JoeDanny
Member
There is very little good faith left for 343 in my opinion. They've been given so many chances to make it right with Halo but they fail every. single. time.
Halo 4 polarized the community with COD-ified multiplayer and introduced the most unnecessary change in art style of an established IP ever. (their justification literally boils down to "because we felt like changing it")
MCC was a famously disastrous launch and permanently damaged the Xbox brand following the poor showing of the Xbone itself.
Halo 5 introduced lootboxes and misled the community with its bizarre marketing campaign, replaced the Master Chief as the main character, and completely undid the emotional ending of H4 with Cortana's return.
Halo Wars 2 has been the least offensive of the bunch since 343 took over, with incredible cutscenes and heroes that felt like they could hang with the Chief. The art style is finally getting back on track and away from 343's bizarrely overdesigned sci-fi crap.
And now Infinite, after years of complete silence about the game, is looking more and more like a disaster every day while bleeding upper management and generally pissing off the community with asinine decisions like locking basic color customization behind a paywall. They really, REALLY need to hit it out of the park with this game. Nothing else will be acceptable, at all.
During this nearly decade long process, they've made it clear that they don't understand what made Halo great in the Bungie days. The soul, the charm. They've chased every single trend that has cropped up over the years, from Call of Duty, to lootboxes, to advanced movement, and now to free-to-play. They just aren't capable of really making something that Halo fans want, and instead want to make a focus-group tested amalgamation of video games with Halo on the box. They even literally said they hired people who hated Halo for whatever reason during Halo 4's development, and that while making H4 they made something that played very much like classic Halo but then scrapped it because it was too classic. 343 Industries' track record has been an absolute slap in the face to the dedicated fans of what used to be one of the biggest entertainment franchises ever.
At least the 343 publishing team has been able to resurrect MCC into a decent product in the last few years.
Halo 4 polarized the community with COD-ified multiplayer and introduced the most unnecessary change in art style of an established IP ever. (their justification literally boils down to "because we felt like changing it")
MCC was a famously disastrous launch and permanently damaged the Xbox brand following the poor showing of the Xbone itself.
Halo 5 introduced lootboxes and misled the community with its bizarre marketing campaign, replaced the Master Chief as the main character, and completely undid the emotional ending of H4 with Cortana's return.
Halo Wars 2 has been the least offensive of the bunch since 343 took over, with incredible cutscenes and heroes that felt like they could hang with the Chief. The art style is finally getting back on track and away from 343's bizarrely overdesigned sci-fi crap.
And now Infinite, after years of complete silence about the game, is looking more and more like a disaster every day while bleeding upper management and generally pissing off the community with asinine decisions like locking basic color customization behind a paywall. They really, REALLY need to hit it out of the park with this game. Nothing else will be acceptable, at all.
During this nearly decade long process, they've made it clear that they don't understand what made Halo great in the Bungie days. The soul, the charm. They've chased every single trend that has cropped up over the years, from Call of Duty, to lootboxes, to advanced movement, and now to free-to-play. They just aren't capable of really making something that Halo fans want, and instead want to make a focus-group tested amalgamation of video games with Halo on the box. They even literally said they hired people who hated Halo for whatever reason during Halo 4's development, and that while making H4 they made something that played very much like classic Halo but then scrapped it because it was too classic. 343 Industries' track record has been an absolute slap in the face to the dedicated fans of what used to be one of the biggest entertainment franchises ever.
At least the 343 publishing team has been able to resurrect MCC into a decent product in the last few years.