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. 

What is up with Halo Infinite?

Maybe Master Chief should have stayed gone.

Once again, I am not the Halo fan that some others are, dripping with praise and endorsement for the decades old space shooter. But I have always been a spectator of it's antics. Bungie have, several times over, managed to create games that have fundamentally altered the industry around them in drastic, and one time supremely harmful, fashions. They invented the standard for first person shooters, created the expected norms of Online ecosystems, and then introduced the world to live services and condemned the entire industry for the next decade. (thanks for that one, guys.) Thus I'd have to be a fool not to look at the brand which they left behind when they went to Destiny, just to see if their legacy is still being upheld in the manner that they would respect and want. After 'Guardians' there has been questions about whether or not 343 is up to take to take on the huge responsibility of leading Halo, and recent months have bought that even further into doubt.

The first and most obvious sign of things not going exactly according to plan at all times was of course the delaying of the game from the release date of the Series X to some unspecified future time that, given the chaotic state of 2020, we may never reach. (I'm joking. Probably) Now some might say that this was to be expected given the absolutely lackadaisical marketing the game was receiving, implying that things were not shaping up to a fashion which could be bragged about, but it still does conjure some worry when Microsoft cannot bring themselves to get out a Halo game to coincide with the birth of their new game's console. It's just unseemly. This extra time will undoubtedly help the game out, there's no debate, but it has caused an extended gap wherein excitement needs to be built up for the game once again through slight info drops, so I wonder what 343 have to tease for this bold new direction on the Halo franchise.

And they've already caused an uproar again. (How do you even manage to do it that fast?) This time with something as easy and innocuous as customisation. In a Halo game. What in god's name could you possibly manage to get wrong about customising the appearance for a first person character? Well, everything, it would seem because people are livid right now. And curiously enough this all seems to trail back to the way in which people received the news that the armour colouring system was changing. For those unfamiliar, this was the particularly rudimentary way in which players could charge the colour and patterns on the protagonist's armour so that they could mix and match. It was simple and uncomplicated, and honestly just a little bit outdated given all the character creators that have spawned over the years. Even if it's completely out-of-bounds to make your own hero for these games (as it very much is with Halo) they could have done some basic revitalisations to this system if they really cared. And I guess 343 kinda did?

What they've done with the system, and forgive me if I get confused at their weirdly uninformative stance on the matter, is marry the independent colouring, pattern making and material deciding aspects into packs that can then be provided to the player wholesale in an as-of-yet-undisclosed manner. So whereas before you could make any piece of your armour whatever pattern and material you think would look good, now you have to get a pack which will decide that combination for you, but only on one specific piece of armour meaning you'll have to get several packs in order to be cohesive. (That last part seems to be what people are most confused about, I can't seem to make sense of it all either, but it sounds pretty much like Destiny's Shader system shamelessly stolen.) Now this has allegedly been done in order to make it easier for 343 to design skins. (Not sure why they even need to, to be honest) but before you leap to their defence it may help to take a look at the example they've already provided of their handiwork.

In some misguided attempt to assuage fears and assure folk that this is for the best, 343 decided to show off some new gun skins for people's classic Halo favourites, these skins themed in a curiously familiar pattern of lime green with black accents. (Oh no, they didn't.) Yep, this is the Monster Energy Drink themed Halo Skin, and instantly 343 lost 50% respect with the community. Do these companies really not comprehend how tacky it is to do brand deals with skins in your game? Had they blinders on when Marvel's Avengers was ruthlessly mocked for the exact same thing? Or was this deal in place long before them and 343 eavesdropped on all that backlash whilst biting their nails nervously? If nothing else this does set up something of a gross precedent for what other 'skins' 343 is planning to cook up for the community instead of letting them get creative on their own. (But hey, you can recolour the Warthogs now. yay.)

I think that people have become most concerned, in the wake of this news, about how these 343 designed colouring packs have the potential to be monetised. Although I don't believe anything has been officially stated on that matter, when you start throwing about brand deals it's a little bit of a 'all bets are off', sort of situation. What's to stop some sort of promotional deal being thrown in, just like for Avengers, where you have to dig through cans of Halo-branded Monster Energy in order to get the codes for your Halo Skin. That's not exactly unheard of in the gaming world, Call of Duty does those sorts of promotions to this day. Or maybe they'll just straight up sell these skins in some in-game store. (Because people just love being sold cosmetics in their single player games.) This whole situation raises a lot of eyebrows.

Almost as many eyebrows, in fact, as the news that Halo Infinite's Director, Chris Lee, has up and left the company out of the blue before the game is anywhere near done. Now we've talked recently about how high level shake-ups in the middle of game production is usually, and historically, a bad sign, but when we're talking about the freakin' Director jumping ship then that opens a whole new can of worms. How bad can things be for Mr. Lee to dip now of all times? Now to play devil's advocate, this is around about the time that Halo Infinite should have originally launched so maybe he's been planning his departure for a while and just didn't want to postpone, but there's no denying the move is, regardless, going to cause some turmoil. (Isn't he potentially sacrificing a credit by leaving in the middle of production? That's a pretty big knock for the ego to take.)

So I refer back to the question that started this blog, what is up with Halo Infinite? It seems like the black sheep of Microsoft's line-up right now that literally no one wants to spare a chance, least of all Halo fans themselves. This game got torn apart during it's gameplay reveal, and is getting torn apart in marketing, it's all enough to make some wonder if people even want another Halo game at all! To their credit, 343 have announced that the multiplayer mode for Halo Infinite will apparently be free-to-play, which is an unprecedented move that I'll surely take advantage of, but that's one silver lining obscured by a deluge of grey skies, for which it's becoming increasingly difficult to see past. Only time will tell if all of these upheavals will propel Halo into the modern age or further sink the brand into steady irrelevancy. (Here's hoping for the former.)

Halo Infinite

Infinite problems

Okay here's one I've been putting off for a while because I just don't really know how I'm supposed to approach it. For clarity's sake, I've never really been that much of a Halo fan and by that I mean I've never actually owned a single game from the main franchise, despite owning an Xbox. (I know, that's pretty much the height of hedonism.) That is not to say, however, that I've never played a Halo game, because I actually have completed a full playthrough of Halo Reach which I'll attest is actually a really solid and well made game. So then why haven't I rode that excitement to play the other games? I don't know, I don't have the money or time, okay? So the consequence of this is that I actually have no attachment to the beloved classic video game character of Master Chief or any of his journeys against the Covenant, or whoever it is he's fighting these days. I don't even really think of Noble Six all that much either. Neither of those characters quite hold that sense of gravitas that I think off when I consider a timeless game protagonist. Give me the Doom Slayer over these faceless nobodies anyday. (No offence to Halo fans, I'm sure John-117 is great once you get to know him.)

As such when the trailer first dropped for Halo infinite, or shall we say the teaser, all those years ago I could have yawned myself to sleep. What did we see? A dude wandering through the desert only to be overwhelmed by a sandstorm and turn out to be Master Chief. Great, that explained nothing, teased nothing and was ultimately nothing. (Way to waste a reveal.) Seems that the marketing team didn't learn from this nothing burger, however, because the next time we saw the title it was just a short cutscene of Master Chief being found in the midst of space by a junker and getting woken from some form of stasis. Seriously, that entire trailer was full of so much nothing-speak it made that final line from Halo 2 sound like the 'Tears in the Rain' soliloquy. ("I'm ending this fight!") So what's the solution? Now that Halo Infinite is actually within the grasp of gamers and they can start with an actual marketing campaign, how do the team correct the wrongs of the past two boring teasers which showed off nothing? Go the complete other direction of course! Show too much.

I typically try my hardest to catch these gaming events in their entirety, but when I cannot I don't really have the time to go back and watch the entire thing unless it's a conference I really care about. (I wouldn't miss a second of a CDPR showcase.) So I just pick and choose what I'm interested in without really investing myself in games I wouldn't poke a feces-covered stick with, which is to say that I didn't watch the raw Halo footage. And that might have something to do with the fact that the gameplay was just several minutes of wandering and shooting without anything really transcendent about this game to knock the socks firmly off. Fair enough, you might think, this was a game trailer made for fans to show them that this game is real afterall, it doesn't need to woo over someone who never really liked the games to begin with. Except, that wasn't how Microsoft billed it. For you see they made a big point about parading Infinite as the first unburdened showcase of 'The power of the Series X', basically throwing this game up against that supremely impressive and technologically stunning 'Ratchet and Clank' trailer. So how'd it end up faring? Well...

I'd be lying if I said that no one was excited by the gameplay that they saw. Fans had been edged on by this game for literal years now, so they went absolutely crazy for even the slightest glimmer of actual gameplay, but as for the rest of us; it was a nuke sized dud. The gameplay in question was just freeroam content showing off the brand new open world that Infinite was touting, but the act of exploring an Open world doesn't exactly make for the best trailer viewing unless that world is absolutely stunning like Cyberpunk's Night City or Metro Exodus' Russian Wastes. Without any real drive for the footage, setpeices to rally around, or substantial new gimmicks to showoff (no, the hookshot they stole for 'Ocarina of Time' doesn't count as 'new') it all made for a comparatively stale show compared against the chaotic action of 'Ratchet and Clanks' world hopping reveal footage. But those who were really invested found something further to gripe on.

Perhaps you've already seen the pictures doing the rounds, specifically the one of the Covenant brute's close up on his nonplussed face as he gets whacked in the face by a Spartan. This brute was dubbed Craig by the internet, and his low quality expression-less face has become the poster child of Halo Infinite whether the devs wanted that or not. (I'm going on a limb and assuming that they didn't. Wouldn't really make sense if they did.) It's a real kick in the nuts, I'll admit, for such an overly controlled marketing cycle to be completely derailed by one bad frame the second they decide to be more open, but it's indicative of a problem that ran throughout all the 'good' shots of this gameplay too; the game just doesn't look that good.

Let me be clear, I'm not just talking about a graphical perspective, although many have claimed that game doesn't shine in that regard either, I'm talking about pure creativity and exploring the unexplored. The footage we saw took place in the classic vista of the Halo ring, which was awe-inspiring back in the days of the original Halo but now seems somewhat sleepy and dull. It's lacks the dynamic range that I experienced throughout my playthrough of Reach, from the alien farmlands to the nightime raids. I'm sure the full game will be more exciting, it has to be, but perhaps if those more lively gameplay moments weren't ready to be shown than neither was this trailer. (But that's just my two cents.)

So what was the consequence of this wide spread disinterest for the new Halo? Well, much like one would expect, it was a bit of panic and, I'd imagine, some relief. This game was initially being propped up in the spot of becoming a launch title for the Series X, something to win over day-one consumers. Yet that's no longer the case as it's apparent the game won't be able to dazzle nearly as much as the company wants it to with that current schedule, thus the title has been pushed back giving 343 some room but leaving Microsoft in a bit of a pickle. What launch title do they have to replace it? The answer: seemingly nothing. I'm being serious, I can't find a single headliner that's going to land by this December and that is worrying. We all know that the worst times for a new console are those opening few weeks of no games, but the headliners are supposed to cushion that wasteland. Nintendo Switch broke that trend with arguably one of the best initial lineups of all time, but Microsoft look eager to pick up the slack with an impending disaster of a launch. 343 have really left them in the lurch this time, huh?

But at the end of the day, the state of the Series X launch it moot. I could care less what happens to the multibillionaire company's new hardware launch, and I'm sure that most people out there are similarly more invested in making sure that Master Chiefs' triumphant return is as good as it can be. (Especially after that widely criticised mess which was Halo 5 Guardians.) If the team need another 6 months to iron things out, then I say let them, what's the harm? Does this mean that Halo will become a game that I sign up to? No, but then I don't think anything would endear me to this FPS series short of a 10/10 must buy game, and I just don't think Halo has the steam to reach those heights anymore. For what it's worth, I didn't think Infinite's gameplay looked terrible, just boring, so perhaps there's hope for this game come launch. Whether the Internet which condemned it will ever come around to liking it, however, is another matter entirely...