Halo 5 & Halo Infinite. Turns out, Halo was the Halo killer all along.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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I'd add Halo 4 to that list. I think people just lost interest in the series over time in favor of new ones that have popped up.
I didn't really like the story in 4, 5 or infinite all that much. I honestly don't like most of the multiplayer maps in the newer games either. I don't think the new games are terrible but ever since Bungie left they haven't been as good either. The new games don't have the same charm to them. Like Halo 2 seeing the scarab for the first time, or the different locales on Halo you'd travel to in order to unravel the mystery of the ring. In infinite you go into a bunch of nondescript towers as Cortana speaks gibberish and the brute guy keeps monologuing at you repeatedly. It was just obnoxious.
I think this is always the case with large IPs. It's never one game or community that kills them. They're always their own worst enemy.
If you want to get really specific, Halo 5 was the Halo Killer. 343 and Microsoft ruined Halo, no other game did it. People wanted Halo to be good so badly. They had 3 tries, and their only successful release was a RE release of Bungie games with the MCC lol.
Halo 4 wasn't awful but left a sour taste with fans. But there was goodwill left, and we were waiting Halo 5 to be that redemptive title. That never happened.
If you want to assign a specific external game as the Halo Killer, then it is Destiny.
Even with all of its server issues, it is the only successful MMO FPS and does PvE better than every game I've played not named Final Fantasy XIV.
Further, it has the best gunplay outside of Call of Duty, is the 2nd most popular FPS on the market right now, fills the scifi FPS niche that Halo dominated, and is made by the same devs that made Halo.
343 did a bang-up job at murdering their golden goose in the pursuit of a mythical "broader audience" that they've referred to many times. In Halo 4, they doubled-down on the loadout systems, added in COD-style perks and ordinance drops, and drastically changed the art direction and tone of the game (and don't even get me started on the story). Halo 5 was much of the same, this time opting to chase the advanced movement trend that was all the rage in the mid-2010s, crazy MTX lootboxes, and a somehow even worse artstyle/story.
Even though the raw gameplay as Infinite was mostly a return to form, 343 again scuttled their own ship with their abysmally pathetic imitation of a Fortnite-styled live service/F2P game. 6-9 month seasons. No rank/career progression. Exorbitant shops prices and locked-down customization. Drip-fed additions of content. Staples of the franchise that are STILL not in the game after 18 months.
It's funny that you mention MCC as 343's best game, though, since I'd argue that was their worst by far. Sure, MCC is pretty good now, but the game was literally unplayable for YEARS for many people - not "oh I'm lagging a bit" sort of unplayable, I mean game-crashing, no multiplayer loading, unable to log-in type issues that only were resolved beginning in 2019 when they brought the game to PC (and even that had a massive slew of issues).
Anyways, I'm rambling at this point. I enjoy playing Infinite quite a bit and think it's 343's most faithful effort, but it's still plauged with issues. 343's endless pursuit over the past decade to attain a broader audience for Halo has effectively killed the franchise in popular opinion - and the ironic thing is that 343 never realized that Halo fans already were the broader audience to begin with.
I respect you for sticking with the franchise. MCC was rough around the edges because of 343 implementation issues, but I had a lot of fun with friends playing through the classic gameplay that had been absent.
All 343 had to do was just ... keep doing what Bungie did. Like Nintendo doesn't drastically alter what 3D Mario games play like. Apple doesn't drastically alter the iPhone each year. Just because you didn't massively change the formula doesn't always mean you're lazy, it often means you've identified a great product and have refined it. Some times you refine it more than other times. And that's okay.
They just wanted so badly to make Halo their own game. And by that point, it simply was not possible. Halo was too massive an IP.
The inexorable march of greed, my friend 😞😞😞
I would argue that Fortnite deserves the title of Halo Killer, because Fortnite popularized the F2P monetization model that all multiplayer shooters follow nowadays, which 343 failed horribly at implementing. If we still lived in a pre-Fortnite world where Halo Infinite didn't have to follow the "F2P with a battle pass" approach, then it might not have failed so badly.
I think battle royale in general was the halo killer.
Both because Fortnite and Apex Legends have I think occupied the attention of Halo's traditional playerbase and age range, and because the Halo dev team spent some time chasing the battle royale format and wasted time and energy on that during infinite's development, IIRC.
I'm not sure if another game killed Halo so much as it imploded on itself, sadly. Maybe whatever game made the open world blueprint popular? But honestly, Guardians wasn't great either and it wasn't open world.
I think it's more the culture of gaming now a days than anything. Everyone likes the free to play mulitplayer shit, or did and companies won't let it go. A solid campaign goes to the wayside when they have to concentrate on the multiplayer to rake in the $$$. Halo had the best of both worlds, and now it has nothing, it really lost it's spark.
That said I still enjoyed Guardians more than Infinite, just needed more Chief. Infinite went a little too off the Halo rails.
But I guess that's how most things end up in the end. Hold onto the great memories.
Launching Infinite with no forge, poor support, slow updates and 343 consistently under delivering is what "killed" Halo.
Halo Infinite.
The game was rigged from the start.
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