Did 343 Kill the Halo Franchise?

[@ICXC_33]

In a word, yes. They have run the franchise into the ground

[@leeham6230]

3 feels great to play, and still looks so good!

[@olivertwist2843]

MCC still the best halo out there. I play it almost daily

[@itsRipe]

Some of the biggest mistakes with HMCC besides the obvious it being completely broken on launch were: no veto system, removing the ranking system that existed before that everyone loved, adding in the Halo Online maps (dogshit), not displaying connection (ping) in the scoreboard for players, removing playlist specific ranks even in social lobbies, removing the classic file share/profile view of players and their games played, and the penalty for quitting games after your team has already quit is insane.

[@drummerAVA]

Halo 3 so refined…..

[@wowthatsbrutal]

But as smooth as it is, as a Halo fan, I’ve been waiting since 2015, damn near 9 years for a fresh new good halo. Sucks man. I abandoned infinite February of 2022. Smh.

[@Phantom_Aspekt]

343i tried to turn Halo into a competitive shooter first and left all the fun social stuff second, that's the main reason their games feel hollow compared to Bungie era ones. Halo was always supposed to be a social party game to enjoy with your friends, stuff like splitscreen, wacky custom modes, theater features to share moments, vidmaster challenges, postgame lobbies etc. 343i effectively gutted the social aspects of the game making it just another shooter in an over saturated market, they took the fun out of the characters in the campaigns and turned it into a boring melodrama, they gave a non human face to the forerunners stomping on the hints Bungie left in all their games. They replaced a sleek art style with an awful one for multiple games. They removed staple features and launched without game modes that people expect to see in Halo games more than once. I could go on... So yes, 343i has killed Halo. The series was climbing into the coffin after Halo 4 came out, and Halo 5 saw the nails start getting hammered in, Infinite almost completely sealed it. Whatever happens next will determine the fate of the series, at least this time there is different management at 343i so maybe it has a chance. But I'm not holding my breath... I'm just glad I can still experience the Bungie era games, bringing them all to PC is the only good thing 343i has done, they still haven't given us the ability to run our own servers with mods and scripts like we could in Custom Edition though, so we have to use the crappy party system in MCC to play custom maps.

[@theunderdog9353]

I don't really care that much about the multiplayer, but in terms of lore, the Forerunners have definitely been improved upon from Bungie's days if you ask me. I'm currently reading Epitaph and it's fantastic. The Forerunners are still majestic and terrifyingly powerful. They have a super complex society and me personally; I've always viewed the Forerunners to be aliens so that's a retcon I fully stand behind. EDIT: Not to confuse "lore" with "story". Those are 2 very different things. 343i sucks at writing stories but the people that wrote the Forerunner novels are not 343i. They're just regular authors that wanted to make Halo books

[@MichaelOxlong-im7lm]

Wrong and more wrong. 343i didn't try to "turn" Halo competitive. Halo was always competitive. It was competitive since CE and became even more popular competition wise in H2 and 3. I can go over all of the knowledge/skills needed to succeed in all those games and it's pretty extensive. It's an arena shooter after all. CE, 2, 3 were competitive asf and the MLG settings for those games made them even better competitive-wise. Reach MLG was also competitively viable after v7. Reach itself is not a good game competitively or a good Halo at all but the MLG mode was at least good. 343i turned the franchise in an extremely casual-friendly direction hence why it fell off: 1. Way higher Aim Assist and Bullet Mag make H4 and h2a extremely easy to be precise in. 2. Armor abilities in 4 took after Reach which means pure cheese. Things like "infinite sprint", "faster reload", "see-ing through walls" were abilities that anyone could place in their loadout in Halo 4. The presence of loadouts in Reach and 4 was already an issue. But the overpowered nonsense that you could put in them in 4 made it so much worse. 3. Map design is made to accommodate for all of these gimmicky abilities which made them feel foreign. This new design philosophy didn't sit well with older Halo fans who enjoyed the less vertical arena style maps (so they liked maps like: Lockout, Guardian, Warlock, Midship) As such your comment misses the mark on why Halo died. It died EXACTLY because 343i IGNORED the classic competitive community. They did everything that was ANTI-competitive with Halo 4. Delivered a foreign product with Halo 5 with insane amounts of bullet magnetism on the sniper and long range automatics. H5 was only competitively viable after it was patched up post launch.

[@Phantom_Aspekt]

@@MichaelOxlong-im7lm Bungie Halo was never designed as a competitive shooter dude, the competitive scene just happened to enjoy it because it was a well designed and fun game. It's such a common misconception that Halo was a competitive shooter first just because of how big the scene was when they were new. the competitive scene was just a happy side effect of creating a fun social party game that rewarded well thought out gameplay. 343i tried to focus on it being competitive (this is brought up in their dev commentary, a stark contrast to Bungie's focus on it being fun and social) but missed the mark every time because they didn't understand that the social and fun aspects of halo are supposed to be the foundation that allows the competitive scene to thrive. With 343i taking away most of the social and fun features over time the bulk of the playerbase lost interest, and therefore the interest in competitive Halo died with it. I mean, Halo 5 didn't even launch with a social playlist... Then you have all the Halo Championships that 343i try to push. That is their focus. Not social fun Halo, Competitive Halo. 343i say it all the time "hurr durr Halo has always been competitive focused game" and It's blatantly wrong. And on top of this, fans have been upset about 343i's focus on trying to make Halo a competitive esports shooter for years. You can find countless posts and videos online of players giving loads of points on the topic.

[@Phantom_Aspekt]

@@theunderdog9353 Fair I guess, everyone has their own likes and dislikes, I just find stuff like "The Mantle of Responsibility", "The Gene Song" and magic space dust that manifests itself into the flood (At least that's what I remember) to be far too ridiculous for me. A simple alien religious fanatical faction hell bent on exterminating humans along with a parasitic threat and ancient super weapon thrown in is all I need to be happy with a Halo story. Simple, effective and perfect for a military scifi shooter. I personally really want a hard reboot of the games so we can get stuff like the Great Schism but in more depth this time, that would be freaking awesome. Also that cut storyboard where the Arbiter finds a human skeleton in an ancient forerunner tomb shaking the foundation of his beliefs would be amazing. It would really bring the Halo series back story wise imho.

[@theunderdog9353]

@@Phantom_Aspekt Well, you're right, that's just different preferences. I love a deep, fantasy-level sci-fi with lots of details. The Mantle is still an enigmatic, mysterious thing. We still don't really know what it is, just like we still don't know all the details on the "magic space dust". The common belief seems to be that when the Forerunners wiped out the Precursors, the last of the Precursors left the galaxy and reduced themselfs into said dust to one day return and take revenge on the Forerunners. I see it like, it's kind of a cryo-stasis for Precursors? Idk, I'll give it to you that the Precursor stuff is very weird and confusing at times, but I guess it's just part of their mystery. You have to remember, all we know about them comes from the Primordial - the last Precursor and the first Gravemind. The Gravemind tends to lie and deceive to get what it wants so we honestly don't know if what he has told the Didact about their motives is true. I'm guessing there's a lot more to it. As for a reboot; HELL no! There have been so many amazing stories that would then be lost. I would be gone from this franchise forever if they did that

[@theunderdog9353]

Yes. Yes they have

[@Zanzibar354]

Yup

[@SpottedHares]

No, but not for a lack of trying.

[@cdyjv118]

Yep

[@MichaelOxlong-im7lm]

Not completely. There is still hope. But how did they? Some say "they tried to make halo competitive and that's why it died." This makes no sense given that CE, 2, and 3 were competitive and that was literally the peak of the franchise. The answer lies in how they repeatedly ignored the fanbase of people who enjoyed halo for the chess-like arena shooter that it was. I can go into great detail on how even despite their shortcomings, CE, 2, and 3 set up the basis for the kind of competitive shooter that Halo was. And I can go into the same level of detail on how Reach, 4, and 2A, as well as a little bit of 5 at launch completely undermined that precedent and thus killed the franchise's momentum/popularity. Of course, this means that some of the blame is on Bungie as well.

[@IronFistOG]

Bungie did it themselves with Reach unfortunately. It was all downhill from there...

[@KylePhantomK94]

Correction: Halo 2 DID NOT have a Veto system in Matchmaking. Reach and 4 had voting systems NOT veto systems which people were complaining about in MCC for having due to people playing Halo 3 and the same map over and over. Don't spread misinformation or lies to push narratives if you're going to make arguments or whatever. Sure most people agree 343 sucks, but we're stuck with them until Microsoft pulls the plug on the franchise for good.

[@tooturbo]

Pretty sure It did have it definitely not on release but when they did a major update. Also why does even matter lack of it is terrible. Veto or voting system. Why are you nitpicking it so hard anyways? Either option is good option to have so players can keep good options and skip bad options. And there are a lot of bad options in rotation that no one wants to play. Not having either veto or voting is a major mistake especially since prior games had it and it definitely worked well in those games. Getting stuck to a certain game is not even related to the vetoing or voting system. Players can choose from the beginning of MCC's ultra buggy release what games to matchmake for. If they don't want to play H3 or H4 or whatever turn it off in your rotation. Wtf is this support of 343. Not even Halo related, their game development and releases have been terrible and rife with bugs and defects. I hope 343 gets kicked from Microsoft. That sorta of decision making is terrible for AAA developer and bad rep for Microsoft. Everything I noted is true and what I noted and posted for years to the forums to get bug fixes. If you think 343 is doing a good job, good for you, but that's definitely not the case.

[@KylePhantomK94]

@@tooturbo No it didn't. YOU ARE DEAD WRONG THAT HALO 2 DID. I'm playing Halo 2 on the original Xbox on Insignia matchmaking and Halo 2 DID NOT have a Veto system, stop lying. Halo 3 was the first introduce a form of Veto system, then Reach brought in the voting system. And yes I would be nice to have, but when people bitch online about shit, they just remove it entirely. Because if you noticed not a lot of games nowadays have a voting system or a voting system due to player retention samething pregame lobbies. Also have you checked today's political climate? People get offended when people call them slurs online and then they get banned. This isn't just Halo its everywhere. And I"m not a big fan of it either. So, I agree with you on that. However, you have to be open to understanding why. The biggest issue with 343, is Microsoft. Because 343 is Microsoft. 343 was specifically made and formed by Microsoft to continue the Halo franchise. And Microsoft had been fucking with Halo since Halo 2. If 343 fails with Halo. Then Microsoft will decide to pull the plug on Halo altogether. Shutting down MCC, Infinite, and ripping those games off the gamestores. And who knows how much they would do. This is what corporations do. Don't believe me? Epic games just did with the Unreal series. It would be nice if they gave it to another dev studio, but the problem is this. 343 isn't just a dev team, they also manage the franchise of Halo as a whole, which Halo is more than just a game franchise. It's a multi-media franchise like Star Wars. If they gave it to someone like id software (that would be awesome) problem though is that id would be stuck making Halo and managing the expanded universe of Halo. They would NEVER be able to do anything else is the problem, like make another banger like DOOM. I love how your assuming just because someone says one thing opposite from the hive minded opinion. It's either "you're a 343 fanboy" or "you're a bungo fanboy" when there is never something in between. I can be critical of 343 and I can be critical of Bungie as well. I can point out the pros and cons with both 343 and Bungie. (more pros with Bungie when it came to the games) It's called ad hominem cop outs and those aren't arguments. 343 lacks vision and lacks good management when it comes to the games because of Microsoft's higher ups being POS. Which leads to incompetence, something that is common in the gaming industry today. Bungie stopped caring about their own franchise around the time of Halo 3, and how they treated lore fans on their way out with Halo Reach. I will say as much as we can all agree Halo was fumbled by 343, (even by Bungie on their way out) it was nowhere near as bad as how Disney has treated Star Wars. I don't just blame 343 for Halo's downfall, I blame the existence of COD. Where this franchise fucked the gaming industry so hard to where its effects can be seen today. You want my honest thoughts? 343 should just be shut down and Microsoft should just pull the plug on Halo altogether. That means ripping from the stores, shutting down servers, axing fan projects. Let it all die. We don't deserve Halo anymore.

[@khodiblunkit2723]

This is why I enjoy the Internet, lol. I'll sit here with popcorn and enjoy the show, everyone gets a like.

[@tooturbo]

@@khodiblunkit2723 I'll try to keep you entertained lol

[@tooturbo]

​@@KylePhantomK94 Good for you i played H2 on release in 2004 until h3 came along. Also still why are you nitpicking so hard? Lack of a good feature is a terrible decision and not on microsoft but on the developer. Its not political and not even related to cod and shouldn't be. CS is an example of that, it has done its own thing for years and has one of the most stable populations and a thriving esports scene. If microsoft pulls the plug on 343 someone else will buy it. And that's how it always is. FYI the halo community is one of the most toxic gaming communities now and is part of the reason why terrible decisions are also being made. Instead of oh yea that's terrible decision make the devs fix it, lets argue that the decision is ok, this specific letter on a review is wrong so its invalid to use the review or make any fixes to it, argue that the bugs are part of the gameplay and shouldn't be fixed, and the previous games didn't exist as well as their learning and content.

[@pattyb6003]

Yes

[@warpedbays4388]

Remember who the real enemy is. It’s not (entirely) the fault of 343 that Halo is where it is today. Most of its problems stem from poor decisions made by Microsoft. So no. 343 didn’t kill Halo. I won’t say Microsoft did either because it’s not dead. But many of the missteps taken are, at their core, the fault of Microsoft. Not 343.

[@AmericanFarmerHVAC2024]

No. Microsoft did. Microsoft was the reason Bungie left.

[@RezaQin]

Yes, and Bungie let it die.

[@lil-j-waters]

they sold out to activision. a lesson in letting capitalist ambitions rule your life

[@NunChuks691]

Yes