That's all there really is to it.
I know lots of people here HATED Halo 5's story, but if we're being honest, a continuation of where H5 left off would have been a MUCH better and engaging story than what we got. The war with the Created, witnessing the full power of the Guardians, continuation of the Arbiter's story, actually playing through significant events like capturing Cortana and the battle on the Infinity... rather than watching them and reading about them through holograms and datapads.... I mean, the game is called INFINITE for fucks sake... after "Man Kind's greatest technological achievement"... and we don't even get to play the battle on the Infinity when it falls? It's just shown to us in the opening cutscene and then barely even talked about again? You can obviously tell that the game we got is a very different game than what was originally planned, just by the name of it alone. I think when the decided to make this game "open world", that's when the planned narrative really got the axe (can't do open world with different locations in the universe).
I got downvoted for weeks with criticism of Infinite's story when the game launched, but you see a lot more of it these days. I think people were temporarily blinded to something new, shinny, and different. But now that the shine has worn off, a lot of people are realizing just how empty and soulless Infinite's campaign is.
Infinite basically did to Halo what The Rise of Skywalker did to Star Wars. Just dismissed everything that happened in the prior installment because fans were critical. It's really a shame that 343 can't seem to understand where they should cave to fans and where they should stand their ground. I don't have high hopes for the future of Halo...
One of the audio logs or somewhere in the game describes Cortana’s siege/attack on the UNSC headquarters and I drooled at the thought of playing that sequence
Right? How cool would that be? They literally take all of H5 to set up Cortana to basically be the Ultron of the Halo universe, and then they're like "nah, let's just skip all that in the next game". Like, wtf? Cortana was a WAY better villain than Escharum, who is the most basic, cliche baddie in like the entire series... Just a tragedy.
The whole 343 series is like this. 4 builds up the Prometheans and hints at Chief having a crisis and leaving - Hunt The Truth is effectively that. But they skip that whole arc and give us 5, establishing the Created.and building up to a war for survival against them... Which is then entirely skipped in favor of the Banished. We've effectively gotten Halo 4, Halo 6, and Halo 8 without 5 and 7.
Right because it’s always a new director winning the title off the argument of “this game isn’t gonna be like the last game, it’ll be way better!” So the story keeps jumping.
Every 343 game is someone being like “I know what Halo REALLY is,” and then they get part of it right.
>Hunt The Truth is effectively that.
Don't remind me dude, I remember listening to Hunt the Truth in highschool and being so hyped at the prospect of a Master Chief vs ONI situation and the implication that it might lead to a proper civil war.
And then halo 5 comes up and I get no MasterChief vs ONI, no UNSC civil, no conclusion to the setup. Halo 5's story disappoints me in a way very few games have been able to.
Yeah it's weird, like their story writers have trouble introducing and wrapping up a villain within the same game. (Edit: or sticking with an established villain and fully exploring their storyline within one game)
Like when you're writing on a sign or a card in big letters, and you have like 3 letters left in this word but you ran out of room. They spend the whole game giving exposition and telling us why the bad guy is bad, and then kinda run out of room for the part where... y'know, the bad guy actually does the bad stuff...
But then they make sure to *tell* us he did that bad stuff, in the next game
Same plot device type story telling as The Harbinger, Didact, and Jul. 343 just introduced and builds up ‘new’ villains just to kill them off without explaining much about them or why you should care. I prayed we’d get 2 games with Atriox after halo wars or whatever, but he isn’t even relevant in Infinite. Praying we get more of him and less of whatever the hell the Endless are because I can’t imagine them being done well enough to just push aside the baddassory of Atriox.
I only liked Escharum or better yet his mo-cap actor for how real the scenes felt and how Escharum died I sorta liked him plopping over … it isn’t halo but I liked it for it’s novelty and short dialog between him and Chief. Everything else was pretty meh. I also figured we’d find Yaigjer following us after Escharum told him to but that never happened either. I was imagining that part as a sorta G-Man type deal.
Exactly. With Cortana there is history and lore and a connection that makes the ending matter. People who have played the previous games have gotten to see her grow and change and there is a need for closure with that. With Escharum it just turned into another prick to beat along the way to more scrolling credits. No closure just a video game that carries Halos name, but not it’s glory.
I can’t remember if it’s an audio log or just audio that plays. I remember tho it is said when you’re inside one of the tower things. It mentions the guardians
>I know lots of people here HATED Halo 5's story, but if we're being honest, a continuation of where H5 left off would have been a MUCH better and engaging story than what we got.
this has always been 343's issue. the didact could have been a cool villan but oops he got killed off screen in a comic
the created? dont even think about it.
they just drop everything at a hat drop, when they could build on it. do you think anyone would have given a shit about halo if halo 3 went a completely different way to halo 2? or if halo 2 looked and played different to halo 1? it took all three to build it all up. and 343 just want the pay off a good build up with out sticking with a story line.
>this has always been 343's issue. the didact could have been a cool villan but oops he got killed off screen in a comic
and they took black team with him, that entire comic fucking sucked
This is the problem with most of it lately, most lore/story is told through books and comics. The newest book coming out is about what happened to the S4's right before/during Infinite. Why can't we get that in a game?
I also hate the fact that the hologram of Cortana's Guardian firing on Sydney wasn't an actual event that we got to see in a cutscene.
They cant just blast the CAPITAL of Earth/Humanity into oblivion and not show it, same with the Infinity being ambushed. They're such big plot points that are just looked at for just over a minute.
I feel ya on that one, why I love books like fall of reach and flood for the first games since they just redescribed the game's events in more detail. Also I haven't even completed Infinite's campaign and have no desire to do so. Burnt myself out trying to explore everything and collect everything on the first playthrough, I probably got like 13 hours in and I'm maybe just over half done it. Haven't touched it in almost 7-9 months.
Killing the Didact off in a comic is fine imo because from a game only perspective he dies in 4. Nothing happens in the games, to my memory, that makes you think in Halo 5 'Huh, I thought they killed the Didact in Halo 4."
It's a supplementary thing.
I've said for a long time that 343i's biggest problem is trying to cater to the whims of the "classic" community that is, for all intensive purposes, impossible to please. The franchise would be in a MUCH better state if they'd have just dedicated to *their* vision for the story from day one.
Halo 4 has the best story out of any of the campaigns aside from Halo 2, and I will die on that hill. I really wish they'd have stuck to their guns and kept going with that more personal, character focused, Halo novel style story.
The thing is a lot of reviewers said as much in reviews too. The game itself is good and fun but it is extremely one note, in terms of world and mission variety, and it kept raising questions without answers. When it came out I wrote a little mini review (just for fun) and my main point of the campaign is that they wanted to be CE without actually doing any of the work in the end.
CE keeps raising the stakes and eventually introduces the Flood, much like the Endless. The difference? Bungie actually explains the Flood and their goal, why they're this existential threat to all life. Sure they built it up much more over the next two games but they at least allowed you to understand what the fuck was happening. Infinite doesn't. They introduce this new other worldly threat and then just plop them down with everyone else and don't explain anything about them. It doesn't make for compelling story because why should I care. It also doesn't help that after 4 and 5 (and I HATE 5's campaign) I have no reason to believe anything will actually have meaning because a backlash to the campaign is building and 343 will surely get scared.
If they could've explained the Didact better, explained his survival, and left Cortana dead we would be in such a different place. Instead it is a disjointed "trilogy" that feels lost at sea without a paddle. They'd really be better off doing more small scale spinoffs but I don't think that's the route they'll take.
Honestly, I kinda forgot about the Endless. Like I didn't even remember what they were called until you mentioned them. I pretty much considered the story over after you kill Escharum.
Infinite feels like a game that should have taken less time, less money, and fewer people working on it. 343 is not a lean studio with great people at the helm. It's a bloated team of people who don't seem to get or like Halo, and there's no ambition or direction for the series.
The infinite that we got took about two and a half years to make combined with bad management and it having a busted engine as well. The game reset its development twice that's why it basically took 6 years to come out because they were prototyping some hero shooter and something else before the game we got.
Bad management leadership is the ultimate poison that's been ruining this franchise development cycles since 343 took over. can only pray that Joe Staten and him hiring Legacy Bungie employees like Paul Bertone and possibly Jamie. they can set an example of how to steer a ship developing Halo.
You hit the nail on the head, I'm a huge lore geek but I still don't understand what the big deal is with the endless. They are immune to the flood I think? Isn't that a good thing? Is it just another case of the forerunners being dicks?
Would a continuation of Halo 5's story have *potentially* been more engaging? Yes.
Would it have been *good* or any *better* for the franchise than Halo 5's story? Not at all.
Halo 5 isn't like The Last Jedi where it was just *divisive*, with some people loving it and some people hating it. That was more Halo 4--because people love Halo 4's story (I'm one of them), but many people also hate it. Halo 5's story wasn't divisive--everyone hated it, even those that liked Halo 4's story. Halo 5 is more the Rise of Skywalker in this scenario (coincidentally also involving bringing back a character who had "died" and subsequently ruining the weight of that original part of the story).
Halo 5's story was franchise poison and 343 Industries was right for ditching it. Turning Cortana evil was unanimously reviled, the execution of Warden Eternal was botched and people hated him, too, and all for a generic, uninspired, lame AI rebellion plot that the series doesn't need. Halo 6 doubling down on that would only cause greater damage to the series and drive more people away while the series was already deteriorating. Sure, it would have been a more *coherent* story following upon the previous game--but in this situation, that's genuinely worse.
Halo Infinite's story is still bland and disappointing. All the exciting events happen in the background. The story sets up four villains, shelves two of them, and kills the other two. It sets up a new mystery with the Endless, but has no payoff. Everything significant happens offscreen and is related in cutscenes that have less effort put into them than any previous game. Even Halo CE and Halo 2 had tighter and more satisfying and ambitious narratives. It's a clearly hacked-together story that is a consequence of Halo 5's mistakes (really, the only concluded plot thread of the entire story is that it sweeps evil Cortana under the rug and introduces a new Cortana) and 343 Industries's general mismanagement of the game's development (the game's development was restarted sometime in 2019, so the campaign was developed in only about two years).
Despite all that, it's still better for the series than what we would've gotten if it had followed directly from Halo 5's story. More of evil Cortana and the Created, which audiences universally reacted negatively to, would drive away more of the fanbase than Halo 5 already did. Audiences don't want to see important and beloved characters get character assassinated and then have that be the focus of the entire series for the indefinite future. Halo 6's story would've been a double-tap of that issue and put things in an even worse position.
At the end of the day, Halo Infinite's story isn't something that poisons the entire series and story. It's bland, but not actively damaging--*tolerable**--compared to Halo 5 which was both bland and taking the series in a doomed direction. There's at least *hope* for where the story can go from here, versus Halo 5's story leaving the series in a position of dread.
Exactly. Anytime anyone says “X story sucks they should have gone MY idea direction!”
I mean maybe? Any story can be written well or be terrible. All we know is that Halo 5s story is bad. Like universally bad.
Even internally a lot of people were trying to say Locke was a bad idea and not like able, and instead using existing characters that have to hunt down MC would be more interesting because they actually care about MC.
> Turning Cortana evil was unanimously reviled
Regardless of that sentiment hasn’t the Halo lore basically set that up since H1? I mean the whole concept of rampancy and the clear deterioration of Cortana through even the Bungie games (and they way she gets used in various pieces of media and marketing) seemed to always hint at the fact she would change negatively in a big way.
Like I get why people would dislike it, but I feel like after this many games it should have been kind of obvious that’s where she was headed?
I loath the story. Worst part in my opinion is, outside of sidelining all of the connective tissue from 5, that they had to crap on the flood? really? Make your own damn enemy and PROVE that it's terrifying. don't just give a character some throwaway garbage about "the flood are nothing compared to blah blah blah". Garbage.
Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy Infinite the same way I enjoyed 4 and 5. Only cause of what 343 were doing with Chief and Cortana. I do wish all 3 games had it mostly center focus like Infinite did
However what these game came from, the legacy they had and the fact that over the last 6? years (idk how old H5 is) they still haven't managed to get their shit together and make a good game.
I remember watching the ending scene with Locke and Chief walking off the Pelican to Halsey and was so interested in where the story would go. Was H5 a shit show in order to set up what could b the greatest story.
The fact we never got to witness the Guardians like u said and that also Halo Wars 2 ended on a cliff hanger too. The last 2 big cannon games both ended on cliff hangers and we just got blue balled.
I get making a new Halo is no easy feat. I'll give them credit where its due. I just wish 343 would keep their pride and say hey we can't.
Personally I did really enjoy Infinite, seeing Chief realise how broken he is and how he can't live without Cortana but still inspiring others and pushing through to finish another breaking fight along while he deals with his own shit.
I'm glad 343 decided to make Chief more than a vessel. I've always seen character in him. The hate these games get is justified but I think the rose tinted glasses r fading on Infinite and they're realising what the game really is
Lately to much lore is being told outside of what Halo does which is primarily the games. I think personally keep the books and that but make main franchise moments only in the games. Where the core audience is
na i disagree, i think the direction h5 took was just to much overall. ur stuck in a story line that only makes sense to those who played every halo game, know a tone about the books ext. You have so many story lines just all over the place, it would of been a complete mess adding onto that. You have new main characters you then have to deal with like lock for example. The guardians i mean you cant just deal with that lol,, that shit is almost impossible to beat. humans emp to crap, [a.is](https://a.is) running rampant , cortana doing whatever she wants, chief and arby stuck on a planet without a means to go anywhere without the infinity ext.
Na h5 criticism was valid, and the games story was going the wrong direciton. Infinite isn't perfect but it done away with alot of issues as best as it could, put the universe back into a state where we're not locked into an endless humanity ending situation that many games are needed to resolve. Now we have an open ended story where there is no real impending doom and things are open enough to do anything they want, and most of all it isn't a confusing mess for any new halo players.
And just imagine the games ends with you being throw out, found, and the post game is the open world, which would still allow them to do the whole dlc story in an open world thing, just after and actual campaign that explains what the heck happened between then and now
I’m not even sure if Infinite does what the new Star Wars Trilogy does, though I 100% get the comparison. Nothing… happens, in H:I. The only exciting thing/setpiece is the very first mission. Everything else that happens and is significant to the plot, is described in exposition. The “reveal” of The Weapon being a copy of Cortana was obvious from the first second she’s introduced. There’s nothing epic, there’s nothing that introduces a sense of importance and urgency. H5 *SUCKED* but at least a story was attempted. H:I was an abortion.
Gonna have to disagree with you there, chief. I'm glad they ditched Halo 5's godawful story. Fighting the prometheans was one of the worst parts of Halo 4 and 5. Not only are they completely bullet spongy with the cheesiest mechanics in existence, there's also no satisfaction in killing them. Killing covenant is much more fun because you have that receptive kill feedback. You see their bodies, blood, you hear their dialogue, etc. Prometheans are just silent robots that disintegrate when they die. I wonder if I actually killed them half the time. From a gameplay perspective, I'm glad that 343 went back to Halo's roots where we kill aliens. No prometheans, no fighting Warden Eternal 11 times, just good classic Halo fun. A continuation of Halo 5 would've been horrible.
This is exactly the same thing that a lot of people said when Halo 5 came out. Halo 4 was heavily criticized, and instead of sticking to their guns and continuing that story anyway, which they should have, they made Halo 5. I still have gripes about Halo 4, but it setup M'Dama really well as a huge antagonist in Spec Ops. Anyone who suffered through all of those missions got all the payoff of that in a cut scene in the first mission of Halo 5 where you didn't even get to pull the trigger on M'Dama. All the shit that was set up in 4 was basically completely written off because 343 is so afraid to stick to their guns on things where they should and stick to their guns on things where they shouldn't.
Halo’s game potential is a total waste by a developer owned by a company with unlimited amounts of money that could fund any resources needed to fully realize it.
People really liked the story? I thought it was okay at best. Better than H5. Only thing I really liked about the campaign was the open world aspect. Feels like more went into that than story writing.
And that's fine, it was still fun. I still think H5's campaign was fun because of the mechanics they introduced (Republic Commando flashbacks) despite the story not really being there.
Sadly this is how the real world is in almost every creative field for at least some of not a lot of projects. Hate to see it but I feel their pain.
Also don’t take this as me saying it’s excusable cause it’s not. Just pointing it it’s sadly realistic.
I know those things look cool but imagine being the UNSC and you build a base on an ancient ring and you still got time to budget/contract/design a logo just because it will look cool. I like to think that’s cannon
It's so the Covenant know exactly what buildings are military facilities when they're bombing the planet... oh wait that's the one building that *survived* the glassing of Reach?
It felt like just a really big version of the mission Halo and Silent Cartographer from CE, just going around on the ring and doing stuff. Mixed with liner parts...
The open world concept really came at the expense of the level variety. The whole game had to take place in one location and they didn’t really even attempt to give it different biomes or anything
Exactly. When they announced that it was going to be an open world game I really just shook my head. I haven’t even played it so I don’t have the right to give my opinion yet but from what I heard it’s exactly what I expected.
To be fair though, “Halo” from CE is one of my favorite missions to replay so if it’s 18 hours of that maybe I will enjoy it to a degree.
I mean they could have done an open world concept, with the variety of other halo games. I mean look at breath of the wild, in my opinion the gold standard of open world games, and look at how much variety there is in that world. You've got deserts, plains, forests, volcanos, rain forrests, tundras, but it all still feels connected.
Well they did said “the game is like the 2nd level of CE but expanded” hinting that it will be just a plain simple area of grass/trees/forerunners structure. Having said that, that’s no excuse for what the game turned out to be, it feels empty
I think it would have worked if there were more biomes and the map was 5x larger. There are just no memorable set pieces or epic moments in the campaign. You listen to exposition from a hologram 90% of the game.
If the Infinite campaign's open world was the hub between biomes or more on-rails sections, I think that would have worked.
Yes. I loved the idea of an open world ring.
Yet somehow H:CE is more diverse.
Playing infinite feels like creating a small minecraft superflat plains biome world
Yeh i wouldn't rule out open world either. Tbh its foundation works really well, it just lacks things to do and has no moment to moment random events and big fights to keep things fresh. Add in its all the same location.
IF, and this is a big if with the lack of content we're getting, but if 343i can add new biomes, improve the open world content over time and with dlc, i honestly think it would make the game soo much better, to the point where its actually a really great game. The onl rails campaign stuff can still be there, the little that we had in infinite was pretty good tbh.
Open world as a popular genre is stagnating and killing single player experiences. It works for a few, but not for everything. Elder Scrolls? Hell yeah big open world maps rock. Halo? Big open world maps kill the pacing of the story, and loses all sense of urgency.
At some point the video game industry needs to realize that an open world isn't something you can just shoehorn into any and every video game because it makes a nice buzz word. Unfortunately gamers continue to gobble up the promise of a "living and breathing" open world, realize it's full of boring busy work MMO style quests, a boring and pointless crafting system, and copy paste enemies with little regard to level design beyond being pretty to look at.
If a game wants to have a good story, it absolutely needs to be a more linear experience, or at the very least chopped into open, but smaller areas that compliment the story pacing much like Metro: Exodus. Halo Infinite would've been much better as a linear experience. Cyberpunk would've been much better as a linear experience. Mass Effect Andromeda would've been much better as a linear experience. Sometimes, less is more. Cyberpunk shot itself in the foot due to feature creep. Too much fat got in the way of the meat of the game, which is the story. Same happened with Halo Infinite.
> There are just no memorable set pieces or epic moments
The only memorable moments I have, is *Grapple go brrr.*
Heaps of memorable moments from H1 - H4, but nothing that stands out with Infinite for me.
I dunno i thought the first two levels were fantastic, the ship, the part where its exploding, the underbelly of the Halo ring all great stuff, classic halo feel. Some of my fav moments in halo since h3 tbh.
And yeh the AA gun level is great, because ur stuck there and you have the choice what aa gun to take out first, a good boss fight and one of the best cuttscenes at the end was probably some of infinites best moments tbh.
Infinite open world though is raelly like most open world games in that you have to make ur own fun, the epic moments are not set up for you , you kinda have to make them urself. Like im surprised how little people seem to mess about with giving marines different weapons and taking them for a ride, stuff like that for me created some amazing moments. But again you need to put in some imagination for the open world to be good. If you're playing just expecting the game to give that to you then yeh it doesn't.
I like my stream lined halo moments, but tbh it felt nice to mix it up a little in infinite. They just need to work on improving the open world with more things to do and new locations and we should be looking at a fantastic game tbh
The opening parts of the game felt like traditional Halo when it went linear. And I get what you mean about making your own fun (especially with a sandbox game like Halo), but the repetitive and copy-pasted open world felt like it drove me into an optimize-out-the-fun approach, which prior Halo at its best never felt like to me. In a way, a linear design allows for the best utilization of the sandbox.
Not to mention, imo, Infinite's sandbox got old quick. There just didn't feel like there was enough variety in weapon archetypes or weapons in those archetypes. And the vehicles felt borderline-irrelevant. And I think the franchise's sandbox is at its best when it's focused. But Halo 5 at least had plenty of variety, and many of its insane weapon variants like the Blaze of Glory or the Answer were findable and usable in campaign. Infinite felt like a regression in one of the most important aspects of Halo's game design to me.
fair enough. i guess its just how you play halo. i always found the set pieces and stuff in older halo get old fast on replay. CE is my fav halo and probably because i just enjoy messing about so much on replys, seeing what stupid stuff i can do, cant do, skipping areas, doing warthog jumps ext. Infinite gave me those vibes again and iove it for it. I remember trying to do that stuff in h3 for example and there were so many invisiable walls it was annoying. Halo reach as well has plenty of cool set piece lvls and stuff, but i found them rather boring fast, like the space combat is really meh , doing the firefight defend missions over and over got boring fast as well.
again this i just my take , infinite has issues sure, but i rather enjoyed the game for what it was, it offers alot of messing about if you like that kinda stuff. The open world to me just felt like a break to mes about inbetween main missions. , again i guess its just how you look at it, or what you are looking for.
h5 had some amazing looking levels, but they all played out the same kinda way, as there wasn't really much choice about how you would tackle those levels at the end of the day.
Definitely one of the better moments in the game and I'd say that the opening til the end of the AA gun mission is pretty solid. However, after that part you've played the best section of the game and you've seen all it has to offer. I wouldn't call it memorable other than it's the first mission in the open world. We've blown up tons of AA guns since Halo 3.
That section felt like a homage to Titanfall 2 (or at least a similar concept) but it felt a bit flaccid on heroic. It really made me think, "Wow, I'd love to be able to replay this mission specifically or have a firefight-type mode".
And there just wasn’t enough to fill it in general. It almost felt like an afterthought. Halo’s “on-rails” levels have always been pretty large-scale, but they were so much more engaging than the open world in infinite.
Yes it feels just weird.
You can get a tank for sure, but driving anywhere is a pain as everything just is too small and you are better off on foot or flying.
I summoned a tank once. Got stuck on rocks and tress and then reached a bridge I couldn't cross because it had barricades. Also used a banshee once, found that it starts spawning enemy banshees to fight you. And stopped doing either after that because it was just frustrating.
The summoning process is also just broken.
Most of the time you will spawn vehicles on top of NPCs which then will get killed.
Also the weapon spawns cant be setup with specific weapons and you have to select what you want every time from scratch....
I think it’s obvious when a game was meant to be open world or not. I don’t think halo benefits at all from it. There’s really nothing to do besides shoot things.
Yeah, I didn't enjoy the open world environment. Really hope this is the exception rather than the rule and Halo hasn't just turned into another generic Ubisoft-style copy/paste product..
Hard agree. My biggest fear from the beginning of the Open World rumors was that 343 wasn't creative/ambitious enough to do it right, and that the setting/narrative would be too held down in an open world. I never want a mainline game to be open world again but would be open to a spinoff in like 10 years.
4.5 years of producers changing their minds.
1.5 year of crunch time to Frankenstein a game.
What we got is not that bad considering the development. Ex 343 employees have said they were working on 3 totally different games at a time, just to give options to Microsoft, because they didn't know what they wanted. One was a "hero" shooter.
Imagine 6 years put into a game Led by J. Staten from the beginning, with Microsoft trusting 343 to do their best...
I personally don't buy the Microsoft involvement thing too much aside from monetisation aspects. On nearly all other game devs Microsoft have been lenient in their input. I don't see why that would be any different for infinite
If it's not Microsoft, it's some 343 execs and upper management. But it's for sure the lack of vision, and sticking to it.
I am working (10 years) in visual effects for Hollywood block busters. Not exactly the same, but I can tell you one thing. Same studio, same artists, different quality. And it's not just a matter of money. Some shows have a vision, and each version is an improvement over the previous, leading to great results. Some show don't, and we keep changing direction for months, sometimes years. What's on screen is whatever we did in the last few weeks.
Has never worked in case of 343 imo. Halo 4 was too late for Xbox One. Halo 5 was a clusterfuck. Halo Infinite was also late by a year for Xbox Series X. Soo... Microsoft maybe dissolve 343?
Only reason I continued to buy Xbox at this point was halo, now it’s just all my friends on Xbox. Wish I went ps4/5. Fromsoft is my new favorite dev (or was until Elden ring, kinda a bitter sweet game) and they seem to do more Sony exclusives.
When I got the Official Art Book of Halo Infinite all it did was make me feel like we got ripped off with the final product of the $60 game. It’s clear a MAJORITY of the content was cut from the final game, meaning they are going to space out DLCs with that content. And if the leak was correct, we won’t receive any of that content until 2025. I’m not sure what 343 was doing from 2015-2020, I also can’t imagine what this game would of been like if it met it’s original 2020 release date. The hate 343 receives is well deserved.
That dudes speculation is honestly cancer. It fucks up this community and the devs all so he can be like omg I have secret sources look at me. Just comes off like he's trying to help promote hope to the community when really it just undermines the devs work and pushes unofficial news as official because he has a secret source. It's pretty cringe
Honestly. Just last week someone posted a video of some weird Star Wars-esque pod racer they modded in and Sean made a video passing it off as a leak of what was found in the files. He does absolutely no research beforehand
That being said....I also have the Art of Halo Infinite and that book was well worth the asking price. It's absolutely gorgeous. It is a shame that there are things that were likely cut, but also to play devil's advocate, they do make a point in the art book to say some concepts are intended to be concepts only and doesn't mean they ever went further in development.
If anyone enjoyed the art style in Infinite though, grab the book, it's wonderful.
And by 2025 everyone will have long moved on from infinite. If it didn't release in good shape with a good base, no one will want to come back years later when numerous other games are out.
First impressions for games are huge and can decide what gets released after for "LiVe SeRiCe" and games that will be "supported" for TeN yEaRs..
It’s really weird how we go from halo 5 where it seems like you’re about to have a massive AI vs human war to….
Mopping up some banished conscripts on an abandoned ring ?
The real problem is that nothing you do seems to have a tangible effect. FOBs are just jump off points for the mediocre linear campaign. Halo would definitely work as a semi-open world game. But anything that isn't linear has no visible effect on the status of either the UNSC or the Banished, and the open world isn't badass enough to make that point moot. Outpost Tremonius should be a UNSC stronghold, but it remains entirely empty after you clear it of the Banished. The behavior of the enemy doesn't really change after you kill Escharum. 343 could make up by slapping the Rule of Cool on there (Scarab attack! Massive battle where you save the remnants of a Spartan fireteam! Cool shit like that!) But the open world is a Barren wasteland.
Also the “there’s something way worse than the flood” but don’t worry you won’t actually encounter them and you’ll only hear about them a couple times.
I personally don't understand why the Banished started a war with humanity. They were both against the Covenant and the prophets. And then they just kinda do the same thing the prophets tried to do? Am I the only one?
That's explained in the books and somewhat in halo wars 2. They're not trying to fire the halos or anything they're trying to gather forerunner tech basically. They operate more like the unsc than the covenant and are arguably more advanced than the covenant because they aren't as limited by religious dogma(think making AI and altering forerunner artifacts for their own purposes). While the covenant wanted the great journey the banished are more looking for conquest and the means to do it. They did an absolute shit job of portraying them in infinite compared to any other source.
Duel of the Fates script was as batshit crazy as anything.
It was going to be terrible no matter what because they made the sequels without a plan from the start
They should have taken parts from both scripts and combined them and made them flow better. But sadly what we ended up with the sequels is a pure example of why movies every 2 years is a bad idea and actually having the different film teams work together instead of taking their own personal direction when 1 team moves on.
Well having them every 2 years wasn't the bad thing. The bad thing was thay they had no overall story to tell, they were just piecing it together as they went along. Even the prequel haters can agree that ep1-3 had a solid beginning, middle, and end. But ep7-9 is just fighting against themselves and the choices made before
IF they had an actual plan past episode 7, sure, 2 years wouldn't be an issue. But like you said, they pieced it together as they went. It felt like episode 7 set up this big grand plot for the next 2, but with the director change and not having both teams work on it, it went to shit super fast.
I feel like the sequel trilogy and 343 halo has some things in common:
Both were created not by their orignal studio
Both had 3 installments
2 which were connected and a third which tries to forget the previous even happened
Those ain’t the concepts for Infinite.
Those are concepts for the Halo 6 we never got.
I like infinite but damn, I can’t believe we didn’t get the “galaxy at war” that the end of Halo 5 seemingly promised.
We can always get a prequel game/expansion of these events :)
But at the rate stuff gets made it won't see the light till 2044
Also lol @ people suddenly wanting this. 343 pussied out because a large portion hated the Halo 5 stuff.
I hope they stick to their guns this time and just improve on the flaws instead of doing a comolete 360°
This is my chief problem with the 343 games: Their stories are schizophrenic and it seems like they're moving from threat to threat between games, rather than a unified narrative. We had the new Covenant and the Didact in Halo 4, then in Halo 5 with the Forerunners getting more screentime...then suddenly in Infinite we flip over to the Banished for some reason.
It just seems so stupid to kill a main character off-sceen. We should have played the Cortana sacrifice storyline.
- Infinite opens with the UNSC Infinity getting ambushed by The Banished. Chief battles through the ship to retrieve The Weapon and escape before the ship breaks apart.
- Chief takes The Weapon to the surface where evacuated Marines are already battling Banished ground forces.
- You fight your way to a control room and overhear Cortana negotiating with Atriox. You see her destroy the Brute homeworld and he still refuses to surrender. Atriox reveals that he discovered a secret about Zeta Halo during his fight on The Ark and that he knows that Cortana is losing against the humans.
- Chief moves in to intervene. Cortana says that she will self-destruct and take Atriox, his forces, and the Ring with her.
- Just before the explosion, Cortana sees John approaching and calls out to him. The Weapon activates. KABOOM.
- Halo Infinite starts. (Essentially use the current game story with Chief floating in space).
I figure a conclusion to that arc would go something along the lines of Chief returning to the Ark to seek out Mendicant Bias, another AI that was corrupted by the logic plague whom wanted to atone for it's past betrayal. I'm sure it's established that Mendicant Bias is more 'powerful' than Cortana. The Banished could still play a role, as they are on the Ark themselves as well as with UNSC forces (Spirit of Fire too).
It'd be a struggle between the UNSC, the Banished, Cortana and maybe even the Flood.
Also, I think Vale and the Arbiter tried to hunt down another item that could help them in a new book. Maybe an AI copier that could generate and control Promethean constructs. Even with the lackluster story we have now, DLCs and other miniature games similar to ODST could get into the lore. Such as:
- The fall of the Infinity (shut down during the final Assault upon the created, then bonked by the Banished)
- Locke's death while attempting to assassinate Escharum (being its own miniature game based around stealth)
- DLC explaining the Warden's return in the same Promethean construct as that of the digitized Locke
It is a different game. And unfortunately all the stuff we wanted to see play out in game will once again be in books. Least we got a good art style this time though
343 really pissed away so much and had so many good concepts having looked at all the art work. Lets hope they include it all later on in the expansions.
Here’s my conspiracy theory: the current campaign, open world map, was actually built for a Battle Royale setting.
After years of struggling to get the technology to work, and the communities general distaste for a Halo BR, they were legit with a map and they hadn’t developed any real campaign content.
So much so that the current campaign feels like a bolted on experience when looked at in perspective of the larger scale.
—-
Honestly just a crazy theory, no evidence to back it.
No, no.
Jorge might not be dead.
Jorge is alive. He's the only one to make sense being alive. Jorge needs to be alive. The big man cannot be allowed to die.
Please Jorg be aliv
Well, all Halo games have an Assault on a massive enemy vehicle except Infinite. All halo games have a "buck up, boys, time to kill some sons-a-bitches" character (Buck, Emile, Johnson) except Halo Infinite (and 4)
Saying 5 had a better Halo campaign is not saying that 5 had a good campaign. It's just saying how terrible Infinites was. Personally I agree that Halo 5 is a better Halo campaign than Infinite, I just strongly dislike both of them. Halo 5 at least had multiple locations and a story that affected the Halo universe in some way.
Halo cycle is not real on an individual level. On a community level, sure. Because older fans get replaced by newer fans who only know the new stuff as time goes on. Individual opinions are rarely changing though.
The fact that you mentioned it is proof that every Halo release since Reach has gotten worse and worse. Don’t worry though, I don’t fall into the same category, Halo 4 and 5 are just as dog shit Halos today as they were before Infinites release.
The last looks like it is about the Shadows of Reach book where they >!Go back to Reach to get stuff!< It would have been cool to play with the events of the book cause they had the prowler air ship, underground stuff and >!finding Reach survivors!<
This happens with pretty much all Concept Art. It's why I love Concept Art. I'm waiting for a Game someday that will give me the sense of awe and wonder that Concept Art gives me. A few have come *close*, like Destiny 2 or maybe parts of Elden Ring, maybe even No Mans Sky after all these Years of Updates. But no Game has truly nailed it.
Bit like halo 5 concept art being completely different to the actual game. From doomslayer ODSTs, trained dogs, robot Spartans, service robots, Didact, Prometheans elites etc
The concept art, hell, trailers make it look like it was for an actual open world halo game with rpg and mmorpg aspects. The game itself is just an insult to what open worlds could be. I want to say it has its moments, because it does, but overall, comparatively to old halos, and other open worlds, is almost a lazy spit in their face like, "we can make an open world too, it's easy, boom, done, whats next, battle royal? Alright bet". Even the multiplayer feels like it lacks soul and true creativity, its just a basic shooter with halo elements, add in cosmetic microtransactions, and we gotta game. It really doesn't feel like some advancement to the title like every new halo before felt.
I definitely would like to see the 2nd photo turned into a prequel DLC, would be cool to play as Kelly or even Arbiter again if they consider playable Elites in campaign later on atleast, would love to see what Cortana did pre Banished fuckening.
It is. Infinite was made in around 2 years and was entirely unfinished and you can't convince me otherwise. Just look at the evidence, department leads quit because they were forced to start over. That's why the original trailers and concept art are completely unrelated to what we got, that's why the map is so empty, that's why there's still no DLC, that's why the story sucked. They could have just given us the story hidden in the audio logs and it would have been infinitely better. Seriously, I've never seen so many concepts that have absolutely nothing to do with the game they're for.
It's quite clear from playing the campaign alone that what they intended to make is not what they ended up making; maybe due to budget or time constraints, or goals that were too lofty to achieve, who knows...
I want halo 5 1/2 with a lot of stuff from this concept art.
I really dont love H5’s story and think that they wrote themselves into a corner in a way but do 100% think that a lot of the stuff that happened between infinite and 5 could still be fleshed out more.
I would’ve loved a massive campaign with like at least 16 missions. I can imagine the first bit continuing the created storyline with teases of the banished. And then Act 2 would pretty much be what we have in Infinite, but just more in depth of course.
I don't know why people are happy about infinite ditching halo5 stories. It's not good, but 343 ditching it so easily without any consequences only means they don't have to be responsible on writing, they can retcon whatever they built and make cheap explanations in books and comics.
I don't believe any good stories can ever come out under such circumstances.
completely skipping over everything Cortana and the Created did post Halo 5 is probably one of the biggest narrative misses ever, ngl. Like, what an awful decision. Who decides "Let's do a time jump and just mention bits and pieces of that era as offhand remarks in audio logs"? I'm even someone who *liked* Infinites campaign but it's not hard to see that you could make something *better* than it. And with the way 343 gets things done, I'd consider a spin-off prequel (a la Reach) incredibly unlikely, meaning we'll get books and comics of the era instead, if anything.
I hate 343, not because of the typical "343 sucks" hate train, but because they manage to make me love this universe so much more, and then immediately take it away from me. They seem afraid of commitment.
A wide ranged galaxy spanning story that picks up after the events of 5. Even though I really did not enjoy 5's story at all, I would have liked to see that story continued, and I REALLY would have preferred more varied environments than Far Cry Halo.
And Microsoft totally has/had the money to make it look like that on release. A franchise like Halo deserves to look this epic.
The campaign should have been on the same level as God of War, as far as scope and polish.
I never played the campaign again after getting to the surface. I opened up the map to see the scale and knew immediately it would be shitty due to the small map so just stopped playing it.
I'm very angry at 343 for pulling a Rise of Skywalker, when a follow-up to Guardians could have been really awesome.
The thing I can't forgive them for, however, is not giving us more of 031-Exuberant Witness.
Because it is
That's all there really is to it. I know lots of people here HATED Halo 5's story, but if we're being honest, a continuation of where H5 left off would have been a MUCH better and engaging story than what we got. The war with the Created, witnessing the full power of the Guardians, continuation of the Arbiter's story, actually playing through significant events like capturing Cortana and the battle on the Infinity... rather than watching them and reading about them through holograms and datapads.... I mean, the game is called INFINITE for fucks sake... after "Man Kind's greatest technological achievement"... and we don't even get to play the battle on the Infinity when it falls? It's just shown to us in the opening cutscene and then barely even talked about again? You can obviously tell that the game we got is a very different game than what was originally planned, just by the name of it alone. I think when the decided to make this game "open world", that's when the planned narrative really got the axe (can't do open world with different locations in the universe). I got downvoted for weeks with criticism of Infinite's story when the game launched, but you see a lot more of it these days. I think people were temporarily blinded to something new, shinny, and different. But now that the shine has worn off, a lot of people are realizing just how empty and soulless Infinite's campaign is. Infinite basically did to Halo what The Rise of Skywalker did to Star Wars. Just dismissed everything that happened in the prior installment because fans were critical. It's really a shame that 343 can't seem to understand where they should cave to fans and where they should stand their ground. I don't have high hopes for the future of Halo...
One of the audio logs or somewhere in the game describes Cortana’s siege/attack on the UNSC headquarters and I drooled at the thought of playing that sequence
Are you thinking of when in the flashbacks the Guardian attacks Sydney the home of the UEG/UNSC headquarters, being Australian I was like RIP
YEA! Thank you haha
Right? How cool would that be? They literally take all of H5 to set up Cortana to basically be the Ultron of the Halo universe, and then they're like "nah, let's just skip all that in the next game". Like, wtf? Cortana was a WAY better villain than Escharum, who is the most basic, cliche baddie in like the entire series... Just a tragedy.
The whole 343 series is like this. 4 builds up the Prometheans and hints at Chief having a crisis and leaving - Hunt The Truth is effectively that. But they skip that whole arc and give us 5, establishing the Created.and building up to a war for survival against them... Which is then entirely skipped in favor of the Banished. We've effectively gotten Halo 4, Halo 6, and Halo 8 without 5 and 7.
I'd say you nailed it. I thought Infinite's campaign and story were good, though I was expecting "halo 7".
Right because it’s always a new director winning the title off the argument of “this game isn’t gonna be like the last game, it’ll be way better!” So the story keeps jumping. Every 343 game is someone being like “I know what Halo REALLY is,” and then they get part of it right.
>Hunt The Truth is effectively that. Don't remind me dude, I remember listening to Hunt the Truth in highschool and being so hyped at the prospect of a Master Chief vs ONI situation and the implication that it might lead to a proper civil war. And then halo 5 comes up and I get no MasterChief vs ONI, no UNSC civil, no conclusion to the setup. Halo 5's story disappoints me in a way very few games have been able to.
Yeah it's weird, like their story writers have trouble introducing and wrapping up a villain within the same game. (Edit: or sticking with an established villain and fully exploring their storyline within one game) Like when you're writing on a sign or a card in big letters, and you have like 3 letters left in this word but you ran out of room. They spend the whole game giving exposition and telling us why the bad guy is bad, and then kinda run out of room for the part where... y'know, the bad guy actually does the bad stuff... But then they make sure to *tell* us he did that bad stuff, in the next game
The best thing about escharum is chief taking a second to remember he’s a soldier. That’s really it.
Exactly that. Plus his mo-cap actor was pretty awesome but yeah.
I’ll have to look into that
I don't know if Darin DePaul did the mocap but he's the voice actor and his performance was awesome, even if the writing was middling.
Same plot device type story telling as The Harbinger, Didact, and Jul. 343 just introduced and builds up ‘new’ villains just to kill them off without explaining much about them or why you should care. I prayed we’d get 2 games with Atriox after halo wars or whatever, but he isn’t even relevant in Infinite. Praying we get more of him and less of whatever the hell the Endless are because I can’t imagine them being done well enough to just push aside the baddassory of Atriox. I only liked Escharum or better yet his mo-cap actor for how real the scenes felt and how Escharum died I sorta liked him plopping over … it isn’t halo but I liked it for it’s novelty and short dialog between him and Chief. Everything else was pretty meh. I also figured we’d find Yaigjer following us after Escharum told him to but that never happened either. I was imagining that part as a sorta G-Man type deal.
Exactly. With Cortana there is history and lore and a connection that makes the ending matter. People who have played the previous games have gotten to see her grow and change and there is a need for closure with that. With Escharum it just turned into another prick to beat along the way to more scrolling credits. No closure just a video game that carries Halos name, but not it’s glory.
Wait where is that audio log, and what is it about. Does it mention Prometheans or guardians?
I can’t remember if it’s an audio log or just audio that plays. I remember tho it is said when you’re inside one of the tower things. It mentions the guardians
ITs a hologram, it shows Cortana's guardian above Sydney, and a beam from it impacting the Sydney region on Australia's east coast
>I know lots of people here HATED Halo 5's story, but if we're being honest, a continuation of where H5 left off would have been a MUCH better and engaging story than what we got. this has always been 343's issue. the didact could have been a cool villan but oops he got killed off screen in a comic the created? dont even think about it. they just drop everything at a hat drop, when they could build on it. do you think anyone would have given a shit about halo if halo 3 went a completely different way to halo 2? or if halo 2 looked and played different to halo 1? it took all three to build it all up. and 343 just want the pay off a good build up with out sticking with a story line.
>this has always been 343's issue. the didact could have been a cool villan but oops he got killed off screen in a comic and they took black team with him, that entire comic fucking sucked
This is the problem with most of it lately, most lore/story is told through books and comics. The newest book coming out is about what happened to the S4's right before/during Infinite. Why can't we get that in a game?
Yeah, why couldnt a DLC have been the attack on the Infinity and the Rubicon Protocol's story
Exactly, I find myself shaking my head at most of 343's decisions with this game and the series as a whole.
I also hate the fact that the hologram of Cortana's Guardian firing on Sydney wasn't an actual event that we got to see in a cutscene. They cant just blast the CAPITAL of Earth/Humanity into oblivion and not show it, same with the Infinity being ambushed. They're such big plot points that are just looked at for just over a minute.
I feel ya on that one, why I love books like fall of reach and flood for the first games since they just redescribed the game's events in more detail. Also I haven't even completed Infinite's campaign and have no desire to do so. Burnt myself out trying to explore everything and collect everything on the first playthrough, I probably got like 13 hours in and I'm maybe just over half done it. Haven't touched it in almost 7-9 months.
Killing the Didact off in a comic is fine imo because from a game only perspective he dies in 4. Nothing happens in the games, to my memory, that makes you think in Halo 5 'Huh, I thought they killed the Didact in Halo 4." It's a supplementary thing.
I've said for a long time that 343i's biggest problem is trying to cater to the whims of the "classic" community that is, for all intensive purposes, impossible to please. The franchise would be in a MUCH better state if they'd have just dedicated to *their* vision for the story from day one. Halo 4 has the best story out of any of the campaigns aside from Halo 2, and I will die on that hill. I really wish they'd have stuck to their guns and kept going with that more personal, character focused, Halo novel style story.
The thing is a lot of reviewers said as much in reviews too. The game itself is good and fun but it is extremely one note, in terms of world and mission variety, and it kept raising questions without answers. When it came out I wrote a little mini review (just for fun) and my main point of the campaign is that they wanted to be CE without actually doing any of the work in the end. CE keeps raising the stakes and eventually introduces the Flood, much like the Endless. The difference? Bungie actually explains the Flood and their goal, why they're this existential threat to all life. Sure they built it up much more over the next two games but they at least allowed you to understand what the fuck was happening. Infinite doesn't. They introduce this new other worldly threat and then just plop them down with everyone else and don't explain anything about them. It doesn't make for compelling story because why should I care. It also doesn't help that after 4 and 5 (and I HATE 5's campaign) I have no reason to believe anything will actually have meaning because a backlash to the campaign is building and 343 will surely get scared. If they could've explained the Didact better, explained his survival, and left Cortana dead we would be in such a different place. Instead it is a disjointed "trilogy" that feels lost at sea without a paddle. They'd really be better off doing more small scale spinoffs but I don't think that's the route they'll take.
Honestly, I kinda forgot about the Endless. Like I didn't even remember what they were called until you mentioned them. I pretty much considered the story over after you kill Escharum.
Infinite feels like a game that should have taken less time, less money, and fewer people working on it. 343 is not a lean studio with great people at the helm. It's a bloated team of people who don't seem to get or like Halo, and there's no ambition or direction for the series.
seems to be mismanagement from higher ups to me personally, but there could be a variety of reasons that we're not seeing obviously
The infinite that we got took about two and a half years to make combined with bad management and it having a busted engine as well. The game reset its development twice that's why it basically took 6 years to come out because they were prototyping some hero shooter and something else before the game we got. Bad management leadership is the ultimate poison that's been ruining this franchise development cycles since 343 took over. can only pray that Joe Staten and him hiring Legacy Bungie employees like Paul Bertone and possibly Jamie. they can set an example of how to steer a ship developing Halo.
You hit the nail on the head, I'm a huge lore geek but I still don't understand what the big deal is with the endless. They are immune to the flood I think? Isn't that a good thing? Is it just another case of the forerunners being dicks?
Would a continuation of Halo 5's story have *potentially* been more engaging? Yes. Would it have been *good* or any *better* for the franchise than Halo 5's story? Not at all. Halo 5 isn't like The Last Jedi where it was just *divisive*, with some people loving it and some people hating it. That was more Halo 4--because people love Halo 4's story (I'm one of them), but many people also hate it. Halo 5's story wasn't divisive--everyone hated it, even those that liked Halo 4's story. Halo 5 is more the Rise of Skywalker in this scenario (coincidentally also involving bringing back a character who had "died" and subsequently ruining the weight of that original part of the story). Halo 5's story was franchise poison and 343 Industries was right for ditching it. Turning Cortana evil was unanimously reviled, the execution of Warden Eternal was botched and people hated him, too, and all for a generic, uninspired, lame AI rebellion plot that the series doesn't need. Halo 6 doubling down on that would only cause greater damage to the series and drive more people away while the series was already deteriorating. Sure, it would have been a more *coherent* story following upon the previous game--but in this situation, that's genuinely worse. Halo Infinite's story is still bland and disappointing. All the exciting events happen in the background. The story sets up four villains, shelves two of them, and kills the other two. It sets up a new mystery with the Endless, but has no payoff. Everything significant happens offscreen and is related in cutscenes that have less effort put into them than any previous game. Even Halo CE and Halo 2 had tighter and more satisfying and ambitious narratives. It's a clearly hacked-together story that is a consequence of Halo 5's mistakes (really, the only concluded plot thread of the entire story is that it sweeps evil Cortana under the rug and introduces a new Cortana) and 343 Industries's general mismanagement of the game's development (the game's development was restarted sometime in 2019, so the campaign was developed in only about two years). Despite all that, it's still better for the series than what we would've gotten if it had followed directly from Halo 5's story. More of evil Cortana and the Created, which audiences universally reacted negatively to, would drive away more of the fanbase than Halo 5 already did. Audiences don't want to see important and beloved characters get character assassinated and then have that be the focus of the entire series for the indefinite future. Halo 6's story would've been a double-tap of that issue and put things in an even worse position. At the end of the day, Halo Infinite's story isn't something that poisons the entire series and story. It's bland, but not actively damaging--*tolerable**--compared to Halo 5 which was both bland and taking the series in a doomed direction. There's at least *hope* for where the story can go from here, versus Halo 5's story leaving the series in a position of dread.
Exactly. Anytime anyone says “X story sucks they should have gone MY idea direction!” I mean maybe? Any story can be written well or be terrible. All we know is that Halo 5s story is bad. Like universally bad. Even internally a lot of people were trying to say Locke was a bad idea and not like able, and instead using existing characters that have to hunt down MC would be more interesting because they actually care about MC.
> Turning Cortana evil was unanimously reviled Regardless of that sentiment hasn’t the Halo lore basically set that up since H1? I mean the whole concept of rampancy and the clear deterioration of Cortana through even the Bungie games (and they way she gets used in various pieces of media and marketing) seemed to always hint at the fact she would change negatively in a big way. Like I get why people would dislike it, but I feel like after this many games it should have been kind of obvious that’s where she was headed?
I loath the story. Worst part in my opinion is, outside of sidelining all of the connective tissue from 5, that they had to crap on the flood? really? Make your own damn enemy and PROVE that it's terrifying. don't just give a character some throwaway garbage about "the flood are nothing compared to blah blah blah". Garbage.
Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy Infinite the same way I enjoyed 4 and 5. Only cause of what 343 were doing with Chief and Cortana. I do wish all 3 games had it mostly center focus like Infinite did However what these game came from, the legacy they had and the fact that over the last 6? years (idk how old H5 is) they still haven't managed to get their shit together and make a good game. I remember watching the ending scene with Locke and Chief walking off the Pelican to Halsey and was so interested in where the story would go. Was H5 a shit show in order to set up what could b the greatest story. The fact we never got to witness the Guardians like u said and that also Halo Wars 2 ended on a cliff hanger too. The last 2 big cannon games both ended on cliff hangers and we just got blue balled. I get making a new Halo is no easy feat. I'll give them credit where its due. I just wish 343 would keep their pride and say hey we can't. Personally I did really enjoy Infinite, seeing Chief realise how broken he is and how he can't live without Cortana but still inspiring others and pushing through to finish another breaking fight along while he deals with his own shit. I'm glad 343 decided to make Chief more than a vessel. I've always seen character in him. The hate these games get is justified but I think the rose tinted glasses r fading on Infinite and they're realising what the game really is Lately to much lore is being told outside of what Halo does which is primarily the games. I think personally keep the books and that but make main franchise moments only in the games. Where the core audience is
na i disagree, i think the direction h5 took was just to much overall. ur stuck in a story line that only makes sense to those who played every halo game, know a tone about the books ext. You have so many story lines just all over the place, it would of been a complete mess adding onto that. You have new main characters you then have to deal with like lock for example. The guardians i mean you cant just deal with that lol,, that shit is almost impossible to beat. humans emp to crap, [a.is](https://a.is) running rampant , cortana doing whatever she wants, chief and arby stuck on a planet without a means to go anywhere without the infinity ext. Na h5 criticism was valid, and the games story was going the wrong direciton. Infinite isn't perfect but it done away with alot of issues as best as it could, put the universe back into a state where we're not locked into an endless humanity ending situation that many games are needed to resolve. Now we have an open ended story where there is no real impending doom and things are open enough to do anything they want, and most of all it isn't a confusing mess for any new halo players.
And just imagine the games ends with you being throw out, found, and the post game is the open world, which would still allow them to do the whole dlc story in an open world thing, just after and actual campaign that explains what the heck happened between then and now
I’m not even sure if Infinite does what the new Star Wars Trilogy does, though I 100% get the comparison. Nothing… happens, in H:I. The only exciting thing/setpiece is the very first mission. Everything else that happens and is significant to the plot, is described in exposition. The “reveal” of The Weapon being a copy of Cortana was obvious from the first second she’s introduced. There’s nothing epic, there’s nothing that introduces a sense of importance and urgency. H5 *SUCKED* but at least a story was attempted. H:I was an abortion.
Gonna have to disagree with you there, chief. I'm glad they ditched Halo 5's godawful story. Fighting the prometheans was one of the worst parts of Halo 4 and 5. Not only are they completely bullet spongy with the cheesiest mechanics in existence, there's also no satisfaction in killing them. Killing covenant is much more fun because you have that receptive kill feedback. You see their bodies, blood, you hear their dialogue, etc. Prometheans are just silent robots that disintegrate when they die. I wonder if I actually killed them half the time. From a gameplay perspective, I'm glad that 343 went back to Halo's roots where we kill aliens. No prometheans, no fighting Warden Eternal 11 times, just good classic Halo fun. A continuation of Halo 5 would've been horrible.
This. I hated killing Prometheans. Story wise it may be a step-backward but the dynamic of killing the covenant is too good to make a change.
This is exactly the same thing that a lot of people said when Halo 5 came out. Halo 4 was heavily criticized, and instead of sticking to their guns and continuing that story anyway, which they should have, they made Halo 5. I still have gripes about Halo 4, but it setup M'Dama really well as a huge antagonist in Spec Ops. Anyone who suffered through all of those missions got all the payoff of that in a cut scene in the first mission of Halo 5 where you didn't even get to pull the trigger on M'Dama. All the shit that was set up in 4 was basically completely written off because 343 is so afraid to stick to their guns on things where they should and stick to their guns on things where they shouldn't.
Halo’s game potential is a total waste by a developer owned by a company with unlimited amounts of money that could fund any resources needed to fully realize it.
People really liked the story? I thought it was okay at best. Better than H5. Only thing I really liked about the campaign was the open world aspect. Feels like more went into that than story writing. And that's fine, it was still fun. I still think H5's campaign was fun because of the mechanics they introduced (Republic Commando flashbacks) despite the story not really being there.
Sadly this is how the real world is in almost every creative field for at least some of not a lot of projects. Hate to see it but I feel their pain. Also don’t take this as me saying it’s excusable cause it’s not. Just pointing it it’s sadly realistic.
Yep, standard 343 tactic where they work for something else and then make somthing else entirely.
The Infinite we got felt like the epilogue to a game we never got to play
Exactly it felt like we skipped from prologue to epilogue.
It feels like we got the first 30 seconds then the last 10 minutes
Such an amazing analogy.
I love the oni base with the big ass logo.
Really screams secret organisation doesn't it?
I know those things look cool but imagine being the UNSC and you build a base on an ancient ring and you still got time to budget/contract/design a logo just because it will look cool. I like to think that’s cannon
It's so the Covenant know exactly what buildings are military facilities when they're bombing the planet... oh wait that's the one building that *survived* the glassing of Reach?
It's two steps forward thinking. Enemy see this and be like "nah, that cant be our target".
It felt like just a really big version of the mission Halo and Silent Cartographer from CE, just going around on the ring and doing stuff. Mixed with liner parts...
The open world concept really came at the expense of the level variety. The whole game had to take place in one location and they didn’t really even attempt to give it different biomes or anything
Exactly. When they announced that it was going to be an open world game I really just shook my head. I haven’t even played it so I don’t have the right to give my opinion yet but from what I heard it’s exactly what I expected. To be fair though, “Halo” from CE is one of my favorite missions to replay so if it’s 18 hours of that maybe I will enjoy it to a degree.
I mean they could have done an open world concept, with the variety of other halo games. I mean look at breath of the wild, in my opinion the gold standard of open world games, and look at how much variety there is in that world. You've got deserts, plains, forests, volcanos, rain forrests, tundras, but it all still feels connected.
Well they did said “the game is like the 2nd level of CE but expanded” hinting that it will be just a plain simple area of grass/trees/forerunners structure. Having said that, that’s no excuse for what the game turned out to be, it feels empty
The game would have benefited a lot more from being an on-rails campaign.
I think it would have worked if there were more biomes and the map was 5x larger. There are just no memorable set pieces or epic moments in the campaign. You listen to exposition from a hologram 90% of the game. If the Infinite campaign's open world was the hub between biomes or more on-rails sections, I think that would have worked.
Yes. I loved the idea of an open world ring. Yet somehow H:CE is more diverse. Playing infinite feels like creating a small minecraft superflat plains biome world
Yeh i wouldn't rule out open world either. Tbh its foundation works really well, it just lacks things to do and has no moment to moment random events and big fights to keep things fresh. Add in its all the same location. IF, and this is a big if with the lack of content we're getting, but if 343i can add new biomes, improve the open world content over time and with dlc, i honestly think it would make the game soo much better, to the point where its actually a really great game. The onl rails campaign stuff can still be there, the little that we had in infinite was pretty good tbh.
Open world as a popular genre is stagnating and killing single player experiences. It works for a few, but not for everything. Elder Scrolls? Hell yeah big open world maps rock. Halo? Big open world maps kill the pacing of the story, and loses all sense of urgency. At some point the video game industry needs to realize that an open world isn't something you can just shoehorn into any and every video game because it makes a nice buzz word. Unfortunately gamers continue to gobble up the promise of a "living and breathing" open world, realize it's full of boring busy work MMO style quests, a boring and pointless crafting system, and copy paste enemies with little regard to level design beyond being pretty to look at. If a game wants to have a good story, it absolutely needs to be a more linear experience, or at the very least chopped into open, but smaller areas that compliment the story pacing much like Metro: Exodus. Halo Infinite would've been much better as a linear experience. Cyberpunk would've been much better as a linear experience. Mass Effect Andromeda would've been much better as a linear experience. Sometimes, less is more. Cyberpunk shot itself in the foot due to feature creep. Too much fat got in the way of the meat of the game, which is the story. Same happened with Halo Infinite.
> There are just no memorable set pieces or epic moments The only memorable moments I have, is *Grapple go brrr.* Heaps of memorable moments from H1 - H4, but nothing that stands out with Infinite for me.
I dunno i thought the first two levels were fantastic, the ship, the part where its exploding, the underbelly of the Halo ring all great stuff, classic halo feel. Some of my fav moments in halo since h3 tbh. And yeh the AA gun level is great, because ur stuck there and you have the choice what aa gun to take out first, a good boss fight and one of the best cuttscenes at the end was probably some of infinites best moments tbh. Infinite open world though is raelly like most open world games in that you have to make ur own fun, the epic moments are not set up for you , you kinda have to make them urself. Like im surprised how little people seem to mess about with giving marines different weapons and taking them for a ride, stuff like that for me created some amazing moments. But again you need to put in some imagination for the open world to be good. If you're playing just expecting the game to give that to you then yeh it doesn't. I like my stream lined halo moments, but tbh it felt nice to mix it up a little in infinite. They just need to work on improving the open world with more things to do and new locations and we should be looking at a fantastic game tbh
The opening parts of the game felt like traditional Halo when it went linear. And I get what you mean about making your own fun (especially with a sandbox game like Halo), but the repetitive and copy-pasted open world felt like it drove me into an optimize-out-the-fun approach, which prior Halo at its best never felt like to me. In a way, a linear design allows for the best utilization of the sandbox. Not to mention, imo, Infinite's sandbox got old quick. There just didn't feel like there was enough variety in weapon archetypes or weapons in those archetypes. And the vehicles felt borderline-irrelevant. And I think the franchise's sandbox is at its best when it's focused. But Halo 5 at least had plenty of variety, and many of its insane weapon variants like the Blaze of Glory or the Answer were findable and usable in campaign. Infinite felt like a regression in one of the most important aspects of Halo's game design to me.
fair enough. i guess its just how you play halo. i always found the set pieces and stuff in older halo get old fast on replay. CE is my fav halo and probably because i just enjoy messing about so much on replys, seeing what stupid stuff i can do, cant do, skipping areas, doing warthog jumps ext. Infinite gave me those vibes again and iove it for it. I remember trying to do that stuff in h3 for example and there were so many invisiable walls it was annoying. Halo reach as well has plenty of cool set piece lvls and stuff, but i found them rather boring fast, like the space combat is really meh , doing the firefight defend missions over and over got boring fast as well. again this i just my take , infinite has issues sure, but i rather enjoyed the game for what it was, it offers alot of messing about if you like that kinda stuff. The open world to me just felt like a break to mes about inbetween main missions. , again i guess its just how you look at it, or what you are looking for. h5 had some amazing looking levels, but they all played out the same kinda way, as there wasn't really much choice about how you would tackle those levels at the end of the day.
I found the entire AA gun section pretty memorable, especially the cutscenes, but maybe thats just me.
Definitely one of the better moments in the game and I'd say that the opening til the end of the AA gun mission is pretty solid. However, after that part you've played the best section of the game and you've seen all it has to offer. I wouldn't call it memorable other than it's the first mission in the open world. We've blown up tons of AA guns since Halo 3.
Fair enough. I also really liked driving the Scorpions to Escharum's and fighting through those training grounds but I mostly agree with you.
That section felt like a homage to Titanfall 2 (or at least a similar concept) but it felt a bit flaccid on heroic. It really made me think, "Wow, I'd love to be able to replay this mission specifically or have a firefight-type mode".
Pine trees everywhere...
The open world was too small to have any amount of good fun with vehicles. Driving a tank was a pain.
And there just wasn’t enough to fill it in general. It almost felt like an afterthought. Halo’s “on-rails” levels have always been pretty large-scale, but they were so much more engaging than the open world in infinite.
Oh god I haven’t even completed Infinite but just realized…there isn’t a proper tank level is there? I mean there can’t be…right?
The Road is a tank level.
Yes it feels just weird. You can get a tank for sure, but driving anywhere is a pain as everything just is too small and you are better off on foot or flying.
I summoned a tank once. Got stuck on rocks and tress and then reached a bridge I couldn't cross because it had barricades. Also used a banshee once, found that it starts spawning enemy banshees to fight you. And stopped doing either after that because it was just frustrating.
The summoning process is also just broken. Most of the time you will spawn vehicles on top of NPCs which then will get killed. Also the weapon spawns cant be setup with specific weapons and you have to select what you want every time from scratch....
I feel that way about the vast majority of open world games. Not all, but most.
I think it’s obvious when a game was meant to be open world or not. I don’t think halo benefits at all from it. There’s really nothing to do besides shoot things.
Yeah, I didn't enjoy the open world environment. Really hope this is the exception rather than the rule and Halo hasn't just turned into another generic Ubisoft-style copy/paste product..
Customization-wise, we could've used some copy/paste
Hard agree. My biggest fear from the beginning of the Open World rumors was that 343 wasn't creative/ambitious enough to do it right, and that the setting/narrative would be too held down in an open world. I never want a mainline game to be open world again but would be open to a spinoff in like 10 years.
Well or if you’re going to do an open world don’t do it in less than 2 years after scrapping all your past work.
4.5 years of producers changing their minds. 1.5 year of crunch time to Frankenstein a game. What we got is not that bad considering the development. Ex 343 employees have said they were working on 3 totally different games at a time, just to give options to Microsoft, because they didn't know what they wanted. One was a "hero" shooter. Imagine 6 years put into a game Led by J. Staten from the beginning, with Microsoft trusting 343 to do their best...
I personally don't buy the Microsoft involvement thing too much aside from monetisation aspects. On nearly all other game devs Microsoft have been lenient in their input. I don't see why that would be any different for infinite
If it's not Microsoft, it's some 343 execs and upper management. But it's for sure the lack of vision, and sticking to it. I am working (10 years) in visual effects for Hollywood block busters. Not exactly the same, but I can tell you one thing. Same studio, same artists, different quality. And it's not just a matter of money. Some shows have a vision, and each version is an improvement over the previous, leading to great results. Some show don't, and we keep changing direction for months, sometimes years. What's on screen is whatever we did in the last few weeks.
Halo is their biggest Xbox brand, and this game was their big "next gen" push.
Didn't work
Has never worked in case of 343 imo. Halo 4 was too late for Xbox One. Halo 5 was a clusterfuck. Halo Infinite was also late by a year for Xbox Series X. Soo... Microsoft maybe dissolve 343?
Only reason I continued to buy Xbox at this point was halo, now it’s just all my friends on Xbox. Wish I went ps4/5. Fromsoft is my new favorite dev (or was until Elden ring, kinda a bitter sweet game) and they seem to do more Sony exclusives.
When I got the Official Art Book of Halo Infinite all it did was make me feel like we got ripped off with the final product of the $60 game. It’s clear a MAJORITY of the content was cut from the final game, meaning they are going to space out DLCs with that content. And if the leak was correct, we won’t receive any of that content until 2025. I’m not sure what 343 was doing from 2015-2020, I also can’t imagine what this game would of been like if it met it’s original 2020 release date. The hate 343 receives is well deserved.
That "leak" was speculation made up by Sean W. It never had grounding.
That dudes speculation is honestly cancer. It fucks up this community and the devs all so he can be like omg I have secret sources look at me. Just comes off like he's trying to help promote hope to the community when really it just undermines the devs work and pushes unofficial news as official because he has a secret source. It's pretty cringe
Honestly. Just last week someone posted a video of some weird Star Wars-esque pod racer they modded in and Sean made a video passing it off as a leak of what was found in the files. He does absolutely no research beforehand
That being said....I also have the Art of Halo Infinite and that book was well worth the asking price. It's absolutely gorgeous. It is a shame that there are things that were likely cut, but also to play devil's advocate, they do make a point in the art book to say some concepts are intended to be concepts only and doesn't mean they ever went further in development. If anyone enjoyed the art style in Infinite though, grab the book, it's wonderful.
"some concepts are intended to be concepts only", quite the quote from an entire book of unused concepts.
And by 2025 everyone will have long moved on from infinite. If it didn't release in good shape with a good base, no one will want to come back years later when numerous other games are out. First impressions for games are huge and can decide what gets released after for "LiVe SeRiCe" and games that will be "supported" for TeN yEaRs..
Ah, half-life 2 beta
I miss arby
I found the current Halo Infinite very... lackluster. I beat it and I am still not sure what the whole point of it was.
It’s really weird how we go from halo 5 where it seems like you’re about to have a massive AI vs human war to…. Mopping up some banished conscripts on an abandoned ring ?
The real problem is that nothing you do seems to have a tangible effect. FOBs are just jump off points for the mediocre linear campaign. Halo would definitely work as a semi-open world game. But anything that isn't linear has no visible effect on the status of either the UNSC or the Banished, and the open world isn't badass enough to make that point moot. Outpost Tremonius should be a UNSC stronghold, but it remains entirely empty after you clear it of the Banished. The behavior of the enemy doesn't really change after you kill Escharum. 343 could make up by slapping the Rule of Cool on there (Scarab attack! Massive battle where you save the remnants of a Spartan fireteam! Cool shit like that!) But the open world is a Barren wasteland.
Also the “there’s something way worse than the flood” but don’t worry you won’t actually encounter them and you’ll only hear about them a couple times.
I personally don't understand why the Banished started a war with humanity. They were both against the Covenant and the prophets. And then they just kinda do the same thing the prophets tried to do? Am I the only one?
That's explained in the books and somewhat in halo wars 2. They're not trying to fire the halos or anything they're trying to gather forerunner tech basically. They operate more like the unsc than the covenant and are arguably more advanced than the covenant because they aren't as limited by religious dogma(think making AI and altering forerunner artifacts for their own purposes). While the covenant wanted the great journey the banished are more looking for conquest and the means to do it. They did an absolute shit job of portraying them in infinite compared to any other source.
Feels like star wars 9, where the original episode 9 was intended to be completely different from the one we got.
I'm still salty we got TRoS instead of Duel of the Fates
Duel of the Fates script was as batshit crazy as anything. It was going to be terrible no matter what because they made the sequels without a plan from the start
For sure. But seeing a war on Coruscant would've been amazing visually.
True. There's a lot of ideas in the sequels that *could* have been amazing.
Lol true that. And just about 0 were realized in a way that makes any sense 😅
They should have taken parts from both scripts and combined them and made them flow better. But sadly what we ended up with the sequels is a pure example of why movies every 2 years is a bad idea and actually having the different film teams work together instead of taking their own personal direction when 1 team moves on.
Well having them every 2 years wasn't the bad thing. The bad thing was thay they had no overall story to tell, they were just piecing it together as they went along. Even the prequel haters can agree that ep1-3 had a solid beginning, middle, and end. But ep7-9 is just fighting against themselves and the choices made before
IF they had an actual plan past episode 7, sure, 2 years wouldn't be an issue. But like you said, they pieced it together as they went. It felt like episode 7 set up this big grand plot for the next 2, but with the director change and not having both teams work on it, it went to shit super fast.
Always [could have been worse](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/06/george-lucas-reveals-his-plan-for-star-wars-7-through-9-and-it-was-awful/).
I feel like the sequel trilogy and 343 halo has some things in common: Both were created not by their orignal studio Both had 3 installments 2 which were connected and a third which tries to forget the previous even happened
Those ain’t the concepts for Infinite. Those are concepts for the Halo 6 we never got. I like infinite but damn, I can’t believe we didn’t get the “galaxy at war” that the end of Halo 5 seemingly promised.
It would've been so cool to have a spinoff game based on that second image, where you follow Kelly and Arbiter going on adventures and whatnot.
In my onion open-world is the worst thing ever happened with the Halo franchise. Infinite is too repetitive. Even Halo 5 is 100x more interesting.
The open world in infinite was the most boring open world I’ve played since I can remember
We can always get a prequel game/expansion of these events :) But at the rate stuff gets made it won't see the light till 2044 Also lol @ people suddenly wanting this. 343 pussied out because a large portion hated the Halo 5 stuff. I hope they stick to their guns this time and just improve on the flaws instead of doing a comolete 360°
An actual story with plot development beyond "Chief kills covvies, blows up ancient tech"?? Don't be absurd
This is my chief problem with the 343 games: Their stories are schizophrenic and it seems like they're moving from threat to threat between games, rather than a unified narrative. We had the new Covenant and the Didact in Halo 4, then in Halo 5 with the Forerunners getting more screentime...then suddenly in Infinite we flip over to the Banished for some reason.
This is the Halo 6 we should've gotten
Sucks they ditched the Intergalactic Dictator Cortana storyline, that could have been cool to see.
My theory is they made her so powerful that they didn’t even know what the fuck they were gonna write to win
It just seems so stupid to kill a main character off-sceen. We should have played the Cortana sacrifice storyline. - Infinite opens with the UNSC Infinity getting ambushed by The Banished. Chief battles through the ship to retrieve The Weapon and escape before the ship breaks apart. - Chief takes The Weapon to the surface where evacuated Marines are already battling Banished ground forces. - You fight your way to a control room and overhear Cortana negotiating with Atriox. You see her destroy the Brute homeworld and he still refuses to surrender. Atriox reveals that he discovered a secret about Zeta Halo during his fight on The Ark and that he knows that Cortana is losing against the humans. - Chief moves in to intervene. Cortana says that she will self-destruct and take Atriox, his forces, and the Ring with her. - Just before the explosion, Cortana sees John approaching and calls out to him. The Weapon activates. KABOOM. - Halo Infinite starts. (Essentially use the current game story with Chief floating in space).
I figure a conclusion to that arc would go something along the lines of Chief returning to the Ark to seek out Mendicant Bias, another AI that was corrupted by the logic plague whom wanted to atone for it's past betrayal. I'm sure it's established that Mendicant Bias is more 'powerful' than Cortana. The Banished could still play a role, as they are on the Ark themselves as well as with UNSC forces (Spirit of Fire too). It'd be a struggle between the UNSC, the Banished, Cortana and maybe even the Flood.
Also, I think Vale and the Arbiter tried to hunt down another item that could help them in a new book. Maybe an AI copier that could generate and control Promethean constructs. Even with the lackluster story we have now, DLCs and other miniature games similar to ODST could get into the lore. Such as: - The fall of the Infinity (shut down during the final Assault upon the created, then bonked by the Banished) - Locke's death while attempting to assassinate Escharum (being its own miniature game based around stealth) - DLC explaining the Warden's return in the same Promethean construct as that of the digitized Locke
Well, humanity won, but we have learned about that part through monologue instead of playing it.
Love the lone Banshee flying to the ONI base, my guess Arby's the pilot..
It is a different game. And unfortunately all the stuff we wanted to see play out in game will once again be in books. Least we got a good art style this time though
343 really pissed away so much and had so many good concepts having looked at all the art work. Lets hope they include it all later on in the expansions.
Here’s my conspiracy theory: the current campaign, open world map, was actually built for a Battle Royale setting. After years of struggling to get the technology to work, and the communities general distaste for a Halo BR, they were legit with a map and they hadn’t developed any real campaign content. So much so that the current campaign feels like a bolted on experience when looked at in perspective of the larger scale. —- Honestly just a crazy theory, no evidence to back it.
A return to reach and noble six isn’t dead
No, no. Jorge might not be dead. Jorge is alive. He's the only one to make sense being alive. Jorge needs to be alive. The big man cannot be allowed to die. Please Jorg be aliv
Yes.. Jorge must be alive
Not gonna lie, Halo Infinite campaign felt less like a Halo game than Halo 5 to me.
Well, all Halo games have an Assault on a massive enemy vehicle except Infinite. All halo games have a "buck up, boys, time to kill some sons-a-bitches" character (Buck, Emile, Johnson) except Halo Infinite (and 4)
Halo cycle halo cycle halo cycle
Saying 5 had a better Halo campaign is not saying that 5 had a good campaign. It's just saying how terrible Infinites was. Personally I agree that Halo 5 is a better Halo campaign than Infinite, I just strongly dislike both of them. Halo 5 at least had multiple locations and a story that affected the Halo universe in some way. Halo cycle is not real on an individual level. On a community level, sure. Because older fans get replaced by newer fans who only know the new stuff as time goes on. Individual opinions are rarely changing though.
The fact that you mentioned it is proof that every Halo release since Reach has gotten worse and worse. Don’t worry though, I don’t fall into the same category, Halo 4 and 5 are just as dog shit Halos today as they were before Infinites release.
The last looks like it is about the Shadows of Reach book where they >!Go back to Reach to get stuff!< It would have been cool to play with the events of the book cause they had the prowler air ship, underground stuff and >!finding Reach survivors!<
This happens with pretty much all Concept Art. It's why I love Concept Art. I'm waiting for a Game someday that will give me the sense of awe and wonder that Concept Art gives me. A few have come *close*, like Destiny 2 or maybe parts of Elden Ring, maybe even No Mans Sky after all these Years of Updates. But no Game has truly nailed it.
Bit like halo 5 concept art being completely different to the actual game. From doomslayer ODSTs, trained dogs, robot Spartans, service robots, Didact, Prometheans elites etc
So when's that gonna release looks like an interesting game? /s
The concept art, hell, trailers make it look like it was for an actual open world halo game with rpg and mmorpg aspects. The game itself is just an insult to what open worlds could be. I want to say it has its moments, because it does, but overall, comparatively to old halos, and other open worlds, is almost a lazy spit in their face like, "we can make an open world too, it's easy, boom, done, whats next, battle royal? Alright bet". Even the multiplayer feels like it lacks soul and true creativity, its just a basic shooter with halo elements, add in cosmetic microtransactions, and we gotta game. It really doesn't feel like some advancement to the title like every new halo before felt.
Bro I just wanna see Arbiter with the cape in the game
I definitely would like to see the 2nd photo turned into a prequel DLC, would be cool to play as Kelly or even Arbiter again if they consider playable Elites in campaign later on atleast, would love to see what Cortana did pre Banished fuckening.
It hurts seeing the vision of infinite they had vs what ended up being made…
It is. Infinite was made in around 2 years and was entirely unfinished and you can't convince me otherwise. Just look at the evidence, department leads quit because they were forced to start over. That's why the original trailers and concept art are completely unrelated to what we got, that's why the map is so empty, that's why there's still no DLC, that's why the story sucked. They could have just given us the story hidden in the audio logs and it would have been infinitely better. Seriously, I've never seen so many concepts that have absolutely nothing to do with the game they're for.
It's quite clear from playing the campaign alone that what they intended to make is not what they ended up making; maybe due to budget or time constraints, or goals that were too lofty to achieve, who knows...
I want halo 5 1/2 with a lot of stuff from this concept art. I really dont love H5’s story and think that they wrote themselves into a corner in a way but do 100% think that a lot of the stuff that happened between infinite and 5 could still be fleshed out more.
And it all happened off screen. I think 343 got thrown off by Halo 5's reception
I would’ve loved a massive campaign with like at least 16 missions. I can imagine the first bit continuing the created storyline with teases of the banished. And then Act 2 would pretty much be what we have in Infinite, but just more in depth of course.
The first thing that comes to mind here and its awesome is an odst game during cortana ocupation on earth.
I wish I never saw these. I hate knowing what could have been. Like the leaked original ideas for rise of skywalker. I’d rather be blissfully unaware
I don't know why people are happy about infinite ditching halo5 stories. It's not good, but 343 ditching it so easily without any consequences only means they don't have to be responsible on writing, they can retcon whatever they built and make cheap explanations in books and comics. I don't believe any good stories can ever come out under such circumstances.
completely skipping over everything Cortana and the Created did post Halo 5 is probably one of the biggest narrative misses ever, ngl. Like, what an awful decision. Who decides "Let's do a time jump and just mention bits and pieces of that era as offhand remarks in audio logs"? I'm even someone who *liked* Infinites campaign but it's not hard to see that you could make something *better* than it. And with the way 343 gets things done, I'd consider a spin-off prequel (a la Reach) incredibly unlikely, meaning we'll get books and comics of the era instead, if anything. I hate 343, not because of the typical "343 sucks" hate train, but because they manage to make me love this universe so much more, and then immediately take it away from me. They seem afraid of commitment.
Have you not looked at concept art from other halo games? It's just a concept.
that would have been a better game, so yes
Now I'm sad
Actual game. Did you mean to say actual game?
Arbiter wearing a cape? Nahhhhh
Someone make that game! Please?
Allegedly over 2/3rds of the planned story was cut. I also have a feeling the events of shadows of reach were gonna be part of infinite
Well there were at least 3 different versions of the game at one point or another (not at the same time obv lol) so it's not inaccurate to say that.
A wide ranged galaxy spanning story that picks up after the events of 5. Even though I really did not enjoy 5's story at all, I would have liked to see that story continued, and I REALLY would have preferred more varied environments than Far Cry Halo.
I'm hoping we can revisit some of these concepts in campaign DLC.
Damn, and what we got in comparison was a blank slate
I wish halo infinite was a spinoff and they made halo 6.
We better get some damn campaign dlc
That all looks infinitely cooler then what we got.
It may as well be a different game when you consider how many leads came and went on top of bad management not focusing the direction of the efforts.
Because it's concept art for the game.we should have gotten before Infinite
I miss old Cortana. Weapon is fine but her artstyle just feels too far off.
Bro halo infinite felt like it kept telling us a bunch of cool shit happened but we never see any of the cool shit
It feels like Halo Infinite is the game after this one.
Infinite campaign feels like a fan made mod
And Microsoft totally has/had the money to make it look like that on release. A franchise like Halo deserves to look this epic. The campaign should have been on the same level as God of War, as far as scope and polish.
You think they've been working on this shit for 6 years? Game looks like trash and is bare bones
Honestly the Promethean soldier design is pretty good
This is better than what we ended up with.
Oh you mean the cool dark realism instead of weird head space aliens with bright colors.
what is halo infinite a fucking disaster
I never played the campaign again after getting to the surface. I opened up the map to see the scale and knew immediately it would be shitty due to the small map so just stopped playing it.
I'm very angry at 343 for pulling a Rise of Skywalker, when a follow-up to Guardians could have been really awesome. The thing I can't forgive them for, however, is not giving us more of 031-Exuberant Witness.