Ex 343 Dev here. Now I work at Epic Games. Microsoft's contracting policies are single handedly one of the biggest issues that Halo faces. Can you imagine how difficult it is to do your best work knowing that they'll get rid of you in 18 months and there's nothing you can do about it? Plus that forces people out the door just as they become fully trained and competent at their positions. All of this just so they can have the luxury of being able to easily lay off employees when it suits Microsoft execs. A SIGNIFICANT portion of 343's workforce is comprised of contract workers (including the entirety of the old MCC team). The self inflicted brain drain is maddening to watch, and it's (in my opinion) why most Microsoft exclusive titles are seeing a downturn in quality. They've created a business environment in which the talent they should be trying to cultivate is being pushed out the door and is then nabbed by other studios.
Yea, getting rid of people that just got used to your companies engine, workflows, etc. seems like a nightmare considering youd likely have to train new folks again to do the same thing.
I've long thought the use of contract resources was a core problem. I think it just goes to show that Microsoft views it purely as a business. They pay a lot of lip service saying that everything they do is "centered around gamers" but actions speak louder than words.
Pretty sure that’s not just a Microsoft issue also out of curiosity, how comes we don’t hear about this issue from other Microsoft studios? I’m Genuinely asking
that's so frustrating to hear. the execs must think "what? a developer is a developer. they sit at computer and code I don't see the problem??" as if games aren't pieces of art
It surprises me that u guys completely scrapped testing. Did u manage to get some end users to run some acceptance tests for the final product. Were the sprint cycles ran sufficiently to support ISP or deliverables? Were there scrum reviews running to help with the next sprint? How bad was the environment and how long did it take u to learn the language of their engine because 18 months is so short to pick up the language, getting accustomed to the team, and actually writing code. Seems like microsoft doesnt understand the basics of agile development... Sad company
Ever since I learned about the rejected ODST spinoff game, I am fully convinced that the old 343 leadership team genuinely did everything they could to stop Halo having another golden era
@@flakeandflosh Nah not a sequel. Basically it would’ve been like Helldivers 2 (only helldivers 2 wasn’t even out yet) but 343 rejected it... then Helldivers 2 came out and literally everyone was praising the fuck out of it. That win would’ve gone to halo instead if not for 343
Yes that’s absolutely correct. Frank o Connor hated halo and intentionally hired people to kill it. I will never forgive them for these crimes. They must be fired and taken to court!!
@@MasterCheeksOfficialI would be willing to fight a Flood infestation bare handed and be a scapegoat for an ONI conspiracy to get a Hell Divers styled Halo game.
My two takeaways from this video: 1) Man, Joe Staten really did everything in his power to try and make Infinite work and it was all just too little too late. 2) I'm not even mad at the old leadership at this point, I'm mad at whoever made the decision to put them in charge in the first place. So many people had to be so bad at their job and fumble so many bags, it's actually astonishing how many things went wrong and how many people screwed up.
No I am made at old leadership. It was THEIR decisions being put on paper, THEIR ideas, and THEIR leadership. Fuck them. Biggest wasted opportunity in gaming history.
Well, old leadership basically put themselves in charge - Bonnie Ross pitched the idea of 343, she became the in charge, and she got others like Frank O'Connor and rest of the management.
Gotta say, dragging Joseph Staten into a Halo project that was pretty much dead on arrival is EERILY similar to Rooster Teeth bringing Burnie Burns back last-minute for a final Red VS Blue season with no budget whatsoever. It's uncanny how parallel the rises and falls are with those two properties.
Having those bigger, more detailed UNSC FOBs (and the crashed infinity) that they cut, would have made all my other little annoyances a little more tolerable. Those little platforms we got were just so… underwhelming, and disappointing.
The fact that Infinite was delayed because of Craig but not because of all this cut content is actually ridiculous. This is worse than how much was cut from Halo 2
@@LoveSickWorldthe only reason the game didn't suffer instant death with no recourse is probably because of Joe Staten. He was handed a shit platter and somehow got it out the door which is a miracle.
@@CtKEngage There is so much, and so many more people that went into making Halo a good game in its day stop treating Joseph like he’s all we needed, and he can’t do no wrong because when things go wrong it wasn’t him it was everyone else and he just walked in to a bad situation. I have no doubts he’s talented and a worthwhile addition to the team but he ain’t your savior
@LoveSickWorld he's referring to his involvement in halo infinite. He's almost certainly the only reason infinites campaign wasn't complete and utter shit.
Don't worry they will be dealt with in a spin off comic and when Halo 7 eventually releases in 10 years we will have an even bigger and badder villain! The baddest one so far, 343 promises.
It's probably 343i recycling the same stupid idea for the third time. First Forerunners not being humans but a superior separate species, then the Precursors being another meaningless species, superior to the Forerunners, and now the Endless being once more, another meaningless superior species to the Precursors.
I hate when these people still glaze 343 and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Im talking about these youtubers. I still think even after the change in leadership 343 is the worst game company even worse then ea ubisoft and Activision. Yet these youtubers try to make you feel like its not their fault like we had over a decade of chances to make OME good halo game.
I’ll never get over the lack of DLC Infinite really could have been a generational long game with story expansions and robust multiplayer if things had just been planned and cared for properly
I remember an audience tournament a few years ago where this kid won and his only question to the developers was about the Campaign DLC... the guy with the beard and snapback pivoted so hard to the next person that they cut him off mid-sentence.
Its insane how we went from an era where first person shooters came with 3 games modes, horde, singleplayer and Multiplayer to now either releasing with JUST multiplayer or maybe with a campaign.. the more to do the better!
Meanwhile, Space Marine 2. I've got my problems with it, but hell, I love and respect that they put both pve and pvp multiplayer and a single player campaign into it.
There was so much DLC expansion story that could have come out of Halo Infinite. They could have gave us the prequel story of Cortana rampage and Chief chasing her after halo 5 leading up to Atriox attack on the infinity, alot of people complained about missing that out. They could have added an open world expansion with new enemies and targets to go after with a story. Man there was so much could have been done. Wow so disappointed and I love the halo infinite single player campaign and just wish more could have come out of it.
343 putting out a clearly unfinished campaign expecting to just finish it later like they do with everything else they release and then cancelling the post launch dlc is peak 343
@@jarg8 343 is Microsoft. Microsoft created them and hired people for it. At the end of the day Microsoft is definitely at fault but there are plenty of people within 343 as well who fucked up
ah, yes, my favorite genre: cut content that would change an already fun game into a potentially fantastic and memorable experience! My favorite parts were: - our spartan canonically surviving and fighting the banished assault on zeta halo - destiny-esque multiplayer hub - space combat - dungeons much pain indeed! bonus agony: halo wars 3 remembered
@@dashblue8224 you mean... like reach's space combat? You mean like... the multiple space combats that have constantly happened within almost every halo game?
Halo Infinite campaign is good, but little happens in actuality. There are very limited memorable moments, but it felt like a great start to something greater. It had the looks, the feel, the gameplay loop. And yet, it will remain as it is. A beginning.
Ye exactly, when I finished it at first I really liked it , but something was off with it and I couldn't think what it was. Like you said nothing really memorable happened bar a few chief scenes
This is exactly it. The entire game, gameplay, and sandbox feels like the opening third to something better. Although I do think it has one of the weakest sandboxes of ANY Halo game: the whole electric damage thing detracts more than it adds (specifically because it nerfs plasma pistols); needing an "ability" to see active camo takes away more, it's always been possible to see camo enemies if you look carefully; the vehicles are garbage, weak, and unfun; and there's way too many classic weapons missing. And then biomes...
How can the entire campaign feel like a beginning? This was a cop out at best. A game should be able to stand on its own, not on the hopes and empty promises that there will be more. Watch them do the same thing next release, entirely different story and characters completely detached from the last installment, $15 microtransactions, more empty and broken promises... More money going into Microsoft execs pockets
Stakeholders got skittish and threatened to pull funding. Usually happens these days to publicly traded game companies. Had a few projects that had stakeholders attached to them and they would always try to throw their weight around and threaten to pull funds.
They have a literal producer in today’s studio talking about how they don’t want to work on a game that glorifies guns. They are all at fault. Top to bottom. New and old.
Halo Infinite easily could have been a beloved classic, something up there with 2, 3, and Reach. What we got instead was a fart in the wind. It stunk and was over as soon as it began!
What's sad about this is that this just proves that they are _not_ by any means short of creativity and great ideas. This would have been the best game since Halo 3 if it had released as originally conceived.
The issue was time like I been saying for years. Especially in the modern era of game development where even a single player only game takes 5-6 years to develop the fact that 343 were either tasked or had their own ambitions for infinite to ship all in just 4 years is a recipe for disaster
@@longlivetheblackmamba2-8-24 Modern game dev takes so long, nowadays, specifically because of the incompetence that's bred from toxic positivity, needlessly extended deadlines, and segmented teams. Halo 3 was made in around 3 years and cost approximately 30 million. Modern game dev takes a long time because of incompetency, not necessity.
@@bigdaddynero there’s actually something wrong with you and your incorrect obsession with toxic positivity. If you don’t want to listen to people actually making these games why don’t you get off the comments and develop games for yourself and see if these devs are lying.
@@longlivetheblackmamba2-8-24 How are you somehow shifting the blame of incompetent game dev onto me? You think it's fiction that a much more content-complete game was made in less than half the time than that of Infinite with a budget that's less than 10%? You're a moron and all you can do is make baseless excuses
The 18 month contract stuff is the thing that gets me every time. How dumb were these executives? Where did they come from? Why does Microsoft still not understand they are there own enemy.
@@beanpeen4163 but did they? They could have made so much more if the game was at its full potential. People realized very quickly that the game was not complete and for being “live service”. because of the lack of experience devs that actually knew how to use BLAM! Nothing got done and they couldn’t even make deadlines for bare bones content. The problem was Sooo obvious. I would LOVE to know what that leadership did before heading infinite.
Because it was (and still is) how Microsoft teams are run throughout many of their divisions, the gaming division included. I hope that they learned from this that the gaming division needs to be run differently.
I think that they did man. You see it all the time in the video game industry, Just a recent example is the modern warfare reboot series. You underestimate how much big companies love playing on nostalgia and how many people it can bring in. Friends of mine that barely knew what halo was were talking about infinite and all of those pre-orders and cosmetic purchases from people that didn't know or care about 343s bad rap really do add up. So many people had been blinded by infinites supposed majesty and wanted to support the creators for the work they had shown off in those first trailers, but next to none of it was real. All that mattered to Microsoft was that people thought it was. After the transaction is complete the money goes to them, no refunds. A lot of people bought into the belief that this time it would be different and I wanted to believe too but I know Microsoft sees nothing but the money you give them, and people gave them a lot of dough for halo. Halo 5 despite its rocky start was an overall success, people loved the forge bought the req packs and they made money off of it for very minimal effort. The keyword is effort. Why make a finished product that has all the things you said it would have when you can sell people on the idea that one day it will and just keep taking their money? Its basically free money. It takes time and money out of their own pocket to pay developers to make things like campaign dlc and the features that they promised or heavily eluded to the game having before it dropped and good returns on that investment for the time put in aren't guaranteed. The series x was releasing at the same time the game was slated to launch, they saw their opportunity for quick cash and instead of giving it the time it clearly needed bundled infinite with the new console which was what, $600? Imagine all the people that bought the series x just for halo. That's a lot of money. I think Microsoft definently made a return on their investment, all the preorders and overpriced skins people were guaranteed to buy was just the icing on top of the urinal cake. Even if they barely Broke even I'm sure they'd be happy because most of the money they earn is going to the higher ups at Microsoft not the developers that actually make the games, which we're contractors and likely underpaid. Microsoft and 343 are false prophets. They don't believe in the great journey. They only care about making the most for the least amount of effort.
@@HeliosDrive Someone has to lose. If they don’t do this though, we ALL lose. Listen, you’re not thinking outside the box here. Parts of old 344 lore could be preserved and repurposed a-la Disney Star Wars. Take what works, discard what doesn’t. Maybe the Created could be brought back in some form, but instead of being led by Cortana, they are led by the Didact or Offensive Bias or something? Anything is better than what we got
One thing that I thought would’ve been cool would be if each member of the hand of Atriox was a different race. There are five main enemy species and each one could’ve been a 'finger' of the Hand, but instead we just got brutes and elites
I think the campaign is seriously lacking, just go to a base kill all enemies repeat ( Farcry did this already), vehicles are pointless because of the grappling hook, no epic worthog run, no flood, where's the memorable music?, one biome?. Best part of the campaign is everything before the open world part. I hope 343/M$ gives another studio the Halo ip
The main thing that kept me playing infinite was my hope for campaign dlc, and yet did never happened. Installation 00's proposals for dlc always makes me go "this is what we should have gotten".
The whole stronghold being weaker or stronger depending on side objectives also echoes some of the Breath of the Wild feeling they were going for. In that game, you can choose to fight Ganondorf at any time but it’s nigh impossible at the beginning. It’s not until you’d completing some of the side quests that he really starts to weaken.
A hub with actual friendly NPCs would have been so huge! The 343 Halo games have really been missing that sense that even though you're the most capable soldier around, you're still just one part of a huge conflict with only so much influence over events. Having the marines and other UNSC characters be more present in the story and gameplay, even if it's not really about them, could have brought that back.
Honestly it's heartbreaking they were considering a Spartan Ops mode but cut it. I'm one of the few people who actually completed and enjoyed the Spartan Ops Smooth Operator achievement. I see, respect, and do like 343's vision with Requiem but seeing that fully realised with Zeta Halo would have been something special.
I liked SpOps missions the first couple times I played them, but by time I started grinding out the achievement the luster had worn completely off. That was a painful grind.
Breath of the Wild integrated biomes by having different areas of the map reflect different climates - there was a water area for the Zoras, desert for the Gerudo, forest for the Zonai ruins and about 50% of the map, snow area for the Rito, and a volcanic area for the Gorons. Basically the forest area was the middle of the map, whilst the other 4 biomes were located in the 4 corners of the map which allowed for crossover between them, and allowed you to be in one biome but be able to reach a vantage point and see clearly into the next biome.
Ironically, your description of your canonical Spartan 4 post release supporting your Halo Story Campaign, is precisely what Space Marine 2 has implemented with their Operations PvE mode.
What do you mean open world is something Halo has never done before? Halo 3 ODST is an open world game, you can go anywhere and interact with any mission triggers, without being stuck on a liner path being sticked about mission order.
I'm glad there's new leadership at 343 but it's baffling just how all over the place Halo Infinite's development was. Really hoping whatever comes next is a success, and that the team behind it is proud of what they put out.
Don't hold your breath. The new leadership of Halo Studios are unqualified woke DEI hires. If what you are looking for is cat ears and rainbow spartan armor, they got you covered. Otherwise forget about anything changing for the better.
@@dcdrew713 Captain, wake up. Something has happened. The Spirit of Fire has been adrift for just over 28 years. I've made some repairs while you were asleep, and the ship's systems are 100%.
Agreed. The music is amazing and the minimalist art style is quite pretty. That grappling hook is also the best thing 343 ever added to Halo BY FAR. It's just that, after a while, the copy past design, lack of flood that it was clearly teasing, and the lack of environmental variety really hurt it. Still, I like that you can kind of just pretend 5 didn't exist and think of it as a sequel to 4 which, despite its many issues, is the better 343 era story and doesn't fully ruin the franchise like 5 does
As someone who still enjoys Infinite's campaign from time to time, it's hard for me not to be distracted thinking about the things we could've had in it.
@@needum9212 You think? I dunno tbh. I felt the same way. It was a breath of fresh air. If they set out to reboot Halo, Infinite felt like the best shot. It gave me that same feeling of wonder that I had when playing the original and not knowing what I was going to experience. No Halo game since CE really had that same feeling for me until Infinite. Halo 2 and 3 felt like natural extensions of the story that they already set up, but an extension isn’t going to turn things on its head. It’s a natural and expected follow through on what was set up before. Infinite felt like all things were off the table. This was brand new. It was open world. It just gave me the same feeling as that second mission of CE where you first landed on the ring. But my gripe with it is the lack of additional content. To compare Infinite to CE again, Infinite feels like if they had cut CE’s campaign off after Assault on the Control Room and had you fight a big evil boss in said control room and then blam. Nothing else.
Here's an interesting question that no one covers What's going to happen to master chief when all this ends If he is survived To the end of the Series What's going to happen Because all the war and fighting is over Will he try to live a normal life, or Will Military make him retire
The only way he gets a happy ending is if they bring back Cortana again and they seem absolutely determined to get rid of her. Currently, she is dead again.
as a halo fan, it was good to know seeing your video that there were a lot of good ideas that just got cutted and could make the Campaingn and game overal even more interesting as a spiritual revival of the Halo series. Thank you! Was good to watch (:
It's nice to have a little bit of closure on the mystery of all this. We all suspected it more or less what's from leadership being bad leadership, but it's nice to have a little bit of the actual details. Thanks for making this!
I think Rebs also mentioned the siloing off of teams is why equipment breaks the campaign. It's because the MP team made it and the campaign team had to try and fit it in. Also, with the personnel change at 343 management, I think theirs is closer to what CDPRs is now. Because Cyber Punk 2077 suffered from a similar management style issue Now, instead of just massive teams, CDPR does smaller strike teams, which I think is probably what 343 will do as well
@@nolanglahn8528 They don't exist anymore, the gaming community has become so watered-down and overly sensitive that you'd get banned for "being mean".
@@ragemonkey117 "Edgelord"? 🤣 Nothing edgy about stating an objective fact, my guy; I regularly get comms banned for talking shit to people on Xbox lobbies.
It seems like the Infinity was supposed to be in the center of the map instead of the corner, and the map being split up with the cut biomes with a different sub faction in each bit but instead, we just got 1/3 of the map.
I gave Halo Infinites campaign a high score when it released because I assumed it was going to have more updates. At this point, it's still 343s best campaign but that isn't saying much
Yeah I'll be honest my initial rating was under the assumption it was going to continue in DLC. I still stand by 95% of the positive things I said about it, but it's such a shame that all the continuation we should've got never happened
@@Milk-vw1cv Story wise? Yes. Gameplay wise? Not a chance in hell. It's got to be the worst campaign gameplay wise. I think Infinite has a better balance.
@@Milk-vw1cvI love H4 storywise but the levels are super linear (which on it's own isn't really bad), the enemy ai is bad, Prometheans are bullet sponges and the game doesn't give enough ammo, you're constantly running out.
8:10 kinda reminds me of the Orc Captains in the Shadow of Mordor game, named characters that roam around in strongholds and its outskirts, they also had an alarm system to alert all the orcs if the protagonist enters them
Imagine a dlc where you play as the arbiter(and playable elites for multiplayer)and along the way you find out that the banished accidentally unleashed the flood. Except in an open world game, where you would see the flood slowly changing the atmosphere and terrain little by little on the halo ring, and that would be the main sign that you would be facing the flood again. Like flood territory. Like “Oh shit, look at the ground and the sides of mountains, the flood are here!” Then you hear that flood scream as they begin surrounding you little by little
Bruh, yall gotta let the Flood go, its getting ridiculous at this point. Imagine if Sauron returned for the umpteenth time after ROTK. It would completely ruin that movie’s ending, wouldn’t it? Though to a lesser degree, it’s the same thing with the Flood. If yall want more cosmic horror so bad, you’d be better off finding a long lost Precursor for the galaxy to contend with
Credits rolled so unexpectedly, I really thought id hit the halfway point but it just ended. Basically nothing happened, never found out about the endless, the banished are still on the ring, so many loose ends.
It did so many things right, but the things that went wrong were just too vital. Like, I genuinely loved the campaign, but there are certain downsides that cannot be denied within the realms of reason. I REALLY hope they can take the best elements of Infinite's campaign (the boss design, for instance) and learn from the mistakes in the future.
You know with the abundance of all the remakes and remasters we get these days. I honestly would like to see a remake of infinites campaign with 343's original vision for the game in UE5.
With Sony doing another 2 remasters, I would be fine with that. If they still have all the assets, they could get it done in 2-3 years. This is actually a great idea. I would pay $40 for essentially 50% more of the campaign.
Not a 343 dev but someone who used to go to SCAD and had stuff shown to me ahead of time either by industry people who were doing presentations or by friends. The first planned DLC was going to be in the Sand Biome and would have taken cues from Dune, and one of the bosses you would have faced would have been a Giant sandworm. This is based off of an ex friend of mine being in the loop with a modeler who was hired to help fix some of the models post 2020 reveal trailer and delay.
Infinite is so fascinating to me. While the game is really fun to play and the multiplayer is excellent, I think its development pre and post-launch is just insane. This really had the potential to be a huge game and something that would have been cool to experience as the “platform for halo for the next ten years” like they said years ago. The more we learn about what went on behind the scenes with this game the more interesting the whole thing becomes. Even just playing the game has always felt like there was much, much more that we were meant to be able to do and see and play, but it just isn’t there. It almost feels haunted in a weird way. Like there are aspects of this game (set pieces, characters, maps) where you really can tell “oh that was probably meant to do something or be something more than it is now” and those feelings haven’t gone away even when I come back to the game. It’s really easy to see that so many people wanted this game to be so much more. Really disappointing what happened. I have faith that whatever happens next for Halo will be good. Granted, it won’t be for a while. also flood needs to come back lol
@@TheKingclayton87 it'd be hard to do so.. blacklisting usually happens when you go against companies and do something horrendous, or pushing back against dei and such id imagine.. or being called out for r a p e and such which likely would also blacklist you and may not even be cleared even if you were cleared legally speaking..
343 devs and creatives: here’s all these great ideas we think will make Halo amazing! microsoft: cancel all that and add cat ears to the shop. also your 18 months are up you’re fired.
At this point it feels like having a depressing amount of cut content is par for the course for a halo game, but this just makes the 'finished' version of Infinite look pathetic by comparison
Why would not adding a customization feature to the campaign be a bad thing? That would sound like a really cool thing for Halo and it would be a cool new idea.
@@Finger112 Because it wouldnt be a Halo game thats why. If you want customization on a weapon then i suggest you Call of Duty games, they are pretty cool. Halo has some unique and very specific elements that makes it Halo and even adding sprint on Halo infinite was really bad move even if it was open world, because you already have vehicles to roam around.
@@angelosmpesiropoulos7429 Well actually the campaign already has a form of customization for the weapons which is the upgraded versions of the same weapons, even that is a limited form of customization but its a pre-set form of the same weapon, they are in the same line of upgrading a weapon to be more powerful. Also your claims about "it not being a Halo game" is ridiculous. Halo can try new things if 343 wants to do for the game, its all subjective in the end on what is for an X game.
@@Finger112 I just don't think that _level_ of customisation would feel very Halo-ey, the variants are enough since they are at least easily identifiable. It'd be like if Titanfall 2 kept the loadout system they had from Titanfall and not the class system they have now where you can still customise it to some degree but at least when you see a Ronin you know it's a Ronin and can decide what to do accordingly. Variants are enough in the same vein, I would know that if I see a white Ravager, it's gonna be a Brute Shot (and before the changes... Brute... sh*t hehe..) I'm dealing with.
It's heart wrenching to me. I've sunk hundreds of hours into forge and I can tell there was incredible talent put into this game that just got put to waste.
Thank you HiddenXperia for winning the “Don’t message a minor.” Challenge 😂, you’re one of four of content creators I’ve subscribed to that haven’t been in a disgusting thing.
Just because they have new leadership now doesn’t mean everything is finally going to be okay. In fact, in some ways it looks like things could go downhill even faster than before. I don’t have any hope left for the franchise but I will always have fun replaying the OG games over and over again. They can’t take that away from me.
Oh please, Bungie peaked at 2 so hard and they could barely get it out the door. 3 is just a disappointing younger brother and Reach they already checked out on for what became a pos called Destiny. Bungie hasn't been even "good" in a very long time.
@@Connor8609 pos called destiny? Have you seen how beautiful and how much depth that game has to offer? Taking games at face value regardless of what genre it is D2 is a stand out.
@@Connor8609 a minor side quest in destiny can have its own set pieces, instances and lore with good writing. i can go on about other aspects of the game but its clear you cant understand the value d2 brings to the table. I mean have you honestly played the game in detail or do you not enjoy MMos, which is fine.
Thank you very much for the shoutout! There’s a bunch of cool stuff that many passionate developers wanted to create for Infinite, but poor former leadership stopped that from happening. It’s a damn shame.
Hey, The Legend of Zelza: Breath of the Wild vet here! I'm thinking the biomes idea might've been part of the different subfactions and strongholds idea. In BotW, the different biomes are more regions of the world map, for example there is a desert and a cold tundra. These different environments bring different quirks associated with the environment that factor into strategies in combat and the kinds of things you can get from there. Given the variety of enemy types, different kinds could have gravitated towards environments they are good in and thus in a way give a way to tell what you might be going up against in the different regions of the world. Maybe it would have factored into the customization system you speculated about, having attachments for your equipment based on the warlord/dominant species of the region?
I really liked Infinite's campaign, it filled me with so much hope for the future- at launch. I still like the campaign just fine now, but that ending is so brutally bittersweet now. It had so much promise, and nothing came of it.
With 343 being a whole new studio at this point, should consider rebranding and renaming themselves. Would help shake off and disassociate from the Sins of the formers
They should rebrand to 117 Studios. Instead of being named after the nutjob antagonist that always LOOKS like he's going to save you right before he betrays you, they should name themselves after the stoic reliable badass that never fails.
Man this hurts to watch. As someone who has been with Halo since 2006, Infinite was the first actual Halo game that felt AND looked almost 1:1 with a Bungie Halo. Infinite was fun, sure, but it could have been so much more. At this point, you're going toe to toe with Halo 2 in the perspective of cut content.
But Halo 2 actually had a great story to back it up. The best story in the franchise. What the hell does Halo Infinite’s story have? Psychotana’s ditsy “We’re sorry we ruined an iconic character, but here’s a BETTER one!” replacement??
I always thought it would really cool if they created a Spartan Ops like game mode, but instead of telling continuous stories it was just a bunch of anthology like missions. Basically the game equivalent of Halo Evolutions. Imagine a mission playing as headhunters or missions where you play as the covenant glassing a planet. They could even make missions that go all the way back to the forerunner flood war. The opportunities with this game mode would be limitless and could easily be adapted to a live service with each season being based around a different story or story arc. Please @HiddenXperia I would love to hear your feedback on a game mode like this.
What you're describing is the story of Star Wars: Republic Commando. Loosely connected missions that tell a story about characters, rather than an overarching plot.
It amazes me just how much people don't understand the value of strong leadership. I just graduated college and my last semester I took a organizational communication class. During one lecture when my professor was discussing leadership, he asked everyone in the class to simply raise their hands if they thought that strong leadership was integral to a team's success. I was dumbfounded when only about a third of the class raised their hand. My professor was also clearly shocked as he took a few seconds to say anything after that, which I knew was uncharacteristic for him as this was my third class with him and he normally responded to class responses like this one lightning fast.
love how despite halo is my favourite game franchise and a game i normally play daily, ive now realised i havent even thought about it for the past year or so
Halo is a AAA flagship game from one of the largest corporations on earth. It really isn't unreasonable that we look at what other similar games in the space are doing and wondering why we aren't getting that. This should be the game that doesn't compromise and shows what gaming could be with the entire weight of Microsoft and Xbox behind it. Instead it has barely reached the standards of its own past titles only just a decade ago.
@@beanpeen4163 Most people will (have) realize(d) that they don't actually have to spend money on a product that they have no confidence of satisfaction from
@@bigdaddynero people were confident in infinite despite what the past has shown us, people preordered and bought the skins and the console bundle and Microsoft got their money. I want to believe you but so far people largely haven't changed and I feel its going to take a lot more for Microsoft to change as well. I hope I'm proved wrong
in Zelda Breath of the Wild, different biomes are just in different parts of the map. center of the map is grassland, south is the jungle, southwest is the dessert, west and northwest is mountains, north is forest, northeast is volcanic, east is whatever, and southeast is tropical
Infinite's campaign had so much potential... I still think its a pretty solid campaign (7/10, still, IMO), but its ROUGH around the edges. Thanks for making this video to help clarify things to the layperson like me.
I loved infinite honestly. The campaign at least. Knowing this now does kinda make me feel like it could have been WAY better but when I played it knowing (thinking) they were gonna release DLC I was fine with the ending. I really hope they revive Halo cause it’s my favorite lore there is.
Idk what it says about the campaign, but I only remember 2 things from the campaign: The opening Cutscene & Fighting the Camo Elite Boss I can remember every major story point from the OG trilogy, I can even remember Arbiter's moments from Halo 5
Should have kept the Prometheans around, instead 343 dropped them and the Covenant Storm. It’s one thing to add new elements, but to disrespect halo 4 to halo wars 2 and not building upon past ideas and throwing it out, you lose the engagement from the audiences. You look at Halo 4 and you can see how each of the factions were improving on technologies and tactics which went further into Halo 5; then you look at Halo infinite where it goes so backwards like using the old scorpion models despite clearing stating in halo 5 they were all phased out. Also they were gaslighting us to think there were adding new weapons when the sidekick pistol is just a gunfighter pistol from halo 5, or that they got rid of the beloved Carbine to add in the Commando. Other examples was we lost the rail gun for the massive spiker, or the incineration cannon for the crappy ravager, or the scattershot to be replaced by another scattershot that’s sideways. Halo infinite went backwards so much and relies too heavily on Halo 1 nostalgia to try to carry its drawbacks. It released for free on game pass ultimate 1 month for the campaign, which meant its sales were so garbage. Then we got customisation, where in Halo 5 you could earn everything just by playing in a reasonable time post warzone firefight release and it wasn’t time gated and you could see the full library. Whereas in halo infinite you have to pay for colours and you can’t even see the unlocks and pressured in predatory sesson passes to unlock skins. Biggest lost was no warzone mode especially warzone turbo, the height of Halo gameplay. 343 really lost the plot for ditching their most played and best mode.
The one good thing 343 did. Halo 5 looks horrible. The designs are either overblown sci-fi bs or boring copies of modern equipment. So yeah, ill take halo 1 nostalgia all the time.
@@seimen4348 Halo infinite is whats overblown, especially with stuff like the Samurai. Halo 5 looks incredibly realistic designs and are quite form fitting and probably one of the best looking sci fi armours you see compared to other Halo's and other franchises like Mass Effect. The only real negative was black undersuits disabled for the multiplayer spartans, as well as smaller shoulder pads for armour suits of the female spartans.
@@AmiteahEldenRing They look terrible, wtf crack are you on? All of the armors are indistinguishable once you're in-game. Moreover, they look like power ranger armors. Infinite's armors at least look like they might be a real armor a soldier might wear.
NGL, if halo infinite dropped a series of $20 dlc campaigns over the span of 4-6 month windows that I can coop with my friends I’d buy them for myself and them and play them still to this day. The game was fun, they just didn’t treat it like a live service.
Seems pretty par for the course as far as live service games go, we've seen this happen far too often in the industry where they promise all this cool shit that gets everybody to pre-order and then at launch all development is shifted to pumping out them $15 skins that people keep buying. Even if they charged $40 dollars for a dlc just selling 3 skins would make them more money with a fraction of the effort. Live service was ultimately this games undoing.
@bable6314 tons of people buy skins dude that was this game in particulars bread and butter, they were charging for primary colors. 343 and Microsoft after seeing such a mixed reception of infinites campaign most likely thought (for good reason) any dlc would be received the same and didn't bother making any, but still kept pushing out the skins when a very vocal minority of fans said they didn't want em. kept on doing it though. I can only wonder why.
i was such a fan of destiny when i was playing halo 5 and loved the idea of a social hub in the infinity and the fact that i almost had that burns a little bit is also kind of cool
Ex 343 Dev here. Now I work at Epic Games. Microsoft's contracting policies are single handedly one of the biggest issues that Halo faces. Can you imagine how difficult it is to do your best work knowing that they'll get rid of you in 18 months and there's nothing you can do about it? Plus that forces people out the door just as they become fully trained and competent at their positions. All of this just so they can have the luxury of being able to easily lay off employees when it suits Microsoft execs. A SIGNIFICANT portion of 343's workforce is comprised of contract workers (including the entirety of the old MCC team). The self inflicted brain drain is maddening to watch, and it's (in my opinion) why most Microsoft exclusive titles are seeing a downturn in quality. They've created a business environment in which the talent they should be trying to cultivate is being pushed out the door and is then nabbed by other studios.
Yea, getting rid of people that just got used to your companies engine, workflows, etc. seems like a nightmare considering youd likely have to train new folks again to do the same thing.
I've long thought the use of contract resources was a core problem. I think it just goes to show that Microsoft views it purely as a business. They pay a lot of lip service saying that everything they do is "centered around gamers" but actions speak louder than words.
Pretty sure that’s not just a Microsoft issue also out of curiosity, how comes we don’t hear about this issue from other Microsoft studios? I’m Genuinely asking
that's so frustrating to hear. the execs must think "what? a developer is a developer. they sit at computer and code I don't see the problem??" as if games aren't pieces of art
It surprises me that u guys completely scrapped testing. Did u manage to get some end users to run some acceptance tests for the final product. Were the sprint cycles ran sufficiently to support ISP or deliverables? Were there scrum reviews running to help with the next sprint? How bad was the environment and how long did it take u to learn the language of their engine because 18 months is so short to pick up the language, getting accustomed to the team, and actually writing code. Seems like microsoft doesnt understand the basics of agile development... Sad company
Ever since I learned about the rejected ODST spinoff game, I am fully convinced that the old 343 leadership team genuinely did everything they could to stop Halo having another golden era
There was an odst spin off sequel? That is one of my favorite games.
@@flakeandflosh Nah not a sequel. Basically it would’ve been like Helldivers 2 (only helldivers 2 wasn’t even out yet) but 343 rejected it... then Helldivers 2 came out and literally everyone was praising the fuck out of it. That win would’ve gone to halo instead if not for 343
That’s y I’m so happy they fired them ppl maybe now we have a shot of getting some halo spin off games to
Yes that’s absolutely correct. Frank o Connor hated halo and intentionally hired people to kill it. I will never forgive them for these crimes. They must be fired and taken to court!!
@@MasterCheeksOfficialI would be willing to fight a Flood infestation bare handed and be a scapegoat for an ONI conspiracy to get a Hell Divers styled Halo game.
My two takeaways from this video:
1) Man, Joe Staten really did everything in his power to try and make Infinite work and it was all just too little too late.
2) I'm not even mad at the old leadership at this point, I'm mad at whoever made the decision to put them in charge in the first place. So many people had to be so bad at their job and fumble so many bags, it's actually astonishing how many things went wrong and how many people screwed up.
So Microsoft?
No I am made at old leadership. It was THEIR decisions being put on paper, THEIR ideas, and THEIR leadership. Fuck them. Biggest wasted opportunity in gaming history.
@@HeliosDrive moneysoft*
Well, old leadership basically put themselves in charge - Bonnie Ross pitched the idea of 343, she became the in charge, and she got others like Frank O'Connor and rest of the management.
Sad to say Joe, THE Halo narrative guy...get put on PR narrative duties his entire time at 343.
Gotta say, dragging Joseph Staten into a Halo project that was pretty much dead on arrival is EERILY similar to Rooster Teeth bringing Burnie Burns back last-minute for a final Red VS Blue season with no budget whatsoever. It's uncanny how parallel the rises and falls are with those two properties.
Having those bigger, more detailed UNSC FOBs (and the crashed infinity) that they cut, would have made all my other little annoyances a little more tolerable.
Those little platforms we got were just so… underwhelming, and disappointing.
I honestly thought the downed frigates were gonna be a fob we kept returning to.
It was genuinely insulting to the playerbase that they made us wait 6 years for something so pathetic and elementary. As if we wouldn't care or notice
I've seen many more creative things made in forge than those "FoBs"
The fact that Infinite was delayed because of Craig but not because of all this cut content is actually ridiculous. This is worse than how much was cut from Halo 2
At least no tangerines were harmed during production
@@gustavofring5674 💀
But Halo 2 has something that Infinite doesn't.
Being a good game
@@MasterCheeksOfficial I mean Green liar got the pour. He died for me did I realize it and we can’t yeah OK try again when I get to Graham.
@@sandramarkus1054i want whatever you're on
Infinite will forever be known as the Halo game that could have been sadly
It was something. That's what makes it worse. The most fun gameplay since the Bungie era
the potential... hurts to think about it.
@jarg8 which isn't saying much. To be fair it's the first Halo game they made that was almost up to par in terms of gameplay.
I actually really liked the campaign. I just wanted a continuation. It was the most halo game since 343 started working on Halo.
Biggest wasted opportunity in gaming history. They let the gem slip right through their hands and into the gutter.
Joseph Staten: I'm here to save Halo
343 Industries: Too late mate
Maybe stop attributing a games overall success to one guy
The man literally dipped as soon as dlc campaign matured and went literally no where afterwards.
@@LoveSickWorldthe only reason the game didn't suffer instant death with no recourse is probably because of Joe Staten. He was handed a shit platter and somehow got it out the door which is a miracle.
@@CtKEngage There is so much, and so many more people that went into making Halo a good game in its day stop treating Joseph like he’s all we needed, and he can’t do no wrong because when things go wrong it wasn’t him it was everyone else and he just walked in to a bad situation. I have no doubts he’s talented and a worthwhile addition to the team but he ain’t your savior
@LoveSickWorld he's referring to his involvement in halo infinite. He's almost certainly the only reason infinites campaign wasn't complete and utter shit.
My Favorite part of Infinite Cut Content, is figuring out wtf a Endless is.
It’s a Endless cliffhanger!
@@backtooth1018Endless possibilities, haha!
Don't worry they will be dealt with in a spin off comic and when Halo 7 eventually releases in 10 years we will have an even bigger and badder villain! The baddest one so far, 343 promises.
It's probably 343i recycling the same stupid idea for the third time. First Forerunners not being humans but a superior separate species, then the Precursors being another meaningless species, superior to the Forerunners, and now the Endless being once more, another meaningless superior species to the Precursors.
waiting for the reveal that 343 is the biggest baddest villain.
This 27 minutes video is the most i engaged with Halo this year. Now i can go back to not caring.
I hate when these people still glaze 343 and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Im talking about these youtubers. I still think even after the change in leadership 343 is the worst game company even worse then ea ubisoft and Activision. Yet these youtubers try to make you feel like its not their fault like we had over a decade of chances to make OME good halo game.
I remember his 10/10 review of infinite 😂
@@sandman8920 Imagine aggressively edg-ing for 6 years and then finally finishing. ANYTHING would have felt like a 10/10.
@@bigdaddynero 😆
I can go back to playing the Bungie games and reading the first seven books.
I’ll never get over the lack of DLC
Infinite really could have been a generational long game with story expansions and robust multiplayer if things had just been planned and cared for properly
I remember an audience tournament a few years ago where this kid won and his only question to the developers was about the Campaign DLC... the guy with the beard and snapback pivoted so hard to the next person that they cut him off mid-sentence.
@@SavageSayo79Lmfao
@@SavageSayo79 I almost suffocated laughing so hard at that.
When has campaign dlc ever happened?
@@ThatGuyNamedRickHe did say he meant that as a joke, rather than an actual insult
30 minutes of self torture thinking about what could have been?
Sign me up.
Welcome to the last decade of halo.
Stopping feedback is a death sentence in creativity
locking people down in subsections just as much so.. like what in the hells were the older leadership thinking what was going on in their heads
By this logic 343 should be the Leonardo D’vinchis of game devs
Its insane how we went from an era where first person shooters came with 3 games modes, horde, singleplayer and Multiplayer to now either releasing with JUST multiplayer or maybe with a campaign.. the more to do the better!
Especially horde modes. Gears 3 Horde held some of my fondest gaming memories.
Meanwhile, Space Marine 2. I've got my problems with it, but hell, I love and respect that they put both pve and pvp multiplayer and a single player campaign into it.
god i love horde modes...
It's sad that we have giant TVs now and almost no splitscreen games.
There was so much DLC expansion story that could have come out of Halo Infinite. They could have gave us the prequel story of Cortana rampage and Chief chasing her after halo 5 leading up to Atriox attack on the infinity, alot of people complained about missing that out. They could have added an open world expansion with new enemies and targets to go after with a story. Man there was so much could have been done. Wow so disappointed and I love the halo infinite single player campaign and just wish more could have come out of it.
343 putting out a clearly unfinished campaign expecting to just finish it later like they do with everything else they release and then cancelling the post launch dlc is peak 343
I know I hate 343 bro they’re so ass
Did we forget Microsoft's role in this?
@@jarg8 343 is Microsoft. Microsoft created them and hired people for it. At the end of the day Microsoft is definitely at fault but there are plenty of people within 343 as well who fucked up
@@jarg8what role like funding and allowing 343 to be this ass 3 times in a row without intervening?
@@jarg810+ years, unlimited funding, and zero good 343 titles, hardly a MS issue
ah, yes, my favorite genre: cut content that would change an already fun game into a potentially fantastic and memorable experience! My favorite parts were:
- our spartan canonically surviving and fighting the banished assault on zeta halo
- destiny-esque multiplayer hub
- space combat
- dungeons
much pain indeed!
bonus agony: halo wars 3 remembered
If we do eventually get that player hub, I hope to god they give us emotes like destiny did.
@@Sangheillioz We already have bagging! What more do you want?
@@WolfshotPlayzRandomised loot you can get from purchasable item boxes.
A multiplayer hub? Who gives a shit, space combat? Halo was never known for that
@@dashblue8224 you mean... like reach's space combat? You mean like... the multiple space combats that have constantly happened within almost every halo game?
Halo Infinite campaign is good, but little happens in actuality. There are very limited memorable moments, but it felt like a great start to something greater. It had the looks, the feel, the gameplay loop. And yet, it will remain as it is. A beginning.
Ye exactly, when I finished it at first I really liked it , but something was off with it and I couldn't think what it was. Like you said nothing really memorable happened bar a few chief scenes
This is exactly it. The entire game, gameplay, and sandbox feels like the opening third to something better. Although I do think it has one of the weakest sandboxes of ANY Halo game: the whole electric damage thing detracts more than it adds (specifically because it nerfs plasma pistols); needing an "ability" to see active camo takes away more, it's always been possible to see camo enemies if you look carefully; the vehicles are garbage, weak, and unfun; and there's way too many classic weapons missing. And then biomes...
You can not be more poetic, perfectly described the status of halo
How can the entire campaign feel like a beginning? This was a cop out at best. A game should be able to stand on its own, not on the hopes and empty promises that there will be more. Watch them do the same thing next release, entirely different story and characters completely detached from the last installment, $15 microtransactions, more empty and broken promises...
More money going into Microsoft execs pockets
Stakeholders got skittish and threatened to pull funding. Usually happens these days to publicly traded game companies. Had a few projects that had stakeholders attached to them and they would always try to throw their weight around and threaten to pull funds.
They have a literal producer in today’s studio talking about how they don’t want to work on a game that glorifies guns. They are all at fault. Top to bottom. New and old.
Halo Infinite easily could have been a beloved classic, something up there with 2, 3, and Reach. What we got instead was a fart in the wind. It stunk and was over as soon as it began!
What's sad about this is that this just proves that they are _not_ by any means short of creativity and great ideas. This would have been the best game since Halo 3 if it had released as originally conceived.
The issue was time like I been saying for years. Especially in the modern era of game development where even a single player only game takes 5-6 years to develop the fact that 343 were either tasked or had their own ambitions for infinite to ship all in just 4 years is a recipe for disaster
Open world, pve, social hubs? Yeah nah, insulting to even compare this game (if these things made the cut)to halo 3
@@longlivetheblackmamba2-8-24 Modern game dev takes so long, nowadays, specifically because of the incompetence that's bred from toxic positivity, needlessly extended deadlines, and segmented teams.
Halo 3 was made in around 3 years and cost approximately 30 million. Modern game dev takes a long time because of incompetency, not necessity.
@@bigdaddynero there’s actually something wrong with you and your incorrect obsession with toxic positivity. If you don’t want to listen to people actually making these games why don’t you get off the comments and develop games for yourself and see if these devs are lying.
@@longlivetheblackmamba2-8-24 How are you somehow shifting the blame of incompetent game dev onto me?
You think it's fiction that a much more content-complete game was made in less than half the time than that of Infinite with a budget that's less than 10%?
You're a moron and all you can do is make baseless excuses
The 18 month contract stuff is the thing that gets me every time. How dumb were these executives? Where did they come from? Why does Microsoft still not understand they are there own enemy.
@@Spartan-EOD they made their money off it, that's all they care about
@@beanpeen4163 but did they? They could have made so much more if the game was at its full potential. People realized very quickly that the game was not complete and for being “live service”. because of the lack of experience devs that actually knew how to use BLAM! Nothing got done and they couldn’t even make deadlines for bare bones content. The problem was Sooo obvious. I would LOVE to know what that leadership did before heading infinite.
Because it was (and still is) how Microsoft teams are run throughout many of their divisions, the gaming division included. I hope that they learned from this that the gaming division needs to be run differently.
I think that they did man. You see it all the time in the video game industry, Just a recent example is the modern warfare reboot series. You underestimate how much big companies love playing on nostalgia and how many people it can bring in. Friends of mine that barely knew what halo was were talking about infinite and all of those pre-orders and cosmetic purchases from people that didn't know or care about 343s bad rap really do add up. So many people had been blinded by infinites supposed majesty and wanted to support the creators for the work they had shown off in those first trailers, but next to none of it was real. All that mattered to Microsoft was that people thought it was. After the transaction is complete the money goes to them, no refunds. A lot of people bought into the belief that this time it would be different and I wanted to believe too but I know Microsoft sees nothing but the money you give them, and people gave them a lot of dough for halo. Halo 5 despite its rocky start was an overall success, people loved the forge bought the req packs and they made money off of it for very minimal effort. The keyword is effort. Why make a finished product that has all the things you said it would have when you can sell people on the idea that one day it will and just keep taking their money? Its basically free money. It takes time and money out of their own pocket to pay developers to make things like campaign dlc and the features that they promised or heavily eluded to the game having before it dropped and good returns on that investment for the time put in aren't guaranteed. The series x was releasing at the same time the game was slated to launch, they saw their opportunity for quick cash and instead of giving it the time it clearly needed
bundled infinite with the new console which was what, $600? Imagine all the people that bought the series x just for halo. That's a lot of money. I think Microsoft definently made a return on their investment, all the preorders and overpriced skins people were guaranteed to buy was just the icing on top of the urinal cake. Even if they barely Broke even I'm sure they'd be happy because most of the money they earn is going to the higher ups at Microsoft not the developers that actually make the games, which we're contractors and likely underpaid. Microsoft and 343 are false prophets. They don't believe in the great journey. They only care about making the most for the least amount of effort.
and friend to any other companies because they have essentially trained those contractors and now the other companies can soak in their potential XD
The damage done by 343's old leadership is near irrepairable. Halo has been in a tailspin for almost a decade.
Not if they reboot the story to a post Halo 3 or 4 timeline. Then there’s hope. Nothing less will save Halo
@@Arander92 Post Halo 4 please.
@@JosephRomay Nah
@Arander92 So screw everyone who liked the lore additions beyond those points then?
@@HeliosDrive
Someone has to lose. If they don’t do this though, we ALL lose.
Listen, you’re not thinking outside the box here. Parts of old 344 lore could be preserved and repurposed a-la Disney Star Wars. Take what works, discard what doesn’t. Maybe the Created could be brought back in some form, but instead of being led by Cortana, they are led by the Didact or Offensive Bias or something? Anything is better than what we got
Still mad that splitscreen campaign was capable of functioning through a convuluted glitch but the devs couldnt figure it out
This
The dev teams not being allowed to work together is like a sports team not being able to train together. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!
One thing that I thought would’ve been cool would be if each member of the hand of Atriox was a different race. There are five main enemy species and each one could’ve been a 'finger' of the Hand, but instead we just got brutes and elites
The idea of grunts that are a boss without relying on any sort of vehicle was kinda goofy tbb though.
@@xcfjdyrkdtulkgfilhu there are grunt specific vehicles in halo wars.
@@xcfjdyrkdtulkgfilhuthen give them a vehicle, or a unique weapon. We fought a friggen chair boss fight in halo 2 did we not?
Call my Waze I got no s**t here he made out try and join the meal
@@CosmicDarkLord grunt goblin my beloved
Infinite had so much potential for dlc. The gameplay is amazing and the campaign is the best 343 did
Objectively speaking it's still a good game the most part but they should have done dlc for ten years
I think the campaign is seriously lacking, just go to a base kill all enemies repeat ( Farcry did this already), vehicles are pointless because of the grappling hook, no epic worthog run, no flood, where's the memorable music?, one biome?.
Best part of the campaign is everything before the open world part. I hope 343/M$ gives another studio the Halo ip
Disagree Halo 4 was leagues better Infinite is bland and repetitive
@@sgtaveryjohnson3803it would have been with Split screen, no split screen killed like 50% of the reason to play most Halo campaigns.
i would love to see a side mission where your objective is locate the infinity or various weapons, vehicles and equipment from previous games.
The main thing that kept me playing infinite was my hope for campaign dlc, and yet did never happened. Installation 00's proposals for dlc always makes me go "this is what we should have gotten".
The whole stronghold being weaker or stronger depending on side objectives also echoes some of the Breath of the Wild feeling they were going for. In that game, you can choose to fight Ganondorf at any time but it’s nigh impossible at the beginning. It’s not until you’d completing some of the side quests that he really starts to weaken.
A hub with actual friendly NPCs would have been so huge! The 343 Halo games have really been missing that sense that even though you're the most capable soldier around, you're still just one part of a huge conflict with only so much influence over events. Having the marines and other UNSC characters be more present in the story and gameplay, even if it's not really about them, could have brought that back.
Honestly it's heartbreaking they were considering a Spartan Ops mode but cut it. I'm one of the few people who actually completed and enjoyed the Spartan Ops Smooth Operator achievement.
I see, respect, and do like 343's vision with Requiem but seeing that fully realised with Zeta Halo would have been something special.
I liked SpOps missions the first couple times I played them, but by time I started grinding out the achievement the luster had worn completely off. That was a painful grind.
Breath of the Wild integrated biomes by having different areas of the map reflect different climates - there was a water area for the Zoras, desert for the Gerudo, forest for the Zonai ruins and about 50% of the map, snow area for the Rito, and a volcanic area for the Gorons.
Basically the forest area was the middle of the map, whilst the other 4 biomes were located in the 4 corners of the map which allowed for crossover between them, and allowed you to be in one biome but be able to reach a vantage point and see clearly into the next biome.
Ironically, your description of your canonical Spartan 4 post release supporting your Halo Story Campaign, is precisely what Space Marine 2 has implemented with their Operations PvE mode.
What do you mean open world is something Halo has never done before? Halo 3 ODST is an open world game, you can go anywhere and interact with any mission triggers, without being stuck on a liner path being sticked about mission order.
Odst is not open world. Only three missions can be done out of order but only if you go deliberately out of your way
Odst had open world elements, but wasn't a full on open world game
That infinity hub and Custom Spartan DLC campaign would've been so perfect. Thanks for shedding light on all of this! Keep slaying it 🤙
I'm glad there's new leadership at 343 but it's baffling just how all over the place Halo Infinite's development was. Really hoping whatever comes next is a success, and that the team behind it is proud of what they put out.
The only thing that will actually change things is if they can get rid of microsoft's 18 month contracts.
Oh hi Stryxo
Don't hold your breath. The new leadership of Halo Studios are unqualified woke DEI hires. If what you are looking for is cat ears and rainbow spartan armor, they got you covered. Otherwise forget about anything changing for the better.
babe wake up hidden xperia just uploaded
👑🤝👑
Why did I read this in my head in Serina's voice?
@@dcdrew713lol
Mr nabber can you please give me your dog as hes very Cute
@@dcdrew713 Captain, wake up. Something has happened. The Spirit of Fire has been adrift for just over 28 years. I've made some repairs while you were asleep, and the ship's systems are 100%.
The painful irony of Halo Infinite being the most Finite Halo story out of the whole series.
7:19 lol, gotta love that hitbox
I can't imagine how much cash Xbox wasted on 343... They clearly had the right-ish ideas, but a Total mismanagement of resources.
I felt like a teenager again while running the campaign. It had that special halo feel that’s been missing. I still enjoy it honestly.
Agreed. The music is amazing and the minimalist art style is quite pretty. That grappling hook is also the best thing 343 ever added to Halo BY FAR. It's just that, after a while, the copy past design, lack of flood that it was clearly teasing, and the lack of environmental variety really hurt it. Still, I like that you can kind of just pretend 5 didn't exist and think of it as a sequel to 4 which, despite its many issues, is the better 343 era story and doesn't fully ruin the franchise like 5 does
As someone who still enjoys Infinite's campaign from time to time, it's hard for me not to be distracted thinking about the things we could've had in it.
happy you enjoyed it but i think people standards are just low now lol
I must be the odd one out who would have preferred the jetpack to the grappling hook... 🤣
@@needum9212
You think? I dunno tbh. I felt the same way. It was a breath of fresh air.
If they set out to reboot Halo, Infinite felt like the best shot. It gave me that same feeling of wonder that I had when playing the original and not knowing what I was going to experience.
No Halo game since CE really had that same feeling for me until Infinite. Halo 2 and 3 felt like natural extensions of the story that they already set up, but an extension isn’t going to turn things on its head. It’s a natural and expected follow through on what was set up before.
Infinite felt like all things were off the table. This was brand new. It was open world. It just gave me the same feeling as that second mission of CE where you first landed on the ring.
But my gripe with it is the lack of additional content. To compare Infinite to CE again, Infinite feels like if they had cut CE’s campaign off after Assault on the Control Room and had you fight a big evil boss in said control room and then blam. Nothing else.
After all these years, the missing pieces of the puzzle are revealed... I still long for that Campaign DLC 🤔
Here's an interesting question that no one covers What's going to happen to master chief when all this ends
If he is survived To the end of the Series What's going to happen Because all the war and fighting is over
Will he try to live a normal life, or Will Military make him retire
Dont, it wont be worth it, just like the game wasnt even worth its wait and hype and still aint
Whats more worth the wait is dragons dogma's dlc
what are mods if not unofficial dlc?
The only way he gets a happy ending is if they bring back Cortana again and they seem absolutely determined to get rid of her. Currently, she is dead again.
as a halo fan, it was good to know seeing your video that there were a lot of good ideas that just got cutted and could make the Campaingn and game overal even more interesting as a spiritual revival of the Halo series. Thank you! Was good to watch (:
It's nice to have a little bit of closure on the mystery of all this. We all suspected it more or less what's from leadership being bad leadership, but it's nice to have a little bit of the actual details. Thanks for making this!
I think Rebs also mentioned the siloing off of teams is why equipment breaks the campaign. It's because the MP team made it and the campaign team had to try and fit it in.
Also, with the personnel change at 343 management, I think theirs is closer to what CDPRs is now.
Because Cyber Punk 2077 suffered from a similar management style issue
Now, instead of just massive teams, CDPR does smaller strike teams, which I think is probably what 343 will do as well
In the area where they trapped u on a island I just grappled across the mountain
i have so many "gamer words" for old 343i leadership
Send 343 to the halo 2 Xbox lobbies
@@nolanglahn8528 They don't exist anymore, the gaming community has become so watered-down and overly sensitive that you'd get banned for "being mean".
@Blue-Gold_Crusader edge lords like you keep saying that and yet things stay the same.
@@ragemonkey117 "Edgelord"? 🤣
Nothing edgy about stating an objective fact, my guy; I regularly get comms banned for talking shit to people on Xbox lobbies.
Save it for Microsoft
Infinite had so much potential!!!!
That's all 343 is... missed potential and horrible leadership.
Honestly would love more story dlc, I found the campaign so much fun.
It seems like the Infinity was supposed to be in the center of the map instead of the corner, and the map being split up with the cut biomes with a different sub faction in each bit but instead, we just got 1/3 of the map.
I gave Halo Infinites campaign a high score when it released because I assumed it was going to have more updates. At this point, it's still 343s best campaign but that isn't saying much
Yeah I'll be honest my initial rating was under the assumption it was going to continue in DLC. I still stand by 95% of the positive things I said about it, but it's such a shame that all the continuation we should've got never happened
Halo 4 is definitely better imo
@@Milk-vw1cv Story wise? Yes. Gameplay wise? Not a chance in hell. It's got to be the worst campaign gameplay wise. I think Infinite has a better balance.
@@thedead073yeah, halo 4 is such a slog to play through, beautiful story but that's not enough for me tbh
@@Milk-vw1cvI love H4 storywise but the levels are super linear (which on it's own isn't really bad), the enemy ai is bad, Prometheans are bullet sponges and the game doesn't give enough ammo, you're constantly running out.
8:10 kinda reminds me of the Orc Captains in the Shadow of Mordor game, named characters that roam around in strongholds and its outskirts, they also had an alarm system to alert all the orcs if the protagonist enters them
Imagine a dlc where you play as the arbiter(and playable elites for multiplayer)and along the way you find out that the banished accidentally unleashed the flood. Except in an open world game, where you would see the flood slowly changing the atmosphere and terrain little by little on the halo ring, and that would be the main sign that you would be facing the flood again. Like flood territory. Like “Oh shit, look at the ground and the sides of mountains, the flood are here!” Then you hear that flood scream as they begin surrounding you little by little
More creativity from this comment than 343's entire team
Bruh, yall gotta let the Flood go, its getting ridiculous at this point.
Imagine if Sauron returned for the umpteenth time after ROTK. It would completely ruin that movie’s ending, wouldn’t it? Though to a lesser degree, it’s the same thing with the Flood.
If yall want more cosmic horror so bad, you’d be better off finding a long lost Precursor for the galaxy to contend with
@@Arander92 Enter the Endless.
@@Kustan112 I don’t think we’re getting more Endless at this point. Which is just as well, considering the collective “MEH” they inspired
@@Arander92 nah
Thank you so much for putting all this information on one place and giving more people to follow. Really appreciate you, sir.
that terminator timeout cut was perfectly timed i had just finished watching that for the first time
just before this video
I think a post game hub/lobby would be cool, vote for maps and modes and whatnot
I had a blast with this campaign, but I can agree it felt like half the game was missing. Glad to finally know what was cut, as depressing as it is
Credits rolled so unexpectedly, I really thought id hit the halfway point but it just ended. Basically nothing happened, never found out about the endless, the banished are still on the ring, so many loose ends.
It did so many things right, but the things that went wrong were just too vital. Like, I genuinely loved the campaign, but there are certain downsides that cannot be denied within the realms of reason. I REALLY hope they can take the best elements of Infinite's campaign (the boss design, for instance) and learn from the mistakes in the future.
You know with the abundance of all the remakes and remasters we get these days. I honestly would like to see a remake of infinites campaign with 343's original vision for the game in UE5.
With Sony doing another 2 remasters, I would be fine with that. If they still have all the assets, they could get it done in 2-3 years. This is actually a great idea. I would pay $40 for essentially 50% more of the campaign.
Not a 343 dev but someone who used to go to SCAD and had stuff shown to me ahead of time either by industry people who were doing presentations or by friends. The first planned DLC was going to be in the Sand Biome and would have taken cues from Dune, and one of the bosses you would have faced would have been a Giant sandworm. This is based off of an ex friend of mine being in the loop with a modeler who was hired to help fix some of the models post 2020 reveal trailer and delay.
This was the plan about 1-2 months before launch so take my comment with a grain of salt.
This game would have been great!
It really sucks that the current state of halo has devolved the fan base into "wouldn't have been cool if..."
Keep doing good work HX!!!!
Infinite is so fascinating to me. While the game is really fun to play and the multiplayer is excellent, I think its development pre and post-launch is just insane. This really had the potential to be a huge game and something that would have been cool to experience as the “platform for halo for the next ten years” like they said years ago. The more we learn about what went on behind the scenes with this game the more interesting the whole thing becomes. Even just playing the game has always felt like there was much, much more that we were meant to be able to do and see and play, but it just isn’t there. It almost feels haunted in a weird way. Like there are aspects of this game (set pieces, characters, maps) where you really can tell “oh that was probably meant to do something or be something more than it is now” and those feelings haven’t gone away even when I come back to the game. It’s really easy to see that so many people wanted this game to be so much more. Really disappointing what happened.
I have faith that whatever happens next for Halo will be good. Granted, it won’t be for a while.
also flood needs to come back lol
In all honesty I hope each of the individuals who played a part in sabotaging halo be blacklisted from the industry.
I don't think you can blacklist Microsoft from the industry
@beanpeen4163 he said individuals not corporations
@@TheKingclayton87 it'd be hard to do so.. blacklisting usually happens when you go against companies and do something horrendous, or pushing back against dei and such id imagine..
or being called out for r a p e and such which likely would also blacklist you and may not even be cleared even if you were cleared legally speaking..
@@TheKingclayton87they all had a part to play, can't ban em all
343 devs and creatives: here’s all these great ideas we think will make Halo amazing!
microsoft: cancel all that and add cat ears to the shop. also your 18 months are up you’re fired.
"bUt It'S ToTaLlY tHrEeFoUrThReE gUyS"
That disclaimer in the beginning was a nice addition to this video 👌🏻
At this point it feels like having a depressing amount of cut content is par for the course for a halo game, but this just makes the 'finished' version of Infinite look pathetic by comparison
You god damn saved it when you said that you want customization on a spin off and NOT on a campaign. Jesus you gave me a heart attack.
LMAO
Why would not adding a customization feature to the campaign be a bad thing? That would sound like a really cool thing for Halo and it would be a cool new idea.
@@Finger112 Because it wouldnt be a Halo game thats why. If you want customization on a weapon then i suggest you Call of Duty games, they are pretty cool. Halo has some unique and very specific elements that makes it Halo and even adding sprint on Halo infinite was really bad move even if it was open world, because you already have vehicles to roam around.
@@angelosmpesiropoulos7429 Well actually the campaign already has a form of customization for the weapons which is the upgraded versions of the same weapons, even that is a limited form of customization but its a pre-set form of the same weapon, they are in the same line of upgrading a weapon to be more powerful.
Also your claims about "it not being a Halo game" is ridiculous. Halo can try new things if 343 wants to do for the game, its all subjective in the end on what is for an X game.
@@Finger112 I just don't think that _level_ of customisation would feel very Halo-ey, the variants are enough since they are at least easily identifiable. It'd be like if Titanfall 2 kept the loadout system they had from Titanfall and not the class system they have now where you can still customise it to some degree but at least when you see a Ronin you know it's a Ronin and can decide what to do accordingly. Variants are enough in the same vein, I would know that if I see a white Ravager, it's gonna be a Brute Shot (and before the changes... Brute... sh*t hehe..) I'm dealing with.
It's heart wrenching to me. I've sunk hundreds of hours into forge and I can tell there was incredible talent put into this game that just got put to waste.
Thank you HiddenXperia for winning the “Don’t message a minor.” Challenge 😂, you’re one of four of content creators I’ve subscribed to that haven’t been in a disgusting thing.
Just because they have new leadership now doesn’t mean everything is finally going to be okay. In fact, in some ways it looks like things could go downhill even faster than before. I don’t have any hope left for the franchise but I will always have fun replaying the OG games over and over again. They can’t take that away from me.
I always knew 343 couldn’t live up to a franchise they didn’t create.
They could have tried.
Oh please, Bungie peaked at 2 so hard and they could barely get it out the door. 3 is just a disappointing younger brother and Reach they already checked out on for what became a pos called Destiny. Bungie hasn't been even "good" in a very long time.
@@Connor8609 pos called destiny? Have you seen how beautiful and how much depth that game has to offer? Taking games at face value regardless of what genre it is D2 is a stand out.
@@tarps1151 If you're putting Destiny in the same sentence as depth you've lost all credibility. Destiny is puddle deep.
@@Connor8609 a minor side quest in destiny can have its own set pieces, instances and lore with good writing. i can go on about other aspects of the game but its clear you cant understand the value d2 brings to the table. I mean have you honestly played the game in detail or do you not enjoy MMos, which is fine.
It didn’t just die, it was murdered…
…by the brutes
@@YodaOnABender By 343.
@@commando414 vile disloyal beasts, Microsoft were fools to trust them
Classic throwback to CPG. God that channel was cancer.
@@jimothy9943 What's CPG?
It's so sad what happened to infinite. The game could've and should've been so much better
Thank you very much for the shoutout! There’s a bunch of cool stuff that many passionate developers wanted to create for Infinite, but poor former leadership stopped that from happening. It’s a damn shame.
Hey, The Legend of Zelza: Breath of the Wild vet here! I'm thinking the biomes idea might've been part of the different subfactions and strongholds idea. In BotW, the different biomes are more regions of the world map, for example there is a desert and a cold tundra. These different environments bring different quirks associated with the environment that factor into strategies in combat and the kinds of things you can get from there. Given the variety of enemy types, different kinds could have gravitated towards environments they are good in and thus in a way give a way to tell what you might be going up against in the different regions of the world. Maybe it would have factored into the customization system you speculated about, having attachments for your equipment based on the warlord/dominant species of the region?
I really liked Infinite's campaign, it filled me with so much hope for the future- at launch.
I still like the campaign just fine now, but that ending is so brutally bittersweet now. It had so much promise, and nothing came of it.
“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad..” -Shigeru Miyamoto
man, we missed so much… i’d honestly have chosen to have infinite delayed to this year if we got all this stuff.
I remember when that assassin elite was supposed to hunt you down around the map through the game but instead we just got a lousy boss fight with him
You can tell he's an ultra lord of the rings fan because he has a ring behind him in literally every video.
With 343 being a whole new studio at this point, should consider rebranding and renaming themselves. Would help shake off and disassociate from the Sins of the formers
They should rebrand to 117 Studios. Instead of being named after the nutjob antagonist that always LOOKS like he's going to save you right before he betrays you, they should name themselves after the stoic reliable badass that never fails.
Looks like I'm a fortune teller
Man this hurts to watch. As someone who has been with Halo since 2006, Infinite was the first actual Halo game that felt AND looked almost 1:1 with a Bungie Halo. Infinite was fun, sure, but it could have been so much more. At this point, you're going toe to toe with Halo 2 in the perspective of cut content.
But Halo 2 actually had a great story to back it up. The best story in the franchise.
What the hell does Halo Infinite’s story have? Psychotana’s ditsy “We’re sorry we ruined an iconic character, but here’s a BETTER one!” replacement??
@@Arander92 Please don't slander The Weapon. Cortana's character being assassinated was a failing of Halo 5, not Infinite.
I always thought it would really cool if they created a Spartan Ops like game mode, but instead of telling continuous stories it was just a bunch of anthology like missions. Basically the game equivalent of Halo Evolutions. Imagine a mission playing as headhunters or missions where you play as the covenant glassing a planet. They could even make missions that go all the way back to the forerunner flood war. The opportunities with this game mode would be limitless and could easily be adapted to a live service with each season being based around a different story or story arc. Please @HiddenXperia I would love to hear your feedback on a game mode like this.
What you're describing is the story of Star Wars: Republic Commando. Loosely connected missions that tell a story about characters, rather than an overarching plot.
It amazes me just how much people don't understand the value of strong leadership. I just graduated college and my last semester I took a organizational communication class. During one lecture when my professor was discussing leadership, he asked everyone in the class to simply raise their hands if they thought that strong leadership was integral to a team's success.
I was dumbfounded when only about a third of the class raised their hand. My professor was also clearly shocked as he took a few seconds to say anything after that, which I knew was uncharacteristic for him as this was my third class with him and he normally responded to class responses like this one lightning fast.
love how despite halo is my favourite game franchise and a game i normally play daily, ive now realised i havent even thought about it for the past year or so
GOD THE PAIN PROGRESSIVELY GETS WORSE AS THE VIDEO CONTINUES INFINITE COULDVE BEEN GOLDEN MAN😭😭😭😭😭
Damn... Last time I was this early, Infinite was actually antici.... pated.
Halo is a AAA flagship game from one of the largest corporations on earth. It really isn't unreasonable that we look at what other similar games in the space are doing and wondering why we aren't getting that. This should be the game that doesn't compromise and shows what gaming could be with the entire weight of Microsoft and Xbox behind it. Instead it has barely reached the standards of its own past titles only just a decade ago.
People keep buying it, they'll keep doing it.
Yeah, except halo infinite was a complete flop by Microsofts standards. That's why the leads all got fired@@beanpeen4163
@@beanpeen4163 Most people will (have) realize(d) that they don't actually have to spend money on a product that they have no confidence of satisfaction from
@@bigdaddynero people were confident in infinite despite what the past has shown us, people preordered and bought the skins and the console bundle and Microsoft got their money. I want to believe you but so far people largely haven't changed and I feel its going to take a lot more for Microsoft to change as well. I hope I'm proved wrong
@@bigdaddynerothat is completely wrong lol. Do you see people’s spending habits in other games? 😂
How many times has the UNSC Infinity been proposed as a hub world and subsequently scrapped at this point?😂
0:46 "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness, a father's sins, passed to his son."
in Zelda Breath of the Wild, different biomes are just in different parts of the map. center of the map is grassland, south is the jungle, southwest is the dessert, west and northwest is mountains, north is forest, northeast is volcanic, east is whatever, and southeast is tropical
Infinite's campaign had so much potential... I still think its a pretty solid campaign (7/10, still, IMO), but its ROUGH around the edges. Thanks for making this video to help clarify things to the layperson like me.
I really enjoyed the campaign as well but I hate the physics of the game. Plus it's too repetitive.
I really enjoyed it to, but something was clearly missing. A 66% cut is crazy, you could literally almost make another game with how much was cut.
Luke switch that damn shirt lmao
I hope people are willing to give the new leadership a chance once the next game is announced. Once bitten twice shy i guess
If the next game is a post Halo 3 or 4 reboot, I’ll give them a chance. There’s no saving this timeline
@@Arander92yea pretty much
No. 4, 5 and now infinite were all shit
@@Arander92 Objectively false.
I loved infinite honestly. The campaign at least. Knowing this now does kinda make me feel like it could have been WAY better but when I played it knowing (thinking) they were gonna release DLC I was fine with the ending. I really hope they revive Halo cause it’s my favorite lore there is.
Idk what it says about the campaign, but I only remember 2 things from the campaign:
The opening Cutscene
&
Fighting the Camo Elite Boss
I can remember every major story point from the OG trilogy, I can even remember Arbiter's moments from Halo 5
Should have kept the Prometheans around, instead 343 dropped them and the Covenant Storm. It’s one thing to add new elements, but to disrespect halo 4 to halo wars 2 and not building upon past ideas and throwing it out, you lose the engagement from the audiences.
You look at Halo 4 and you can see how each of the factions were improving on technologies and tactics which went further into Halo 5; then you look at Halo infinite where it goes so backwards like using the old scorpion models despite clearing stating in halo 5 they were all phased out.
Also they were gaslighting us to think there were adding new weapons when the sidekick pistol is just a gunfighter pistol from halo 5, or that they got rid of the beloved Carbine to add in the Commando. Other examples was we lost the rail gun for the massive spiker, or the incineration cannon for the crappy ravager, or the scattershot to be replaced by another scattershot that’s sideways.
Halo infinite went backwards so much and relies too heavily on Halo 1 nostalgia to try to carry its drawbacks. It released for free on game pass ultimate 1 month for the campaign, which meant its sales were so garbage.
Then we got customisation, where in Halo 5 you could earn everything just by playing in a reasonable time post warzone firefight release and it wasn’t time gated and you could see the full library. Whereas in halo infinite you have to pay for colours and you can’t even see the unlocks and pressured in predatory sesson passes to unlock skins.
Biggest lost was no warzone mode especially warzone turbo, the height of Halo gameplay. 343 really lost the plot for ditching their most played and best mode.
facts
The one good thing 343 did.
Halo 5 looks horrible.
The designs are either overblown sci-fi bs or boring copies of modern equipment.
So yeah, ill take halo 1 nostalgia all the time.
@@seimen4348 Halo infinite is whats overblown, especially with stuff like the Samurai. Halo 5 looks incredibly realistic designs and are quite form fitting and probably one of the best looking sci fi armours you see compared to other Halo's and other franchises like Mass Effect. The only real negative was black undersuits disabled for the multiplayer spartans, as well as smaller shoulder pads for armour suits of the female spartans.
@@AmiteahEldenRing They look terrible, wtf crack are you on? All of the armors are indistinguishable once you're in-game. Moreover, they look like power ranger armors. Infinite's armors at least look like they might be a real armor a soldier might wear.
NGL, if halo infinite dropped a series of $20 dlc campaigns over the span of 4-6 month windows that I can coop with my friends I’d buy them for myself and them and play them still to this day.
The game was fun, they just didn’t treat it like a live service.
Seems pretty par for the course as far as live service games go, we've seen this happen far too often in the industry where they promise all this cool shit that gets everybody to pre-order and then at launch all development is shifted to pumping out them $15 skins that people keep buying. Even if they charged $40 dollars for a dlc just selling 3 skins would make them more money with a fraction of the effort. Live service was ultimately this games undoing.
@@beanpeen4163 Except very few people buy skins, and everyone would buy the DLC.
@bable6314 tons of people buy skins dude that was this game in particulars bread and butter, they were charging for primary colors. 343 and Microsoft after seeing such a mixed reception of infinites campaign most likely thought (for good reason) any dlc would be received the same and didn't bother making any, but still kept pushing out the skins when a very vocal minority of fans said they didn't want em. kept on doing it though. I can only wonder why.
Gotta grieve for what could’ve been. At least we got more Halo.
Infinite was still good although we shoudlve gotten dlc.
Should have gotten what was promised at launch
It’s not real Halo.
@@bunjier4041out
being told the crusher was that shadow in the trailer blew my mind. i cannot believe they did that and then cut that enemy from the game!
i was such a fan of destiny when i was playing halo 5 and loved the idea of a social hub in the infinity and the fact that i almost had that burns a little bit is also kind of cool