What is up with 343 Industries?

 Wasted potential, mostly.

For many successful and excitement-filled years, Bungie were the custodians of Xbox's most recognisable flagship series; that of Halo. Such was their relationship that one could look as Bungie as just the game development arm of Microsoft proper, an appendage to the Xbox body, a hand guided by the Bill Gates brain. (And funded. Is that how hands work?) But their love affair could only ever last so long, and like two sweethearts leaving for different colleges, Bungie one day had to depart from Xbox and the baby they sired and nurtured together; young Halo, now coming into his teens and frighteningly promising. They had a new future with Destiny, and that's a whole can of worms I don't have the mental fortitude to open right now. But Bungie did not leave Halo rudderless. No. Instead they peeled off a piece of themselves, a contingent of faithful's that would bear the name of the Guilty Spark and adopt the role of 'Halo Custodian'. With their fanatic passion Halo would be on the verge of new horizons that the fans could only dream of; it would be the dawn of a new, golden age. And what the heck happened to that dream, eh?

I dramatized. Obviously. It's what I do, I'm a drama queen. But the basic facts are very much true. Bungie went their own way after the release of Halo Reach and 343 Industries was formed in order to fill that void; however I think that was more a move from Microsoft than Bungie. I can't even say how many of Bungie's staff remained with 343, if any; which is significant when it comes to answering the question: What in the heck happened to Halo? Because something absolutely happened to turn it from what it was, a powerhouse industry contender that helped shape the face of First Person shooting for it's time, to what it is today, a straggler in the pack trying and failing to imitate that which makes the other players of the industry filthy amounts of money and respect. But to hone in on where 343 today I want to take some short steps on the journey; starting with Halo 4.

Halo 4 had a lot to live up to in being the first Halo without Bungie, picking up on a story that was left largely completed with Master Chief floating through space after having defeated the Covenant and destroyed a threat to all life in the galaxy, and developing for a gaming industry that had moved on quite some way. And what did 343 do? Their best... for what little that's worth. Two years after the subtle story of a planet falling to ruin in 'Reach', 343 resurrected Master Chief and tried to erect a brand new narrative starring him that shifted the story away from an action-focused struggle of all humanity against a threat that totally overwhelmed them, to a wholly new, tonally distinct, story about the Chief being the latest in a long line of possible Space Jesus' who has been genetically orchestrated to kill this one big ugly super villain guy whom he eventually defeats by, and I'm not kidding here, punching him in the face and sticking a grenade on him. The entire human race was specifically orchestrated over millennia to birth both a man and the technology to arm that man, so that he could place a grenade on some dude. All in all, there was an attempt to evolve the story, at least.

But at the same time as that scathingly bad narrative set-up, 343 did try something very interesting and new, not just for Halo but for gaming at that time altogether. They tried to set up a live service! I'm not kidding, all the way back in 2012 343 were on that train! I guess some of Bungie rubbed off on the guys! Their idea was pretty cool too, an extra mode called 'Spartan Ops' where you played multiplayer co-op levels with your friends across a series of maps. Each map was predated with a hefty 10 minute cutscene and the needle of the plot slowly moved forward as you completed actions and objectives. And the 'Live' aspect came from the fact that the team would keep adding new levels and expanding the story all the way up until the release of Halo 5 Guardians. The only problem? The levels were trash! Yeah, it's not like you were playing levels that aped the quality of the main campaign, obviously not that would take too much time to develop; but these levels were literally just big arenas with endless waves of enemies attacking you at every objective. There was no nuance, no creativity and no reason to come back to this content week after week. 343 overpromised what the production rate of their studio was and ended up having to rush out low quality content just to meet their own deadlines. Sound familiar?

'Halo 5: Guardians' had none of those machinations as far as I can tell. And that's because the team learnt quickly about their limitations from Halo 4 Spartan Ops. And the fact that Halo 5 didn't need any help being bad. I'm slightly talking out of my arse here as, still, the MCC has not received a Halo 5 update and thus I haven't played the thing; but I did follow the game closely when it first launched; I remember the fan vitriol. I remember them bringing back the god-awful Prometheans and turning them into recurring boss fights. (which I now know to be more boss fights than Halo has ever had in the past.) I know the story was apparently a long process of spinning wheels with characters who don't matter as 343 tried to stretch the one plot point they had over the course of a whole game, and I remember there being some contention about how the multiplayer mode was handling customisation. My account my be sporadic and lacking detail, but by-and-large those are the failures 343 made with Halo 5.

And now we come to Infinite. Halo Infinite has received oodles of praise for its single player which proved to be 343's best yet. (You know, after they exorcized all the story elements and new faction enemies they added and returned to Bungie's framework franchise from 2010.) Infinite is said to have not taken any real risks with it's main story, and been somewhat lacking in terms of significant narrative progression; but the game is fun to screw about in and that's saying something after their last two outings. So where do the issues come in? Well it seems that 343 grew a little too big for the britches again when it came to providing for the other key pillar of Halo; the multiplayer. I'm not a big multiplayer guy so hearing all of these tribulations and discussions was essentially like overhearing your parent's arguing from the front porch. You don't know what it's about and you sort of don't want to. But eventually you'll find out that Halo just isn't what it once was for a lot of people, and is trying to be something more despite that.

Live service! It always comes back to live services for this team, doesn't it? This time they're much less 'ahead of the ball' however, but just as unprepared for the commitments of this style of content delivery. The base multiplayer package suffered from considerable progression problems that made 'challenges' the sole way to improve your rank instead of just playing the game how you wanted. And since then 343 have meandered at a snail's pace to try and update that multiplayer mode with such things as: a free-for-all mode trickled in bizarre placed production value in it's introduction belying a much more grandiose release of this content that had to be scaled back as their deadlines started rushing them. Several months are going by with absolutely no content at all; and players are falling off into MCC or just off Halo entirely as attention is siphoned off to much more regularly maintained competition. Which is everywhere, by the way. Halo may not be rudderless, but it's sure feeling like 343 is.

So what is going on with 343 I ask? Mismanagement and overpromising that has led to disappointment after disappointment. They have a nose for ambition shoved far further than their grasp for achievement and it's hurting consumer trust every time they reach short of implied potential. And it has gotten to a point where fans are growing sick of them and their failures. Halo has only shrunk in prestige since they've taken the helm, and though the name is loud enough to score a bad TV adaptation, it's not enough to earn a serious place in the 'actively played games' list anymore. Perhaps 343 was never truly up to the job of handling such a large franchise, and expecting otherwise was unrealistic of Microsoft, them, and us. But does that mean it's time for them to reassess their talents and direction, or time to make a change altogether? That, we will soon find out.