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Azzanation 6 days ago
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LegitHyperbole said:
Pemalite said:

Halo: Reach was probably the last super good Halo FPS title.

Halo Wars was a good RTS for a console game... And Spartan Assault was a different take as well.

Halo 4 was a technical showpiece for the Xbox 360 console and gave the Xbox 360 a good send off... But it's Multiplayer and Story left much to be desired, I did like the inclusion of the Prometheans to mix up the flood/covenant stuff that we had experienced already for years.

Chrkeller said:

343 is underrated IMO. I really enjoyed Reach, 4 and Infinite. Perhaps I am remembering wrong, but they were 343 games, no?

Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST and Reach was made by Bungie.
Halo 4, 5 and Infinite were made by 343i.
Halo Wars was made by Ensemble Studios. (One of the best RTS developers... Microsoft closed them.)
Halo Wars 2 was made Creative Assembly.
Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike was made by Vanguard Games... With Spartan Strike being the only Halo game never to release on an Xbox console.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary original game code made by Bungie, remaster done by Saber.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection gets tricky... As Saber Interactive did the remaster of Halo 2 with Blur Studios doing the cut-scenes which was incredible, Saber Also did the original Combat Evolved Anniversary Remaster...

343i work involved the combining of all the titles into a single package which ended up being a logistical nightmare, resulting in an absolute unplayable, buggy, terrible mess... Requiring a complete top to bottom rebuild of the set... Microsoft also issued an apology and a free copy of ODST, 1 month of free Xbox Live.

Without a doubt... Bungie made the best Halo FPS games, all of 343i games have fallen short.
Spartan Assault and Spartan Strike were good, albeit short low-budget romps... And Halo Wars 1+2 is a basic, simple, bare-bones, shallow RTS, but has it's charm if you can get around the lack of online population and support.

Here is the kicker... Did you know you can still connect the Original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and play the original Halo 1+2 over LAN via backwards compatibility on all the consoles still?

I do it with my consoles on the odd occasion... But I also have a ton of PC's so it's easier just to fire those up instead.

LegitHyperbole said:

Nah, We're never getting those days back again. Even if the people at 343 magically raised their talent levels to that of bungie they don't seem to know what a Halo player wants. Best bet for them to make a good Halo game is to remake Combat Evolved and or for a MP game remake all the original trilogy maps and put them in one package. I'd buy a series S for the latter. 

I think that's part of the issue... People are expecting 343i to be like Bungie.
They aren't Bungie and never will be... But 343i also needs to realize this and lean on it's own strengths rather than just trying to stick to a formula or continuously make the same mistakes. (I.E. Lack of Content and expected features with Halo 5 and Infinite on launch.)

One advantage of having their own in-house engine was that they could engineer the engine to the consoles strengths and weaknesses... I.E. Halo 3 used the Tessellation unit (Something Sony didn't have until the PS4) to make Tessellated water effects.
But they also pushed a ton of Alpha Effects which the Xbox 360's insane bandwidth was really amazing at handling.

And Halo 4 they leveraged the extremely flexible shaders on Xbox 360 to implement subsurface scattering on skin to give a very realistic effect... Which ironically is ray tracing.

What did Halo 5 and Infinite do that wowed people to want to buy an Xbox console? It wasn't class-leading graphics, Halo 5 was a terrible looking game and it didn't even have 60fps animations, it was built as a 30fps game.
And Infinite was ridiculed heavily for it's flat texturing and lighting, which forced a delay in it's release.

Technology matters, I just hope that a shift to UE5 isn't going to make the games feel "samey" to all the other UE5 games.

Exactly. They never will be bungie and they'll never capture that lightning in the bottle that bungie has. Wether people are expecting it or not, they just don't have it in them. And graphics performance aren't the problem, it's the core gameplay and how they design the games. Pretty sure that fan base wants a semi linear game with little fluff but one that has core gameplay as addicting and feels as good as Destiny 2 and well designed MP maps to be able to use the perfect fps gameplay against other people. That's it, there's no more to the equation and 343 can't seem to do that. 

Gameplay is not the issue with Halo, 343i nailed the Bungie titles on Gameplay. Once you play Infinite, it's hard going back to older titles.

It's the direction of the story and the lack of content which has hurt the new games. The Story will always be a challenge since Bungie told the best parts. As for content, we now know the Engine was the issue. 

All they need to do is write an epic story, provide the gameplay they have been offering and fill it with content.

That's when we will have an amazing Halo game. Halo Studios seems to be addressing these issues, hence the changes.

Last edited by Azzanation - 6 days ago