“Just one question. What if you miss?
“I won’t”
It’s an iconic line which confirms that the Master Chief is indeed the superhuman hero of humanity that the halo series had portrayed him as. It’s been clipped countless times and is one of the most popular moments in the halo game series which is unquestionably iconic; but in recent years has felt like it has lost its way and magic.
Halo is microsoft xbox’s flagship game and served as one of the main launch titles for the original xbox and the 360. Eighty million units have been shifted since it first released on 15th November 2001 and it is one of my all time favourite game series and the only FPS I have sunk double digit hours into. From the original game it has span off into music, books, figures, table top game, comics and tv with a total value of the IP now in the region of $5 billion (as of 2016). The love and respect the series had though seems to have declined in recent years and the question has to be asked whether the series has in fact simply been milked to death and the IP is now essentially a metaverse product rather than what was once considered one of the finest FPS series out there.
What is Halo?
Halo was released on the original xbox as a FPS game where you play as the ‘Master Chief’. An armoured, faceless character of relatively few words who runs through the game with the help of the AI cortana fighting initially an alien race called the Covenant and later a second race called the flood. On the first glance this could be any one of a number of FPS games where you just run around shooting things but Halo had something different. It had a story that was rock solid and way beyond other fast paced FPS games like Doom. From the very start the story is clear and tight. Humanity is in a war against the Covenant and is losing. Badly. Fleeing the destruction of the main human base the Master Chief finds himself over a massive alien artifact called Halo. The Covenant feel this is a holy relic whose activation will ascend them to godhood but in fact it is a weapon of mass destruction and a containment facility for an alien parasite called the flood.
The first three games of the series tell the story of the above and the storytelling is tight and relentless. You finish one mission and are immediately onto the next with each game following on from the next. Halo 2 expands to add in the Covenant Civil War but continues the narrative and everything is in the context of the halo rings and what they are for.
Character creation is great and secondary characters actually have character and roles rather than being generic NPCs. Avery Johnson is almost as classic a character as the Chief is and the AI cortana gets a story line and is not just a simple voice in the speaker in the first three games.
The whole thing is immersive and coupled with the amazing music (seriously, just listen to pieces like this https://youtu.be/QAeeYohFL1Y and tell me that it does not get your blood pumping) the original three games remain one of the best gameplay experiences I, and many others, have had.
The problem?
The problem is that in the recent trilogy of games this experience has been at best, muted and at worst is not there at all. There is nothing technically wrong, though Infinity has undeniable issues, but I will list below why for me the new trilogy is not even close to the original. The sales figures remain healthy enough but the wider availability of game pass does skew things I suspect; as a result it is probably not a good metric to use.
Metacritic scores show that the newer games are generally less well received than the originals. Below is a grab of an image listing the metacritic average scores and the old clearly outscores the new.
So where did it all go wrong?
The story
The original story was, as I said earlier, tight and relentless. You finished one mission and went onto the next with a clear understanding on where you were in the universe. If you wanted to know more then there was the novel series etc but you did not need that to know what was essentially the state of play. The new series though is markedly different and puts me in mind of the latest Star Wars trilogy with no clear overarching theme or plot thread. Four is about the didact, five is Cortana and infinity is…well I am not totally sure. The banished? the harbinger? I did actually check out halopedia on this which does emphasise the point. I had finished the game and did not actually really know what had been going on. No doubt the other media will fill in the gaps but for me that is not how it should be. The books should be the cherry on the cake and not the cake itself.
The series also tried to include other characters in Halo Five and this had been done before with the arbiter. The problem is that the Arbiter was fleshed out (especially in the remastered cutscene version – seriously find the youtube videos as they are amazing) but Locke and the others just felt like strawmen with nothing to add. Infinity seems to have dropped that and gone back to just the Chief but that game does have other issues which I will detail below. The point though is that without the story that the original trilogy enjoyed the new trilogy leaves the player feeling disconnected from what is going on and without that connection you need to fall back on the gameplay itself. Halo’s gameplay has always been fluid for me but I have never felt like it was groundbreaking and super gripping.
Music
The original score for halo is legendary. There is no other way to describe it and I was blown away when I first heard it; personally I always preferred the Halo 3 score but all three were great. The scores for the second trilogy have been ok but none of them have ever stood out for me. I can easily name tracks from the first trilogy but ask me to name any from the new and I would struggle. I was particularly disappointed with the score in Infinity. This seems to have carried over into the TV series where the classic music was not able to be used due to licencing and royalties issues (seriously game companies just pay people their due). I have not seen much of the tv series bar clips but there is one doing the rounds of a battle scene where a fan has rescored it with the classic music. The difference is frankly immense. The original is not bad at all, yes the iron man shots are a bit odd, but the fluidity is a joy to behold but the score is just so flat. The Mandalorian fell into the same trap with Luke’s return and again the rescore is so much better.
It’s easy to overlook music but a great score can lift a game or show beyond normal levels and whilst a fan may not understand it; they appreciate it. More importantly they notice when something amazing is not present and the absence in Halo feels more noticeable than most games, especially in the boss battles and key stages. I was expecting the strident battle theme which usually had me checking for cloaked elites or a pair of hunters; instead I got a passable bit of music but not the heart rate increase.
The infinity problem
Am not going to lie, Infinity was a massive disappointment for me. I don’t play multiplayor so I was not overly concerned about the issues which I knew were present but I did have high hopes for the campaign. After all campaign mode has been a key part of halo since the beginning because that’s all there really was. After years of delays and promises though it just felt slow and flat. It wasn’t bad and the grapple mechanic was actually really good fun but the rest just did nothing for me. The story was just so flat and whilst I like the idea of side quests the ones in Infinity are essentially the same and they kill the pacing stone dead. The original trilogy took you from stage to stage with only the cutscene to catch your breath but in Infinity you don’t get that.
I do get the impression that the design scope for Infinity changed many times in the dev stage. Is it an open world game like the Witcher? A pure FPS like Doom with its boss mechanics or a narrative driven FPS with just one key final boss like the original games? I still don’t know but Infinity had elements of all three but does not blend them seamlessly together so it all feels disjointed. Coupled with the delay, no ability to replay levels at launch and the fact that the multiplayor was released half baked and this just feels like a game that was released because the beancounters realised they had run out of time and hoped that brand loyalty would avoid a cyperpunk style backlash. The problem with that thinking though is that Infinity had taken so long to release, and Halo 5 had been so divisive that the loyalty was no longer there. As a result there was a backlash (though not CP77 levels) and almost every poll I have seen has people saying they played it once and never went back. I completed the story and then pretty much immediately uninstalled.
Infinity not being a finished or nearly finished game is for me an indication that the studio wanted to make the most money they could from battle passes and microtransactions on the new series x console but when it became clear that this was never going to have enough units to make it work they shoved it into the xbox one and almost washed their hands of it.
A brand more than a game
This, I think, is the root of the issue. Games are no longer happy with just being game. Companies no longer want to drop a game with maybe a bit of DLC over a few months; instead they want a money making vehicle which runs for a much longer period. I understand why of course, dev time is expensive and these are not cheap games to make. The problem is that the only way to keep making money is to paywall content which is accessed via microtransactions. Infinite is not pay to win but the boosts given to people who got in on day one give them a huge advantage what with boosts and achievements over players who came in later. The need to get the money coming in also drove the release of the game before it was finished in my view. This was the same as cyberpunk which never really recovered from its messy launch; though it did better than Fallout 74!
Halo has always had tie ins but it seems now that there are more than ever and the fact that the key figures on the new TV show admit they never played the games suggest that the game is no longer important. It is the brand that matters now. Stick Halo on it and its likely that you will pick up some fans of the game by default. Disney have done the same thing with Star Wars, though to a much greater extent. The problem with that thinking is that by simply assuming your fans will accept any product simply because it bears the name; you actually show a degree of contempt for them and they respond in kind by voting with their feet (or rather the uninstall key). I think this has happened with Guardians and Infinite; this was not a halo game that they knew; instead it was a passable game with a halo skin and name slapped on the box. I feel this is especially true with Infinite.
Conclusion
So is Halo doomed to die? No.
Any suggestion that the franchise is on its last legs is ridiculous and it remains a very profitable brand for Microsoft. There does however need to be an awareness there that brand loyalty is not what it was and people no longer simply play a game because it is in the series they once loved. They are more critical now and as money gets tighter they are more selective in where they spend it. As a result any future releases of games, movies, or TV shows needs to factor in that fact. No fanbase is ever fully happy but equally disregarding them has its risks and trying to constantly milk a cash cow ultimately drives people away.
It remains to be seen if Infinite gets a successor. I suspect there will be one but whether the diminished brand loyalty is enough to weather another long absence with only paywalled drops of content for Infinite and ‘inspired by’ type TV shows is another matter altogether.
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