Microsoft: We Lost Our Way With Recent Halo Games

[Torrasque]

I liked the change of focus in ODST and Reach, just like I enjoy how the books don't always revolve around Chief.
While Halsey and Sarge may be a part of the games, and you get a glimpse of their character as you play, you don't get to really care about them until you see the world through their eyes.
In a series like Halo where you are meant to care about the soldiers in the fight, it is important to do exactly that: care about the soldiers.
Chief may be a Spartan; the last and luckiest of a breed of the best soldier humanity can pump out, but he is still just a soldier. Yes, I know that he has killed prophets, destroyed carriers, slain countless flood and covenant, and basically saved the universe, but he is still just a soldier.

By looking at the Halo series through different sets of eyes, everything is seen with much greater depth than it would be if just viewed through the Chief's visor.
If anything, I'd like to play more Halo games that didn't have the Chief at all.

 

[Scrustle]

Not that I'm a huge Halo fan, I do agree to an extent. I didn't buy ODST or Reach simply because I wasn't that interested in them. I was kind of interested in Halo Reach, but the fact there was no Master Chief did put me off a bit. That and the fact Elites were no longer equals in the online modes, even if they did have better looking armour than before.

But one thing I did feel about Reach is that in bringing in a whole bunch of new Spartans and showing off their faces it kind of took away from the specialness and mystery of Spartans and the Master Chief. They made them look like yet another band of generic gun-ho commandos. The great thing about the first 3 Halo games is that it made the Master Chief in to this mythical hero of legend, and you felt like it from the way people behaved around you and the fact that you never saw his face. He remained like some kind of legendary symbol of hope, like a superhuman hero that transcended the ordinary constraints of man, but who had to give up his personal identity to become something whose purpose is for others to look up to. Master Chief felt like an important figure, and even when you were looking through his eyes you were seeing him as others did.

EDIT: That said, Arbiter has always been my favourite character. He has a great story line in Halo 2 and is by far the most interesting and deep character in any Halo game.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

So the people taking over for Bungie think the two best games in the series were missteps. Comforting.

Not that I'm a huge Halo fan, I do agree to an extent. I didn't buy ODST or Reach simply because I wasn't that interested in them. I was kind of interested in Halo Reach, but the fact there was no Master Chief did put me off a bit. That and the fact Elites were no longer equals in the online modes, even if they did have better looking armour than before.

But one thing I did feel about Reach is that in bringing in a whole bunch of new Spartans and showing off their faces it kind of took away from the specialness and mystery of Spartans and the Master Chief. They made them look like yet another band of generic gun-ho commandos. The great thing about the first 3 Halo games is that it made the Master Chief in to this mythical hero of legend, and you felt like it from the way people behaved around you and the fact that you never saw his face. He remained like some kind of legendary symbol of hope, like a superhuman hero that transcended the ordinary constraints of man, but who had to give up his personal identity to become something whose purpose is for others to look up to. Master Chief felt like an important figure, and even when you were looking through his eyes you were seeing him as others did.

EDIT: That said, Arbiter has always been my favourite character. He has a great story line in Halo 2 and is by far the most interesting and deep character in any Halo game.

You should probably play ODST and Reach. ODST wasn't about Spartans at all, so I'm not really sure what the issue there is. And they were very certainly not stealing any thunder - very much vincible and not really mythological in any way.

As for Reach, it was established for a while that there were more Spartans and the handful we see in Reach are clearly gone by the time of the main trilogy.

And what you mention about the arbiter is one of the things that made ODST and Reach so incredibly good - we got great Halo gameplay (very intelligently using squad-mate specialties to lead into some really nice themed levels without things feeling forced) with actual characters with a lot more depth.

The thing that I find so disconcerting about the announcement isn't even really that they think the best two games in the series were missteps (though that is troubling, and a little bit fucked up - as soon as Bungie leaves they claim that their last two games were basically mistakes?). The problem I have is that they're basically claiming that there is no room in the Halo series for any game that isn't about Master Chief. They didn't say "we did too much side stuff not focusing on the main character, we should do less", they said "we did side stuff not focusing on the main character, we shouldn't ever do that".

 

[RagTagBand]

No, Microsoft/Bungie, the arbitrary space marine/camera on a stick you're incidentally playing as has absolutely nothing to do with whether the games are good, or even if the story was good; Especially since Master Chief was a barely talking, characterless mobile gun platform in the games.

The only difference, and I do mean only difference, is what your support characters call you before saying "Go from A to B and kill everything on the way". Which is pretty much the entire Halo Experience in a nutshell.

What makes Halo bland and uninteresting is the gameplay, not what fleshy vehicle carries you through the gameplay.

 

[Kyle 2175]

To be honest out of playing Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach (decided just to wait for the rerelease of Combat Evolved) the only two I found to be genuinly good were ODST & Reach, the weapons felt better in both, especially Reach, the character didn't feel as powerful which was a nice change and the story telling was better than in the previous Halo games that I have played. Are Microsoft basing this entire thing on the amount of sales or something? Did ODST & Reach sell worse than Halo 3? Well, ODST probably did but that's besides the point.

What was wrong with these games that was so much better in 3? You played different characters? There was barely any difference anyway, in the games Master Chief is barely even a character, he says about 10 lines in the entire game. To me it's just like playing Gordon Freeman but with some mediocre one liners. Halo 2 was better about having Master Chief character though. Besides, the customisation in Reach was great and let you really make your own spartan. Master Chief to me is just a generic hero in an ugly green suit of armour.

A lot of the reason Master Chief is boring is the feeling of invincibility he has, you know he isn't going to die no matter what and comes across as a less interesting James Bond in that regard. In Reach there is a definite feeling of mortality and many people die.

Spoiler

This includes members of your own squad and even the player character at the end.

The game feels more intense and the characters more human for having them as such. The characters in Reach were also far better written than the Halo 2, 3 or ODST characters in my own humble opinion.

Edit: And the ODST charactes were also better than the 2 or 3 characters, again, this is merely my opinion.

 

[The_Emperor]

what an idiot, clearly he is not in touch with the gamers at all

 

[Kyle 2175]

Everyone in this thread seems to be excluding the possibility that Master Chief is going to be a lot more vocally active in the game. After all it's only him and Cortana so far as we know, someone's gotta talk besides that dumb bimbo.

Good point, it would definitely be an improvement if they did make him more "vocally active" as you put it. Having Master Chief talk more and have a more fleshed out personality like in the books would be neat and a vast improvement. Nonetheless it is, as you say, only a possibility, it's also a possibility that they won't have him speak more, which would be a shame, well, unless they decide to give him the same sort of dialogue as they did in 3 in which case it would just be irritating.

 

[Casimir_Effect]

Fuck this noise. ODST was my favourite solo experience from any of them. Not having to deal with the flood while also having an interesting story was far superior than "Chief go here, Chief kill stuff'.

 

[Trillovinum]

MGS boss Phil Spencer made a frank admission: ODST and Reach weren't what gamers wanted.

what! only the first halo could beat them. I thought ODST and reach were the best two of the series (after combat evolved of course)

 

[ceyriot]

I honestly played the Halo games mostly for the multiplayer...I played CE a lot on the computer and original xbox, I think I played some Halo 2...I played the shit out of Halo 3, I liked the campaign and the multiplayer was fun.

I never really played ODST, I think I played a couple games of firefight at a friends house.

As for Reach, I really liked it. The multiplayer is fun and hilarious at times, just what I expect from a Halo game.

I'm looking forward to Halo 4. Master Chef is bland and dull, but I do love all the little 12 year old kids on xbl >

 

[General_Potatoes]

I really liked ODST. It was good finally having no more overpowered huamns, who could thow grenades over buildings and also who couldn't jump high. Also because Nathan Fillon was in it.

 

[Valenza]

But then look at it like this: Let's say they wanted to flesh them out more in game. Well Halo shows most of its story (not all) through cutscenes. So that would mean they probably would have needed to make cutscenes longer and then people would complain about the length of cutscenes.

The books are NEEDED, you can't show everything in games. In Fall of Reach, there were many times that there would be no combat and just talking. They can't show that in game without people like I said complaining about length of cutscenes or would complain about lack of action.

The books aren't needed, though. They shouldn't be needed.

That is of course not to say they shouldn't exist (supporting material is okay, but I've always held to the belief they should NOT focus on the main story or character in a game).

What I'm saying is that, if they wanted to flesh out his character in the game, then they should have just done that. And they could've. Others have worked with less and come out with stronger characters.

No one should need someone else to write a novel to flesh out their character.

Advertising the books as "Hey, felt Master Chief was devoid of any personality or qualities? Pay us more money and you can have that!" isn't really a good thing.



Buuuuuuuut, that's all moot to me anyway, because I'm kinda sure they intended for Chief to be as he is: A silent action-hero type guy made of brick, and twice as charming as one.

 

[Wandering Squid]

Translation from Microsoft: "Boo-hoo, we didn't sell as many copies of ODST and Reach as we wanted. SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG!"

Personally a single character from either ODST or Reach (especially Buck, and you all know why) had more depth and personality than Chief ever did.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

"The key question for me in managing the studio and the creatives is 'what is Halo?', making sure Halo lives up to what I think gamers fell in love with [playing Combat Evolved]," he said. To him, that's putting the player in the role of SPARTAN-II John-117 - better known as Master Chief.

"We kind of lost our way [with ODST and Reach] a little bit, I'll say," he admitted. "And that's why I wanted to make sure that at the unveiling of Halo 4, you knew you were playing Master Chief, that John was back. Because Master Chief is the John Wayne character of that universe, and that's who you want to play."

Oh God, no. The main selling point (to me) for Reach was that for once the player wasn't the bloody Master Chief. The Halo universe purports to be deep and rich, but how is this possible if it constantly revolves around the same f*cking character time and time again? The best thing about Reach was that you found out about other Spartans fighting in a different theatre of war.

I had long ago been soured to the Halo franchise, but Reach brought me right back on side. And now it seems Microsoft are gonna push me away again with the regurgitation of the same old crap that made Halo stale and boring in the first place.

 

[Hamish Durie]

ahhh finnaly ODST sucked because the levels reminded me of halo 3 and not in a good way while "bringing back" the haloCE pistol but then replacing it with a gun loaded with peas and bits of paper while making every enemay have stupid amounts of help which didn't help because every gun in that game was loaded with peas and tissues (except the enemies).

Reach was a step in the right direction but the characters where so badly designed and the levels weren't so different and it just didn't feel like the old halo that i have come to love

 

[shadowmagus]

I thought ODST was a great game from a story standpoint. I thought taking the focus away from Derp Chief and having to fill the void with actual humans gave a real sense of life to universe that had been created. I find that Master Chief is much like Batman half the time in that the people around him are more interesting then he is. ODST actually expanded upon that and made it interesting.

 

[Korolev]

So basically what he is saying is that it was a misstep to even be marginally creative? Ugh. I don't have much hope for Halo 4 if the head of the studio thinks even a relatively MINOR deviation from "what-came-before" is seen as a "misstep".

Gamers do like Masterchief, just like Gamers like Snake or Mario or Gordon Freeman. But we don't need EVERY game to revolve around those main characters. We're fine with having different characters to play with in the same universe. Masterchief had a good run of 3 games - taking a break from him was a good idea.

Frankly, I wish MORE franchises would occasionally ditch the main character and go with another character within the same universe. Okay, it didn't work out so well with MGS2, but that was due to the fact that Raiden was a bad character. I want to see more Mario games without Mario necessarily taking the centre stage. I want to see BioWare take a new direction with the Mass Effect series after ME3, and not have Shepard be the main character.

If you are willing to take the risk with creating new characters for your franchise, you could reap the rewards of having a diverse range of stories and plots. Of course, you should go insane with creating too many new characters (e.g: Sonic and his horrible cast of pals), but you shouldn't be afraid to take the franchise in new directions.

Frankly, I thought the reception to Reach was rather positive. I don't remember hearing anyone say "buh-buh-buh, but where's Masterchiiiiiiiieeeefffff!? Waaaaaaah! *Sob* *Sob*"

 

[kuroshimo]

Eh? Master Chief was barely even a character.

Master Chief is an interesting enough character, it's just that bungie managed to do something incredible: they created an interesting world, then told the story of a character in it. You could make a great story with anyone anywhere in the Halo metaverse, and that incredible world overshadows the chief. I just wish devs would try to create interesting worlds, that could tell many different stories from many different viewpoints, rather than relying on a small number of characters doing the same thing over and over.

The point being that the Halo universe has way more potential than watching the chief blow more purple(moving to bluish-silver now) stuff up again.