Yeah...sorry, can't really agree.
Halo Infinite was meant to be a clean slate. That a clean slate was required at all after Halo 5 ended on a cliffhanger is an inditement (again, I liked Halo 5, most people didn't, hence Infinite soft rebooted). That Halo Infinite has no apparent plans to continue its story (which ends on a "to be continued") is another inditement. Even if the people at 343 are the best developers since energy sword-sliced bread, to say Halo Infinite's in a "decent and healthy place" or "the future of Halo is quite bright indeed?" That's a big ask.
Halo Infinite might be in a great position in terms of multiplayer (I dunno, haven't played it for awhile, I certainly enjoyed the multiplayer), and no doubt there's a lot of people who play Infinite just for multiplayer (since the multiplaer portion is F2P), but I can't call Halo in a bright spot when its narrative has floundered, when it's arguably been floundering for a long time, and when there's no apparent plans to do anything with it. At least for me, you can't cut off the entire campaign/story/lore segment of Halo, call it a day, and expect me to be satisfied, even if the multiplayer might be excellent.
Yes, I should have qualified my statement with "the
multiplayer is in a decent and healthy place". The campaign is a whole other can of worms.
I too definitely have my questions regarding the future of the story. Namely that the voice cast is frankly getting quite old (Steve Downes is 73) and they don't seem to be making much (public) progress regarding whatever is the next chapter. Supposedly we were going to be getting some campaign DLC at some point, but apparently the campaign team was gutted at the beginning of the year alongside 10,000 other Microsoft layoffs, so that seems increasingly unlikely. And whatever multiplayer narrative that they were constructing was cut after season 3.
Im assuming that means we will only be getting more story content when the next game launches, but we still aren't sure if the "10 years of Halo Infinite" thing is still the plan.
So assuming that we will be waiting for the next Halo game for any more story content, we have no idea when that will be coming (especially with Halo's recently quite drawn-out development cycle), and I wouldn't be surprised if that ends up being the final game with our current voice cast, which definitely leaves the direction of the story from then on in question, unless we entertain the idea of recasting The Master Chief (unless the character were to die or otherwise retire).
But no, I do not envy the story team. They have inherited a franchise in turmoil, and I am pretty eager to have them settle on a single plot line and actually meaningfully build it up and conclude it. It has definitely been a while since we last had that.
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Ultimately I guess my overall viewpoint when it comes to Halo is that I am more hopeful of the direction of the franchise now, than I was back when Halo 5 launched, or back when Halo Infinite launched. No, I have no idea what they are planning on doing, and I obviously don't have all of the answers, but at the very least I am no longer actively questioning the competence of the studio, but more so curious as to how they are going to pick up the pieces.
