Halo MCC/Infinite/general Griefing thread - Six months, two maps, no refunds

What did you think of Infinite after the campaign showcase?

  • It looked good

  • Good, but they need to iron out some issues

  • Majorly apprehensive

  • It sucked donkey dick

  • I need to see more

  • I don't know

  • Craig monke


Results are only viewable after voting.
What even is the story for Halo at this point? People talk about remakes and gameplay, but Halo's story was just as important. But now, people don't even give a flying fuck. Humanity can't squash one ex-Covenant PMC, and it's not even clear what they're fighting over.

The clear direction for the story should've been the Didact reviving the Covenant to be a threat again. With the Didact at the helm, the once-weakened Covenant finds its strength, especially as more worlds get composed and more Promethean Knights come on-line, and you can even have it so that the Didact reveals some Forerunner factory world that makes Forerunner warships for the new Covenant. You can then have the UNSC lose to this Covenant, but ONI and some UNSC remnants refuse to give up, so they pay the Banished to join their fight, since Atriox hated the old Covenant and ONI, would bank on that hatred to turn him against the new one.

Then you can have the team-up of Master Chief, the Arbiter, and Atriox against the new Covenant. Let the players play as a Brute for once in a mainline Halo game. They keep glazing Atriox and building him up to be tough, but the best way to make him a badass is not to make the player lose to him in a cutscene; it's to make him playable. It worked for Revan, Kyle Katarn, the Arbiter, and Master Chief, it would work for Atriox as well.

There, I just made a better story for Halo within less than 5 minutes. I did in less than 5 minutes what people getting paid thousands of dollars for couldn't do in over a decade.
 
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What even is the story for Halo at this point? People talk about remakes and gameplay, but Halo's story was just as important. But now, people don't even give a flying fuck. Humanity can't squash one ex-Covenant PMC, and it's not even clear what they're fighting over.
Don't take this the wrong way, but after Halo: CE, I stopped even giving a fuck that Halo had a campaign.
 
What even is the story for Halo at this point? People talk about remakes and gameplay, but Halo's story was just as important. But now, people don't even give a flying fuck. Humanity can't squash one ex-Covenant PMC, and it's not even clear what they're fighting over.
Yathzee put it best when he was coming into Halo Infinite as an outsider
"Bastards hate humans, kill all the bastards"
This hasn't really changed much over the years. As a rule of thumb, I only care about everything, be it games or other forms of media, up to the end of the Bungie era, then the only 343 era piece of media I consider canon is Halo 4 and only because it makes for a good book end for Master Chief: Cortana is dead, so is everyone else, The Covenant might have been defeated but Chief still wakes up in a world foreign to him. The new ancient evil is awakened, but Chief doesn't care about that because the loss of arguably the closest thing he has to a true friend is much more important to him, making the whole plot of 4 a sidenote with a QTE boss fight at the end straight out of Call of Duty. This is the start of a new story, but one that Chief has no involvement it, he already fought his fight and the new generation of Spartans will have to fight Forerunners or nu-Covenant or whomever. This is why Halo 5, Infinite and everything else past 4 doesn't exist as far as I know, and never will. I'm iffy on Halo Wars 2 since I like to think that the crew in that game made it back safely to Earth and warned UNSC, this is why Cortana seems to know that something is up with Halo at the start of CE since it is so familiar to Shield World. The crew of Spirit of Fire being frozen and arriving 25 or so years later to a random planet only to fight more bastards that hate humans is kind of anti climactic and I prefer my own fan-canon instead, especially when the whole deal with Banished is that it was a leadup to...Halo Infinite, which I will never consider canon.
 
Halo 3 was literally a cultural phenomenon when it launched. Literally the best selling and highest praised exclusive FPS game for it's time.
The only "sin" that I can recall from Halo 3, was that Bungie admitted that the game didn't ran at 720p but 640p as a measure to hit a stable frame rate. An acceptable trade-off in my book.
 
The only "sin" that I can recall from Halo 3, was that Bungie admitted that the game didn't ran at 720p but 640p as a measure to hit a stable frame rate. An acceptable trade-off in my book.
Yet it is still very good looking. All the 4k assets. In the world won't make your game beautiful if your art style is shit.
 
Halo 3 was literally a cultural phenomenon when it launched. Literally the best selling and highest praised exclusive FPS game for it's time
It's really hard for people who weren't around at the time to understand but Halo wasn't just popular for a game, it was popular for a piece of media in general. Like on release days it would make the news it was so big.
It's not like today where Halo is this kinda popular but not really big property that gets a decent amount of attention at launch then drops. For reference Halo 2 was the most played Xbox Live game consistently until Gears of War came out in 2006.
 
It's really hard for people who weren't around at the time to understand but Halo wasn't just popular for a game, it was popular for a piece of media in general. Like on release days it would make the news it was so big.
It's not like today where Halo is this kinda popular but not really big property that gets a decent amount of attention at launch then drops. For reference Halo 2 was the most played Xbox Live game consistently until Gears of War came out in 2006.
It was getting close to being as big as Star Wars when Halo 3 released. Halo was that big. The gameplay was fun, the graphics were top-notch, and people enjoyed the living fuck out of the multiplayer and the campaign.

Microsoft had themselves a goose that laid golden eggs. Then they killed it on the altar of DEI and cheap cash-grabs.
 
The lead-up to Halo 3 was truly something special. We're never going to see that type of anticipation for another Halo game. No autist is going to make a goofy song about how hyped he is for Halo 7 or whatever other dogshit Halo Studios spews out.
 
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What even is the story for Halo at this point? People talk about remakes and gameplay, but Halo's story was just as important. But now, people don't even give a flying fuck. Humanity can't squash one ex-Covenant PMC, and it's not even clear what they're fighting over.

The clear direction for the story should've been the Didact reviving the Covenant to be a threat again. With the Didact at the helm, the once-weakened Covenant finds its strength, especially as more worlds get composed and more Promethean Knights come on-line, and you can even have it so that the Didact reveals some Forerunner factory world that makes Forerunner warships for the new Covenant. You can then have the UNSC lose to this Covenant, but ONI and some UNSC remnants refuse to give up, so they pay the Banished to join their fight, since Atriox hated the old Covenant and ONI, would bank on that hatred to turn him against the new one.

Then you can have the team-up of Master Chief, the Arbiter, and Atriox against the new Covenant. Let the players play as a Brute for once in a mainline Halo game. They keep glazing Atriox and building him up to be tough, but the best way to make him a badass is not to make the player lose to him in a cutscene; it's to make him playable. It worked for Revan, Kyle Katarn, the Arbiter, and Master Chief, it would work for Atriox as well.

There, I just made a better story for Halo within less than 5 minutes. I did in less than 5 minutes what people getting paid thousands of dollars for couldn't do in over a decade.
The only real paths Halo could have gone down would have been making a new trilogy where you fight the insurrectionists OR just making random spin offs set in the Human-Covenant War, I personally cannot think of a way to have a new trilogy that would be as epic as Bungie's.
 
The only real paths Halo could have gone down would have been making a new trilogy where you fight the insurrectionists OR just making random spin offs set in the Human-Covenant War, I personally cannot think of a way to have a new trilogy that would be as epic as Bungie's.
Correct. Modern writers seem incapable of understanding that trivialising the original story with their own creations is the fastest way to bleed interest in the setting as a whole. Respect the shoulders of the giants that built the franchise, build from there.
 
What even is the story for Halo at this point? People talk about remakes and gameplay, but Halo's story was just as important. But now, people don't even give a flying fuck. Humanity can't squash one ex-Covenant PMC, and it's not even clear what they're fighting over.

The clear direction for the story should've been the Didact reviving the Covenant to be a threat again. With the Didact at the helm, the once-weakened Covenant finds its strength, especially as more worlds get composed and more Promethean Knights come on-line, and you can even have it so that the Didact reveals some Forerunner factory world that makes Forerunner warships for the new Covenant. You can then have the UNSC lose to this Covenant, but ONI and some UNSC remnants refuse to give up, so they pay the Banished to join their fight, since Atriox hated the old Covenant and ONI, would bank on that hatred to turn him against the new one.

Then you can have the team-up of Master Chief, the Arbiter, and Atriox against the new Covenant. Let the players play as a Brute for once in a mainline Halo game. They keep glazing Atriox and building him up to be tough, but the best way to make him a badass is not to make the player lose to him in a cutscene; it's to make him playable. It worked for Revan, Kyle Katarn, the Arbiter, and Master Chief, it would work for Atriox as well.

There, I just made a better story for Halo within less than 5 minutes. I did in less than 5 minutes what people getting paid thousands of dollars for couldn't do in over a decade.
When Bonnie Ross took over Halo, one of her ambitions was to make Halo "the Star Wars of gaming". Not only did she succeed (in the negative sense), but the truth is that Halo was always the Star Wars of gaming. That is, it had a very successful original trilogy, but it had nowhere else to go. Just like you can only see the same X-wings and AT-ATs before you realize how shallow it all is, in Halo you can't end the great war only for it to immediately go back to square one in the next game.

343 tried to alleviate this with muh rogue faction ("they aren't the true covenant!" AKA cope), but this was just a concession that yes; Halo (like Star Wars) is shallow and will always be stuck doing the same thing. Prometheans weren't a substitute. Grunt fodder, mundane Elites, and boring Brutes for the rest of eternity.

So what's the answer? The answer was to never touch Master Chief or that timeline again, let him forever float towards that mysterious planet. Instead focus on side stories, smaller skirmishes and scale, different timelines, alternate perspectives of the original trilogy, etc.
It's no secret that the best media of Star Wars outside of the OT are ones that don't try to follow mainline lore, like KOTOR for example.

It also didn't help that 343 wrote themselves into a corner. They wanted to kill off Cortana to pull the emotional strings, but in doing so erased a large part of what made Halo "Halo." So they bring her back, but this time as a villain as a compromise, and in doing so further desecrated her character. And for what? A terrible story that went nowhere. Now we have fake Cortana in Halo Infinite as a band aid fix. You could have just done nothing at all and be in the same position.

Just end it all. No more. I realize Master Chief is/was a mascot, and Microsoft wants to print money, but every subsequent game turns Master Chief closer into a joke. Let 117 rest in peace.

(I say all of this as a Halo and Star Wars fan, but certainly not the recent projects in either franchise)
 
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So what's the answer? The answer was to never touch Master Chief or that timeline again, let him forever float towards that mysterious planet. Instead focus on side stories, smaller skirmishes and scale, different timelines, alternate perspectives of the original trilogy, etc.
The only real paths Halo could have gone down would have been making a new trilogy where you fight the insurrectionists OR just making random spin offs set in the Human-Covenant War, I personally cannot think of a way to have a new trilogy that would be as epic as Bungie's.
It depends. Star Wars managed to make a great Expanded Universe series with the continuing adventures of Luke and friends, like the Thrawn Trilogy, Crimson Empire, Dark Empire, and the Jedi Knight games, but those were written by writers who weren't concussed orangutans. Halo went off the deep end after 4 and never came back. Halo 5 onwards, the story-writers were just throwing shit on the board.

It's no secret that the best media of Star Wars outside of the OT are ones that don't try to follow mainline lore, like KOTOR for example.
Hell, it'd be funny to see things like the earlier years of the Human-Covenant War, as well as the Grunt Rebellion and the Taming of the Hunters.

With the former, we can play as Spartans or marines who have weaker armor as players, a la Halo Reach or ODST. In the latter, we can play as the Arbiters as they keep the Covenant together during trying times.

Speaking of the Covenant, it would be fun to have a Dynasty Warriors: Empires sort of game where you play as a Covenant Warlord and fight to control it all after the Covenant splintered into warring states.

It also didn't help that 343 wrote themselves into a corner. They wanted to kill off Cortana to pull the emotional strings, but in doing so erased a large part of what made Halo "Halo." So they bring her back, but this time as a villain as a comprise, and in doing so further desecrated her character. And for what? A terrible story that went nowhere. Now we have fake Cortana in Halo Infinite as a band aid fix. You could have just done nothing at all and be in the same position.
Halo 5 should've been a struggle by the Chief to revive Cortana, with him having a Cortana fragment and going from one Forerunner ruin to another to find a way to bring her back. Then have it so that Team Osiris was dispatched to hunt him down because he went AWOL from his post trying to revive Cortana.

When John finally succeeds, with some help from Forerunner constructs like the Warden Eternal, Team Osiris catches up to him and guns him down, leaving him critically injured. The sight of UNSC Spartans nearly killing the Chief then causes the newly-revived Cortana to go rogue.

Halo 6 won't feature the Chief, but have ONI be the bad guys, and Cortana hires a certain Brute and his PMC to help with kicking the shit out of ONI and their pawns within the UNSC-the Banished. Atriox becomes a playable character, with Cortana's guidance, and you have to help free the UNSC from ONI's control. First mission: save Dr. Halsey before ONI assassins dispose of her for no longer being useful.

There you go. Once again, I came up with a better story than people who are paid professionally to make up stories. In less than five minutes.
 
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343 never had a cohesive vision for the franchise. Likely due to shit management insisting on a revolving door of contractors instead of long term employees like Bungie had with Joe Staten.

Halo wars 2 was the only remotely good thing to come from 343's tenure and even then it felt like Creative Assembly was retconning the ending of Halo 3 despite isabel referencing it early on in the story. Since we blew up High Charity at the end of the Cortana level, setting off a chain reaction that blew up the main reactor to distract the gravemind. There should have been either a replaced section of the ark or a giant piece missing where High charity is in "awakening the nightmare". As Cortana said we "did a number on the ark" after firing the unfinished halo ring.

The banished also make no sense since the ark was a few hundred thousand light years from galactic center and no one used the ark portal after Halo 3 besides some ONI researchers. The brutes were also on the verge of extinction even in 343's earlier lore entries before the Prophets saved them from themselves. So where the hell did this massive galaxy spanning super hyper army come from? I get hiring mercs like that shipmaster, but he would not have that kind of sway to rival the prophets beyond being a small heretic faction when the covenant was the largest known superpower at the time.


Also will never get over how different and worse professor anders and to a lesser extent Captain Cutter look compared to Halo wars 1. Since they also carried over sgt forge and serina as DLC leaders and didnt change their timeless designs or voice actors at all.
 
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Hell, it'd be funny to see things like the earlier years of the Human-Covenant War, as well as the Grunt Rebellion and the Taming of the Hunters.

With the former, we can play as Spartans or marines who have weaker armor as players, a la Halo Reach or ODST. In the latter, we can play as the Arbiters as they keep the Covenant together during trying times.

Speaking of the Covenant, it would be fun to have a Dynasty Warriors: Empires sort of game where you play as a Covenant Warlord and fight to control it all after the Covenant splintered into warring states.
There is so much opportunity and inspiration available for other stories, but they waste their time trying to mend something that can't be fixed (i.e. current storyline).
And if the CE remake rumors are true, it's even worse. They are only going to dilute the franchise further.
 
Would it kill them to add some new unsc and covenant vehicles so the banshee isnt the only aircraft in MP? Its not 2004 anymore.
I hate how they ditched the Falcon and replaced it with the Wasp and Phaeton, both of which are significantly more boring and uninteresting (the Phaeton is also really fucking ugly, like all the other Promethean designs).
 
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Would it kill them to add some new unsc and covenant vehicles so the banshee isnt the only aircraft in MP? Its not 2004 anymore.

Add the halo wars vehicles to the mainline sandbox.
I'd love to fly the Vulture gunship or use the Locust walker.

There is so much opportunity and inspiration available for other stories, but they waste their time trying to mend something that can't be fixed (i.e. current storyline).
The only way to mend it is to take a blowtorch and canon wipe everything after Halo 4, outside of Halo Wars 2.

And if the CE remake rumors are true, it's even worse. They are only going to dilute the franchise further.
Why am I not surprised? It's the modern devs wanting to leave their own footprint on Halo. Despite the fact that everything they touched turned into utter shit.
 
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