How far does the 'benefit of the doubt' stretch?
I actually lack the years of hard won love that a lot of the gaming world has for Bungie's stint on Halo. I may have played all of the games, but years after their first run when Bungie were already long on my 'do not forgive' list for their conduct when marketing Destiny content. (Twice.) Thus I can honestly say that it was purely on the merit of the sheer quality of the products themselves that I came to find 343 as questionable custodians of the legendary shooter franchise. It's not that I don't think they care, I just don't think they've ever had the right team to pull off a successor to Halo like they've been shooting for all this time. To many it seems like the decision makers behind the franchise don't even understand what it was that made Halo special in the first place, and offer ideas entirely contrary to what the audience vie for. And it is a heartbreaking game of tug and war that fans and developer seem destined to be stuck between for the rest of their collective lives.
Not that it is a simple thing to pick up where Bungie left off for their legendary franchise which was once so massive that it frontlined Xbox sales and branding; but one would think that at some point, with about 10 years on the job, the people at 343 would stumble upon something of a winning formula accidentally at the very least! But alas, you end up getting Halo 4, which had some great individual mission ideas that were ruined by the genuinely badly physically and visually designed new faction, Halo 5 which is said to have a legendarily bad storyline, Master Chief Collection which launched in the sorriest state possible and now 'Halo: Infinite'; so named because it was meant to herald the next 10 years of Halo, only to end up losing so much momentum, goodwill and potential that the team have reportedly quietly scrapped all of it's dreamt-of additions in favour of a brand new Halo game built in an entirely different engine.
Now because I absolute despise the several years of gaslighting that we were subjected to by Bungie after the Destiny 'Ten Year plan' debacle, let me be absolutely clear: Halo Infinite was called the start of the next ten years of Halo. The way it was built, with a focus on open world play that shunned constrained linear experiences, was in order to facilitate the next steps of the Master Chief story as integrated chunks of the single player narrative; maybe even expansions on top of that base product. Just as the Master Chief collection is a platform that collects the first 10 years of the Halo journey, Infinite was supposed to fill that gap for a new ten, and any shift on that model marks a distinct change in circumstance whether the team and Microsoft are willing to admit that or not. And a shift in circumstance that no internal party is willing to share or talk about does not typically engender happy and fruitful behind-the-scenes discussions.
This is worth bringing up because along with these unconfirmed reports of a new Halo game in the works, 343 just faced a cataclysmic rock of layoffs that took out much of the development force behind Infinite and even some of the executives. Although the real important people just moved from one position to another and people are want to do in high-importance positions. All of Microsoft was hit with these layoffs, of course, but the way that some reporters were discussing 343's casualties made it almost sound like the big M had a vendetta against 343 specifically as an underperforming studio tucked under their corporate wing. Thus it rings slightly odd when Microsoft spokespeople come out to then confirm that not only is Halo alive and healthy, but that it is going to continue on under the purview of 343 entirely unabated by the massacre which just occurred at that studio. It stinks of something rotten and aquatic. Perhaps the fishy remains of a deep untruth.
Some have already taken it upon themselves to read between the lines and question how healthy a franchise actually is if it's caretaker needs to publicly declare how not dead it is. I know there's an art of feeling the public pulse and responding to a feeling before it turns into an unfounded 'fact'; but even having to make that sort of fundamental assurance belies the state of a franchise that absolutely does not speak for itself. And does the current outward facing look of the Halo franchise seem healthy? Well it depends. On one hand Infinite's Forge mode is said to be the best the franchise has ever enjoyed and that has alone boosted the game's player count and the franchise just crossed over to television with it's own TV show last year. On the otherhand the actual singleplayer content of Infinite is said to be dead in the water and the Halo show was largely panned by critical fans and pundits. But none of that implies Halo is dead per se.
But what it does say to me at least is that Halo is missing the oomph that it once had. Which is kind of a basic statement when you think about it. Of course Halo doesn't have the brand appeal of the olden days, one merely needs to look at Xbox's modern, largely Master Chief free, branding to see that. But does that mean Halo is doomed to slowly become more and more irrelevant as 343 is slowly stripped of more personnel and resources for each failure they make? Because I can tell you one thing for free- they're not going to get better at making Halo with less people to actually sit down and make the game, now are they? If you ask me, and no one did; what Halo needs is fresh blood. And I'm not talking about new faces joining 343, I'm talking about new directions for the franchise.
Remember Halo Wars? The lauded RTS game which moved Halo away from Master Chief in order to expand upon the wider war with great gameplay and fresh characters and at least one race-bending cast member? Why doesn't Halo do more of that? Blow out the universe of Halo so it moves past the green giant and explores totally distinct genres to get ahold of more people, similar to what the 'Vampire: The Masquerade' franchise is currently doing with it's shotgun approach to games. Why can't there be a survival horror Halo game about being alone in a world besieged by Flood? Or a character driven narrative adventure following a single isolated contingent of the Sangheili rebels in the wake of Halo 2, trying to come to terms with being cut off from the Covenant that they were raised under and eventually coming around to siding with their former sworn enemies at the UNSC?
Halo as it stands is riding on the top of a small bump of a hill heading towards a dire plunge into unknown territory and it's not hard for the casual fan to imagine things will only become worse from here. Say what they will, 343 did not appear to be up to the task of keeping Halo relevant back before they lost 95 jobs, I can't see that changing anymore now. If Microsoft really do care about this franchise like they keep insisting that they do, then it's time for them to really dedicate some effort into proving that assertion. All of these new studios now under Microsoft's purview and not one of them could make a single small companion title to the Halo franchise as a small experimental project at the least? I call bull on that and I call bull on Microsoft sitting atop the burning rubble of an entire department of 343, sipping a brew made from the ground-down bones of all those they sacked and assuring just themselves that "This is fine."
No comments:
Post a Comment