They sealed its fate by having no DLC.
Comment on Halo 3 may be the greatest release in the history of the games industry
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
At risk of going off-topic, Halo’s fall is really sad.
Like, I still imagine everything Infinity could have been as a franchise-reboot, high budget, open world game, and it just felt… so underwhelming?
jeff@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
VirtuePacket@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yea, it’s been pretty severely mishandled. Star Wars is oft-described as an evergreen setting. Halo is certainly not Star Wars. But it has a pretty vast, expansive setting that could be evergreen. There’s a lot of great stories you could tell and plenty of space to build characters we care about. But the IP has been completely rudderless since Halo 4.
I’m becoming rather convinced that the bespoke studio model wherein a single studio does nothing but make Halo games is a bad idea. I think it leads to a lot of turnover and creative burnout. Instead, I think they should license the IP to studios that make a good pitch. It took them over a decade. But Disney finally figured that out with Marvel. Now we’re getting great Marvel games from multiple studios and publishers.
Turn Halo Studios into a Lucasfilm-like org that partners with other studios (internal or external) and sets the guardrails. It could be great.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
To be fair, a new open-world engine was a tall order for a “new” studio. Most AAAAs with bespoke engines fail.
…Which is why they should have just licensed CryEngine, probably?
But yeah. Specialized “AA” development is the sweet spot of gaming now, and Microsoft could have made sacks of cash simply licensing Halo out and sitting on their hands.
fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’m glad opensource engines are really clawing there way up for this reason. If you are making something ambitious enough you almost need the ability to muck around with niche under pinnings but hopefully if it’s opensource they can both be standard and muck around