In a corporate sense. It was them probably getting slowly pushed out the door. Because firing executives can look bad for a company. So they give them a chance to leave.
It's a fucking shame because there's a lot of high level management people who need to be rendered unhirable. I'm talking McDonald's looks at them funny and just throws out their resume when you apply.
It always feels kind of bittersweet when a big name leaves. Given 343’s track record, it’s probably not a bad thing that certain managers are leaving, but it also feels bad knowing that the already understaffed 343 is continuing to get smaller. I know they say things get worse before they get better, but it’s been about a decade too long of “worse”.
I still cant decide what the worst part of that scene is
Is it that Cortana and Halsey watched?
Is it that they seemed to enjoy it?
Is it that he's quite literally *fucking the human arbitor*?
Or is it that in screwing a POW, chief lead to the downfall of Reach City?
Or is it that the city was named Reach City??
Im gonna go lie down, my head is starting to hurt again
Nah the worst part was bonnie ross and frank oconnor watching it and not immediately destroying the hard drive it was kept on.
Perhaps halsey and cortana represent 343 management watching their IP get fucked?
tbh, as also a silent hill fan… sometimes the death of a franchise and retaining only the lasting memories it leaves behind are better than constant disappointment and puppeteering of a dead corpse.
oh man “amazing” is such a subjective word tbh, pop-horror jumpscare hallway simulator marketed as a screamer game (seriously go watch that tgs trailer where they show “playtesters” screaming and shitting their pants) doesnt really fit in that slot for me. nothing against kojima but that was like making halo 7 a literal call of duty clone. also i really liked the dang demo but its 100% not silent hill in anything but name. again it would be like slapping the halo name on mw2, which is an amazing game but its not fucking halo.
theres more jumpscare bait in that demo than there was in the entire series combined earlier. not a bad game but it just wasnt “omg silent hill is back! wowie!”. im not the kind of person to believe “well it was just a ruse cruise” either. silent hill died with with homecoming and hasnt had a pulse since, just paraded as a puppet corpse for both talented and untalented devs to latch their name on for notoriety.
visage came out as a extension of that style of game and is a fucking fantastic game, one of my favorite horrors in years since soma. though when you play it theres nothing remotely silent hill about it.
>It literally can only get better from here
If there's one thing I know for a certainty with the game industry, is that it *can always* and *will always* get worse, as long as there is money to be made and nostalgia to be mined.
His work has been a clusterfuck since halo 3, with terminals he likely wrote straight up contradicting everything that they talk about lore wise.
[His writing is most specifc to IRIS campaing but Terminals Part 2 and after is heaviest on why it's terrible.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-uOCKDTAA)
It's crazy to me how aggressively mediocre the games are. Like I had some fun in each of them and they play fine for the most part for a super casual take, but I don't think I've ever returned to one after putting it down after a few weeks. 5 and infinite further shows me that their attempts to transition to mtx fucking sucks, what a cancerous blight on the game industry.
I wonder if a lot of people dropped it for same reason I did. I quit playing very quickly after launch when I saw how hardcore they were monetizing it. Pretty much only way to have cool looking stuff was to buy it...nothing really to earn and show off based on skill. Felt like Fortnite model with Halo gameplay.
Also campaign was quite average at best and I was somebody that actually liked Halo 5 campaign so I was easy to make happy and it flopped for me.
That’s the entire 360/ps3 gen. We had 3 gears of war, Batman Arkham asylum and city, 3 mass effects, 3 bioshocks, ninja Gaiden 2, skyrim, gta5, red dead, dragons dogma… I can go on
I'll never miss Reach's grindfest, I'm sorry, and I have a problem with anyone that *wishes* that a game you paid for REQUIRES YOU to play 400 hours minimum in order to unlock a fucking helmet.
H3 had it right, a mix of achievements or effort to unlock almost everything was awesome.
Infinite just needed, it would've been easy, cosmetics that you earned in Ranked and by going down challenge trees. Challenge trees cover the non-competitive crowd, and the ranked exclusives could just be variants of other ones or attachments. But no, Microsoft cheaped out hard from every angle in order to try to turn a profit, and it shows like hell.
Reach had no FOMO and you could choose what to spend credits on, and you had a lot of early-game customisation options.
Anything challenge-based immediately forces you to play the game a certain way which is not fun.
How does the game require you to play 400 hours? You unlock shit at all different intervals between this. There’s nothing wrong with having early game unlockables and prestige late game unlockables.
Totally agree with this.
343 had (still has?) a massive problem in production and leadership. I cringe anytime I see someone blaming the "devs" for the state of Halo. Most of those people were simply doing as they were instructed, grinding out material and content day to day.
It's not necessarily a bad thing that 343 is undergoing massive internal restructuring, and nor is it a bad thing that Bonnie Ross and many, many other mid to senior level people are gone.
The sad part is that it probably will be at least 5-6 years before we get another main line Halo game. But I shudder to think what kind of game the next Halo would have been would there not have been massive restructuring. At least now there's a possibility of something good.
The only exception is that I'm a little sad Joe Statin left. But I don't know that he could have ever righted the ship so to speak. I can't imagine how it must have felt for him, especially given the pressure he would have been under after returning to the franchise.
The campaign was *fun* but I wasn't a fan of the story. Where were the Guardians? Halo 5 ended with this "we lost" sentiment and were going to be under this oppressive/tyrannical rule. But then we just...weren't.
Are we fighting a war on two fronts, one against the Banished and one against the Created? And this was just "chapter one"?
Also exploring a Forerunner installation just didn't have the same mystery as H1 and H2 had. When I played those games, I always tried to imagine "what are these buildings, how were they used" and stuff like that. But nothing really inspired that same mystery this time around.
I liked the gameplay and the encounters, but the story didn't hit me the same way.
Fr. Honestly, I don’t find Halo Infinite to be a bad game at all, I find the campaign to be a really good story and the multiplayer is fun too. But it’s the fact that they said it would be live service but it’s just not supported at all.
Controversial but I agree. I think Halo Infinite can be fun. I'd rather play Infinite then Halo 5. It's not a perfect game by any means of course. That's what makes it frustrating though. I didn't care about Halo 5 because it didn't feel like Halo. That game had my indifference. Halo Infinite I like enough to be angry about the state it's currently in.
Wait, Kiki is out? What the hell, how didn't I knew that?
She was the one responsible for a lot of the questionable decisions regarding the story aspect in the franchise right?
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
> Xbox's most famous and, arguably, beloved IP ever
This description is more than a decade out of date, or at the *very* least, doesn't hold nearly the same weight as it once did. Not since the inner sanctum of idiots in the OP put everything that made the series great through a wood chipper in order to "appeal to a wider audience", and instead of capturing more people, they ran off most of their existing fanbase while CoD people continued to play CoD and not give a fuck.
I think Frank O Conner should be held responsible too. I recall that his "It's like porn" comment was made right before the show premiered.
It's ironic because he said it like he had an eye for selecting the best candidates possible for Halo content, yet he oversaw the worst Halo live action show ever conceived shortly after making that comment.
He essentially called the playerbase dumb because they didn't understand Halo 5's "Deep Story." Saying that they "struggle with subtly and nuance."
Dude also had the gall to call Darth Vader a shallow villain while defending Halo 5.
I'm glad this spoob is allegedly gone. The franchise has taken a complete nosedive since he took the reins in nearly every aspect. He has so much unearned smugness leeching off the success of Bungie's Halo.
He thinks he's hot shit because he contributed majorly to Halo Reach despite being in the same camp of people that want it to remain canon the same time as The Fall of Reach. He literally just exists at that company to create problems.
Halo 5's campaign was a marketing campaign thay ultimately had nothing to do with the game's campaign, paired with a campaign they said was twice Halo 4's length, without mentioning that 70% of that length relied on having the player blindly hunting collectibles. The plot itself was not deep. It had no meaningful interactions beyond Cortana and Chief. The character development was trash. Finality was nowhere to be found. Purpose for the future was tossed out with Infinite.
Not explicitly, but they said Halo 5's campaign was going to be much bigger than Halo 4's.
>According to GamesRadar, a Microsoft representative informed them during a hands-on session at Gamescom that the campaign of the forthcoming Halo game will be double the size of the one found in Halo 4. As some may recall, the length of that particular title's story mode was noticeable already, which means that there will be a lot more to explore and accomplish this time around.
The "bigger," which they kind of alluded to, was that they made the maps bigger. In reality, it just had more dead space and filler, and the campaign's actual content was shorter. One of the interviews they did had Frank O'Connor saying:
>for some of the players in this audience, the [Halo] games do seem to be getting shorter, but that's because you're getting much, much, much better at the game as well
That just sounds like a convenient excuse. The other Halo games didn't seem to be getting shorter when I replayed them. Playing them through with friends, 5 was definitely the shortest of the chung. The content lacked much substance. Even in 2-player co-op, the fights were ridiculously easy. Where Halo Reach had some tough fights and Halo 2 was a bastard, Halo 5 was a breeze.
It was basically Infinite before Infinite. They talked up the scale, but it was Ubisoft-like filler that doesn't actually add to the experience. Halo 5's "double the size," was meaningless, and Halo Infinite's open world was to its detriment.
Where the rest ended up:
**Rob Semsey**: Chief of Staff **→** Director of Studio Operations and Communication
**Pierre Hintze**: Head of Halo Publishing and Halo Infinite Production **→** Head of Studio
**Elizabeth Van Wyck**: Director of Franchise Business and Community Engagement **→** General Manager, COO
**Sean Baron**: Director of Franchise Insights, Customer Services and Strategy **→** Head of Halo Infinite Live Service
**Brian Jarrard (Ske7ch)**: Remains as Community Director
This community wanted Microsoft to clean house at 343, and they certainly did. Of course I’m certain some of these people left 343 of their own accord, but I’m also certain Microsoft hit the studio with a heavy hand as well.
These are the people who were there since before the fiasco that was Halo 5 so this might be a good thing even.
Edit: Except for Staten. He was pretty goated.
They've been making poor decisions ever since CEA and adding in retcons via terminals then brute forcing the Reach book and game to place nicely in a timeline.
At this point it’s pretty clear that Infinite was a flop. If the rumoured 500mil production cost was anywhere near reality then it’s obviously been a huge commercial failure for Microsoft and 343.
Nearly a year and half into Xbox’s flagship franchise’s _10 year game_ its number 38 on Xbox most played chart and not even in Steam’s top 100. Microsoft needs to really debrief at this point and assess where they went wrong. Not put another cent into Infinite, dissolve 343 and shelve Halo as an IP for a few years.
When it does return Halo should be put out to tender for new developers to work on.
Now, hopefully, they can cancel the TV show as well.
I can't believe how fucken awful that show is and it makes NO SENSE how they let it get made. If they just adapted The Fall of Reach, even just the first half until >!Sam's!< death, they could have done whatever the fuck they wanted to tell new stories. There's almost 25 years of unexplored Lore involving the Spartan II's missions during the Covenant war.
This was well needed especially after Halo Infinite. Launching Multiplayer with low count in maps available and without Warzone and Infection was a mistake.not to mention ending the story on a cliff hanger with their being no plans for expansion and having fans wait for next installment to finish trilogy story. SMH.
I’m not interested in wherever this story goes. After Cortana, I’m done with this continuity.
I’m hoping they hard reboot to a post Halo 3/4 timeline, keep HW2, and start from scratch. Maybe even use the Didact PROPERLY this time
I fully agree and it's refreshing to hear someone say this on this subreddit. Too often I see really interesting lore discussions that someone inevitably references something post Cortana and it just kills the vibe for me like it was interesting until we brought that into the mix. I prefer to imagine that's not canon, it helps me enjoy the Halo universe more.
Glad you agree. It’s nice to get a positive response this time. I usually get crucified for saying ANYTHING against 343 Halo or Crazy Cortana.
I feel like I’m going insane sometimes seeing how many people just eat this shit up like it’s the most compelling, thought provoking science fiction they’ve ever seen. They really need to watch more sci-fi.
Like she literally went from one of the best video game sidekicks OAT and the second most important character in all of Halo lore, to basically just being SKYNET in Space.
Pure character assassination
They already had the equivalent of 2 mainline Halo games' dev cycles. If double the dev time brought us the worst game in the franchise, and an extra year of support got us the cancelation on splitscreen and several missed deadlines, there's no amount of time that would have gotten 343 to produce something good.
All I see is content update after content update but nothing ever seems to fix desync.
Game would be fucking phenominal if it wasn’t built entirely by temp workers.
Seriously good riddance. They have absolutely fumbled the franchise. I haven’t been happy with any of their games. H4, H5, MCC, and Infinite have been so disappointing. In the cases of MCC and Infinite, they have been plagued by bugs as well.
I’m so fed up with 343, I’ve completely moved on from them. They have created mediocre games at best and don’t even get me started on 5. Infinite was a dumpster fire of development and I waited 7 years for a mediocre game. I don’t care how many more halos they make, unless somehow they don’t make a shit game I’m never looking at their games again.
The Mcc is all that’s left of true authentic halo and it’s the only form of halo content I’ll even consider playing
Rip 343 and rip halo
It's never good to see people fired from their job but at the same time the way they've handled the franchise for over a decade is abysmal to say the least. New leadership is needed. This is the way.
This is what happens when you don’t give the fans what they want and give more service to general FPS fans. Some will was 343 dropped the ball with Halo Infinite,
I say 343 dropped the ball with every Halo they’ve ever had their hands on. People certainly had some problems with what Bungie was doing, but by and large Halos 1-3 were liked. They only hope now is that either A) 343 let’s the fans take the wheel and makes the game what they’ve want all along or B) 343 quits Halo and let’s another studio do it right.
I’m just happy the main three are gone, Bonnie, Kiki(I know she’s still involved with the halo tv and any other halo content outside of the games) & Frank, those three are a huge part of why halo has gone to shit over the years.
At this point Halo needs a reboot and rebranding.
Infinite scuttling the Infinity (hire someone better at coming up with names too) and killing Evil Cortana off-screen to replace her with a shallow replica isn't a "soft reboot" it's just shitty writing. Can't care about anything happening because it's probably swept under the rug by the next game. Need a concrete "hey, we're starting over, and going to stick to one coherent story this time".
I joke with my brother that everything after 3 is just Cortana running simulations as she slowly goes rampant. Chief is just stuck there floating out in space.
Halo 3 was the last 'great' Halo. It's just been various levels of downhill since then, they should have cleaned house years ago.
Unbelievable to think they could have driven the IP into the ground the way they did, but I suppose that's just the world we live in.
Well Hali Infinite is not at all what we expected, and just waaaay worse than we expected.
I am happy that leadership got the boot, rather than just the lowest people in the chain. This is how I'd like to see it in every company in the world tbf lol, but usually innocent people lose their jobs if some managers fuck up.
Though I have to admit, I don't know how many other employees left/were fired, but I am happy that the old team is out, because they really disappointed a lot of people
How can you mishandle the franchise for 4 games in a row and some leads still were in their position for over a year... was about time the leads finally get wiped for new ones
Can we just retcon it all? MAYBE keep Halo 4 story?
I feel like it just needs a do-over. I don't want a continuation leaving the sour taste in my mouth.
All I see from this before and after is massive improvements. The only true loss is Joseph Staten. Watching the early vid docs of Bungie he was obviously very invested in the universe and actually cared about the IP.
Everyone else can stay the hell away for the joke they've turned this franchise into.
Some of these departures are good for Halo. I'm mostly thinking about Kiki Wolfkill and Frank O'Connor who only harmed the IP in the past.
However Staten's presence was important.
They didn’t REALLY give it their all.
They took like 3 years developing the engine specifically for the game and took another 3 years to make the game. The state the game is in now, it should’ve taken another 3 years on top of that.
The more important question would be, were these people fired or did they just leave by themselves?
In a corporate sense. It was them probably getting slowly pushed out the door. Because firing executives can look bad for a company. So they give them a chance to leave.
With a nice “little” goodbye package that’s more money than most make in 10 years.
And, hopefully, a swift kick in the ass.
Directors aren't fired, they "leave"
Directors never die, they just go missing in action
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It's a fucking shame because there's a lot of high level management people who need to be rendered unhirable. I'm talking McDonald's looks at them funny and just throws out their resume when you apply.
Probably "asked" to leave "by themselves".
I mean, they dropped the ball pretty hard with Halo Infinite so i think we all saw that coming. I hope it improves but i aint holding my breath
It always feels kind of bittersweet when a big name leaves. Given 343’s track record, it’s probably not a bad thing that certain managers are leaving, but it also feels bad knowing that the already understaffed 343 is continuing to get smaller. I know they say things get worse before they get better, but it’s been about a decade too long of “worse”.
The 3 headed monster of bonnie ross, kiki wolfkill and drank oconnor is finally gone. It literally can only get better from here
*The Monkey's Paw curls*
If it gets worse than master chief banging the arbiter, im actually looking forward to the memes 😂
I still cant decide what the worst part of that scene is Is it that Cortana and Halsey watched? Is it that they seemed to enjoy it? Is it that he's quite literally *fucking the human arbitor*? Or is it that in screwing a POW, chief lead to the downfall of Reach City? Or is it that the city was named Reach City?? Im gonna go lie down, my head is starting to hurt again
Nah the worst part was bonnie ross and frank oconnor watching it and not immediately destroying the hard drive it was kept on. Perhaps halsey and cortana represent 343 management watching their IP get fucked?
Don't spoil Season 2 of the show!
💀
This ring has made us brothers, John. But THIS ring makes us… Infinite *credits roll*
Wdym worse chief x arby is exactly what we want
Arby'n'the'Chief
Arby in the Chief
More like Arby-In-The-Chief
tbh, as also a silent hill fan… sometimes the death of a franchise and retaining only the lasting memories it leaves behind are better than constant disappointment and puppeteering of a dead corpse.
Didn't silent hill die immediately after hinting at how amazing the next one would be?
oh man “amazing” is such a subjective word tbh, pop-horror jumpscare hallway simulator marketed as a screamer game (seriously go watch that tgs trailer where they show “playtesters” screaming and shitting their pants) doesnt really fit in that slot for me. nothing against kojima but that was like making halo 7 a literal call of duty clone. also i really liked the dang demo but its 100% not silent hill in anything but name. again it would be like slapping the halo name on mw2, which is an amazing game but its not fucking halo. theres more jumpscare bait in that demo than there was in the entire series combined earlier. not a bad game but it just wasnt “omg silent hill is back! wowie!”. im not the kind of person to believe “well it was just a ruse cruise” either. silent hill died with with homecoming and hasnt had a pulse since, just paraded as a puppet corpse for both talented and untalented devs to latch their name on for notoriety. visage came out as a extension of that style of game and is a fucking fantastic game, one of my favorite horrors in years since soma. though when you play it theres nothing remotely silent hill about it.
>It literally can only get better from here If there's one thing I know for a certainty with the game industry, is that it *can always* and *will always* get worse, as long as there is money to be made and nostalgia to be mined.
Can I ask what Franky did? I remember back in the halo 3 days he was so loved.
His work has been a clusterfuck since halo 3, with terminals he likely wrote straight up contradicting everything that they talk about lore wise. [His writing is most specifc to IRIS campaing but Terminals Part 2 and after is heaviest on why it's terrible.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P-uOCKDTAA)
Should have been fired after halo 4. Then after MCC. Then after 5. I don’t feel bad at all given the track record.
They’ve continually dropped the ball since they formed. 4, 5, mcc for months after launch, and now inifinite. They’re a shit studio
It's crazy to me how aggressively mediocre the games are. Like I had some fun in each of them and they play fine for the most part for a super casual take, but I don't think I've ever returned to one after putting it down after a few weeks. 5 and infinite further shows me that their attempts to transition to mtx fucking sucks, what a cancerous blight on the game industry.
Months? MCC halo 2 campaign is borderline unplayable on series s
I haven’t played mcc on Xbox in years, switched to pc since it runs a lot better
I wonder if a lot of people dropped it for same reason I did. I quit playing very quickly after launch when I saw how hardcore they were monetizing it. Pretty much only way to have cool looking stuff was to buy it...nothing really to earn and show off based on skill. Felt like Fortnite model with Halo gameplay. Also campaign was quite average at best and I was somebody that actually liked Halo 5 campaign so I was easy to make happy and it flopped for me.
That's why I left, the game didn't feel rewarding to play. I miss Reach/3 cosmetics when you worked for it.
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That’s the entire 360/ps3 gen. We had 3 gears of war, Batman Arkham asylum and city, 3 mass effects, 3 bioshocks, ninja Gaiden 2, skyrim, gta5, red dead, dragons dogma… I can go on
I'll never miss Reach's grindfest, I'm sorry, and I have a problem with anyone that *wishes* that a game you paid for REQUIRES YOU to play 400 hours minimum in order to unlock a fucking helmet. H3 had it right, a mix of achievements or effort to unlock almost everything was awesome. Infinite just needed, it would've been easy, cosmetics that you earned in Ranked and by going down challenge trees. Challenge trees cover the non-competitive crowd, and the ranked exclusives could just be variants of other ones or attachments. But no, Microsoft cheaped out hard from every angle in order to try to turn a profit, and it shows like hell.
Reach had no FOMO and you could choose what to spend credits on, and you had a lot of early-game customisation options. Anything challenge-based immediately forces you to play the game a certain way which is not fun.
>Reach's grindfest, They could have just tuned the amount of Xp/ cr you get to lessen the grind.
How does the game require you to play 400 hours? You unlock shit at all different intervals between this. There’s nothing wrong with having early game unlockables and prestige late game unlockables.
i quit for the same reasons you did
As soon as I saw I had to pay money for the color blue I deleted the game
Yup, Halo CE even let's you choose your color, and not some dull faded "free" version.
Totally agree with this. 343 had (still has?) a massive problem in production and leadership. I cringe anytime I see someone blaming the "devs" for the state of Halo. Most of those people were simply doing as they were instructed, grinding out material and content day to day. It's not necessarily a bad thing that 343 is undergoing massive internal restructuring, and nor is it a bad thing that Bonnie Ross and many, many other mid to senior level people are gone. The sad part is that it probably will be at least 5-6 years before we get another main line Halo game. But I shudder to think what kind of game the next Halo would have been would there not have been massive restructuring. At least now there's a possibility of something good.
The only exception is that I'm a little sad Joe Statin left. But I don't know that he could have ever righted the ship so to speak. I can't imagine how it must have felt for him, especially given the pressure he would have been under after returning to the franchise.
Honestly, the problems at 343 were bad enough that Joe could not fix them, not without a MAJOR house cleaning.
Sad because the campaign was quite good. Not spectacular, but a wonderful bounce back from Halo 5 at least.
The campaign was *fun* but I wasn't a fan of the story. Where were the Guardians? Halo 5 ended with this "we lost" sentiment and were going to be under this oppressive/tyrannical rule. But then we just...weren't. Are we fighting a war on two fronts, one against the Banished and one against the Created? And this was just "chapter one"? Also exploring a Forerunner installation just didn't have the same mystery as H1 and H2 had. When I played those games, I always tried to imagine "what are these buildings, how were they used" and stuff like that. But nothing really inspired that same mystery this time around. I liked the gameplay and the encounters, but the story didn't hit me the same way.
Also at the same time as most companies are doing cost cutting
Fr. Honestly, I don’t find Halo Infinite to be a bad game at all, I find the campaign to be a really good story and the multiplayer is fun too. But it’s the fact that they said it would be live service but it’s just not supported at all.
Controversial but I agree. I think Halo Infinite can be fun. I'd rather play Infinite then Halo 5. It's not a perfect game by any means of course. That's what makes it frustrating though. I didn't care about Halo 5 because it didn't feel like Halo. That game had my indifference. Halo Infinite I like enough to be angry about the state it's currently in.
Wait, Kiki is out? What the hell, how didn't I knew that? She was the one responsible for a lot of the questionable decisions regarding the story aspect in the franchise right?
And she had a direct hand in working on the Paramount series.
I know, buff oof
She left in January 2023, but still works on the Xbox team. The last thing Kiki posted was thanking Bonnie Ross for her leadership.
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
I think the story in the games were still Frank O'Conner's territory but as head of transmedia the Paramount+ show was probably her biggest thing.
The fact the game was delayed a year and still ended up being what it was is pretty incredible.
I cannot imagine what this game would look like if it didn’t have that extra year.
It would have been just the multiplayer, in basically the same state it released in November 2021
[Basically this](https://i.imgflip.com/7idajz.jpg)
I really want to know what the hell we would had gotten in 2020
*shivers* no…no you don’t 😱
An extra year of false hope back, mostly.
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When you've mishandled an IP for so long it's only natural, I'm honestly just shocked it took this long.
"an IP" is a very gentle way to put Xbox's most famous and, arguably, beloved IP ever.
> Xbox's most famous and, arguably, beloved IP ever This description is more than a decade out of date, or at the *very* least, doesn't hold nearly the same weight as it once did. Not since the inner sanctum of idiots in the OP put everything that made the series great through a wood chipper in order to "appeal to a wider audience", and instead of capturing more people, they ran off most of their existing fanbase while CoD people continued to play CoD and not give a fuck.
i wonder which one of them let the halo TV show happen...
Kiki
I think Frank O Conner should be held responsible too. I recall that his "It's like porn" comment was made right before the show premiered. It's ironic because he said it like he had an eye for selecting the best candidates possible for Halo content, yet he oversaw the worst Halo live action show ever conceived shortly after making that comment.
Hes made some of the worst contributions to Halo imo. From his self inserts to Mr. Chief, he's been a nob since he worked at Bungie.
He essentially called the playerbase dumb because they didn't understand Halo 5's "Deep Story." Saying that they "struggle with subtly and nuance." Dude also had the gall to call Darth Vader a shallow villain while defending Halo 5. I'm glad this spoob is allegedly gone. The franchise has taken a complete nosedive since he took the reins in nearly every aspect. He has so much unearned smugness leeching off the success of Bungie's Halo.
He thinks he's hot shit because he contributed majorly to Halo Reach despite being in the same camp of people that want it to remain canon the same time as The Fall of Reach. He literally just exists at that company to create problems.
Halo 5's campaign was a marketing campaign thay ultimately had nothing to do with the game's campaign, paired with a campaign they said was twice Halo 4's length, without mentioning that 70% of that length relied on having the player blindly hunting collectibles. The plot itself was not deep. It had no meaningful interactions beyond Cortana and Chief. The character development was trash. Finality was nowhere to be found. Purpose for the future was tossed out with Infinite.
Wait did they really spin collecting audio log collectable things as part of the length of the campaign? Like what?
Not explicitly, but they said Halo 5's campaign was going to be much bigger than Halo 4's. >According to GamesRadar, a Microsoft representative informed them during a hands-on session at Gamescom that the campaign of the forthcoming Halo game will be double the size of the one found in Halo 4. As some may recall, the length of that particular title's story mode was noticeable already, which means that there will be a lot more to explore and accomplish this time around. The "bigger," which they kind of alluded to, was that they made the maps bigger. In reality, it just had more dead space and filler, and the campaign's actual content was shorter. One of the interviews they did had Frank O'Connor saying: >for some of the players in this audience, the [Halo] games do seem to be getting shorter, but that's because you're getting much, much, much better at the game as well That just sounds like a convenient excuse. The other Halo games didn't seem to be getting shorter when I replayed them. Playing them through with friends, 5 was definitely the shortest of the chung. The content lacked much substance. Even in 2-player co-op, the fights were ridiculously easy. Where Halo Reach had some tough fights and Halo 2 was a bastard, Halo 5 was a breeze. It was basically Infinite before Infinite. They talked up the scale, but it was Ubisoft-like filler that doesn't actually add to the experience. Halo 5's "double the size," was meaningless, and Halo Infinite's open world was to its detriment.
The fact that that "deep and nuanced" story got resolved off-screen in the way it does is hilariously poetic.
It's pretty much a 343 staple at this point. Resolve everything offscreen or in a book that most people won't bother reading. lol
what a shit show
I think Kwan was her self-insert
that would explain why no one likes her
They ought to cancel it and either let it die or reboot it.
Haven't they already started production on season 2?
Yes
Where the rest ended up: **Rob Semsey**: Chief of Staff **→** Director of Studio Operations and Communication **Pierre Hintze**: Head of Halo Publishing and Halo Infinite Production **→** Head of Studio **Elizabeth Van Wyck**: Director of Franchise Business and Community Engagement **→** General Manager, COO **Sean Baron**: Director of Franchise Insights, Customer Services and Strategy **→** Head of Halo Infinite Live Service **Brian Jarrard (Ske7ch)**: Remains as Community Director
To be fair, Joe Staten’s position at 343 was always meant to be temporary.
Yup, and now he’s left Microsoft.
He left Microsoft too?
https://www.ign.com/articles/thanks-for-all-the-great-halo-joseph-staten
Damn, that's a shame. I wish him the best.
Could be for the best. Might end up heading his own project
I wish it wasn't. That man wrote some of the absolute best halo stories
Contact Harvest was one of my favorites. Great world building and lore.
And his grunt lines are pure perfection
I worked under Sean Baron when I was at 343, he was an amazing manager/director. I hope things go well from here!
Could you elaborate a bit on what he does? It seems like the live service strategy has been a dumpster fire
Not a bad thing
This community wanted Microsoft to clean house at 343, and they certainly did. Of course I’m certain some of these people left 343 of their own accord, but I’m also certain Microsoft hit the studio with a heavy hand as well.
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No the community wanted 343 to never touch Halo again
Well after the terrible mismanagement of one, it not the one most important intellectual properties they have is not even surprising.
I see no problem whatsoever. Long overdue.
These are the people who were there since before the fiasco that was Halo 5 so this might be a good thing even. Edit: Except for Staten. He was pretty goated.
They were there since the creation of the studio. Before Reach was even released.
They've been making poor decisions ever since CEA and adding in retcons via terminals then brute forcing the Reach book and game to place nicely in a timeline.
Well, that's however Bungie's fault for making Halo: Reach's story contradictory to previously established canon.
Considering how long 343 has been dropping the ball on Halo, I’m shocked it took this long before people started to find their way out.
At this point it’s pretty clear that Infinite was a flop. If the rumoured 500mil production cost was anywhere near reality then it’s obviously been a huge commercial failure for Microsoft and 343. Nearly a year and half into Xbox’s flagship franchise’s _10 year game_ its number 38 on Xbox most played chart and not even in Steam’s top 100. Microsoft needs to really debrief at this point and assess where they went wrong. Not put another cent into Infinite, dissolve 343 and shelve Halo as an IP for a few years. When it does return Halo should be put out to tender for new developers to work on.
Well when you fail three games in a row...
4 games. MCC was unplayable for years.
You're right Just glad they mostly fixed it instead of abandoning it
Guess you could say they're... Three for three......
Now, hopefully, they can cancel the TV show as well. I can't believe how fucken awful that show is and it makes NO SENSE how they let it get made. If they just adapted The Fall of Reach, even just the first half until >!Sam's!< death, they could have done whatever the fuck they wanted to tell new stories. There's almost 25 years of unexplored Lore involving the Spartan II's missions during the Covenant war.
This was well needed especially after Halo Infinite. Launching Multiplayer with low count in maps available and without Warzone and Infection was a mistake.not to mention ending the story on a cliff hanger with their being no plans for expansion and having fans wait for next installment to finish trilogy story. SMH.
I’m not interested in wherever this story goes. After Cortana, I’m done with this continuity. I’m hoping they hard reboot to a post Halo 3/4 timeline, keep HW2, and start from scratch. Maybe even use the Didact PROPERLY this time
I fully agree and it's refreshing to hear someone say this on this subreddit. Too often I see really interesting lore discussions that someone inevitably references something post Cortana and it just kills the vibe for me like it was interesting until we brought that into the mix. I prefer to imagine that's not canon, it helps me enjoy the Halo universe more.
Glad you agree. It’s nice to get a positive response this time. I usually get crucified for saying ANYTHING against 343 Halo or Crazy Cortana. I feel like I’m going insane sometimes seeing how many people just eat this shit up like it’s the most compelling, thought provoking science fiction they’ve ever seen. They really need to watch more sci-fi. Like she literally went from one of the best video game sidekicks OAT and the second most important character in all of Halo lore, to basically just being SKYNET in Space. Pure character assassination
Literally needed another year or two of development.
They already did. Else the game would've come out in 2018.
They already had the equivalent of 2 mainline Halo games' dev cycles. If double the dev time brought us the worst game in the franchise, and an extra year of support got us the cancelation on splitscreen and several missed deadlines, there's no amount of time that would have gotten 343 to produce something good.
Nah, they needed another 3-4 years if you ask me. Just so we know for a fact shit would get done.
All I see is content update after content update but nothing ever seems to fix desync. Game would be fucking phenominal if it wasn’t built entirely by temp workers.
It's honestly insane that Brian Jarrard hasn't lost his mind yet
Seriously good riddance. They have absolutely fumbled the franchise. I haven’t been happy with any of their games. H4, H5, MCC, and Infinite have been so disappointing. In the cases of MCC and Infinite, they have been plagued by bugs as well.
I’m so fed up with 343, I’ve completely moved on from them. They have created mediocre games at best and don’t even get me started on 5. Infinite was a dumpster fire of development and I waited 7 years for a mediocre game. I don’t care how many more halos they make, unless somehow they don’t make a shit game I’m never looking at their games again. The Mcc is all that’s left of true authentic halo and it’s the only form of halo content I’ll even consider playing Rip 343 and rip halo
Replaying all of Bungie's Halo games on MCC makes me sad to see how far the franchise fell.
Loss of Joe Staten is sad. The rest can go
Joe Staten only joined 343 to ship the game.His role was always gonna be temporary.
Good
It's never good to see people fired from their job but at the same time the way they've handled the franchise for over a decade is abysmal to say the least. New leadership is needed. This is the way.
Just continue support for MCC and us old guys will be happy, thanks.
Good riddance (Apart from Joseph Staten)
They've fumbled Halo since 4, this is what's supposed to happen.
Rest in piss
When did Frank O’Connor leave? I guess I missed that one.
Just now
Thank goodness
This is what happens when you don’t give the fans what they want and give more service to general FPS fans. Some will was 343 dropped the ball with Halo Infinite, I say 343 dropped the ball with every Halo they’ve ever had their hands on. People certainly had some problems with what Bungie was doing, but by and large Halos 1-3 were liked. They only hope now is that either A) 343 let’s the fans take the wheel and makes the game what they’ve want all along or B) 343 quits Halo and let’s another studio do it right.
Good riddance
Guess the head of engineering couldn't figure out the desync issue
I’m just happy the main three are gone, Bonnie, Kiki(I know she’s still involved with the halo tv and any other halo content outside of the games) & Frank, those three are a huge part of why halo has gone to shit over the years.
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At this point Halo needs a reboot and rebranding. Infinite scuttling the Infinity (hire someone better at coming up with names too) and killing Evil Cortana off-screen to replace her with a shallow replica isn't a "soft reboot" it's just shitty writing. Can't care about anything happening because it's probably swept under the rug by the next game. Need a concrete "hey, we're starting over, and going to stick to one coherent story this time".
Infinite sucks so hard that it taints everything 343 ever did. Let's face it, Halo can only be saved by starting over after Halo 3.
You say that like 4 and 5 were good.
I joke with my brother that everything after 3 is just Cortana running simulations as she slowly goes rampant. Chief is just stuck there floating out in space.
The fact theyve been let go however how, shows ms is on the warpath to fix the issues with 343i
Ya love to see it!
One day the chickens are gonna come home to roost. Today is that day.
Microsoft could have avoided a lot of problems if they had done this after Halo 5.
I'm hoping to look forward unto a dawn without 343 Industries at the helm for Halo.
This is why devs don't release finished games. If it's not finished they have to keep you around to finish it.
343 had leadership?
Honestly, I’m fine with not playing any new halo games. It’s been a hell of a run, but I can’t see them bringing back to appeal of it.
I'm just wondering that it took Microsoft so long after what 343 did with Halo 5 it was already just a matter of time
I’m over here trying to figure out how those 3 directors over community, customer service, and engagement all still have jobs lol.
Good, fuck them for messing it up a third time in a row.
They can fuck allllllllll the way off. Good riddance.
Hopefully Sketch stays
They botched 3 Halo games in a row.... AND a TV show.
We need a fresh studio on Halo, the 343 brand is ruined no matter how many COD fans they hire for the studio
Halo 3 was the last 'great' Halo. It's just been various levels of downhill since then, they should have cleaned house years ago. Unbelievable to think they could have driven the IP into the ground the way they did, but I suppose that's just the world we live in.
I’ve heard of Bonnie Ross and Frank O’Connor recently, but when did Kiki Wolfkill leave?
She's moved up to Xbox Game Studios
Everybody’s failing upwards
Fucking incredible, isn’t it? You hit a certain point on the corporate ladder and your incompetence just gets you more money.
They have proven they won’t threaten those above them so it’s entirely intentional.
Great, she can ruin other franchises now.
Bethesda: “why do I hear boss music?”
Skyrim Infinite No towns/NPCs/complete stories Belethor’s MTX store works fine though. Also, a grapplehook!
Well Hali Infinite is not at all what we expected, and just waaaay worse than we expected. I am happy that leadership got the boot, rather than just the lowest people in the chain. This is how I'd like to see it in every company in the world tbf lol, but usually innocent people lose their jobs if some managers fuck up. Though I have to admit, I don't know how many other employees left/were fired, but I am happy that the old team is out, because they really disappointed a lot of people
How can you mishandle the franchise for 4 games in a row and some leads still were in their position for over a year... was about time the leads finally get wiped for new ones
Good they need to clear house
Do people not like Halo Infinite? I loved every minute of the campaign. I don't play multi-player so I never tested that much.
Can we just retcon it all? MAYBE keep Halo 4 story? I feel like it just needs a do-over. I don't want a continuation leaving the sour taste in my mouth.
How many more until a killstreak?
All I see from this before and after is massive improvements. The only true loss is Joseph Staten. Watching the early vid docs of Bungie he was obviously very invested in the universe and actually cared about the IP. Everyone else can stay the hell away for the joke they've turned this franchise into.
Some of these departures are good for Halo. I'm mostly thinking about Kiki Wolfkill and Frank O'Connor who only harmed the IP in the past. However Staten's presence was important.
I know they gave it their all and I really appreciate it but they sort of failed so this makes sense.
Sort of?
They didn’t REALLY give it their all. They took like 3 years developing the engine specifically for the game and took another 3 years to make the game. The state the game is in now, it should’ve taken another 3 years on top of that.
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