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The Troubled Development of Halo 4
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- čas přidán 18. 08. 2024
- A comprehensive breakdown of the making of Halo 4 and the formation of 343 Industries using information from developer interviews, game conferences, articles, art books, leaked early builds, and more. Learn from key figures like Frank O'Connor, Kiki Wolfkill, Josh Holmes, and Bonnie Ross the philosophy behind their approach to the Halo franchise as well as the company during the making of their first installment.
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00:00 Origins and Visions
04:02 Rebuilding a Universe
07:13 New Enemies
08:57 Leaked Builds
11:41 Setbacks
16:37 Release and Reception
“How do you tell a heroes journey when he’s an already a hero?”
The answer is that you don’t tell a hero’s journey. Instead you tell an epic, which is what halo already is in a way
exactlyyyyy - Halo has traditionally not really been about Masterchief at all, he is a player-projectable vehicle for other stories to evolve around. Yes there is lore around his character, but bungie never intended for us to over-focus on him in game.
"Its a bunch of new people working with new tools, it was unfamiliar territory"
Which is why they did the exact same thing 2 more times for the next Halo games, winding up with a bunch of temp contract workers. Great work.
Microsoft moment
Yeah that was Microsoft's call, and something Bungie was warned would happen to their franchise back when they first joined Microsoft
Yeah its a shame. 343 has talented developers but the conditions at the company make it near impossible to put out consistently good games.
@@seereebee I'm willing to bet $1000 the conditions under Ubisoft studios devs are 50x worse than at 343 and MS. Yet its clear they put way way more effort and talent into bad games year over year.
People have some deranged Stockholm syndrome in defending everyone working at 343 like they're these saintly artists under the bootheel of Microsoft and every faceless executive.
@@117johnpar because both Bungie Devs and former 343 devs, as well as other studio devs owned by Microsoft prior said it happened. It feels like a weird Stockholm syndrome when people want to defend the corporate overlord that had a decent number of people step forward and say "this is how Microsoft works with it's subsidiaries"
The 2007 Bungie employee Emails leaked to media sources about how Microsoft treated them and why they were leaving should be enough to illustrate this.
But then there's the Game enthusiasts who remarked this happening to other studios prior back when G4 was on TV, so reports are that old.
According to Bungie testimony the devs that worked on Halo 2's multiplayer left Bungie to start certain affinity almost the time Microsoft showed up to micromanage the development of 3.
Jason Jones attempted breach of contract and then failing that, according to Marty, took as much vacation as possible to get away, likely from the Microsoft suits and then conveniently started working on a different game in secret from the publisher.
That's all very telling.
343 is made and when the original announcement on Bungie's website about it debuted it was Frank O'Conner was spearheading it, when in reality it wasn't revealed until 2012 that 343 was started by Bonnie Ross, A Microsoft JR VP for Xbox, not Franky, a former Bungie dev they obviously hired to buy trust from old fans and to be used as a scape goat since his authority was basically non existent according to former 343 devs and himself when he went up to bat against Microsoft to stop their bad ideas (MCC) and shot him down.
In 2014 there were dev leaks saying the same thing that happened to Bungie in 2005 was basically the norm at 343 after 2012.
In 2022 when Microsoft fired devs on contract, those devs repeated the same sentiment that they all have to jump when Microsoft says so and there's basically no development due to the publisher treating games like computer manufacturing.
343 was always a dummy studio for Microsoft since the publisher was given a black eye by Bungie for not playing ball and finding loopholes out of what they wanted. A studio isn't formed around 18 month non renewable contracts, focus group testings, and mass 3rd party hires from different companies out of a love of game design, it's how a spreadsheet pencil pushing corporate entity sees all business creative or not.
Say you don't believe any of that (there's actually more btw) what's more believable:
1- That Microsoft, the publisher, is signing blank checks and the developers are not doing everything they can to make a decent product despite having a library of resources and experience, and the money to do so.
2- that Microsoft looks at game design the same way a hammer does a nail, and that the bottom dollar sale in units is more important than the quality of the product at the expense of both the fans and developers.
Them saying “The Didact fired the Halo Rings” bluntly would have made this so much better. It’s inaccurate now, sure, but something along those line-telling the player outright who the fuck this guy is and why he’s so dangerous-would have cleared the confusion and raised the stakes immensely.
Microsoft is to blame for putting such a massive project on an unblooded team, then repeatedly shitcanning everyone when they didn’t live up to impossible standards. They just wanted Bungie 2.0 without any of the investment of time needed to build a cohesive team . No wonder the second trilogy was a disaster.
Yeah all of the early narrative beats and ideas are so much clearer than what we got. Once again, dumb playtesters ruin things for everyone.
Pretty sure BUNGIE said that in the Halo 3 terminals and 343s cutscenes and terminals for Halo 4 spelt out exactly who this guy is......
@@anomalyinc3239ot everyone pays attention to things like that especially if they’re hidden like the terminals. That’s the issue most have with the 343 style of storytelling. They rely on the expanded universe and leave the casual fan to be confused. Halo 5 was the worst in this regard
The Act Man explains how 343 treats their Villains in his review of halo infinite better than I ever could
@@elementalramen6792 Halo 4 did not need external material to be understood (Halo 5 did)
The Chief Cortana stuff is straight forward and the Didact Composer stuff is also straightforward thanks to the ingame cutscenes (the librarian and composer)
You dont need to know anything more than that to understand the story or the stakes
"The Didact firing the Halos" literally has no bearing on H4s story whatsoever
"There will never be another game quite like Halo 4" thank fucking god for that. Though this video has shown a lot of things that I didn't know that make me empathize a lot with the team
Both are valid. Nothing is wrong with pointing out that a product was garbage, regardless of sympathy for the devs. Talented and amazing people make shit products sometimes - such is the circle of creativity.
This 'sympathize with the devs' thing is so stupid. This is the only game series that gets this pass. No ones out there defending Ubisofts trench devs when Far Cry or AC turns out garbage. No reviewer or comments are out here defending those devs. Why does working for 343 somehow give you keyboard warrior white knights to defend a decade of bad games??
This whole mindset had come out of 343, nothing else.
And the worst part is that the 343 devs hate you. They openly stated it. The mission statement for the company at one point was to get people who hated Halo on the team to make it something its not. If anything, The devs working for 343 are even more culpable with the state of the franchise than many other series. I dont blame the artists for the state of Assassins Creed, they're nailing it. I dont even blame the combat mechanic devs, because the combat was actually determined by higher ups who wanted to chase the Witcher/souls trend.
Many of 343 Halos issues can boil down to how it was built, the individual pieces and how they fit together, the individual parts that individual devs worked on that are just abjectly bad.
But its Halo, so we have to mea culpa the entire workforce and blame Microsoft because surely that'll wind up with a better result next time.
that early look of h4 missions sound way more fun than what we got and looked cooler as well
And would have addressed many of the complaints to come - such as the Knights rolling to a new location instead of teleporting, and light glow for the Prometheans being blue which is more inline with Forerunner tech than the yellow lights.
For me personally the biggest thing I dislike about 4 and 5 was the drastic change in artstyle. Certain things look nice, like I love the hand models for chief, the H4 and 5 AR is probably the best design ever, I really like the DMR in H4, the hud in H5 is great,
True that. The designs felt very forced upon the fans and sometimes didn't even look as good as Bungie's designs. Now i think the new art direction COULD have worked if they provided more context and good reasoning to how the designs shifted though.
this trend was happening with all sorts of media at that time. artstyles and designs went from colorful and simplistic to bleak and realistic, alot of people credit Christopher Nolan's realistic approach to Batman for this popular change in designs in certain media at the time. this approach just really took off, i dont know why.
No your wrong, ce has best in everything
@@yeetin_yeti69 I mean cool if you think so. Its all subjective anyway. I grew up on CE and 2 and feel every game after was just a better more developed (obviously) version of what CE was trying to do
I don't want to be that guy, but the art style changes are actually a result of Halo Reach. Reach has the first ever mocap body (the op video is technically wrong) and it caused the armor to become both more spacious and to rethink textures and design due to a hard push for "realism" after 2008 to make objects bogged down by too much detail, and that the military was moving away from "less is more" just like videogames were. Halo 4 has the added bonus as having an in universe excuse to make armor, vehicle, and general every day objects look completely different due to advanced science unavailable during the games prior.
The person who designed the armor in Halo reach, I forgot his name, said had they knew what they know now with the motion of the human body and technology, Master chief and by proxy everything else would have looked, and I'm quoting him "totally and completely different from Halo 1-3"
There's a lot of literally unbreakable logic behind some of the more drastic changes, that simply met with "I don't care, I don't like how it looks" which invalidates it's existence as an art style to many.......which shouldn't have been a thing honestly.
Sucks that the Prometheans had some interesting guns in development, but because the playtesters didn't like them, we just got a bunch of lame "human weapons, but they're alien looking" guns instead.
That is sad about Greg Bear's death. I read the Forerunner trilogy, and it was incredible. I didn't mind the game's redesign too much, but it was confusing how the changes to his armor were implemented. The Prometheans were definitely unique, but the damage they too was crazy.
The fact that the algorithm somehow figured out i decided to give halo 4 campaign another go just today and than recommended this video is a bit concerning, that said great work on it i quite enjoyed it
Allah (S.W.T.) decided it, but yeah. No such a thing as a coincidence haha
@@NazmusLabs lmao
Only thing they got right in the art deparment, was Cortana's design.
and halo 5 female spartan
@@Kittysune12🍑😂
Definitely explains the issues 343 has had with the series since there creation.
Liar
@@takeshelter5313lie about what? its an objective fact 343 has done nothing but struggle since the start
@@takeshelter5313your the liar
I think the worst part of Halo 4/5 for me and likely many other people is the art style shift. Ten years later and I still genuinely do not understand why they decided to redesign some of the most iconic characters and set pieces in gaming. Whenever I think of Halo 4/5 the first thing that comes to mind is the art style. So many of the redesigns are just straight up strange and unnecessary. I get that they wanted to move in a new direction, but it’s still probably the most baffling decision 343 has ever made.
Bruh every halo game since 2 changed its art style
@@sword_racer185halo 3 & reach didn't try to make it look like a completely different game.
@@sword_racer185not as drastically as 4-5 tho
I probably would have liked 4 if it looked like a more detailed version of 3. I always thought the game was ugly as shit and didn't really make sense in the universe. Same with 5.
@@GallowayJesse honestly I don't give a fuck about art style halo fans are just Lil bitches that complain non stop even in the bungie days, oh halo 2 sucks, oh halo 3 sucks oh halo reach sucks everyone has said halo is too much like cod since reach yall just wanna bitch
Someone finally admitted they purposefully made Cortana’s boobs massive
I’ve never held Halo 4 in high regard but this video is so important and sheds light on many aspects I didn’t care for in 4. Thank you for this video, this story needed to be told for sometime now.
Underrated video, I hope it picks up!
The original designs for the Prometheans were genuinely good and actually Forerunner-y for a Halo 3 sequel! Really cool. I wish they didn't feel such pressure fro above to throw out Halo's style for almost a decade.
So frustrating to see all the ideas that could have made Halo 4's tools more interesting be shot down by playtesters who were disinterested.
The weapons werent practical to use they were just gimmicky hence why playtesters didnt gravitate towards them
Dude right!
@@anomalyinc3239you do have a point here ngl, any idea what all the weapons were like?
@@anomalyinc3239 I wish they had workshopped them a bit more instead of just turning them into archetypes. I'm sure something could have been salvaged.
@@maximiliantomasoski4032 only bits and pieces i know about the gravity gun but i kinda forget the rest its been awhile since i saw the Josh Holmes imterview
I think the narrative failure of halo 4 and 343 as a whole was even trying to explore the forerunners. There’s something worthwhile about just not knowing. It’s like midicholorians in Star Wars. It’s gonna be hard to come back from that. Mechanics wise, it was a lot of trying to fix what wasn’t broke, and trying to foster competitive play when the spirit was always on the variety. Halo infinite is suffering from its initial focus on the competitive scene, the dev team was simply too scared to just have fun with the map design.
I agree, the forerunners were ultimately an advanced (presumably human) race, not a separate species all together. Changing what the forerunners are in the lore totally ruined the franchise.
10000% agree with you. I personally loved the mystery behind the Forerunners and the structures they left behind, it added a unique backdrop to the original trilogy. I wish they kept that mystery alive in the new games, only introducing new Forerunner structures/halo-like planets where you would learn just a little bit more about the ancient race but never truly revealing too much as it only serves as a backdrop to a newer story. These new Forerunner structures could have brought on new threats which is where I thought Bungie would have taken Halo 4 given the Halo 3 post-credit scene.
@sultanqasim7639 it didn't ruin the franchise at all. It didn't even affect it. The didactic could've been an ancient mutated human and the prometheans robots and not a single thing would've changed about how the games play or feel.
Well that's just a bad example given midichlorians have 0 affect on the lore of star wars. That said, exploring the forerunners does remove the mystery but it doesn't ruin anything. If nothing else it opens up the franchise to explore the forerunner human conflict, tho neither Microsoft nor the fans would have the balls to allow that
@@Riorozenid say you didnt pay attention to the overall story
Great video im glad someone is finally telling the story of Halo 4s incredibly difficult development
You probably couldve mentioned how Bonnie Ross wanted to launch Halo 4 on Xbox one but Microsoft wanted to ship Halo 4 at the end of the Xbox360 life span with led to a ton of issues
But Microsoft allowing some extra development time that 343 definitely earned to polish the game abit more and include some of their more interesting ideas would been beneficial to the game and tk Microsoft who didnt have a launch title for their new console
All in all Halo 4 was awesome and its honestly a miracle it turned out aswell as it did
I never knew that about forcing it on 360, letting it be an Xbox one launch title I’d think would’ve been a better AND more lucrative idea.
@@fullauto86 Its not just that, what actually happened is because there was no launch title for the Xbox One and Halo 5 was still 3 years away Microsoft wanted something bigger for Halo on the Xbox One before 2015 so they rejected 343s initial plan for just a second anniversary edition which then 343 decided okay lets do MCC but they had nowhere near enough time to get it done which they didnt realise until they were in the middle of development and MCC also took dev time and resources away from Halo 5 which stuffed up that game in many areas aswell
Also Microsoft had the bright idea to releasing Halo 4 six days before Black Ops 2 which is the reason Halo 4s population dropped faster than any other Halo game since it lost around half its population in a day and was the only Halo game up til that point to release not only with a direct competitor that was kicking Halos ass since 2007 but in the very SAME week!
People love to leave out that key detail because they wanted to construct a narrative of people simply not liking the game because they wanted a Halo 3 clone but that in no way translates to half a ganes population dropping to buy the newest FPS that they were going to buy anyway Halos main competitor which had been siphoning players from Halo and elsewhere for 5 years up til that point
In short its just a complete mess borderlining on sabotage and a very large proportion of the troubles 343 have had with Halo can be traced back to Microsoft forcing it onto the Xbox 360 which only had another year of life in it anyway and by late 2013 people were playing the new console which at the time wasnt even backwards compatible
@@anomalyinc3239 that shit is wild man. Thanks for the info it’s good to know.
@@fullauto86 you're welcome
Just because he explained how hard it was for 343 to take a shit doesn't mean it still isn't a piece of shit. 343 should've never existed, an already seasoned developer would've been Microsoft's best bet. They are such a shitty development company it took them 5 YEARS to fix halo MCC, they couldn't even develop remasters. Thats how laughable this studio is.
It seems there's no such thing as a Halo game developed without trouble
I'd probably say Reach is the one with the least amount of troubled development behind it, that or ODST.
@@nagger8216 I haven't heard anything about Halo 3 having issues either.
@@Souldestroy199 Some people like Jason Jones and Joe Staten were burned out after Halo 2 and weren't as involved in Halo 3 because of it, but that's the most I know of Halo 3 having any development "trouble"
@@nagger8216 I know that Joe Staten wasn't as involved and 3 was basically ghostwritten - something always felt off about 3's writing.
Reach baby
I think if they actually stuck to thier guns instead of backtracking Halo 5 and infinite would have turned out much better
5:58
Cortana’s in game model sure is *“expressive”*
It wasn’t a change they needed to do, someone was just horny in the studio
It baffles me how they went about "innovating" in halo 4 and onwards, especially with the previous experience on the mgs series. Each MGS game built off each other and innovated in ways that benefited the gameplay and aesthetic while still being recognizable as metal gear solid in every step of the process. This was the same process bungie took with halo from CE to 3, each game innovated just enough to be new and meaningful while still staying true the core game.
Wanting the game to be "radically different and unrecognizable as a sequel" was the biggest mistake in an already proven and beloved franchise. They didn't want to make a halo game, they wanted to make a completely different game.
I love halo 4 :( I was 12 and remember playing it on release day
I’m in the same boat! Same age, had such a blast playing the game on release day. Blew me away and instantly became one of my favorite Halo games.
Notably Bungie was always a studio that refused to help out others sharing the Halo IP which surely didn't help 343. IIRC Marty was part of that
It very much stems from a “stick it to the man” mentality at the core of their company. The book Halo: A Space Opera From Bungie goes into a lot of the ideology behind the studio as they were forming and throughout their time developing. That mentality went beyond just Microsoft, but also extended to external studios like Ensemble, according to some employees.
Marty, despite his amazing work on the soundtracks, does not seem like the most friendly and agreeable person.
Marty came in as a contract worker for bungie at first. And he can have a rough personality sometimes but he has his heart 100% at the right place. He always puts the art and developers first and that doesn’t really sit well with CEOs of big companies (look up the golden goose story). He fought with microsoft over creative vision (they didn’t want a piano in the Halo 3 presentation lmao) and with Activision over the Destiny soundtrack. Thats where the "Marty is a bad person" bs comes from really. Smear campaigns and lawsuit fighting with big greedy companies. 🪿
@@nopmop4248The smear campaign got even worse for him when it came to those entitled Reddit Moderators and their dystopian rules didn't wanted him posting his music on the Destiny subreddit. Plus there's a legion of jackasses on Twitter making up bs saying that "Marty doesn't care about Halo, the fanboys just want to worship him" and another calling him a "Thief". And another there was a Destiny subreddit moderator calling him an asshole because of the Destiny subreddit incident.
I love Halo 4 and that time period. The way they wove the Forward unto Dawn movie with it, forerunner trilogy, art style, soundtrack having its own unique flair that matched with the story. It wasn't perfect but everything wrapped together so nicely. I really enjoyed the story except for the complicated forerunner lore. It's not a direction I feel like the franchise should have gone into permanently but it was nice for one game as its own thing
Damn...really makes me feel like I gave Halo 4 too much hate at the time. Also brilliant video and editing style. Would love to see more videos in this style.
Damn, those alpha levels sound way better than what we got.
I'm sure a lot of stuff was cut for reasons. For example, those lich battles in Composer *sound* cool, but they don't thematically fit the rest of the level and would likely be fairly boring after the initial novelty wore off, due to each one having the same layout.
I genuinely love Halo 4, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, it's very interesting to sea why and the development of Halo 4.
Awesome video would live to see you cover halo 5s development because I want to know what the fuck happened there
It's insane because despite halo 4s short comings, overall it easily had the best story and campaign out of the new trilogy. I mean 5 was an absolute mess and infinite barely had a story.
God I miss good halo
i remember infinite have so much horrible honeymoon phase that everybody including big halo youtuber praise the story so much even one of them said it was better than original trilogy glad everybody opened their eye and saw infinite campaign is the most horrible one
@@Kittysune12 I believe that only halo 5 is worse because of the blatant character assassination of cortana and others. I remember the way the CZcamsrs I followed talked about the story on release and it just goes to show they will literally praise anything if they get special treatment in return. I hate what they've done to this franchise
They make SUUUCH a huge deal about people working together for the first time. Like bringing up how the Voice actors were recording lines in the same room for the first time.
How does anything every get done anywhere if two people working together for the first time is such a shellshock idea that supposedly causes all of this development trouble?
I love Halo 4. I didn't get to it until two summers back, so I had a much needed distance from Halo 3 and I found myself really appreciating it for the story and its surprisingly emotional core. While not perfect, I still think back fondly on this one.
I remember holding the game in one of the retro game stores we have here in Sweden and it was a really powerful feeling to behold that big 4 on the cover, knowing a new adventure awaited me. Just comparing the cover of 4 with later games like 5 and Infinite, there's an artistry to 4 that you don't see from Halo anymore. It's clear to me that a lot of love was poured into 4 and the entirety of its presentation.
Looking at the cover of 4 also made me think back on all the countless nights playing Halo 3 when I was 16. I haven't played it since around 2011 but I still remember the moments leading up to Chief's final line; wake me when you need me. It had a lasting impact on me to see the third installment end on that very line. After all this time, I can honestly say I'm happy with how 343 decided to follow up and pay off that line, at least as far as the story of Halo 4 goes.
I have to say this video really impressed me, especially with how seamlessly it went from the narration to the commentary of the creatives at 343. Very few channels, even the bigger ones, manage to pull off that slick documentary feel this well. Subscribed.
Considering the sheer hell of 343 trying to find their personal footing on top of making a AAA game for Microsoft's biggest franchise, it's a wonder this game came out finished at all. Yeah, their playtesters probably should've been chosen better, but that was probably something Microsoft demanded of them. Considering all of the things you mentioned in this video, I'm actually very sympathetic towards 343, no matter what the haters say. Doing what they did must've been a monumental task, one ultimately doomed to fail in some way.
However, if there's one thing I know, it's that 343 haters are not in the least bit sympathetic. Such a shame. I'd like to see how well they perform under the same circumstances. Most would probably fail just as hard, if not harder
halo fans are actually the most forgiving of fans, problem was 343 nvr gave 2 ducks about the fanbase and nvr listened to what they had to say, the ontop of that was the dogdookie management that ruined the set expectations that THEY SET. To give you an idea, 343 had 6 years over to complete Infinite, bungie got halo 2 done in 3 years (with the final build being done from scratch in 9 months) , then they had 2x-3x the budget of Halo 2's and ontop of that 100s more employee's working at the company with other companies helping by doing their outsourced work. if any other game fandom was in the shoes of halo ones they wouldve started the fire 343 trend right after Halo 5, 343 has had too many chances and they just dont seem to care. sad situation rlly
Those play testers were saying what most after release said. People hated the prometheans, they didn't fit the lore or style and were bad to fight. The weapons didn't fit the gameplay and so for the most part were ignored for UNSC and Covenant weapons just as with the play testers.
The decision to tell an emotional story with master chief was beyond dumb, and the fact they had greg bear write his books before them even nailing down the story for the game speaks volumes. They literally had no clue what they were doing. Halo 4 is essentially just a reskin of reach with unrelated art direction and a story that doesn't actually relate at all to the main trilogy. Multiplayer was a simple industry trends copy of COD, same with every other 343 game. 4 was COD, 5 was micro transactions, and Infinite was live service. 343 is a intellectually bankrupt studio which gets way more praise than it should.
@@skaimask29 considering how 343 has had a very tumultuous production cycle for all of their products, you are only proving my point further. 2-3x the budget of Halo 2 doesn't mean anything when prices for production have increased exponentially, not by a factor of 2. Do you also notice that the team for Halo 4-Infinite usually has never more than 50% of the same people from the previous game? That also speaks volumes for the difference between Bungie and 343 production. It's never that 343 doesn't care. It's that the Halo Bungie stans are way too hard without realizing what is going on behind the scenes and Microsoft listens to only the negative feedback from them.
@@Powerof7even did you even watch the video? It was _because_ of the playtesters that we pretty much got the Forerunner versions of the DMR, shotgun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher. Some of the better weapons in the sandbox that everyone remembers have no near-identical clone like the grenade launcher, needler, and magnum. I'm also willing to bet that the Prometheans would've been much better to fight if half of their roster wasn't scrapped, making them closer to the Covenant in terms of combat variety. There is only so much you can do with 3 unit types.
If you were paying attention at all to the video, you would see that the reason they had no idea what they were doing was because they were trying to work out how to do things. You don't expect a team to perform at top notch from the get-go. That's incredibly unrealistic. That they had to do that and make a game at the same time, so it's no surprise they failed in a lot of ways with Halo 4. The trend-chasing of COD is something that pretty much only works in Halo 4, not 5, so stop trying to use it. Infinite only shares the traits of the store from COD, literally nothing else. If you actually watch some of the documentaries and retrospectives that go into the production of 343's games, you'll see the repeating pattern of them wanting to get creative, but having to follow the constraints of Microsoft. Stop blaming solely 343, always add Microsoft to the mix.
I’d like to counter your argument for 343 deserving sympathy. Not on the grounds that “343 are scum hurr durr” or something, but on the grounds of the consumer being valid regardless of what the developers went through.
Andrew Prokhorov, the creative director of 4A Games (Metro series), responded to journalists claiming that people were not showing enough sympathy for the developers in Metro 2033’s reviews and scores. He responded, flatly, that “We deserve the ratings we get. After all, the final consumer doesn't care about our conditions. And this is RIGHT. We need no indulgence.”
If a Ukrainian development studio that made a legendary gaming franchise can acknowledge this, why can’t 343 and Microsoft be held to the same standard when their audience lambasts their poor performance? 4A is a studio that worked without heating in freezing winter, a studio that worked on a barely-functioning power grid and had to use generators just to work, that lacked office chairs and basic work desks, that had to smuggle PCs and dev kits into the country to prevent theft, and that had to work on a deadline and budget far tighter and much smaller than 343 ever did. Yet, they admirably accept that any dissatisfaction and low audience opinions are the responsibility of 4A’s shortcomings, and that the audience and reviewers would be wrong to be held responsible instead just because the developers struggled.
So why exactly does AAA developer _343 Industries_ and megacorporation parent company _Microsoft_ get a free pass? Why exactly does the consumer paying for their products need to show sympathy towards a _PRODUCT_ that they purchased because the people who made it struggled in doing so?
Stop simping for corporations. Good people behind the scenes can make bad products at release, and disgruntled consumers not happy with the product calling that out isn’t a matter of sympathy - it’s a matter of review, and one that is valid regardless of sympathy or lack thereof for the developers.
This game was the beginning of the end. I still don't get why change drastically something, and thought everyone would like it, specially in their playtests. 343i was filled with talented people that don't know Halo and assumed rather than investigate.
They hired people that hated Halo… This was stated multiple times in multiple interviews and even gaming media outlets. It wasn’t a secret that 343i didn’t care about the state of the Halo games.
@@zachsmusic9171 I've seen some contrarians say "that isn't true, they never hired people who hated halo"
ok, even if it was not true (though it was) 343 was very anti-classic Halo and anti OG Halo fan through all their games. If OG fans liked it 343 would make sure to do the opposite. With statements pretty much saying they wanted to make 'their' Halo for new players, not the 'old guard'. They didn't care about what made Halo, they had the name and IP and rode off of that doing all sort of weird things following the gaming trends of the time instead of doing what Halo was always known for: Making trends.
Didn't like this game, don't like 343 and anything they did with Halo.
But I can't deny that they put their hearts and souls into making Halo 4 and it was an interesting listen.
Wow excellent video! Loved the way you presented/edited everything.
I didn’t even know Greg Bear passed away. Its sad to know that most definitely part of the greatest part of the EU was written and can’t be finished by the man that started it. I hope if 343 ever manages to correct Halo, the Didact isn’t done wrong.
Halo 4 had an amazing story. Hell, Steve Downes himself said it's his favorite.
I’m glad they spent all that time and effort making the armor look that cool in a first person game, I can really admire it
The backlash would've been MUCH less if they had moved the series on with a new protagonist/spartan. That would've really made the series their own and marked a new beginning with a new art style, story, and an expansion of the universe.
Besides the little grunt mouths and the fact that they didn’t have any interesting quips like in past halos, i liked the direction and the artstyle. Felt future militaristic and i liked the dynamic between chief and cortana. As they said, what was left for the hero to do but explore and overcome his humanity at that point after H3.
H4 is easily my fave halo which i know isn’t popular but it still leaves a poor taste in my mouth considering all the consistent retconning in H5 and Infinite.
Wish we could have had a second trilogy but they couldnt commit to a consistent vision for even 2 games
I don’t particularly understand this… they had a great amount of resources: staff, money, time. Think they really suffered from lack of leadership (i.e. telling a new story). Chief’s story ended in 3 - Legendary ending hits so hard compared to anything in the series. Resurrecting him & Cortana, changing their camaraderie to some sexual desire (the touching counts), and putting a spotlight on Forerunners - which killed the mystery of what they were, were not good decisions and made the story weak. They needed a new goal, some vision with the world that the rest of the team could follow. The direction they went seems to have led to stagnation and mediocrity in spite of the talent brought aboard. I remember playing this campaign the 1st time and having no desire to play it again. Boring and repetitive.
This is a great video and hit a lot of details I wasn't familiar with even as a 20+ year Halo fan. Looks like you combed through some GDC talks and less mainstream interviews for some of this? Analyzing the dev builds is a great idea, all of the videos that modders put out themselves are frankly hard to watch and tend to be very surface level.
Would love to see more games covered in this style, Halo, Bungie, or otherwise.
man halo 4 truly has a pretty
hectic development cycle
from the early stages itself
as well as truly making the game
simultaneously being a studio
from through all at once itself
and not only that the very game
was constantly facing production
hurdles continuously until
the very game was truly finished
along with so many problems
that was all suddenly appearing
from through all at once itself
and also the hole team truly
had a lot of pressure that was
all seemingly coming there way
itself
and this sure does feel like the
very development stages of Halo 2
all over again for so many reasons ways
like developing Xbox Live simultaneously
as well as completing the game right before
the day of launched without no delay itself
and honestly I do think that Halo 4
had a lot of expectations that was
all truly coming towards them
from through all at once itself
as well as starting a studio and
making a new game from established ip
for your very own company itself.
but all in all this is truly a precautionary tale
of how you should not start up a studio itself
and also the development of Halo 4
truly gives me a lot of vibes of xenogears
hectic development
from within that very
moment itself
but all in all pretty good video itself
This was a really well done video. Thank you for sharing and telling this story. You got my sub.
This was a great video essay. Factual, neutral, informative. Well done!
Despite the unfortunately poor result of Halo with 343i's management, I do not envy the task that all the people who worked on Halo 4 had ahead of them, to follow up the most legendary arena FPS trilogy since Doom with a new saga of games, while STILL ASSEMBLING a studio, and work with a game engine that is largely foreign to the industry all at once is extremely daunting. All things considered, I did enjoy the story they came up with and it's such a damn shame we never saw it followed up in H5. Great video!
Excellent video. Great editing, informative and I loved the clean audio of all the interviews. Was that done using Adobe's new A.I Podcast software?
I personally don't really enjoy Halo 4, and I think a lot of the people who worked on it were severely misguided, focusing way too much on irrelevant details without ever getting the basics figured out. But this video gave me a newfound respect for the developers and how they pulled off the insane miracle of getting this game ready for release under extremely unfair circumstances.
"IGN called it the best HALO game to date 9.8/10"
IGNs reputation being a meme went this far back I see.
The ear gasm audio comment they made had me dying, did they not fire the BR that sounded like a rusty bicycle?
@@Creepin_Jesus The warthog never sounded right under 343
@@117johnpar or looked, I remember when 4 came to mcc I was right at the back of it and thought the texture hadn't loaded in right. Wasn't until I stepped back a good bit did I realise it's actually really low res 2D detail like hooks and whatever
Such an excellent video! Well written, perfectly paced and very understanding of 343's unfortunate situation. Good luck on future content.
I like the concept promethean designs besides turning into a ball
Great video, curious how it’s coming out among a sea of videos either showing big Halo content creators faking extreme outrage about the aforementioned because they know that’s what many people like seeing nowadays or videos where people just echo things ad nauseam, it’s nice to see something of quality out for a change, especially when it’s something the general public doesn’t know about.
Subscribed, please do more videos like this one!
I love the format you did for this. If you do any more videos in this vein, keep the same format for sure!
Frfr love this style of content
Chris Schlerf is a great writer, everything he wrote for Halo I personally loved.
*Laughs in Mass Effect Andromeda
@@EvilPhoenix007 pretty sure sam maggs was the problem there
Schlerf left Andromeda pretty early in production if i recall
No thanks, the way he wrote Chief and Cortana in this game is fucking unbearably cringe.
@@nagger8216naa
i played the whole campaign the day it game out, was so mid i genuinely cant remember any part of it, where halo 3 was so good i remember every second of the campaign like i played it yesterday and i haven't played it in a decade
I too cant remember a single thing about the campaign, any MP maps, or the general lore this game created. I have how ever played every bungie halo like 10x each minimum. 343 sucks so bad it's a shame what they've done.
Halo 3 barely had a story so i dont imagine there was much to forget
Nostalgia is not a metric
@@anomalyinc3239 Halo 3 had better and more memorable setpiece missions, something that 343 Halo games lacked.
@@TMek42 lol setpieces
Like the 1st half of the campsign with chief in africa and people saying go here next mission defebd base next mission go here next mission
Only good setpiece was the scarab the ark the covenant and the finsl warthog run
Not much
Halo 4 will always be one of my favourite Halo games. I loved everything about it; Campaign, multiplayer, spartan ops, etc. And to see just how much pressure 343 was under to deliver after the monumental success of Bungie's Halo games will always make me appreciate this game even more.
Really great video some interesting insights into Halo 4, especially about how play testers we not interested in the early promethean weapons during testing, makes sense now why they ended up so functionally similar to the existing weapons.
Subbed, liked and looking forward to seeing more from you in the future!
The playtesters had a point
Weapons should have practically first and foremost aswell as some tangible familiarity, they shouldnt just be a bunch of gimmicks
@@anomalyinc3239 both are bad tbh, making the weapons too similar to existing weapons lead to competition, they're either better or worse than their counterparts. The Plasma Pistol and Needler are gimmick weapons but they are understandable and have uses.
They even had a hint of a neat idea that 343 just never capitalised on which could've helped make them more unique.
@@TMek42 no they weren't Plasma rifle was a machine gun, Plasma pistol was a pistol needler was a submachine gun spiker was a sub machine gun carbine was a dmr beam rifle was a sniper
All of them were similar and functioned similar to UNSC weapons with the exception of the needlers traffic
Its only an issue now because "number company bad"
Promethean weapons like covenant weapons have very clearly defined and recognisable functions that were practical to use
Like covenant weapons they were distinguished by their firing properties
Scattershot had bouncing projectles Boltshot had a charge up shotgun Lightrifle had a weaker burst fire than BR with a stronger scope shot with less range and accuracy than the DMR incineration cannon had one shot with larger damage radius
Suppressor was an SMG shield shredder
You definitely deserve more subscribers! Wonderful video! Honestly I liked Halo 4 allot, albeit having some flaws, this video shows the fact that it even releasing was honestly a miracle.
Very well-made video! I would like for you to do Halo 5 next. That's a game where I need to hear what the hell happened.
Well, this was a joy to watch. You've earned my sub, good work friend.
Ok so this is starting to make more sense of things I wasn't aware of before regarding halo 4's development. As much as 343i wanted to incorporate something new to franchise of halo, they essentially weren't faithful to original designs of bungie's games which in essence made 343i's 1st halo inconsistent to bungies past titles, and they didn't even bother to further innovate what bungie laid foundation on things that were either cut or could've been improved to make something better that bungie couldn't have imagined themselves. Little things like that could've been improved or well executed was a missed opportunity that they didn't capitalize on enough in my opinion.
This was 343i's free pass to learning from their failures and not making those same mistakes again by focusing on what's really important than just whatever they want to do without hardly any help from the previous bungie developers that could've helped them in a long way. H4 was essentially at the same time graphically impressive on the xbox 360 for it's time, but it stands alone from the bungie's games that were considered truly nearly unanimously good games whereas halo 4 was a mediocre game at best and not really liked on a large scale partly that I partly explained and many other reasons.
All in all, H4 was meh, but it was an okay game by pre-exisiting fans that played the original classic halo games that were provenly better than H4. But none of the less, this video was interesting and informative of H4's development that weren't documented before in the 2012 ViDocs.
A really great retrospective and collection of interview and BTS information. It's really good to watch these kinds of things that show the creative passion and dedication of these teams making these games, irrespective of what people think of the game at the end. That humanity doesn't change. And it's easy to forget that when a game is controversial and social media is filled with disappointment, anger and vitriol about it. And that humanity is easily then forgotten. But it shouldn't be.
What a wonderful documentary. Well made. For all its faults, I really love how the game opens. I thought it was a perfect transition. Almost felt next gen. I think 343 painted themselves in a corner however by keeping the chief isolated throughout the story along with the rampancy angle. Necessary yet limiting. An impossible situation to please fans. For example, It gives you a warthog… that no one can help you operate. Anyhoo, great video. Hope to see more soon.
"Wanted halo 4 to be so different, it would be unrecognizable as a sequel to halo 3" Well, mission accompilshed.
One of the few things from 4 that felt like Halo was honestly the new Jackal subspecies.
Might sound weird but, idk, something about them felt like they could exist in any other Halo game perfectly fine with 0 issue
So they hired a bunch of people who did not understand Halo and then wondered why it didn't work.
6:28 Best decision from 343🍊🍊
Very well done on this video
Halo 4 had a lot working against it and I wish they had more time and resources to flesh the game out. I’m a long time Halo fan, but the fact that the story and characters in 4 were basically dumped instead of iterated on after 4 gives me contempt for the halo community and 343.
Halo 4 may be the best looking game on Xbox 360. I enjoyed its Campaign. I found it fun, and quite interesting.
The Didact should have returned for H5.
You did this whole video and covered the pre-release builds, but didn't go through the Halo 4 mods tools?In the GDC talk where they discuss the promethean knight they talk about the "Jackal replacement" we now know it was supposed to be an enemy that "Socketed" in abilites dynamically but was cut for time which is why the watcher had 4 things it can do at once. Or the fact that we now Know that Bungie ENGINEERS were co developing destiny 1 before it was split off.
To this day, I stand firm: Greg Bear's Forerunner Trilogy is the best thing that came out from 343i's management of the franchise
The change in art style is such a corporate and pointless design choice that I hate to see in any franchise.
“You know this iconic piece of imagery that people love and immediately associate with our product? Let’s completely change it and alienate everyone who liked the original!”
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. No one asked for the art style to change, people loved the original. So why bother changing it and risk alienating everyone who liked what came before? You can make something new within the confines of a set of rules.
It’s crazy that all of these people that worked on 4 and 5 are no longer working on halo
Good
There's a very good reason for that, they were the wrong people for the job. 343 wasn't built from the best, it was built from whoever was available at that time - pro tip, if you're a AAA developer out of work and willing to go into a chaotic work-in-progress studio, you're in that position because you're either a diva who's impossible to work with, or you just don't have the talent for anywhere better. If you were truly valuable and in demand, you wouldn't be sitting around waiting to be offered a start-up studio job. That's 343. That's always been 343. Big egos, big ambition, no ability.
I’ve always loved Halo 4 and at times likely defended it harder than I would otherwise due to how vehement the criticisms were, but as my involvement in the Halo community has waned and through moving on to other franchises, I’ve been able to look back on it a bit more objectively. It certainly has its flaws and I don’t replay it nearly as often as other titles like 2 or ODST, but there’s something special to the game that not only deserves credit, but is severely lacking in Guardians and Infinite.
I’m not sure how many people give this much thought, but Halo 4 is the only game in the entire series that feels like straight, good old science fiction. Classic Halo has a blend of military tacticool from Aliens and Starship Troopers mixed with religious mysticism, ODST throws in a splash of Blade Runner-esque noir, and Guardians is just a MCU superhero game. But 4 took the idea of the Halo trilogy’s mysticism and horror elements and re-tooled them in the philosophical vibes of classic sci-fi, and I really liked that.
The art style change goes a long way to helping realize that new direction, but it certainly changed too much too fast. If I’m honest, if there were one or two games between Bungie’s games and 4 that had a more transitional art style I think fans would have been much more tolerant, as most people don’t seem to notice that every Covenant vehicle and most of their weapons are recoloured Reach assets, all of which were replaced with new designs in H5. There are a handful of other Reach models that are present in 4 (like the magnum and mongoose) and collectively there is enough present that I believe backlash against the new art style would have been much more subdued if they had just kept a few but key designs from Reach (or based off of Reach), such as the Covenant units themselves, the marines, and (to an extent) Spartan armour.
The audio mixing is also horrendous. I actually adore Neil Davidge’s work for H4 but you rarely get to actually enjoy the music in game, as it is usually far too quiet and overpowered by the audio effects of, well, literally everything else. Like seriously, the bumping and sliding of Chief’s armour pieces is way too loud. Tracks like Aliens, Haven, and Foreshadow are pretty awesome and sell the haunting and sometimes creepy vibes of the prometheans and how some stones are better left unturned. But those tracks deserved to sit alongside new renditions of classic pieces; the glaring lack of any classic music piece made the soundtrack dead on arrival for many fans, which is a shame as that means none of H4’s music made it into Infinite and will likely never make a reappearance.
And I think that right there is essentially my takeaway about the game as a whole. Yeah there are glaring flaws that should never return to the series, but the way the fans, 343i, and Microsoft interact with each other means that none of the good from Halo 4 will likely ever return to the series, and that’s a shame.
I may not have played all of Halo 4 yet, but watching this REALLy makes me feel sorry for a lot of the developers and especially the writers that tried hard to make this the best it could be. Yeah, there was a heckuva lot of stuff that differentiated it from the Bungie games, but in all honesty... I liked that they tried making it more different.
I feel like it was what allowed them to at least have their own sort of identity when it came to the franchisees they tried to evolve or at least go further on with what was done in the original trilogy.
Watching this really makes it more unfortunate that all that planning that they did with the trilogy's overall storyline and art design and the like ended up just being thrown away because of the more hardcore fans practically stomping all over all that work because they basically just weren't into change.
It's the kind of stuff that really does make fanbases something looking down upon to the point where some amongst said fanbases would step away from these kinds of groups. So they could simply enjoy those that they couldn't try to like. Because of them, it's what's lead to this series being where it's at now.
But then again... who knows how things would've went had 343 stood their grounds and kept going with their original plans for the story and art design.
I love halo 4. I have been a fan of the halo series since halo CE, it was obviously going to be hard to start a new trilogy with a brand new studio built from scratch. I put the blame on the poor leadership and continuous lack of confidence on the work that where making, had 343 been in the good management they would had lost less time on remaking things and expanded the game better. I personally dont think the art style or the graphics to be horrible i think most of the fans are over reacting like babies like if 343 attacked their personal life, had 343 done nothing new they would have been hated for copy and pasting the bungie work. To this day i think Halo 4 to be the best Halo made by 343 with most passion to work on, nowdays the future of Halo looks bleek, the studio changed the direction and the story so many times it just got confusing. For me the story ended with Halo 4 im still waiting for them to brink back the emotional feeling of the characters with a new game hopefully the new management will be better.
I loved Halo 4 narratively, and appreciate everything the team did for Halo. I only wish they had more time to properly transition from the Bungie era and that Halo 5 was a proper sequel
Solidly made video!
Really nice to see recently that more informative stuff like this has been coming out, rather than just pure hate.
Really makes you wonder what Halo/343 could be doing right now if Halo 4 (and 343) had been given an additional year of dev time as an Xbox One launch title, for better or worse.
I think Halo 4 is just a shame cause it genuinely does so much right imo, but the things it does wrong stand out so much more
@@Riorozen "Massive retcons are done to the story"
Aside from Chief's armor and the size/class of the ship they're on being wrong. What else? Unless this is just another "Humans were meant to be forerunners" thing.
"art design is awful" - I genuinely disagree. I don't think the direction is as good as Halo 3, but some of Halo 4's art is honestly solid (though a lot also feels underbaked). But it *is* too different too quick from what came before imo
"and we got quicktime events too" - Yeah that one's fair lol
Gameplay is also hella subjective but I'll be honest, 4's gameplay just feels like a more fluid (if a bit simplified) version of Reach to me. 🤷 I agree it's a step down, but I don't think I'd call it a massive one.
I'm down to discuss some of this. ((Genuinely curious if I've missed anything else that can be considered a retcon.))
I liked Halo 4 for it's story with the emotional weight between Chief and Cortana as the latter began to suffer from rampancy especially by the end when she sacrifices herself to defeat the Ur-Didact really hit me hard, Lead Writer Christopher Schlerf based it on his own experience with his mother suffering from dementia around the start of development. Art Design I had mixed views on especially regarding Chief's armor redesign and the lore reason for it was very lazy, graphics we're great though for a late Xbox 360 game showed what the console was capable of and the multiplayer while fun suffered from the fact it tried way too hard to appeal to CoD fans like with the custom loadouts while made sense for Spartan Ops but not so much for Multiplayer War Games (Thank god Halo 5 ditched it). Spartan Ops meanwhile was a good idea in theory it just wasn't well executed on the grounds it reused areas from the campaign and multiplayer on more then one occasion.
Yeah, I feel fans are a bit too harsh on Halo 4. It's kind of a miracle the game even came out at all. Huge respect to the devs of Halo 4.
@@plobbovondak Would have been better if didnt come out at all tbh it started the decline of the franchise
@@LKNear no the Decline started after Halo 3 came out and got its ass swiftly kicked by Call of Duty for the next 3 years that everyone blamed on Reach
@@Riorozen Pretty sure that was only the Forerunner AI wasnt it?
i genuinely enjoyed halo 4, albeit not my favorite, i think a lot of people hate it because it's 343's first halo project (i don't think they should've deviated too far from the main canon and artstyle, but unfortunately here we are). compared to 5 and the clustertruck that occured in the early days of MCC and current infinite, i think everyone treated 4 too harshly
So interesting seeing behind the scenes like this. This game could have been great, but it just didn't quite come together.
Taking over the Halo franchise is certainly a tall order.
And boy do I wish we lived in a universe where some god-tier team managed to pull it off.
They somehow managed to build upon the Halo universe while also taking away the feel of Halo. Art style is a big complaint that I hear, but there are other ones that I think are important too.
The music felt like generic, sci-fi movie music that was nowhere near as memorable.
The charm of the characters and enemies were lost.
Most importantly, so many decisions just went against what made earlier Halo games fun.
Like I remember them teasing how you could play as the Flood in infection mode. Which SOUNDED COOL. And it was a cool skin. HOWEVER they also removed the ability of the infected to carry ANY WEAPON other than an energy sword. Which absolutely KILLS so many custom games that could have be brought over from Halo Reach and Halo 3. Halo 4 forge was great, but this one little change limited the custom maps severly.
Bringing in the Forerunners as enemies was a cool idea, but they were so annoying to fight. Why do the knights have an instant teleport? Why do the instakill you with a teleport charge on legendary? Why do the watchers fold up and run away, making them so hard to kill (not to mention this exacerbating the issue of the limited ammo you can carry)? There is just no point to not start off these encounters by killing watchers. AND THEY KNEW THIS WAS A PROBLEM? The only promothean that isn't annoying to fight is the crawlers.
I get they wanted to go big. Focus on telling an emotional story. It just seems like this was a game designed by committee. "Less is more" is not something that comes to mind when I think of Halo 4. So many little decisions took away so much fun potential from the game.
What´s the song at the end of the video?
That heros journey quote is red flag to my ears.
Great vid.
I strongly believe that if 343's mind set with H4 was to change as little as possible from H3, they would have been far better off. All the resources invested in the radically different art design, and even little things like adding fuel cans on the Warthog, would have been invested elsewhere in the game or not invested elsewhere at all, allowing for more room to develop the company.
And the criticisms where not simply due to the different art design, but because it was objectively worse - the overly complicated art design led to too much clutter on screen, for example.
Well made video brother.
I wish they kept the original forward unto dawn at least not only did they switch art style the ship was entirely different in the beginning of halo 4 it was like a different universe from what halo 3 was
Art design was the only real complaint I had about Halo 4. New sandbox weapons to play around with was a great breath of fresh air, and the new enemies were actually pretty fun, while still being Halo. I feel like if they'd taken time to build the next game leaning into those strengths, things would've turned out okay.
Same for the story. We had a new setting, with little context which would be solved with lightly digging into the lore. Slightly better dialogue and world building would've easily solved that problem. Instead, Halo 5 had to INNOVATE the entire game in ways that strayed too far from Halo Identity. Weapon sandbox was solid towards the end. But man that story was just unforgivable, the art design was too far gone, micro transactions and ADS mechanics choked the multiplayer while slapping it around with balance issues...it could've been great
"Weapon down mission" sounds like a horrible idea
I can’t tell who’s talking in the background at 15:50 about the guns but it’s interesting for a game where everyone usually see it as 343 trying to be different and change everything, settling and maybe even planning on making the new forerunner guns so similar to what everybody already knew for the sake of simplicity and not rocking the boat. But personally I think they goofed a bit on them the first go. I like how they changed them for halo 5. I just wish the suppressor didn’t have tracking bolts. Or make the it burst fire like the bolt shot is. And make the bolt shot a heavy hitting slow fire pistol or something. But anyways. So interesting to hear the guy say that @ 15:50
Funny how things still haven’t changed in all these years. They should have listened to that one guy when he questioned they should go through with it.
Making a sequel with the mindset of "I want it to be unrecognizable" is where It all went wrong.
Why are you making a sequel then?
Spin-off games lile Halo Wars and the Arcade shooter paid more respect to the original gamds than anything halo 4/5 did.
343 demoted that guy and didnt listen to him if you paid attention
@@anomalyinc3239 Except even without him, they still achieved making the game nearly unrecognizable from the originals lol.
They should have used the MkVI GEN1 for Chief in H4 and the MP MkVI GEN2 in H5. This "Mod" armor was stupid and disgusting, plus it's existence didn't make any sence in the lore.
They've messed up the Elites, Grunts. The Promethians looked too organic. Etc.
Dont tell me you believe the nanobot explanation for the community snobs
Lorewise its the SAME armor 343 just changed the aesthetic to give a more textured gritty look thats why chief still has the dent in his chest plate from Halo 3
If nanobots changed his armor they also changed the battle rifle assault rifle magnum and the entire forward unto dawn
Nanobots was a dumb excuse that 343 never needed to provide because the same people cringe whinging about this stuff had nothing to say about lore consistency when 343 regressed chiefs armor and banished/covenant armor designs for fanservice in Halo Infinite
They didnt care because they got their baby bottle back
@@anomalyinc3239 I didn't believe Franky's stupid reasoning at all.
So, if I swear on the original GEN1 in H4 and the MP GEN2 in H5, is that valid? I DO that anyway, just curious. I've made redesigns for Chief and the for the entire Blue Team too.
I don't play H4 and H5 Campaigns mostly because I can't stand that ugly Mod armor.
If they really weren't serious about the nanobot nonsense, why did they make a different version for Multiplayer?
I'm glad they did btw.
REALLY REALLY GOOD VIDEO! 1k subs very soon i feel
Halo 4 had such a dreadful direction. And only 2 years to release it with this team? What on earth was Microsoft thinking.
The multiplayer was a whole can of worms, i’m glad they reversed that direction in 5 😅
ODST is the only halo that didn’t have a troubled development lol
I don’t mind halo 4,?it’s not a bungee halo title for sure, don’t get me wrong. However with the considerations 343 we’re dealing with I think they did alright, idk about some of the combat design lol but the game as a whole isn’t terrible, other than reach 4 has my fav assault rifle.
0/10 game, it doesn't have a full auto shotgun😉
Halo 4 is, next to Halo 2, the best in the series, and hated for what i celebrate it for.
"for fans tapped into it.. it was a rewarding experience" ....... Sooooo ... how was spartan ops?
They return!