Right up until 343 Industries released the first image of Halo 4, I was very positive about the new developer. Many lamented Bungie’s abandonment of the series, but at the end of the day, games are developed by people, not studios, and the heavyweights largely followed Microsoft where a wide-open purse awaited.
But… Halo 4 is one of my biggest disappointments ever. It’s by no means a bad game, and a lot of it was downright great (game controls were better than Bungie’s, Forge was superior, and the graphics were on a whole other level) – but I gave max ratings to most of Bungie’s Halo games and that’s ratings I think it stands. Halo: Reach in particular I think I would rank as the world’s best game of all time.
In light of that, the seventh I would give Halo 4 a big step down, mostly it felt like a sci-fi version of Call of Duty. Not wrong, but I want Halo. But after that, it seemed like 343 Industries would listen to the fans. And sure, Halo 5: Guardians has probably the best multiplayer the series has ever had. There have been endless hours together with friends, colleagues, old colleagues, readers and my eternal weapon bearer; cousin ZåRK.
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But… that doesn’t mean it was all peace and joy. 343 Industries understood that we didn’t want to play as Master Chief anymore, but that we dreamed of a brand new Spartan that we had never seen before, who took off his helmet and showed his face in time and time and looked like a Power Ranger. Also, they were convinced that local multiplayer was something we absolutely did not want.
The criticism was massive and the second Halo game with serious flaws was a fact. But for Halo Infinite, the third time was valid and now everything was going to be fixed. Local multiplayer was among the first to be promised. We all have the story fresh in our minds since it was released just over a year ago, but it ended up being heavily delayed after a half-baked demo, countless features missing (including local multiplayer), multiplayer between PC and console was something everyone had to endure and that support for multiplayer completely died out after launch.
Microsoft has been incredibly patient with the studio (who were also involved in the lousy Halo series at Paramount+) which probably cost a lot of money over the years, without delivering what they should be doing. But now patience seems to have run out. During Microsoft’s big announced layoffs of 10,000 people, 343 Industries seems to have pulled a heavy load. Up to 60 people are reported to have been allowed to go, which includes several heavyweights. This corresponds to 12% of the workforce.
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It has been talked about for a long time that several other studios (especially Certain Affinity are often mentioned) are working on content for Halo Infinite, and sources also say that the developer is in the process of abandoning its graphics engine Slipspace Engine in favor of Unreal Engine 5. This reasonably insane graphics engine may thus only be used for a single game before being abandoned, if the information is correct. For my own part, I actually think there is something in them. The rumors that say that Halo Infinite expansions of various kinds will be built with Unreal Engine 5, I don’t care much for, mixing graphics engines is a recipe for disaster, but in the future I think it’s Epic’s technology that applies.
Even though Halo is still a huge game series and the hope of a new, really good game in the series still keeps millions of gamers flocking to day one to keep up with the Master Chief. But let’s be honest too, the series isn’t as big as it once was, and I think that’s what Microsoft has now landed in. The Halo games don’t have to be these huge giant projects and the vast majority of people probably dream of a regular Halo adventure with fairly classic multiplayer. If you want to do something more with the latter, it could advantageously be its own title, just like Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST where the latter added Horde-based battles with Firefight. The idea that Halo has to be a living platform and completely huge project, I think is really wrong to a large extent.
While some blame certainly lies with both Microsoft and the Xbox team, there’s no getting away from the fact that 343 Industries has had over 15 years to manage the Halo legacy, something they haven’t quite managed as well as fans had hoped. This, while Bungie – which was also a Microsoft studio – on the other hand, succeeded terribly well with five games in a row. It’s too sad that people are losing their jobs and I really hope that everything works out for those affected as well as possible, but I think it’s time for a lot of restructuring in the management of this studio.
Halo is definitely part of the future of Xbox and you can’t develop games based on the wishes of the fans. But you can’t end up too far away either. Being able to play Halo co-op and drive the Warthog carelessly together with a pal on the same couch is part of the series’ DNA. That 343 Industries removed this and basically scrapped the Master Chief in Halo 5: Guardians and added Quick Time Events and completely useless new enemies in Halo 4, combined with the Halo Infinite problems, shows that they didn’t really have their ear to the ground very well . And this is what led to the layoffs we are seeing now.
Hopefully, a leaner developer with a new graphics engine (which also allows for better collaboration with The Coalition) and actually slightly lower ambitions might be just what the series needs. Most of the people leaving 343 Industries are said to be from the campaign part of Halo Infinite, something I interpret as we can forget more story in addition to possibly one already started. But after that it stops and I also don’t think this will be the platform for the series for a long time to come as it was supposed to be. A painful patch to pull off, but in the end I think it’s for the better.
