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Rebs Gaming: Inside how 343 Industries Leadership ruined Halo: Infinite Campaign

Draugoth

Gold Member
•Campaign team was placed in a box without studio collaboration, which drained the team.
•Campaign didn’t receive any external focus testing unlike previous campaigns. This pissed off the team.
•Leadership didn’t play the campaign during internal testing days and eventually canceled internal testing which cut off all feedback loops for the campaign team.
•Leadership didn’t ask for campaign feedback until months before the game shipped.
•Hackathons were created to boost morale. Several awesome prototypes were created, but leadership abruptly scrapped them and hackathons.




 

mansoor1980

Gold Member
bonnie ross , the franchise destroyer
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graywolf323

Member
Neogaf will never live that down
whenever someone whines about SonyGAF that should be thrown right back in their face; Halo Infinite not only won, it wasn’t even close

NeoGAF 2021 Top 10 results said:
Halo Infinite613
Forza Horizon 5519
Returnal516
Metroid Dread425
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart385
Psychonauts 2342
Resident Evil Village332
Guardians of the Galaxy328
It Takes Two277
Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker194
 
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THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Like others have said, the campaign was actually very good. It wasn't these nit picks that held it back, it was clearly the massive scope that prevented the focus needed to deliver on time.

Also not the first halo game with faults, if we see being honest certain other halo games suffered badly from repeated rooms and assets. Still great, but far from perfect or even finished.
 
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Story: trash

World design: lacking (everything looked the same)

Open world elements: generic (hey here’s the same handful of open world objectives you’ve seen a thousand times, do them again and again in this game too)

Core gameplay: phenomenal. They created a top notch open world sandbox for you to play in.

I chalk most of Infinites issues up to development hell. I have high hopes for a legitimate sequel with a quality dev cycle.
 

Topher

Gold Member
Story: trash

World design: lacking (everything looked the same)

Open world elements: generic (hey here’s the same handful of open world objectives you’ve seen a thousand times, do them again and again in this game too)

Core gameplay: phenomenal. They created a top notch open world sandbox for you to play in.

I chalk most of Infinites issues up to development hell. I have high hopes for a legitimate sequel with a quality dev cycle.

Pretty much agree with everything you said. I loved the gameplay. Just wish the open world had more in it. I think they could have made the high value targets into more substantial side missions. Story......I really don't remember what it was about.
 

phant0m

Member
Called this last year. 343 does have really good devs that care deeply about the franchise but they keeping getting dragged through the mud by the leadership there.

What a shame.

Core gameplay of the campaign was fun as fuck btw
 
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Agent_4Seven

Tears of Nintendo
Say what you will about HALO 4 (which I like for the most part), it's so much better than this empty shell of a game was. Infinite had great gameplay and HALO 1 feel for sure when it comes to world exploration, but everything else just wasn't there. And this effin' thing is still selling for $60 and even when it gets on sale it's still way too much for what you get, while Gears 5 on sale cost almost nothing and miles better than HALO Infinite.

Enough is enough. Fuck 343! MachineGames can make much better HALO game.
 
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Sleepwalker

Member
Pretty much agree with everything you said. I loved the gameplay. Just wish the open world had more in it. I think they could have made the high value targets into more substantial side missions. Story......I really don't remember what it was about.

Yup I agree.

The problem with Halo's lore is that they made a bunch of external media canon so now only the people that read the novels (comics?) Know what the hell is going on in the universe. I certainly have no clue what its up to...

But the multiplayer was fun for a while.
 

Fredrik

Member
whenever someone whines about SonyGAF that should be thrown right back in their face; Halo Infinite not only won, it wasn’t even close
Might be valid for that year but it’s not the same board now, or the same industry. Would be interesting to see a platform usage poll. I think PS5 is clearly dominating, should be like the industry in general or more. But tbh I wouldn’t know, I put the most obvious console warriors on ignore, I keep those who aren’t hating on PC, creates a fake PCGAF I guess.
 
Pretty much agree with everything you said. I loved the gameplay. Just wish the open world had more in it. I think they could have made the high value targets into more substantial side missions. Story......I really don't remember what it was about.
What story? I only saw an ape that wasn’t happy with Master Chef
 

Three

Member
How does Phil Spencer and Matt Booty not give a flying fuck about their largest IP?

If any of these allegations are true it’s an absolute embarrassment for Microsoft leadership. Fucking hell that’s bad
They gave a shit but for the wrong reasons. They just tried to cash in on it by focusing on the multiplayer GaaS element of it only, hence

Campaign team was placed in a box without studio collaboration, which drained the team.
•Campaign didn’t receive any external focus testing unlike previous campaigns. This pissed off the team.
•Leadership didn’t play the campaign during internal testing days and eventually canceled internal testing which cut off all feedback loops for the campaign team.
•Leadership didn’t ask for campaign feedback until months before the game shipped.
 
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