Or, just like make a good game. You can work on a game until it’s good and then release it. Come up with some fun ideas, hire some good writers and graphic designers, spend some time making the controls and UI intuitive and responsive, and then balance gameplay through testing.
Oh, and get the music right. Halo: CE was like 90% about the music. When you hop in the back of the jeep, and the music is like “dun duh duh DUUN da dun duh duh DUUUN” and you start mowing down Grunts, or when you meet the Flood for the first time, those moments made Halo an experience worth sharing.
The music was great, but the Puma (jeep), was also a huge part of it. The developers are on record talking about how they made the Puma, realized how fun it was, and then basically built the whole game around having fun moments with it.
This conversation makes me want to plug in my old XBox and fire up some Halo.
Wasn’t it called the Warthog, though? Or am I thinking of Halo 2?
It’s the Warthog. There’s an old webseries called Red vs Blue from like 20 years ago (they just finished the whole thing last year) where they refer to the Warthog as a Puma.
It’s hilarious by the way. If you have an hour to kill, you should check out the first season.
That wasn’t twenty years ago … It was, like, three. Right? Please tell me I’m right.
21 years, sorry.
“Have you ever thought about why are we here?”
“No, I have never, ever, wondered why we’re here. Semper Fi, bitch.”
The whole experience was carefully tuned to be fun.
I can hear this comment.
If the film industry won’t learn that lesson, then the gaming industry certainly won’t.
IP rot will continue until it’s no longer profitable.
Stop pre ordering games and watching every milked franchise sequel.
That’s easier said and done with movies and tv where the enjoyment isn’t dependent on player base. For multiplayer games at a certain point you have often have to move to the newer versions.
It is not as if people keep rewatching the same old movies twenty times a week. The problem with gaming is that some players seem incapable of even considering trying something new that isn’t part of the same series.
Yes they do, I’ve rewatched seasons 2-9 of the Simpsons about 25+ times, I’ve watched it’s always sunny a similar amount, my dad has seen the movie Independence day about 300 times. Both of us play the same sport, which we’ve played most of our lives.
It will never rot so completely that’s its never not salvageable. Imagine some alternate universe that 343 actually hired people who knew what they were doing and they created a new Halo that was as well received and as talked about as much as the first Halo. That shit would fly off the shelves, sure it wont be pre ordered (nobody should ever pre order anyway) but it will sell and sell and sell once word gets out.
This is what the cling to as they try to make a successful game, despite having as much understanding as to what makes a great game as my dog does of planning a manned mission to mars. What happened was they confused the people pre ordering and buying the game off previous quality games for actual talent in game development, so they endlessly try repeating what they did previously and it just works less and less. Meanwhile utter tools add DLC of ever lower value, loot boxes and skins, to squeeze a bit more cash out of those not quite ready to give up on the series.
So many franchises need to be laid to rest.
I would have cared but they kept not resolving stories in the games or even side games. So I checked out.
I am still somewhat hopeful because 343 Industries did make a couple of good things along the way.
I really have not much to complain about Halo 4 besides unpleasant sound design and story slowly starting to be stretched between games, novels, comics, etc. Media around the game should be complimentary, not mandatory to getting the full picture in my opinion.
Saw an opinion on Halo 5 that I totally agree with — best multiplayer, poor campaign. Even though the REQ Packs are lootboxes, I never felt forced into buying them and could earn Gold ones without much trouble.
Halo Infinite felt like a Halo themed playground. Grappling hook and open world are fun as hell, and I really enjoyed collecting audio logs for the first time since Halo 3: ODST. Loved the post-rock sounding soundtrack wich still has familiar tunes. But in all other directions it’s a bit of a letdown, even after they mostly fixed everything after a disastrous launch.
I really want to believe that the situation here can be better than simple “they want to sell everything until it’s not profitable”. The universe is massive, there are loads of stories to tell, worlds to explore, guns to shoot, vehicles to ride even without further expansion of the universe. Everything is there, just do something good with it.
I loved 1 & 2, then I kind of lost track of the series for a bit, but I heard everything through Halo 4 was pretty decent. But honestly, I don’t see any reason for the story to continue. Basically:
- Halo: CE - introduction to the Covenant and the Flood
- Halo 2 - learn about inner workings of the Covenant and history of the Flood
- Halo 3 - Covenant brings the fight to Earth
- Halo: Reach - prequel to Halo CE - adds backstory about human intersteller colonization
- Halo 4 - looks like a kind of side story continuation of Halo 3, with new enemies
- Halo 5 - Cortana turns evil?
I haven’t played anything past 2, so maybe it hits different in the games, but the series really looks like it loses its purpose around Halo: Reach and Halo 4 and becomes a cash grab. They really should have wrapped things up around there, at least as far as Master Chief is concerned, and build a new series in the same universe (or a completely new universe).
And that’s also why I don’t bother with Assassin’s Creed games anymore, they’ve long since lost the plot, and doing the same thing but in a different setting just isn’t interesting enough for me.
The fight’s never finished.
Does this website have… articles? All I ever get is a headline and a comment section.
I presume it’s an anti-adblock thing, but if so, fuck 'em.
Yes
I think that’s on your adblock. Works here without ads fine.
Same here. Firefox w/ uBlock Origin, and I see a decently lengthy article.
