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[cormack12]

Someone just made this point in the other thread:

With Bonnie Ross gone, and Kiki Wolfkill out, Frank O'Connor was the only name left. With this, the people who can be said to be directly responsible for the fall of Halo have all been removed. With the house now clean, Halo might actually get the treatment is deserves.

The question is what do you think should happen with Halo going forward? There is a lot of conflicting accounts about lore changing, but ultimately it focuses on whether the changed forerunner arc was or was not in the original Bungie plans, or some small hidden oversight that was built on.





So should the series return to the original end of Halo 3 (sans terminals) and pick up from there?
Should they reboot the entire base series and have one game covering all lore?
Continue with the story as is with a continuation from Infinite?

I've recently played a lot through Halo on coop with only Halo 2 Legendary to finish (except coop keeps shitting itself), and you forget how small scale the originals were. Run to this location, now run all the way back.

Halo 4 was a decent campaign, didn't really like the enemies and levels in 5. Infinite was OK but the open world didn't really add what I thought it would.

Multiplayer is on point currently.

Infinite showed us that there is a large playerbase that can be pulled back in. Infinite also showed us that the number of let downs has bred cynicism and easy drop attitude to the series.

Personally I think they need to get interest back up in Halo. But I can't see a short term fix if I'm being honest. It's like all the good GaaS options would take 5/6 years to develop and chasing BR is too late.

 

[Banjo64]

It can’t. Good things come and go all the time. The brains and passion behind the franchise wanted to move on, we’re left with a husk.

 

[feynoob]

You need to reboot the franchise.
The old halo is dead. Make it new like God of war kind of reboot.

 

[Skifi28]

You need to reboot the franchise.
The old halo is dead. Make it new like God of war kind of reboot.

An emotional master chief on a self discovery journey with a female sidekick, experiencing romance for the first time and never missing a chance to remove his helmet so we can discover the human inside the suit.



No wait, we already got the TV series for that.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Keep same combat. Make a campaign with a slight more biome variety.

Overhaul online completely.

Keep 2-3 online modes active at a time. With slayer and ranked active at all times.

Direct community towards fun with rotating game modes and maps coupled with activities that fulfill battlepass.

They have all the ingredients.

 

[SatansReverence]

Get rid of Wolfkill, O'Connor and Ross.

 

[DragonNCM]

Total reboot with Doom gameplay & Halo AI !!!
Lets see some spartan glory kills !!!

 

[Mr Reasonable]

The rest of the world seems to not agree with me, but stop making everything a multi media saga.

Make the stories entirely understandable and complete within just one game. *Gasp*

Also, do a game where you don't play as master chief. *Shock* This would work just fine, remove a lot of baggage change the rules about being a faceless largely emotion free zone.

None of that matters though really. Infinite is a great game, I was playing it yesterday. Just make sure the next one launches complete, deliver updates more quickly than have been done with Infinite, even if that means reducing scope. People will bitch about anything they can so don't give the negativity chance to gather momentum.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

Whatever direction they decide to go, they should certanly start making more spin-offs covering different characters/events in the timeline.

I want to play a Gears of War or Doom Eternal style Halo game. Let your creative teams create their own take on the franchise using the rich lore and universe they already have.

 

[ByWatterson]

Mostly start over. Migrate the multiplayer (which is SO good right now) soft reboot with remake of Halo 1, and do dramatic story changes from there out.

Give it the FFVII treatment, plus Infinite multiplayer.

 

[Robb]

I think they can continue from Infinite, I liked the campaign in that game. Improve the open world and keep the grapple hook.

I’d love to see the Halo Infinite CGI teaser actually be realized, with wildlife etc. etc. in the world.

 

[Raonak]

Reboot it and make the game of an extremely high quality...

problem is, I really don't know if 343 has the development chops to make a high quality game that isn't a comprimised experience.
And I don't think MS would give them the time/budget/project planning for it to be successful.

It could easily end up as a bad reboot that buries the halo name once in for all.

 

[mrmustard]

Singleplayer: Give him an annoying son and let them walk and talk a lot. Just kidding, no idea how to improve it.

Multiplayer: Is already very good

 

[Sybrix]

The problem with Halo post reach is they tried to move the MP to esports style shooter, Halo 5 MP is the worst in the series, the game worlds were so static and bland and completely ruined the aesthetic of what Halo was about.

Infinite defiantly is an improvement, problem is the didnt provide updates quickly enough, these days MP games need to consistent updates with maps, modes etc, they were too slow of the mark.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Reboot. Let people miss it for awhile and come back with a Halo game for a new generation of fans.

 

[killatopak]

Turn it into first person Mass Effect

 

[k_trout]

franchising sucks the creativity out, stop it already, let things be one offs and move on

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

I dont know if they can. there has already been too many sequels and Infinite is kind of a "reboot" with a well known setting. I think the campaign was fine but problem is for the last 3-4 games, story was so "meh". Multiplayer isnt going to save HALo, their singleplayer needs to be AAAA+ and its serviceable. I enjoyed the game for what it was but there was nothing blockbuster, emotional attachment to anyone. Also I found it jarring that the UI looked like everything is about online and yeah you have a little button to press if you want to play the campaign. If they cant get better writers, them rebooting over and over wont change anything. Maybe the franchise just rsn its course....cant milk a cow to infinity.

 

[small_law]

This old chestnut. I'm still not over 343 ruining MC by giving him feelings.

Stop treating MC like he's a character. He's not. He's there so that players can project themselves into the role of the MC, an unwavering hero serving as the tip of the spear in galactic war that threatens humanity. He doesn't feel lonely or sad or make mistakes. He doesn't say bullshit like "sometimes we fail" or whatever. MC is what players want to be. We care about MC because we get to be stoic and powerful like him for 10-14 hours twice a decade. No one wants to play a game where you're a dad in your forties doing dad shit like talking to sad people.

No more personal or emotion bullshit, especially about Cortana dying. You made one copy of Cortana. Make more in case you lose the new one too.

No more small-D UNSC captains second-guessing MC. By H5, MC had saved humanity's whole ass four separate times. FOUR. If there's one guy everyone can trust when he says "we should look this Didact guy" or "Cortana didn't stay dead, that's a problem", it's MC. No one in the UNSC has the sense to listen to the guy in H4 and H5. Huge plot holes, made zero sense.

No more Sarah Palmer. I think she died in Infinite, but I need to see the body. Nobody plays Halo for Spartan Sarah Palmer. NOBODY.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

No one wants to play a game where you're a dad in your forties doing dad shit like talking to sad people

Counterpoint:

People seem to love "sad dad" games. Maybe it doesn't fit Halo, but the genie's out of the bottle now, got to push onward.

 

[j.k.2021]

Simple.Arena shoots aren't cool anymore.They will have to do unique take on Battle Royale or hero shooter.That's the only way for Halo to retain audience for multiplayer.

 

[j.k.2021]

Counterpoint:

People seem to love "sad dad" games. Maybe it doesn't fit Halo, but the genie's out of the bottle now, got to push onward.

Halo Infinite biggest issue was retaining players for the multiplayer.None of your suggestions will help with that.

 

[aries_71]

Whatever direction they decide to go, they should certanly start making more spin-offs covering different characters/events in the timeline.

I want to play a Gears of War or Doom Eternal style Halo game. Let your creative teams create their own take on the franchise using the rich lore and universe they already have.

Never understood why they didn’t do this. Task one of the multiple studios with doing a 3d adventure based on Halo universe. My guess is that Halo Wars didn’t do too well and they deemed it too dangerous. They certainly had the lore and the characters to do a spin off.

 

[The_Mike]

Going back to making a linear games again.

Halo is about the story and campaign, not making a boring open world.

 

[aries_71]

Halo combat loop is top notch, with no rival in the market. If they dedicated the resources they are wasting in the multiplayer, they could have an epic single player rated 90+. My hope is that once Microsoft’s finishes the Activision acquisition they stop chasing the multiplayer/gaas model with Halo. Having COD in their stable wouldn’t make much sense. Halo multiplayer is dead, not because is bad (it’s very good), but because the market has moved on and people is not interested any more.

 

[Scotty W]

Halo’s place in the sun is due to it being the right game at the right time.

As fast as I can see, the series has always been top quality, but it cannot recapture the excitement of being NEW.

Radically altered gameplay might recapture some, but the meta plot of the series has always been derivative. It is doubtful there is much fresh blood left in the stone.

 

[The Shepard]

Make it linear and replayable, open world kills of the latter.

Or a metroidvania spin off, halo mixed with metroid prime would be great. That would probably be there best chance at getting 90+ scores again.

And bring back that PvE/ PvP mode from halo 5, that was ace.

 

[small_law]

Counterpoint:

People seem to love "sad dad" games. Maybe it doesn't fit Halo, but the genie's out of the bottle now, got to push onward.

I stand corrected.

But Kratos ain't exactly the type to drive you to a dentist appointment. Joel might shoot the dentist.

 

[TrueLegend]

Unreal engine 5 with the Help of Coalition, on other note let Coalition make Halo 5 with distinct biomes. Photoreal Ryse 2 that shit. Kill all dumb storylines. Focus on galactic wars instead of Matser Chief stories. Go Jedi Fallen Order if you can't nail open World with multiple biomes. Make it look real good. Infinte looked ass. I think weapons and gameplay aspects are fine. The world looks uninspired, the story focus on Master Chief for most part which is always dumb. UE5 mass effect Andromeda but with Coalition. Xbox games also need to ditch the yellow tint from their games.

 

[BlackTron]

Counterpoint:

People seem to love "sad dad" games. Maybe it doesn't fit Halo, but the genie's out of the bottle now, got to push onward.

This is true and there's an audience for it, but Master Chief is an existing game character that found his success doing something else. He's silent for similar reasons as Link, and it's intentional -you are the protagonist. Cortana is like Navi, the narrator.

Of course he had lines, but they were Keanu Reeves type lines like "I need a weapon".

I don't think it's usually great when they start messing around with what originally made game characters so effective. Nintendo resisted the urge to change Mario unlike Sonic and look at the difference between those IP. Again, in an ideal world where Halo is just focusing on being a game and not just some piece of a bigger multimedia strategy that is trying to milk the IP while losing sight of why anyone ever liked it.

 

[Dutchy]

Multiplayer-wise: Literally just use Halo 2 and 3 as a foundation. Improve, but do not change too much. Despite being between 15 and 20 years old, these games regularly catch up on Infinite's player numers, even while being very shoddy ports (Halo 2 looks NOTHING like it's OG counterpart). That alone is a solid testimony to these game's their longevity but also potential relevancy.

Get rid of idiotic abilities, and make some actual good maps that weren't designed with them in mind.

Finish the game before releasing it. A (properly working) Theater and Forge are what definitively turned Halo from generic space shooter to a game with massive creative possibilities. The fact they keep dropping this one single and arguebly most important request is mind boggling to me.

 

[Guilty_AI]

It can’t. Good things come and go all the time. The brains and passion behind the franchise wanted to move on, we’re left with a husk.

 

[ZehDon]

Get rid of Wolfkill, O'Connor and Ross.

You might have missed it in the OP, but, they're all gone.

 

[CGNoire]

Id much rather a Marathon Reboot.

 

[Badlucktroll]

I think if Bungie were to make another one it would be BIG. But that would involve alot of red tape.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

This is true and there's an audience for it, but Master Chief is an existing game character that found his success doing something else. He's silent for similar reasons as Link, and it's intentional -you are the protagonist. Cortana is like Navi, the narrator.

Of course he had lines, but they were Keanu Reeves type lines like "I need a weapon".

I don't think it's usually great when they start messing around with what originally made game characters so effective. Nintendo resisted the urge to change Mario unlike Sonic and look at the difference between those IP. Again, in an ideal world where Halo is just focusing on being a game and not just some piece of a bigger multimedia strategy that is trying to milk the IP while losing sight of why anyone ever liked it.

Well, Mario exists in a cartoon world where time and plot progression doesn't exist, and Link gets reincarnated every game, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

The only way to keep Master Chief the same forever is to go the comic book route of rebooting the story every 10-20 years. I think it would be better to explore new characters and time periods instead.

 

[01011001]

Reboot the series after the events of Halo 3.

Reach, 1, 2, 3 and ODST stay canon, everything after that is completely retconned.

this goes for gameplay as well.
no copied game mechanics for the sake of it.

NO SPRINT BUTTON, NO CLAMBER, NO ADS

Evolve the game mechanics of Halo 3 without copying what Call of Duty made popular. Copying other shooters is what started the decline on Halo. it lost its identity. And games like Counter Strike show that you don't have to copy what other popular games do to stay relevant. CS has none of these overused "modern" shooter mechanics.

Halo losing its identity is imo a big reason why it lost relevance.

so Halo 3 should be used as the base for a reboot.
and that means NO MOVEMENT MECHANICS THAT MAKE YOU LOWER YOUR WEAPON OR LIMIT THE USE OF YOUR WEAPON, that was a big part of Halo 1-3 and imo part of what would help a new Halo stand out from the crowd of Sprint, ADS and vaulting having shooters that simply copied what Modern Warfare did 2 generations ago.

you can still being in new gameplay twists with that guideline.
you could have a wallkick-like mechanic, or maybe a type of slide that isn't the typical Sprint+Crouch stuff all shooters do now...
or make the grappling hook more integral to the gameplay and not just a piece of equipment.

do anything that isn't Sprint, ADS, Clamber... it can't be that hard.


what would also be of big importance is that it launches in a COMPLETE STATE.
that means on DAY 1:

Singleplayer campaign with Coop,

Multiplayer with all the classic modes like Oddball, Grifball, Infection, Slayer, CTF, One Flag, Big Team, Team Doubles and SWAT being there,

Splitscreen in every mode,

Forge,

Functional custom games with browser,

Good character customisation based on Halo Reach's way to unlock new armor, with a hint of Halo 3's Achievement based unlocks as a bonus for special armor pieces

 

[simpatico]

It can't. Halo's day in the sun was based on technological limitations of the time. A super slow arena shooter was never bred for success. But for a moment in time, when technology was at just the right point, there was a place for it. That place is no more. You have to consider controller based FPS games barely existed when Halo came out. It's popularity was a combination of Bungie coming up with a great way to control an FPS with a controller combined with the tech leap from the PSX/N64 generation to PS2/XBX/GC generation. Without those hard limitations, Halo is just a slow arena shooter.

 

[BlackTron]

Well, Mario exists in a cartoon world where time and plot progression doesn't exist, and Link gets reincarnated every game, so it's not an apples-to-apples comparison.

The only way to keep Master Chief the same forever is to go the comic book route of rebooting the story every 10-20 years. I think it would be better to explore new characters and time periods instead.

Nothing is an apples-to-apples comparison if you narrow it down enough; for example, Mario is a human and Sonic is an anthropomorphic hedgehog.

What you are saying is probably the best bet actually. As in completely remake Halo 1 as a new game/reimagining like how Starfox has done several times. Halo without Chief isn't really Halo. He's up there with Mario, Sonic, Cloud, Snake etc for game characters so it makes no sense to take him out of his own game. The strength of the MC character is way bigger than the bloated useless Halo story that they screwed up anyway.

 

[Moriarty1889]

Back to the basics imo. A compelling well made campaign playable offline of course. Focusing on the story and lore of Halo is most important. Bring back split screen coop and of course include a well rounded MP mode. Just my two cents worth.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

what would also be of big importance is that it launches in a COMPLETE STATE.
that means on DAY 1:

Singleplayer campaign with Coop,

Multiplayer with all the classic modes like Oddball, Grifball, Infection, Slayer, CTF, One Flag, Big Team, Team Doubles and SWAT being there,

Splitscreen in every mode,

Forge,

Functional custom games with browser,

Good character customisation based on Halo Reach's way to unlock new armor, with a hint of Halo 3's Achievement based unlocks as a bonus for special armor pieces

How many games out there have this many features at launch? With cutting-edge graphics, sound, animation, cinematics, etc? I can't think of one, and that's the issue with Halo going forward, feature creep.

Every big multiplayer-focused series has had to compromise on some aspect in order to make games in the 4K era: Call of Duty has short campaigns and no user made content, Battlefield cut its campaign, Fortnite finally got a Forge, but they have a universal standard engine as a base, not to mention it's cartoony graphics, Apex Legends doesn't have a campaign, user made content, or realistic graphics.

The only FPS that comes close to the amount of work a Halo game requires is Destiny, but I distinctly remember Halo fans rejecting the idea of Halo becoming Destiny. And it still doesn't have a Forge, or game browser.

A modern Halo game with all the features of Halo 3 would be amazing, but very expensive.

 

[DavidGzz]

Reboot in 3rd person and make spartans as badass as they are in the books. I'm over FPS games.

 

[01011001]

How many games out there have this many features at launch? With cutting-edge graphics, sound, animation, cinematics, etc? I can't think of one, and that's the issue with Halo going forward, feature creep.

Every big multiplayer-focused series has had to compromise on some aspect in order to make games in the 4K era: Call of Duty has short campaigns and no user made content, Battlefield cut its campaign, Fortnite finally got a Forge, but they have a universal standard engine as a base, not to mention it's cartoony graphics, Apex Legends doesn't have a campaign, user made content, or realistic graphics.

The only FPS that comes close to the amount of work a Halo game requires is Destiny, but I distinctly remember Halo fans rejecting the idea of Halo becoming Destiny. And it still doesn't have a Forge, or game browser.

A modern Halo game with all the features of Halo 3 would be amazing, but very expensive.

I absolutely disagree with this.
Halo Infinite's development for example was apparently restarted twice during its 6 year dev cycle because the team once again didn't know how to make a Halo game and tried to do weird shit like a hero shooter.

a focused development that is not experimenting with weird shit, and just uses Halo 3 as the baseline, with adjustments only where needed, could have resulted in a fully featured Halo from day 1, that would have taken as long, or even less time, to develop as Halo Infinite.

Infinite ultimately ended up like it did not because they couldn't possibly devliver a feature complete game in 6 years, but because they fucked around for half of that dev cycle because there was noone in charge that just sat their asses down and told them a solid vision for the game, which should be easy to do, but 343i just simply refuses to make a fucking Halo game it seems.

 

[simpatico]

How many games out there have this many features at launch? With cutting-edge graphics, sound, animation, cinematics, etc? I can't think of one, and that's the issue with Halo going forward, feature creep.

Every big multiplayer-focused series has had to compromise on some aspect in order to make games in the 4K era: Call of Duty has short campaigns and no user made content, Battlefield cut its campaign, Fortnite finally got a Forge, but they have a universal standard engine as a base, not to mention it's cartoony graphics, Apex Legends doesn't have a campaign, user made content, or realistic graphics.

The only FPS that comes close to the amount of work a Halo game requires is Destiny, but I distinctly remember Halo fans rejecting the idea of Halo becoming Destiny. And it still doesn't have a Forge, or game browser.

A modern Halo game with all the features of Halo 3 would be amazing, but very expensive.

During PS360 era all those features were the standard for MP releases. Even on the mid to low budget side of things. Hell, Homefront had them. It wasn't even considered a special feat.

Even if they made a game tailored to exactly what the hardcore base wants, it's never going to reach the mind share it once did. It's popularity was dependent on the technological era it was born in. The birth of the console FPS. It depended on our collective inexperience with the genre. The general pubic can no longer be enamored with slow arena shooters.

 

[Three]

By flying into it.

 

[zcaa0g]

A completely new developer.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

I absolutely disagree with this.
Halo Infinite's development for example was apparently restarted twice during its 6 year dev cycle because the team once again didn't know how to make a Halo game and tried to do weird shit like a hero shooter.

a focused development that is not experimenting with weird shit, and just uses Halo 3 as the baseline, with adjustments only where needed, could have resulted in a fully featured Halo from day 1, that would have taken as long, or even less time, to develop as Halo Infinite.

Infinite ultimately ended up like it did not because they couldn't possibly devliver a feature complete game in 6 years, but because they fucked around for half of that dev cycle because there was noone in charge that just sat their asses down and told them a solid vision for the game, which should be easy to do, but 343i just simply refuses to make a fucking Halo game it seems.

I hope you are right and it was just incompetence that stopped a proper Halo game from being made. It just seems there is little appetite in the entire industry to deliver what we used to consider a complete, full-featured multiplayer game.

 

[Alan Wake]

First and foremost: give the franchise to another studio. Only question is which one.

Second: Do a hard reboot.

 

[Shut0wen]

Halo will never be good unless frank it out, he trys to hard to make a halo story seem deep and just fails everytime, though i know im in the minority but i actually think infintes campaign and gameplay is best since reach just a damn shame they went with a GAAS because thats literally what killed the series

 

[brenobnfm]

It's a mediocre franchise, only shined because competent FPS's on consoles were a novelty by then.