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We love Halo. I can confidently say that most of us have enjoyed one of the franchise’s many titles and that’s part of why we’re here and are the Xbox generation today. But in these 10 years of writing day in and day out about all things Xbox and Microsoft, we’ve seen how Master Chief has eluded us, how he’s suddenly become more of a symbol, a mascot, an icon…and it stopped being a great game.
Many say that the last good Halo is Halo Reach, which I disagree with, as Halo 4 left me ultra-fascinated, but they are partly right. And we can pretty much say it now, after everything that’s happened: The management of 343 Industries has been disastrous for the franchise. Of course, we can’t blame them for everything, since Microsoft has always been careful and tried to “break through multimedia barriers”, which rarely worked for them. But the biggest problem of the saga is that they could not reach this brilliant level and that perhaps Bungie knew how to see before withdrawing to make Destiny.
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You must be clear and concise before continuing. This, of course, is a personal, editorial opinion, and I think the Halo games have always been good games, of course until Halo Wars. I am the first who absolutely appreciated them all, who has seen all the series and who even has books, but we also know that they did not follow the path that the fans expected. Halo Infinite was the bloodiest case and perhaps the trigger for all this change, because let’s go over the errors:
- Embarking on a new graphics engine which left us 6 years without a new delivery.
- The first sample of Halo Infinite was a disaster, causing a delay of an entire year and leaving the release plans with Series X (although thanks to it we met Craig xD)
- During this year of delay he changed managers and without that we wouldn’t even have had him.
- The game had been unrealistic and oversized.
- It was released without half of the usual features of games in the series, such as the cooperative campaign.
- The story doesn’t directly continue the events of Halo 5, and to make matters worse, it introduces more questions.
- After its launch, they took a while to respond and the result was that there were no additions to the campaign, Ray Tracing was not implemented and split-screen co-op was not implemented. not been implemented.
Halo Infinite especially hurts me, because even though the game is good, because the gameplay is brutal, it fails at a lot of things it shouldn’t have done. It’s a shame, because I really had high expectations for him and, in part, I was disappointed, because at the end of the campaign I said to myself: OK, now the good things begin. But the good thing will never happen, which pretty much negates the fun I had playing it. It’s hard to explain this feeling of abandonment by your favorite game, which only cares about multiplayer
At least that’s what he did, although it took him a while to get there. Because today the Halo Infinite multi is a real explosion, with Forge the content has been greatly expanded, the different modes and much more that keep it active and in shape. Even We already have a new edition of the Halo Championship Series confirmed for 2025.
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Halo is not dead. No way. But maybe it’s because we arrived on time. And this “save” of multiplayer is due to the radical change that 343 Industries experienced in 2022, with the departure of Bonnie Ross, at the head of the franchise and the studio for almost 10 years. By no means can we say that his work was disastrous, but it doesn’t seem like he was the best and it also doesn’t seem like he was going to get better after Halo Infinite. Therefore, as Brad Sams suggested at the time, perhaps she didn’t leave, but was instead “advised” to leave.
The birth of Halo Studios and the hopes of the community
Since then, his position has been divided into three parts: Pierre Hintze, at the head of the studio, Brian Koski, of the franchise part, and Elisabeth Van Wyck, of the Halo activity. And they entered into a state of silence and continuous work. It is precisely this dynamic that gave birth to Halo Infinite and allowed its continuity and which, two days ago, finally showed what they were working on. Because 343 Industries no longer exists. There’s a new team, new faces, new intentions, a new graphics engine and, as expected, a new name: Halo Studios.
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The little we could read in his presentation, Pierre Hintze said it clearly. It’s about making games. On creating Halo games and making them the best. They already have several projects in development and we can’t wait to see what they consist of, because the Halo universe is perhaps one of the richest and most wonderful in the entire video game industry and, at the same time , they didn’t even exploit the slightest part in the video games themselves.
I am clear that there is hope in my head and in the heads of all the fans. There is a desire for this to work, for the move to Unreal Engine 5 to unlock this new dynamic, for this to be a new chapter and that they will soon show us what they are capable of. But there is also doubt, uncertainty. And not because it’s going to come out on PS5, that doesn’t really matter to us, but because we want to see Master Chief succeed, see him at GOTY, see how he destroys concurrent user records on Steam. We want the glory of a well-deserved return of the franchise that for many made us love the Xbox brand.
