Halo Infinite
343
Halo’s current trend is 100,000 mentions On Twitter, this…isn’t the best news. Much of the discussion online right now is about 343’s dismal roadmap for Halo Infinite Season 2, which will run for six months, and like Season 1, relatively little content has been released during that time. Fans are hoping that the feature Infinite is rolling out now “targets” a late August launch, while the other features (split-screen collaboration) have no date at all.
This raises broader questions about Halo and how 343 Industries has handled Halo on Microsoft’s behalf since Halo Reach took over from Bungie. It was an unusual split, with Bungie leaving Microsoft, leaving behind the Halo IP, and releasing Destiny with Activision. Now, Bungie has been acquired by Sony, and Destiny 2 is one of the biggest live service games on the market. While many people have played Halo Infinite, the ongoing state of the game and the franchise as a whole is still up for debate.
Halo Infinite
343
A lot of it is subjective, but I don’t think you’ll find that many Halo fans prefer For some reason, 343 on Bungie’s term. Generally speaking, the conversation about 343’s Halo installment is:
Halo 4 – Has a pretty good campaign, but tries to COD its multiplayer in a way that doesn’t work at all for traditional Halo players.
Halo 5 – Significantly improved multiplayer, but the final campaign was very, very poorly done, didn’t pay enough attention to the Master Chief, and is often considered the worst campaign in the series.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection – This was a long time ago, but it was a truly disastrous launch, with the game not functioning properly for months. It’s been slowly improved and supported over the years, and recently surpassed the total number of Halo Infinite players on PC after its most recent update.
Halo Infinite
Bunge
Halo Infinite – It was the most played Halo game at launch due to its inclusion in Xbox Game Pass. There were a lot of people who initially enjoyed the fun of the open-world sandbox versus the Master Chief’s toolset, though the story was a bit… more controversial.Feels like we’re missing something Considerable 343 tried to “fix” the Halo 5 story, it ended when new potential races became interesting, and now we have zero idea of when the story will continue.
Multiplayer has always been… rough. The gameplay is solid, but Infinite has one of the worst progression systems in the genre, having had to be overhauled and changed several times over the course of the season, as does its microtransactions. Now, the second six-month season brings just two maps and three modes, and fans feel that 343 can’t support the scale the game needs.And it all happened after Halo Infinite already A year later than the original release window, which was supposed to coincide with the debut of the Xbox Series X/S.
halo
Paramount
Halo Show – It’s a small quibble, but 343 has been heavily involved in the Paramount Plus show, which had a huge budget and went through a million scripts before it was released. The show has had a few solid fights, but overall, it doesn’t seem to be well-liked by most fans or the general audience at the moment due to the odd story and character decisions.
343 has been in control of Halo for a decade since Halo 4 was released in 2012. While Halo games continue to sell well because…they’re Halo games, it seems like every release has some major issues holding the game and the series back from where it needs to be Microsoft’s flagship IP.
Microsoft has already started offering “help”. Certain Affinities are now building a separate multiplayer mode, presumably a battle royale, to launch alongside Halo Infinite. I guess the problem is, given what we’ve seen over the past decade, and in many ways, the current state of Infinite and its development is one of the most troubling turns to date (though I don’t think anything beats the most Bad Halo MCC release).
The problem could be…they even Have Another option? Sony just bought Bungie, so the overall plan for them to take over again isn’t going to happen, not that Bungie is going to give up work on Destiny and their own new IP anyway. Microsoft is still trying to figure out how to get its new first-party studio working, while production issues plague The Initiative and its Perfect Dark game.
Perhaps the answer is time, and Halo Infinite will eventually find its groove. But again, I think it’s about looking back at the big arc of the past decade, which I think raises a broader question than Infinite’s recent struggles. So far, Microsoft doesn’t seem to agree.
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