Halo Infinite is coming! December 8th! And things are… not looking good.
I’ve always found the existence of 343 Industries disconcerting. I love(d) Halo. When I was a kid, it was my Star Wars. I first played Halo: Combat Evolved on an Xbox, a system I’d never even played before, at a cousin’s house over spring break in probably 2002. I played every game, theorized about the lore and consumed every book.
343 didn’t carve out their own place in this world to make something. They were created with the sole purpose to perpetuate the existence of Microsoft’s most well-known IP because Microsoft basically has none without the Master Chief. 343 is a shell to be stuffed with employees to churn out boxes that say Halo on them. And that’s really the crux of the issue. The box says Halo, the title screen says Halo, the announcer says “double kill!” like it’s Halo but it’s not Halo. The games are far removed from the soul and purity of the original Bungie titles.
But that’s okay. Unfortunately, series evolve over time, for better or for worse, and one can’t reasonably expect to be fans of every installation of every franchise. (If you think you can, you haven’t been Mass Effect-ed yet). I don’t like the new Pokemon games but the old ones are still lit.
The problem is that 343, a spectre haunting the memory of Bungie, is bad at making Halo games. They haven’t released a complete (much less Great) title since their inception.
Halo 4
Where it all began. Halo 4 was the harbinger of doom for the franchise. Reach was a grievous misstep in the franchise for a lot of reasons, particularly for the story and gameplay, but 4 is outright offensive.
Maybe spectre isn’t the proper term for 343, because 4’s attempt to reanimate the Bungie Halo trilogy turns it into a shambling zombie. They, and Microsoft through them, couldn’t leave what was done, done. So seemingly desperate were they to maintain some iconic mascot that they would defile even the hushed casket.
Glossing over the sin of the entire premise of Halo 4, it was an incomplete game, albeit the least of 343’s subsequent works. It was released without Firefight and no, I do not consider Spartan Ops to be a “reworked” Firefight and neither should you.
At launch it lacked many features. Some were small but befuddingly absent, like markers to show where allies died (the red X). Some were staples of the franchise at that point, like the file browser, campaign theater mode and playable Elites. It even lacked a ranking system.
To not outright shit on 343 without merit, some of these have been explained. From my understanding, campaign AI in previous Halo games worked with a relatively binary input:output from player:enemy. In other words, if you always jumped in a certain situation, enemies would always react the same way. It was the flexibility of these simple clauses and the way they worked together that made Bungie’s Covenant AI seem so “smart.” Campaign theater functionally worked by replaying inputs from that mission, so the results were always the same and that was the file.
With more complex AI systems in 4, this same system wasn’t doable. Sure, that may be a large undertaking to solve, but 343 didn’t solve it. And this is as good as it gets. It only gets worse from here.
The Master Chief Collection
What is there to say about the failure of the Master Chief Collection that hasn’t already been said? Multiplayer consistently didn’t work for 6 months to 4 years, depending on who you ask. Halo 3 and 4 originally had limited customization, where players were forced to choose full armor sets instead of swapping individual pieces like in the original titles. 4 missed plenty of its content like perks and visor colors.
Not to mention that Halo: CE and Halo 2 are built on the PC ports, which are shoddy, incomplete and misrepresentative incarnations of the original games. When MCC finally hit PC in 2019, it launched without Forge for Halo: Reach and Halo 2 Anniversary until summer 2020. Some of these issues are being fixed, yes. But the MCC came out in 2014. I don’t think anyone should be happy with the fact that almost seven full years later, fundamental issues still exist. Custom games browser? It’s here! Still no file share on PC though.
There are some that say that the MCC is a redemption story. These people are wrong. The MCC will never be the system-seller it was supposed to be for the Xbox One. It may never be the definitive version of the Bungie Halo titles it needs to be, especially as the original Xbox 360 servers go offline in December. Even though it works quite well today (I play it often and have just as much fun as I did as a kid), it will never erase the fact that Microsoft and 343 Industries sold a broken product for years, and an incomplete one after that.
Even Sony didn’t let that happen with Cyberpunk 2077.
Halo 5
The worst of the bunch. Halo 5 first removed split-screen, a plague that infected a vast majority of games today. I don’t know if higher graphical fidelity is worth the loss of such a staple feature for the series. LAN parties are dead; long live online servers. Until they too go offline when a company inevitably decides they are no longer worth the investment.
It also launched with no Forge. Which, I mean, come on. Forge is integral to the post-Halo 3 formula. And it’s not like CE and 2 wouldn’t be improved should Forge have existed then. The freedom it gives to community creators is integral for the longevity of the game. Halo 3 would not have been the success it was without the custom games. I’d wager to say that people have more vivid memories of custom game buffoonery than they do sick plays in matchmaking.
Additionally, it’s integral to launch with a feature like Forge to strike while the iron is hot. Barring unusual circumstances, a game is most popular in the period immediately after its launch. The lack of Forge crippled any ability for a community to develop around Halo 5 that wasn’t related to competitive play, or social matchmaking at best. It’s much more difficult for players to come back to a game than it is to have never left it.
Launching without Forge was a failure. Full stop.
Those two mountains aren’t even close to the full story though. Halo 5’s theater mode was broken at launch and is still buggy today. It had a limited selection of multiplayer modes, no file browser and lacked classic weapons like the Gravity Hammer. Goodbye, Grifball.
In its full lifespan, 5 never saw a single, traditional Big Team Battle map. Ever. Big Team Battle only ever used Forge maps. Big team game modes were pushed aside in favor of Warzone, another large scale gametype, which also happened to be the one that had associated microtransactions. Hmm…
Halo 5 is a weak (I’d almost say failed) Halo game for a lot of reasons, two big ones being story and gameplay. But the missing features above are damning. Compared feature for feature, pound for pound to its Bungie siblings, Halo 5 fails to live up to the standard set by games released almost a full decade before.
Halo Infinite
Wow! Halo Infinite isn’t even out yet and it already looks like a trainwreck. After a disastrous gameplay trailer last year and multiple lead-level departures, Infinite is scrambling to salvage its crumbling reputation and hype by promising free multiplayer and bringing back famous Bungie-era names like Joe Staten.
A few days ago 343 dug that hole they’ve been standing in even deeper by announcing that their game — which has received a whole extra year of delayed development time — will launch without co-op campaign and Forge mode. Considering the release date, December 8, it’s even more damning. An incomplete product is likely being rushed out the door to capitalize on holiday sales. The pessimist in me says that much like Cyberpunk 2077, this is in an attempt to garner purchases before the critical reviews of a mediocre product come in.
Not only is 343 repeating a mistake they’ve already made — and were rightly criticized for by failing to deliver Forge (and Firefight, and still no playable Elites!) on 5’s launch — they’ve managed to remove another feature that has been a part of the series since CE. They know it is the wrong thing to do or else the feature would have been wholly cut. It highlights one of the most disgusting trends in the contemporary industry. The availability of patching has encouraged the release of broken or incomplete games in favor of fixing them later. And that’s what Infinite will be on December 8: deficient, wanting, lacking.
I guess it’s a good thing the multiplayer portion is free then.
“You are the child of my Makers. Inheritor of all they left behind.”
343’s ceaseless inability to handle Microsoft’s once-golden goose raises the question: what to do with a company who fails at the sole purpose they were created for? 343’s literal job, the express purpose that every employee is hired for, is to create Halo games.
They have Microsoft money. They have an emblematic titan, even if he is swiftly eroding into two vast and trunkless legs of stone crumbling in the desert. 343 defiled a mausoleum and squandered a legacy.
I understand that a lot of the text above sets up an integral issue for 343 or any long standing series like Halo: it’s difficult to maintain parity with feature creep from so many titles. Especially ones so integral and complex as Forge, Firefight and Theater. But comparison does not bode well when their work can’t keep up with titles from 2010.
If 343 — the company erected only to make Halo games and continue the legacy — can’t do it, then what do they exist for? Why are they still around?
Infinite is their opportunity to answer that question. Unfortunately after six years since their last game, it currently looks like they still don’t have a good answer.
On the CRT Screen 