Due to a lot of requests for this and at the time lacking another clip to upload (as well as the fact that someone took the time to timestamp all the moments I talked about it in the last stream), I’ve decided to put together the Halo rant for your enjoyment, which should be a bit of a fun since EFAP’s coverage of Halo Season 2 should be coming soon. However, I do want to stress that I will not be regularly putting clips from my bi-weekly live streams here, as this channel is dedicated to EFAP content. In the future, if there are more requests for clips from my personal streams, I'll make another channel to upload those to so as not to confuse or clutter the channel. In the meantime, I'm hard at work polishing up new clips, and the regular schedule will resume this Sunday!
I miss the days of good Halo games 😩 I remember replaying Halo CE campaign over and over again with my friends. It was great. I couldn’t even bring myself to finish Halo 5 story and never even gave Halo Infinite a chance. Thanks for your rant trashing 343 Wolf, it was very cathartic.
Halo 3 managed to compete against CoD 4, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops at the same time and still came out on top. What a giant fucking impact it had.
Thinking back to those times when Halo 2 and 3 (as well as contemporary launches like MW2) launched, and people would wait outside game stores on midnight to buy their copy as soon as the date changed. Digital has unfortunately rendered that obsolete.
It's hilarious when 343 apologists claim that "HaLo hAd No comPetiTion" when Halo 3/Reach had to put up with the likes of Modern Warfare 1/2, Black ops, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3. No 343's Halo is irrelevant not because of competition. 343 just made trash games.
Also never forget: - Death of Rookie in random book - Black Team getting the worst deaths in a random comic - Character assissination of Cortana in Halo 5 and Infinite - The tv show
Halo Infinite felt like it was directed by J.J. Abrams. Constantly teasing at a story in the making, without ever providing one in the present. Thank you Wolf, for finally saying what no one else will dare to say.
@@ThunderClapClide and depressed millions…..can we say psy ops? It seems silly but I could rant for like 30 minutes about it. Like they had to try….and something came out about a group that engage in malicious sabotage in other games….and I was thinking about it months before it came out.
Even suffers the same issues almost exactly in each entry. Halo 4 = Force Awakens. New beginning that ultimately repeats story beats from the start of the previous trilogy but sets up some potential for good story telling if committed to. Halo 5 = Last Jedi An absolute mess that squanders a lot of the previous entry and ultimately goes nowhere. Halo Infinite = Rise of Skywalker A soft retcon of the previous entry by either directly changing or glossing over the most controversial points whilst still falling into its own issues.
It's less coherent than the SW sequels. At the very least the SW movies have somewhat of a main antagonist and the same characters from movie to movie. The 343 Halo games, appart from Chief (not even Cortana, 4 has Cortana, 5 has a different character called Cortana and 6 kills H5 Cortana and has a new AI that looks like Cortana), every single character from one game is removed in the following game, the whole stake of one game is 100% gone in the next one and a different threat is introduced, to be totaly changed in the next one. They truely have nothing linking them appart sharing Chief as main character. The 343 trilogy is as much of a trilogy as 3 Zelda games taken at random.
I will never forgive 343 for what they've done. I highly recommend checking out We WERE Forerunner by c3 Sabertooth. Guy does a lot of research and really breaks down exactly how not only 343 fucked over the lore of humans being forerunner, but how Frank specifically made sure to piss on everything he was given. Guy was an incompetent hack, and it's shameful he was ever even considered for the position. It shows clear Microsoft never gave a shit, and was hoping to simply milk the golden cow dry.
@@CyrodiilCome Yeah, that’s in the Video he’s detailing Joseph Staten in charge of Halo CE-Reach the BIG cheese of Bungie said humans are Forunners. Joseph also wrote Contact Harvest and clarified EVERY human being is a Forunner in the reliquary. Frank O’Connor ignored Joseph’s lore, and re-wrote it for 343 when he took over in the Judas style reorganization of halo. So 343 decided humans were at war with Forunners because the Irony of the covenant killing there gods was to Nuanced for Bonny and Franky
@@TheBiddofslayer58 What. 343 Guilty Spark says VERBATIM. You Are Forunner. But this ring is Mine. God you 343 Shills have never even played Halo 3 it’s so pathetic.
You are not being too negative. You are being appropriately negative. You're not responsible for 343 putting you in the position to have to say these things BUT THESE THINGS NEED TO BE SAID. BECAUSE YOU'RE *NOT* THE ONLY ONE THINKING THIS WAY.
“Do not blame the developers, only blame management and corporations,” is the same flavour as the statement as “do not blame writers and creatives, blame studios.” In reality, neither is eternally fallible pr infallible. This theory of labour is so strange. I understand being pro-writer or pro-development (fair pay, working against harassment in places such as Activision, etc.) but beyond that, it becomes sycophantic.
Developer who worked for a shovelware studio here. A lot of devs -- programmers at least -- don't really get a say in the decisions and can see the iceberg approaching from miles away. 343 also had a huge issue with a constantly revolving door of contractors who would get let go after a few months during the development of Infinite, meaning by the time they got comfortable with the framework and tools they were being let go. Now, of course this isn't always the case. Sometimes there are bad devs who make stupid decisions and ruin things. But there usually is a chain of command and a lot of programmers sit at the bottom of that.
@@imjust_a I can understand that, completely. There are certainly situations wherein upper management and/or the suited people have the say and the actual on-ground workers who have the skills are not able to voice disagreement. But generally, I never assume the better of anyone automatically. Sometimes it is one party, sometimes it is the other, and sometimes you can see a pattern begin to emerge. I do think that the new tends to lean towards putting the fault on shoulders of studios or management because of their fame, social footprint and power, as well as the likelihood that there are more cases where the upper people have the power than those working as developers.
Yes! On top of that it is an inconsequential statement. We know! There's always good and bad people in every facet of life. Honestly, it sounds more like a deflection: "You don't like 343? But you don't mean the poor little ant worker is bad, right? they are only taking orders, let's talk about how good they are instead".
Didn't they also say The Endless were supposed to be worse then the Flood? They seemed to forget that the Flood was so bad that the Forerunners built the Halo rings to wipe out all life that could be eaten by the Flood. So you expect me to believe there's something worse now?
The best possible thing I can say about 343 is that they simply seem incompetent, rather than malicious, unlike so many others who ruin once beloved IP’s.
@@AceGold-hp8jv Yeah I mean, when some games & movies have the developers/directors saying stuff like "Yeah we hated the old thing that everyone liked so we knew when doing this sequel that we were going to change everything to make it more INCLUSIVE", I'll take what I can get with some incompetent morons who at least publicly claimed to like the pervious product.
@@josephkerrigan733 I understand where your coming from, and i actually agree with your point. What i was trying to say, however, is that neither should be the standard for any industry and yet unfortunately are.
If you had told me a couple of years ago, that I wouldn't care about Halo, Star Wars, Star Trek or Game of Thrones anymore, I would have called you crazy. Well, here we are.
@@devildolphin2102i’m pretty sure those two chuckle fucks have been black listed, as for House of the Dragon Season 1 was great and Season 2 looks pretty good.
Your feelings toward Halo are exactly how my friends and I feel. We were die hard Halo fans during the Bungie era, and now, we're completely apathetic towards it because of 343s mishandling of the franchise. During the MCC debacle, there was a review I saw that put it best: "343 didn't earn this, and that's why they don't give a shit."
Every time I hear about modern Halo, it makes me glad I stopped buying Halo games after Reach. Just couldn't muster the interest and it seems like I lucked out.
I played 4 because it was already in the MCC, and it wasn't just bad story, but the gameplay was wack too. Almost every fight is at long range with the two DMRs somehow. You made the right call.
I’m glad I didn’t buy the Xbox One. No or extremely limited backwards compatibility, terrible exclusives, and a requirement to install games to play them.
@@jimmyjohnson501 4 was meh but at least gave an end to the story for Chief and Cortana. I can forgive some of the middling design in 4 for the sake of the ending putting the series to rest. A sendoff with finality to Chief and Cortana rather than 3's ending with Chief and Cortana sleeping in deep space .
We are on the same boat. Reach was the peak of Halo for me. It had it all. I played as much of it as I could before my beloved 360 died. After that I just couldn't be motivated to buy a new one, especially with how...4 and 5 went. Brutal stuff, but a nice silver lining. Like chief, we were just lucky enough.
Sadly I doubt that'll happen now. Besides, most are. Basically every person I know who played xbox is on pc now. Apart from 1 guy who's more into retro than pc gaming (he's cool)
I seem to remember a lot of gaming journalists throwing out 'linear' as a blanket criticism without elaborating on it all the time. That might explain the drive to make every game open world. Never mind games like the original Halo trilogy, Doom, Half Life, Resident evil 4, Dead Space, and more I haven't thought of. If you want to use linear as a criticism, you have to justify why it's bad for the game in question.
I remember that coming up a lot in game discussions when Call of Duty was at its peak, probably because the single player campaigns would make use of linear level design and scripting to put players in scripted spectacles.
Honestly in the 2005-2010 games were becoming terribly linear, and then farcry, elder scrolls and xenoblade(this last one less than the other) showed the world that open world could be deep, then indie games showed up with sandbox and I can see why people liked open world. Now it's the opposite with open world being so dispersive that smaller sized games need to be brought back
People always think "linear" is a criticism instead of a description. When you point out taijiquan is more linear than baguazhang or jujutsu more linear than aikijutsu, because MOST MOTION IS FORWARD AND BACK, they think you're saying taijiquan and jujutsu are flawed. Do they think "Linear A" and "Linear B" was linguists saying the Minoan scripts were bad?
@badman5852 I don't even mean it in that way. Some of the best Halo books have nothing to do with the main story. Ghosts is about the Spartan IIIs and their training, which is cool but not necessary to understand Reach or anything. As far as I remember, no one on Noble Team is even mentioned. Like Wolf said, the best thing Halo could have done is expand out from the story of Chief, like ODST did.
This is bad, it means we don't get Marty to return to the franchise, and was not only the composer but very influential in the story of the original game.
He was never returning in the first place man, if they didn't use him in infinite, the game where they finally return to using a lot of the classic motifs in the ost, he is never coming back @@TheObscuran
It's pretty crazy how both franchises have common things about how they were ruined. I would consider Star Wars Legends and Bungie Halo's lores canon rather than Star Wars "Canon" and 343 "Halo" lores.
I remember playing through Halo 4 and thinking that the ending sucked, but the community seemed to really like that ending at the time. It's like The Force Awakens for Halo.
@@jonathandear4914 Even on first watch I thought it was cringe how Cortana lightly brushed Chief's armor before her death. "There. I touched you. Goodbye." Then, that final line of "She said that once. About not being a machine," really made me roll my eyes because the writer probably thought that was so profound and would earn them a BAFTA or something.
@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 Chief never even had a problem relating to "being a machine", he had a duty he was enrolled to under hideous immoral circumstances and he rolled with it, accepting the necessity of a warrior like him in times like these. If anything he always came across with a subtle wit, like he says cool things through military jargon but his vocal acting makes it clear he knows that he's either understating something or being stoic in the face of outrageous odds. If they wanted to give Chief an arc, it should have been about his fear of not having a fight anymore, like peacetime is close and he realizes that when there's no battle, he doesn't have a place in the world besides being a mentor to other Spartans and his friendship with others in the military. You could have John say a soft "...Confirmed." for example when somebody else happily opines that the threat is nearly dealt with, because he's an older man seeing the most important arc of his life ending. There's plenty you can do with Chief, but forcing the machine connection between him and Cortana, two deeply human characters with plenty of pathos already, is fucking cringe.
Remember, never "pass the torch," it is almost always better to end a story instead of trying to tell the same story for infinite time. Sure, we lose James Bond and a lot of superheroes this way, but we gain Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Halo, The Simpsons, The Twilight Zone, Terminator, Indiana Jones, He-Man, Thundercats, Willow, Mass Effect,...
"never pass the torch" the problem with that lesson is that we're talking about licensed gaming properties, which are part of a world dominated by mediocre capitalist junkies that failed upwards in a system that allows it, calling the shots for profit at the top, incapable of learning lessons unless they somehow end up in the streets (in a system that sets them for life with billion-dollar-bonus emergency parachutes if their careers or companies end up burning). _The people who make the games and art you love are not the ones with the power over those games and art you love._
It was supposed to just be the opening act. We were supposed to get ANNUAL story DLC, not just new seasons of irrelevant multiplayer. Then they realized their in-house, "let's not pay the Unreal people" engine was borderline unusable and had to kill that.
@@sophiasfavorite9646 Even if it was supposed to get story dlc's it still doesn't excuse the single biome. It doesn't help that every single location looks so much the same they probably just copy and paste every location, if you seen one banish's base then you seen them all and the same goes for both of the forerunner's building and UNSC's outpost. It feels like they didn't care to put any time or effort into the campaign both the world and the story was only given the bare minimum.
Has six video where he does nothing but shts on halo 5, had 3 videos where he does nothing but sht on star wars battlefront, has two videos where he says how much he hates other gamers, says he doesn't like infinite overall. But noooo our Lord and master dishonored btch (man doesn't even have the balls to come back to RUclips) said something slightly disagreeable about him, so now he's a "fence sitter" idiots.....
Halo was absolutely a foundational game for me. Combat Evolved was the first game I ever played on the original Xbox, right at the start. I was six years old, I think, and I played it all the time with my dad. We loved it so much, and by the time Halo 2 came out, I was hooked for good. Then Halo 3, one of my favorite stories and one of the most emotional endings in all of gaming history. I too tear up when I watch that beautiful, downright poetic scene. ODST was clearly one of the best reasons I ever had to be alive, having absolutely loved the ODSTs in the previous games, and it lived up to that and then some. Reach was flawed in certain ways, but the story still hits like a train filled with trucks filled with bricks, and I shed tears over that ending too. Then 343 came along, and fucked everything up. From the Halo 4 teaser trailer, I knew things were off, wrong. Turned out to be worse than even I imagined, yet I saw so many fall in love with that garbage and call it the deepest story Halo ever told. To this day, I'm disgusted by that. Halo 5 (Guardians... lol) seemed to turn a lot of people around, and they finally saw the light. Glad to say I never even bought that one, just played it when a friend and I shared games on Xbox One. Infinite eventually comes along, after so many fuck-ups that I couldn't be bothered to care anymore, and promised to be a return to form and feel. It was neither, and made it all even worse. Never bought it, never played it, barely managed to sit through watching the story once, and I'll go back to forgetting it exists after this. Paramount's Halo show... the less said about that dumpster fire, the better we all are. The fact that show exists is proof we are indeed in the worst possible timeline/universe, and I refuse to acknowledge it except to shit on everything it is. They decided they didn't get enough joy out of destroying the franchise that already existed, to sequel trilogy levels. Now, they wanted to tell their own version, worse than ever and only vaguely related to anything we all knew and loved. Halo is dead, and has been since Reach. Everything 343 has made does not exist in my world. The Halo franchise now consists only of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo Wars, and the novels, The Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, Contact Harvest, and The Cole Protocol.
@@ODST_Parker The first was amazing, but by the 3rd, I had watched a comparison and didn't realize how badly outdated the first looked since I hadn't played since beating it.
The only good thing 343 has done is make the original Halo games more accessible. But they should have never have tried to add to the story after Halo 3.
To be fair, Bungie did include the Legendary Ending in Halo 3. We all knew back then that Chief was going to crash land on a Forerunner planet. But 343 fumbled the ball big time with Halo 4 and Spartan Ops' stories. I remember being pissed when Requiem ended up being destroyed at the end of SO. Like, we spent 5 years speculating what the Legendary planet was, where it was, who was there, what was going to happen to Chief. And it gets destroyed a couple months after it's introduced. Wasting of potential will always be what kills a series.
@@GhostLink92 And then they killed off Jul 'Mdama in the first mission of 5. Which annoyed me and I'm apparently the only person who thought 5 was better than 4 (faint praise, to be sure).
We as halo fans should just pretend the 343 made lore is fan fiction and never happened. The story of chief ended after halo 3 he’s found he returns home and he chills in reserve. In my opinion future halo games should have been spin offs like reach and odst where we explore the universe outside of chiefs feet.
Humanity ARE the forerunners. You know it, I know it, Marty O’Donnell knows it. 343 just seems to not give a brutes codpiece about the franchise. I always wanted to blame 343 but quite honestly Microsoft has so much responsibility to take in the way things worked out. I’m done with the franchise that got me through school, college and my early career. It hurts.
@@WastedPot eh, Microsoft seems to have just thrown him into 343 last minute as a fall guy, notice how he was the one apologizing for everything Bonnie had promised years ago? Any time they had bad news they threw him up on stage to announce it.
@@Slender_Man_186 They did and I respect that he had to deal with that. Having said that he did take the role, and proceeded to be Microsoft’s fall guy for his entire tenure. Like I said my reverence of him has faded.
@@WastedPot how likely do you think it was that he was given the ultimatum of “save Halo Infinite or you’ll be leaving Microsoft publishing,” because he was let go from Microsoft shortly after they pulled him off of Halo. I doubt he had much of a choice.
Not worse than the forerunners, worse than the FLOOD! Yeah, you know, the parasite that can wipe out an entire planet with one spore, the creature so terrifying and evil that the Covenant couldn't cover up their existence and simply relegated them to a similar if not worse level of demon than Spartans, a force so power, so terrifying that it literally put into motion the entire Halo Universe's story by wiping out the most advanced race (or most advanced human state) imaginable. Yeah, something we've never heard of until now is worse than the flood. Great writing 343!
I liked Halo 4, but yeah with Halo 5... they just destroyed alot of their own work they put into Halo 4. I mean... "killing" the Didact offscreen in a comic? What the fuck.
The most weird thing about that was that I thought he just died in the game. Which I was perfectly fine with, btw. I thought having a one-off standalone villain was neat. Then I hear a comic retconned him back to life... then killed him again. Huh?
Yeah. I gave up on Halo after Halo 4. I was a teen when that game came out and it just didn't feel right. The art was wrong, the story was wrong, the lore, the gameplay... And it took me a few years to realize exactly what it was. It was 343 not understanding what made Halo itself. For my own love of the universe, I stop acknowledging the games after Reach. I'll never forgive 343 for taking away the poetry of Humanity being Forerunner. The grand mystery of our own ancient cosmic history... UGH.
In my opinion the only media from 343 that is safe to be canon are the novels Silent Storm and Oblivion. They cover how young John and the Spartan-IIs first missions fighting the Covenant. We also get to see Johnson working with the Spartans and earning their respect. Early Covenant War was always a cool time period for me. Also a Halo Legends Spartan has a tiny cameo and I loved being able to see them. If only for a sentence or two. I have played the games after 4 though so if there are lore violations I didn't notice them. No mention of forerunners or anything.
Honestly, seeing this video made my day. 100% agree with almost everything you said in regards to the story, I seriously couldn't believe it when the same people that called out Cortana's treatment in Halo 5 and said it was disgusting and unacceptable turned around and praised her nuking a city filled with millions of innocent people and blowing up Doisac just to torture Atriox for not capitulating to a fascist dictatorship. And then you had people like Act Man saying Chief's character writing was better than Bungie's writing for him, even though he tried to kill his best friend in cold blood to mildly inconvenience the Harbinger when he needs her to save the human race and they confirm this explicitly. Easily the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, hope we get more people criticizing it in the future.
No other studio in gaming history has ever been handed such a powerful IP only to absolutely destroy it and its legacy in every possible way so masterfully. Their slaughtering of MCC alone and subsequent burial to save face was enough to declare them incompetent to run this franchise
Not to mention, halo was THE GAME that gave people a reason to buy an Xbox, Master Chief is basically the mascot, and yet, Microsoft couldn’t form a better game studio than 343? Garbage
With regards to the Forerunners just being more advanced humans, that was always so genius to me as well because The Covenant were completely oblivious to it and were ironically in the process of genociding the exact race that they needed to access the Forerunner tech and fulfill all their religious shit. Like, per their religion, the Covenant probably should have been worshiping the humans? I dunno, either way I liked it
Yeah, it was divine irony at its finest. But the Prophets had already waged war and subjugated the Elites, Jackals, Grunts, and Hunters on the basis of the great Journey. They knew who the forerunners were but by that point, they were in too deep.
It’s the perfect story. Aliens finding their gods and destroying them tragically. Elites are also the real ones they didn’t even want to fight humanity they wanted them to join the Covenant. That would be an insanely cool alternate universe setting for a new Halo game once 343 gets burnt at the pyre
I've always said there is legitimate reason to believe the core leadership of 343 (most are thankfully gone...but not all) wanted to destroy Halo. You have to wonder why they chose the name 343. That character deceives and betrays Master Chief. Then, 343 the company deceives and betrays both Halo and us the customers...over and over again. Always possible it's just a coincidence, but naming yourself after that character seems very intentional and I wish I had a better explanation for the "why?" but I don't. If it was their goal, they certainly succeeded, and it would eliminated the bizarre amount of what we all assume to be "incompetence".
27:00 Not to mention: In the background of that exact image, we see a forerunner-esc ship with people in it. Implying that humanity (reclaimers) are have reclaimed their ancestors technology and are restoring prosperity to the universe. Seeing that combined with your (at that point) ancient war helmet laying in the ground, a reminder of the sacrifice humanity gave to bring humanity back to their golden era, its emotionally potent man. It's perfect. And it only works in Bungies original lore, that the Forerunners are ancient humans. Within 343's lore, that final shot of halo reach literally means nothing
On the "multiple options" scenario, I found out that on the mission The Covenant, when you fight the two Scarabs, if you hop onto the passenger seat of a Hornet, the Marine will fly you to a Scarab, drop you off, and when you destroy the power core the Marine will come back and pick you up. Amazing little detail.
While Kiki Wolfkill and Frank O'Connor are both gone, that doesn't fix the cultural problems in 343 that will result in more games like Infinite, 5, and 4. Halo had a perfect ending with 3, and there was no reason to continue the franchise, especially with Chief. Reach and ODST showed that you can do Halo without Chief. If Halo is going to move forward, they need to do a Disney-retcon and remove everything that's post Halo 3-timeline wise, retcon everything that's not a game, and give it to a different studio like ID or Machine Games or something. Then, return to the roots - Halo 3's gameplay is still solid and DOOM 2016 and Eternal showed you can iterate on a game like it and have it be successful. Story-wise, more games during the war, before Reach or something after in dealing with the remaining Flood somehow and political tensions between Earth and the disparate and leaderless races. But above all, the writing has to be good. 343's games failed because the writing in all of them are abysmal.
@@revolverswitchHalo Wars 2 has some pretty massive issues, mainly when it comes to the Ark apparently keeping a nearly finished ring in its forges at all times, the lack of any major damage on the Ark, and High Charity still being intact, all of which combine to almost completely retcon Halo 3’s ending. I’m all for reusing ideas from Wars 2, like the Spirit of Fire making a return and The Banished (although they would need to be altered since the idea of them rivaling the covenant before the schism is a little nuts).
@@Slender_Man_186 I agree. I'd almost like if the Banished were scaled down to be a threat like the Jackals in Cole Protocol. They could even be some aliens working with Innies or something so they would have a good motive to try to scavenge what Forerunner tech was left to fight the UNSC. The Banished are such a goofy idea imo. Like the secret empire in SWTOR.
THANK YOU! This is all shit I’ve wanted other RUclipsrs who talk about Halo to talk about. Feels good to finally hear someone else rant about the things I’ve ranted about for a while now.
@@dio2076 I have. But both have never talked about things like the change to the forerunners not making sense. I haven't watched Wolf's vids since he took the off YT so maybe I'm missing remembering with him. Plus, Infinite came out after Wolf left YT. And if I remember correctly, Act Man liked the story of Infinite for the most part. It felt good to hear someone talk about how Cortana made no sense and was ruined in that game. Because most of other people (Act Man included) thought she was redeemed.
@@RonS1018 I said Act Man's video on 5 .....Not infinite. The whole point of the forerunners were they were humans. Not a separate race. Something even Marty O Donnell confirmed. Act man not addressing was indeed a problem. I agree with you on that 100%. And yeah I agree. Cortana's character arc should've ended at 4. Bringing her back in 5 and then killing her off again in Infinite was beyond stupid. She's not redeemed......at all..... infinite was a nostalgia bait shit show.
@@dio2076 Yeah, I love that Cortana's explanation for her actions was "I shouldn't have tried to go out on my own. Because we work better as a team." As if that explains blowing up on entire plan and spartan base. Then she tells Chief and the Weapon, "You can learn from my mistakes." 🤣
You'd love Andy - The Bunker Dweller's videos on Halo 4 and Infinite then. That dude really hits the nail on the head on most of the issues, especially the Forerunners, and doesn't pull any punches, it's incredibly refreshing. He actually reminded me a lot of Wolf's old videos. If you want an hour long video on the topic, C3 Sabertooth also made an incredible video detailing the Forerunner retcon and what they were like before 343, going all the way back to the Halo 3 terminals, IRIS and even Halo 2's original cut ending. I'd highly recommend that one too if you're curious on the topic.
@@nagger8216 You know what… I think I have seen Andy’s videos on Halo 4 and Infinite. I remember liking them a lot. I think I’ve had C3 Sabertooth’s video on forerunners recommended to me but never got around to watching it. Will definitely put it on my video queue, thanks.
The fact that a majority of people working on Halo Infinite were independent contractors asked to work on an engine they have no experience with just to fire them and hire new contractors in the same cycle to avoid paying benefits. That is how Microsoft operates the studios they acquire, that’s why they have no problem shutting them down even if they make a good game, because the talent is already long gone
Regarding which franchise fell harder I see it like this. Star Wars died in blazing train wreck of a fire that continues to burn. A crowd still watches, some lament as more burned away, some claim “it’s not so bad”, some try to put out the flames to no avail, and more continue to walk away but occasionally check on the fire to see if it still burns. Halo on the other hand I saw as more of a slow burn in which fans gradually left until the general sentiment was apathetic. To put it simply, Star Wars died with an explosion, Halo died with a whimper.
One thing that is unforgivable is they tried to replace the announcer, Jeff Steitzer and replace him with the boring DEI Spartan announcer in Big Team Battle. They also don't even tell him what voice lines they'll use. 343 is an evil company
It’s weird to realize I spent my childhood as the gaming equivalent of a Star Wars fanboy in Halo, and yet I never think about it now because everything after reach is so shit.
I rarely think about it but when it comes up I feel offended and angry because Halo 1 through Reach was such a critical part of my escapism as a child, I was abused horribly from a young age but when I got to go round my mates house and split screen Halo I was okay and everything was okay for a few hours and 343 have taken that from me and perverted it and mangled it and turned it into abuse
The whole human/forerunner retcon was so contrived. I can't imagine how they ever managed to justify it to themselves. The original forerunner lore was so cool and mysterious. What we ended up getting from 343 is just...weird.
Halo Infinite gives us a great story in the opening cutscene, then skips over all of the exciting moments of that story in a fade-to-black, and then has us play a much less interesting story with entirely different character that takes place AFTER all the cool shit has happened and you're just kind of cleaning up the mess
Who doesn't want to participate in a ruthless battle for survival on the Ark trying to save as many UNSC forces as you can while the brutes bear down on us?
yeah the book Rubicon protocol is all about the fighting on zeta halo that happened while chief was floating in space for 6 months and its a solid read I think
21:31 I think he means "There's a new alien race worse than the Flood" Which is hilarious 343 went with that narrative since The Flood are literally the whole and only reason the Halo rings were created.
I stopped after Halo 4. I knew 343 weren’t going to do a good job continuing on and I feel very vindicated in doing so. The bungie era Halo games is where I start and stop, personally.
It's great to hear Wolf again, and I'm glad he's doing better. Now, let's undo the recovery by bullying him into talking about the current state of Halo!
I like the idea or Cortana going rampant (since she was starting to in halo 3, and its a threat to all AI), but from the sounds of it, they likely didn't do it well. (I didn't play halo 4 or beyond).
@@prufan Halo 5 at least went with "rampancy is mostly megalomania" like in Marathon. Halo 4 instead decided to have it mostly be whiny Lifetime Original Movie cancer-patient scenes.
In the lore, rampancy was due to A.I becoming sentient which would've really been cool for Cortana's progression as a character. But then in Halo 4 it was retconned that Rampancy is what happens to A.I. begins to die.
The 343 Halo games are objectively bad as well as subjectively bad The level design is atrocious, the art design provides gameplay issues, the AI of the original game was better than the ones the 343 games had, gunplay was painful It's not just writing, it's holistic. 343 Halo games are just bad
I think the concept of Cortana becoming a villain was a good idea. The idea that AIs become crazy after a certain number of years and putting Master Chief in this position where he has to surrender the life of his closest ally is a very good story hook. They just didn't stick the landing. They didn't commit to the idea and rushed one story beat to the next as if they didn't know if they were going to continue the story.
343 missed a huge opportunity to make a Elite focused game. Make a story of you fighting along side your Sangheili brothers and the other Covenant races that turned to your side. Hell maybe make a smaller stakes campaign like ODST or Fireteams, just doing operations or fighting on the frontlines of a larger conflict.
Especially a game that focuses on the Arbiter. Something like his backstory or something that happens after Halo 3 would be perfect... but 343 are simply too stupid to conceive the idea.
I remember hearing that after Halo 5 failed they were torn between making a Halo 5.5 that filled in the obvious blanks or a ODST 2 type story with an ODST and Elite fireteam. 343 are kids flushing diamonds down the drain, I swear
They're so fucking obsessed with Spartan shit because they want their own Marvel superheroes. I really like what Joe Staten did with Shadow of Intent. A game based around that would have been perfect
That spinoff game ("Halo: Shadow of Intent?") could be an Elite deploying to the Ark and the Foundry up until Halo is fired with references and appearances of the Arbiter, Truth, Chief, Gravemind, Guilty Spark, Mendicant Bias, and even Tragic Solitude. The goal is to expand on what people are famliar with and love and to keep the arcane, esoteric, dangerous mystique of Halo. Multiplayer will feel like Halo 3's meshed with Reach.
The *ONLY* thing I genuinely enjoy about Halo Infinite is driving around in a razorback with 5 Marines weilding sentinal beams. Only problem is that Infinite is so sparse and narrow, that it makes driving around with them more diffcult to enjoy more. I also enjoy how 343 gaslit Halo Infinite players into thinking cross-core is a cool new thing, when "cross-core" is literally just default normal Halo 3 and Reach customization... My seven unforgivable sins that 343 has comitted are: 1. Retconning Forerunners into not being Human. 2. Making Cortana a stupid wimp. 3. Butchering Chief's armor 4. Modifying the Warthog suspension to me it, "mOrR rEaLiStIc" in a scifi game.... 5. Modifying the Pelican magnetic clamp that carrys vehicles into ropes to make it, "mOrE rEaLiStiC" in a scifi game... 6. Ugly alien redesigns. Elites, grunts, etc... 7. Making the Gravemind a genuine precursor, so technically speaking, the Gravemind is Humanity's ancestral grandpappyma or some shit. I also saw somewhere that they wanted new Forerunners to have 6 fingers because one of the control panels had 6 fingers on it. The problem, is that 343 was so incredibly stupid, that they didn't realize the panel had 6 fingers NOT because Forerunners had 6 fingers, but rather so people with either right or left HANDEDNESS could use the same panel. If you overlay a left and right hand, you get six fingers... How is 343 so dumb? One other thing, the canon title, "reclaimer" makes *ZERO* sense in 343 Halo. Ancient Humanity *NEVER* had a claim to Forerunner tech. In order to *RE* -claim something, one must *FIRST* have claimed said thing at some point. So tell me how exactly modern Humans are "RE-claiming" something they *NEVER* had a claim to in the first place. Then you have people dismissing what Guilty Spark says because, "hE's GoNe InsAnE aNd IsN't ReLiAbLe". As if the Gravemind literally calling us the child of his enemy is also a lie? But wait a second, if the Gravemind is a Precursor, and the Precursors created us, then that means the Humanity must be a child of the Precursors. That means when the Gravemind is talking about us being the child of his enemy, his enemy must be himself?! No, in Bungie Halo clearly the Gravemind was saying Forerunners were Humanity's parents, therefore Forerunners were Human. In 343 Halo, this line make zero sense. Guilty Spark, "Forerunners are Human" Propet O' Truth, "Forerunners are Human" Gravemind, "Forerunners are Human" 343 shills, "nUh Uh!, ThEy UnReLiAbLe AnD wRoNg! FoEhAmMeR nOt HuMaN!"
I hate that people act like Halo 4 is a blessing for Halo's storytelling when it critically redirects the series away from more payoff coming from what Bungie intended and injects a bunch of nonsense in its place. Master Chief being sad doesn't mean he has emotional depth just because they show him being sad. The setup for it is unbelievable based on how Master Chief has been up until that point and the timeskip doesn't explain anything since he's effectively the same person he was prior to being frozen, so he comes across as dejected for no reason because if he were acting in a more consistent manner he would be looking for a practical solution to Cortana's problem and to the problem with the Didact at hand even at the cost of insubordination which he didn't even have a problem with doing just moments before that scene and which he ultimately does anyway that has no consequences for him because the antagonistic Captain is relieved. In other words, he has the solution to his problem right in front of him but takes a break to get emotional despite that not being ever reflected in his actions before and then the conflict he has doesn't even make a difference. Furthermore, there is a plot point that is completely dropped without any exposition or discussion in that Master Chief and Cortana decide the solution to Cortana's rampancy is to get to Dr. Halsey for a probably fix. Obviously the digitization of humanity by the Didact takes priority, but the game just forgets about it instead of highlighting the possibility and showing Master Chief's conflict between accomplishing the mission and saving who is approximately his closest friend, which is literally the easiest thing the writers could have done to explain Master Chief's emotions and simply did not. And there's a ton of other problems along the way, like how the Infinity was there at the same time as the door to the shield world was opened, how Master Chief is the chosen one which hinges upon an unreasonable amount of generational convenience, how a single Archer missile destroyed a Covenant destroyer, how the large gun on top of the big tank needed a target locater from the ground in order to fire at a big ball in the sky, how Cortana wasn't able to just beam herself into Master Chief's suit (or anywhere for that matter) despite being able to project herself in hardlight to "touch" him because "most of her is down there" even though she's a computer program and the Bungie books have her doing the same thing multiple times with ease, or how humans were obviously setup to be the descendants of the Forerunners by Bungie but now they were always a separate species and they're being handed the keys to the old empire for no reason and much much more. 343's story telling is a mess in general, and it all started with just how garbage Halo 4 was to start with.
16:45 Oh man, i agree with this so much. But in reality, it's not about limited space of the level that matters - more so that it would be tailor-made and not just empty spaces. For some reason (i blame skyrim) developers decided that "open world"="half-empty uninteresting world". Also, good example of some kind of middleground between the two is BG3. It's feels like an open-world, but it essentially is just several huge as fuck "levels".
Halo 4, they kill cortana, halo 5 they bring her back and turn her evil, halo infinite, they kill her again and bring her back again but good, least cohesive trilogy ever
Reach to this day is my personal favorite. I liked the immersion. You felt a part of something beyond the scope of "I'm hero, the save world" but an elite group that shows more then tells why they are the tip of the spear. They risk life and limb constantly, use superior knowledge and tactics to undermine the Covenant at every turn. At the time i wasn't sure if what Halsey gave to Noble 6 was alien tech AI or what, I wasn't into Halo lore then. It made sense because you wouldn't explain to a hammer why it drives the nail, it just does. Once again, immersion.
My halo sequel would be the most important event we never saw: the battle for earth. It’s crazy 343 didn’t just make a trilogy about everything else going on while chief in off in space. Would’ve been easy, so much material to cover.
Halo 3 was such a great ending for Chief. And Reach was a great wrap up for the series as a whole. I played less than an hour of Four before deciding I was done with Halo. I think I made the right choice.
The buildup of the elite alliance felt so satisfying and they threw that whole story and achievement down the drain just so we could fight elites again who were redesigned to look and act like brutes and weren’t fun to fight against.
we interviewed an OG Halo concept artist Ed Smith who practically drew up the design for Chiefs armor, we are chilling with him again on the 27th, he has a lot to say about the current state of halo thats for sure!
Not just worse than forerunners, they claimed it was “worse than the flood”. It’s like they’re entirely incapable of grasping or understanding the lore of the game series they took over and actively destroyed.
Bungie had a well-written AI because they already had well-written AI before, Durandal being chief among them. If 343 wanted to go the rogue AI route so bad, they could have stolen Bungie's homework from Marathon, or even go one step further and introduce Durandal post-Marathon Infinity to Halo. He could even constantly talk shit to you and complain about you not recognizing him or something. Hell, some original plans were for Halo (original) to be in the Marathon universe. That could have been interesting. Instead, you get the "people who hate Halo" making Halo.
Due to a lot of requests for this and at the time lacking another clip to upload (as well as the fact that someone took the time to timestamp all the moments I talked about it in the last stream), I’ve decided to put together the Halo rant for your enjoyment, which should be a bit of a fun since EFAP’s coverage of Halo Season 2 should be coming soon.
However, I do want to stress that I will not be regularly putting clips from my bi-weekly live streams here, as this channel is dedicated to EFAP content. In the future, if there are more requests for clips from my personal streams, I'll make another channel to upload those to so as not to confuse or clutter the channel.
In the meantime, I'm hard at work polishing up new clips, and the regular schedule will resume this Sunday!
thanks for this and everything you do Wolf you massive
wait they really got another season through ?
Bring back Wolf to EFAP.
Kick Rags.
Thanks for eating into the mic
I miss the days of good Halo games 😩 I remember replaying Halo CE campaign over and over again with my friends. It was great. I couldn’t even bring myself to finish Halo 5 story and never even gave Halo Infinite a chance. Thanks for your rant trashing 343 Wolf, it was very cathartic.
Halo 3 managed to compete against CoD 4, Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops at the same time and still came out on top.
What a giant fucking impact it had.
Dont forget it was the *first* Game series to ever hit number 1 sales in entertainment, movies included
and halo infinite was completing with call of duty vanguard and battlefield 2042 and still failed.
Thinking back to those times when Halo 2 and 3 (as well as contemporary launches like MW2) launched, and people would wait outside game stores on midnight to buy their copy as soon as the date changed. Digital has unfortunately rendered that obsolete.
It's hilarious when 343 apologists claim that "HaLo hAd No comPetiTion" when Halo 3/Reach had to put up with the likes of Modern Warfare 1/2, Black ops, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3.
No 343's Halo is irrelevant not because of competition. 343 just made trash games.
Lol I love Halo, but what world are you living in where you think Halo 3 came out on top of MW2 and Black Ops?
I think we can all agree that it's a good thing Sergeant Johnson died in Halo 3 so that 343 couldnt ruin his character.
“I’ve died before”
“Somehow Sgt Johnson returned”
@@Goat-t3d Somehow Sgt Johnsons secret twin returned.
@@soulsearcher9620 If you take the legendary difficulty ending of the first Halo as cannon, he already came back from the dead!
He did. His death was meaningless because both the lightbulb and flood are still around.
Also never forget:
- Death of Rookie in random book
- Black Team getting the worst deaths in a random comic
- Character assissination of Cortana in Halo 5 and Infinite
- The tv show
The tv show is not acknowledged
@@AresHoax_9REACH CITY
Fuckin Black Team getting murked liked that was disrespectful af makes me so upset
You forgot that 343 brought back 343 Guilty Spark in a book too.
Don’t even know what all these are tbh
Halo Infinite felt like it was directed by J.J. Abrams. Constantly teasing at a story in the making, without ever providing one in the present.
Thank you Wolf, for finally saying what no one else will dare to say.
That’s a great way to sum up the JJ style. Ever since lost I’ve had a big chip on my shoulder for the guy his stuff feels like a scam.
And trying to fix the problems of the previous entry, like JJ trying to fix what Rian Johnson did
@@Willie_Pete_Was_Here Which is quite the paradox when you think about it. JJ couldn’t fix the problem cause JJ created the problem.
@@Willie_Pete_Was_HereRian was absolutely based for screwing him over.
@@scutumfidelis1436 Yeah... he was soo based for helping to dismantle Star Wars
343 is now 3 for 3 with failed games
They have fulfilled the prophecy.
Strike out!
@@ThunderClapClide and depressed millions…..can we say psy ops?
It seems silly but I could rant for like 30 minutes about it. Like they had to try….and something came out about a group that engage in malicious sabotage in other games….and I was thinking about it months before it came out.
You stole that from another video
Incredible comment
The 343 trilogy is almost as incoherent and contradictory as the Star Wars sequels
Even suffers the same issues almost exactly in each entry.
Halo 4 = Force Awakens.
New beginning that ultimately repeats story beats from the start of the previous trilogy but sets up some potential for good story telling if committed to.
Halo 5 = Last Jedi
An absolute mess that squanders a lot of the previous entry and ultimately goes nowhere.
Halo Infinite = Rise of Skywalker
A soft retcon of the previous entry by either directly changing or glossing over the most controversial points whilst still falling into its own issues.
I only played 1-3
Haven't played the others.
Nowhere near that level of oof tho
It's less coherent than the SW sequels.
At the very least the SW movies have somewhat of a main antagonist and the same characters from movie to movie.
The 343 Halo games, appart from Chief (not even Cortana, 4 has Cortana, 5 has a different character called Cortana and 6 kills H5 Cortana and has a new AI that looks like Cortana), every single character from one game is removed in the following game, the whole stake of one game is 100% gone in the next one and a different threat is introduced, to be totaly changed in the next one. They truely have nothing linking them appart sharing Chief as main character.
The 343 trilogy is as much of a trilogy as 3 Zelda games taken at random.
It’s honestly worse than Star Wars.
I will never forgive 343 for what they've done.
I highly recommend checking out We WERE Forerunner by c3 Sabertooth.
Guy does a lot of research and really breaks down exactly how not only 343 fucked over the lore of humans being forerunner, but how Frank specifically made sure to piss on everything he was given.
Guy was an incompetent hack, and it's shameful he was ever even considered for the position.
It shows clear Microsoft never gave a shit, and was hoping to simply milk the golden cow dry.
Bungie made the humans forerunners not 343. They did it in a book.
@@CyrodiilCome
Yes, I know. 343 fucked over that lore.
@@CyrodiilCome
Yeah, that’s in the Video he’s detailing Joseph Staten in charge of Halo CE-Reach the BIG cheese of Bungie said humans are Forunners. Joseph also wrote Contact Harvest and clarified EVERY human being is a Forunner in the reliquary.
Frank O’Connor ignored Joseph’s lore, and re-wrote it for 343 when he took over in the Judas style reorganization of halo. So 343 decided humans were at war with Forunners because the Irony of the covenant killing there gods was to Nuanced for Bonny and Franky
@@devildolphin2102halo 3 literally distinguishes that humanity and forerunners are separate
Halo point of light fully explains the connection.
@@TheBiddofslayer58
What.
343 Guilty Spark says VERBATIM. You Are Forunner. But this ring is Mine.
God you 343 Shills have never even played Halo 3 it’s so pathetic.
You are not being too negative. You are being appropriately negative. You're not responsible for 343 putting you in the position to have to say these things BUT THESE THINGS NEED TO BE SAID. BECAUSE YOU'RE *NOT* THE ONLY ONE THINKING THIS WAY.
Definitely not the only one, haha.
“Do not blame the developers, only blame management and corporations,” is the same flavour as the statement as “do not blame writers and creatives, blame studios.”
In reality, neither is eternally fallible pr infallible. This theory of labour is so strange. I understand being pro-writer or pro-development (fair pay, working against harassment in places such as Activision, etc.) but beyond that, it becomes sycophantic.
Developer who worked for a shovelware studio here. A lot of devs -- programmers at least -- don't really get a say in the decisions and can see the iceberg approaching from miles away.
343 also had a huge issue with a constantly revolving door of contractors who would get let go after a few months during the development of Infinite, meaning by the time they got comfortable with the framework and tools they were being let go.
Now, of course this isn't always the case. Sometimes there are bad devs who make stupid decisions and ruin things. But there usually is a chain of command and a lot of programmers sit at the bottom of that.
@@imjust_a I can understand that, completely. There are certainly situations wherein upper management and/or the suited people have the say and the actual on-ground workers who have the skills are not able to voice disagreement.
But generally, I never assume the better of anyone automatically. Sometimes it is one party, sometimes it is the other, and sometimes you can see a pattern begin to emerge. I do think that the new tends to lean towards putting the fault on shoulders of studios or management because of their fame, social footprint and power, as well as the likelihood that there are more cases where the upper people have the power than those working as developers.
@@viddykhaos2896 Yeah that's fair! I'm certain there are plenty of devs who've ruined their own games out of hubris.
I’m sorry but if the the seed is bad the tree is bad. There is nothing more annoying than a modern “creative” 😂 you are a loser
Yes! On top of that it is an inconsequential statement. We know! There's always good and bad people in every facet of life. Honestly, it sounds more like a deflection: "You don't like 343? But you don't mean the poor little ant worker is bad, right? they are only taking orders, let's talk about how good they are instead".
Didn't they also say The Endless were supposed to be worse then the Flood? They seemed to forget that the Flood was so bad that the Forerunners built the Halo rings to wipe out all life that could be eaten by the Flood. So you expect me to believe there's something worse now?
The only way the endless can be worse than the flood is if they are immune to the firing of the halo rings or if they are in fact the precursors
Worse than the Flood but the entire species got captured and put in a jar by what little of the Forerunners was left after firing the Halo rings.
Feels like a fanfic written by a barely literate 10 year old. You know the BIG BAD? Well these are BADDER. Why? They just ARE.
And that is what I believe is called tell don't show! they don't think why, they just say it!
@@Kurai_69420 This is my exact problem. Like if the Endless are dangerous they must also be gullible idiots if they could get trapped like that.
Don't forget Halo 5 was the one that included microtransactions "single use item packs" that literally made the multiplayer pay to win.
It made the non arena "pay to win" took 1 game to get 1 pack. Made it super easy to get them all
And somehow that one was a better system than Infinite's lol
I never spent anything on Halo 5 after purchase and I had more sniper rifles and rocket launchers than I could have hoped to use in Warzone.
I would take halo 5 req pack system over i finites system any day
@@nobodykayaks1041 Warzone was fun
The best possible thing I can say about 343 is that they simply seem incompetent, rather than malicious, unlike so many others who ruin once beloved IP’s.
It's really quite sad that mass incompetence is seen as a step up in the world of modern entertainment.
@@AceGold-hp8jv Yeah I mean, when some games & movies have the developers/directors saying stuff like "Yeah we hated the old thing that everyone liked so we knew when doing this sequel that we were going to change everything to make it more INCLUSIVE", I'll take what I can get with some incompetent morons who at least publicly claimed to like the pervious product.
I don't know the whole desgin ethos of halo four was changing it to be there's. The same way other companies change things for themselves.
@@josephkerrigan733 I understand where your coming from, and i actually agree with your point. What i was trying to say, however, is that neither should be the standard for any industry and yet unfortunately are.
@@AceGold-hp8jv Yeah I understood what you meant. I agree with you, it's a damn shame that this is the timeline we got.
We’re now making highlights of the highlights, how advanced!
Hope you’re doing well, Wo-
Mr. EFAP Highlights man!
If you had told me a couple of years ago, that I wouldn't care about Halo, Star Wars, Star Trek or Game of Thrones anymore, I would have called you crazy.
Well, here we are.
Only a couple years?
Two years ago all of these were already ruined. Take it 2012.
Well house of the dragon hopefully will be a Redemption arc. Just hope D&D never remember about the Series
@@devildolphin2102i’m pretty sure those two chuckle fucks have been black listed, as for House of the Dragon Season 1 was great and Season 2 looks pretty good.
There is some hope for course correction. See: Mass Effect.
Your feelings toward Halo are exactly how my friends and I feel. We were die hard Halo fans during the Bungie era, and now, we're completely apathetic towards it because of 343s mishandling of the franchise.
During the MCC debacle, there was a review I saw that put it best: "343 didn't earn this, and that's why they don't give a shit."
Every time I hear about modern Halo, it makes me glad I stopped buying Halo games after Reach. Just couldn't muster the interest and it seems like I lucked out.
what halo games after Reach?
I played 4 because it was already in the MCC, and it wasn't just bad story, but the gameplay was wack too. Almost every fight is at long range with the two DMRs somehow. You made the right call.
I’m glad I didn’t buy the Xbox One. No or extremely limited backwards compatibility, terrible exclusives, and a requirement to install games to play them.
@@jimmyjohnson501 4 was meh but at least gave an end to the story for Chief and Cortana. I can forgive some of the middling design in 4 for the sake of the ending putting the series to rest.
A sendoff with finality to Chief and Cortana rather than 3's ending with Chief and Cortana sleeping in deep space .
We are on the same boat. Reach was the peak of Halo for me. It had it all. I played as much of it as I could before my beloved 360 died. After that I just couldn't be motivated to buy a new one, especially with how...4 and 5 went. Brutal stuff, but a nice silver lining. Like chief, we were just lucky enough.
If Helldivers2 ever comes to xbox... the halo population that currently exists would get even smaller..
it did we moved to pc or PlayStation to fill the void
Some of us will stay dedicated to halo (at least bungies)
@Valkyrae123 I did and still do play Halo quite a lot, but I just played different games recently, beginning on 2024
They'd just migrate to Helldivers. Lots of the tight gunplay that is very Halo-esque.
Sadly I doubt that'll happen now.
Besides, most are. Basically every person I know who played xbox is on pc now. Apart from 1 guy who's more into retro than pc gaming (he's cool)
I seem to remember a lot of gaming journalists throwing out 'linear' as a blanket criticism without elaborating on it all the time. That might explain the drive to make every game open world. Never mind games like the original Halo trilogy, Doom, Half Life, Resident evil 4, Dead Space, and more I haven't thought of. If you want to use linear as a criticism, you have to justify why it's bad for the game in question.
I remember that coming up a lot in game discussions when Call of Duty was at its peak, probably because the single player campaigns would make use of linear level design and scripting to put players in scripted spectacles.
@@Willie_Pete_Was_Heretrue. The problem with cod was never its linearity, but rather its lack of depth and innovation as the years went on.
Honestly in the 2005-2010 games were becoming terribly linear, and then farcry, elder scrolls and xenoblade(this last one less than the other) showed the world that open world could be deep, then indie games showed up with sandbox and I can see why people liked open world. Now it's the opposite with open world being so dispersive that smaller sized games need to be brought back
@@Willie_Pete_Was_Here I feel like modern games still have that problem despite being open world.
People always think "linear" is a criticism instead of a description. When you point out taijiquan is more linear than baguazhang or jujutsu more linear than aikijutsu, because MOST MOTION IS FORWARD AND BACK, they think you're saying taijiquan and jujutsu are flawed. Do they think "Linear A" and "Linear B" was linguists saying the Minoan scripts were bad?
"Stop hitting it! It's already dead!"
"Let him keep going, it's cathartic for all of us"
😂
“You want what it’s having?”
“no”
“That’s what I thought. JUSTICE!!! For HALOOO!!!!”
Halo went from extreme cultural significance to insignificance almost as fast as game of thrones did.
Wolf, if you ever decide to make that video, we’re all here for it.
I miss his channel. I wish he didn't delete everything
You just didn't read the 16 shit books that would have made the plot make sense.
Which is made worse because some of the books are pretty cool. Ghosts of Onyx is still a favorite of mine
Ok, and Rey was so powerful because she downloaded knowledge from Kylo. You should never have to read a separate book to understand a story.
@badman5852 I don't even mean it in that way. Some of the best Halo books have nothing to do with the main story. Ghosts is about the Spartan IIIs and their training, which is cool but not necessary to understand Reach or anything. As far as I remember, no one on Noble Team is even mentioned.
Like Wolf said, the best thing Halo could have done is expand out from the story of Chief, like ODST did.
Most of the books are bangers. Played Halo all my life and Rubicon Protocol is possibly my favorite novel in the series
Also the Didact was killed in a sidestory comic book no one read. Whee.
Martin O'Donnell the Halo composer is running for congress so that's cool.
I hope he gets to be a president one day.
Make Halo great again.
This is bad, it means we don't get Marty to return to the franchise, and was not only the composer but very influential in the story of the original game.
He was never returning in the first place man, if they didn't use him in infinite, the game where they finally return to using a lot of the classic motifs in the ost, he is never coming back @@TheObscuran
@@anthonychase6906 Sad and true.
Halo and Star Wars were my childhood. Thanks to Disney and 343i, I've completely lost interest in both franchises.
It's pretty crazy how both franchises have common things about how they were ruined. I would consider Star Wars Legends and Bungie Halo's lores canon rather than Star Wars "Canon" and 343 "Halo" lores.
@@YnossZaperator 100% agree
“I need to stop talking about Halo.” 9 minutes into a 30 minute video.
Ironic how this has been something nostalgia-blinded “fans” have been doing for over a dozen years since 2012
I remember playing through Halo 4 and thinking that the ending sucked, but the community seemed to really like that ending at the time.
It's like The Force Awakens for Halo.
its more how it handled cortana's death mainly though how they handled it afterwords.....its a big mess.
@@jonathandear4914 Even on first watch I thought it was cringe how Cortana lightly brushed Chief's armor before her death.
"There. I touched you. Goodbye."
Then, that final line of "She said that once. About not being a machine," really made me roll my eyes because the writer probably thought that was so profound and would earn them a BAFTA or something.
@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 That was the most disappointing christmas for 14 year old me
@@ashblossomandjoyoussprung.9917 Chief never even had a problem relating to "being a machine", he had a duty he was enrolled to under hideous immoral circumstances and he rolled with it, accepting the necessity of a warrior like him in times like these. If anything he always came across with a subtle wit, like he says cool things through military jargon but his vocal acting makes it clear he knows that he's either understating something or being stoic in the face of outrageous odds. If they wanted to give Chief an arc, it should have been about his fear of not having a fight anymore, like peacetime is close and he realizes that when there's no battle, he doesn't have a place in the world besides being a mentor to other Spartans and his friendship with others in the military. You could have John say a soft "...Confirmed." for example when somebody else happily opines that the threat is nearly dealt with, because he's an older man seeing the most important arc of his life ending. There's plenty you can do with Chief, but forcing the machine connection between him and Cortana, two deeply human characters with plenty of pathos already, is fucking cringe.
I dunno, plenty of people said Force awakens sucked, I sure thought it was crap after seeing it. Same with Halo 4.
Remember, never "pass the torch," it is almost always better to end a story instead of trying to tell the same story for infinite time. Sure, we lose James Bond and a lot of superheroes this way, but we gain Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Halo, The Simpsons, The Twilight Zone, Terminator, Indiana Jones, He-Man, Thundercats, Willow, Mass Effect,...
Bungie tried to end it but Microsoft said no
"never pass the torch" the problem with that lesson is that we're talking about licensed gaming properties, which are part of a world dominated by mediocre capitalist junkies that failed upwards in a system that allows it, calling the shots for profit at the top, incapable of learning lessons unless they somehow end up in the streets (in a system that sets them for life with billion-dollar-bonus emergency parachutes if their careers or companies end up burning). _The people who make the games and art you love are not the ones with the power over those games and art you love._
The fact that all of Infinite is one biome is infuriating, I honestly couldn't believe how devoid of anything that world was.
It was supposed to just be the opening act. We were supposed to get ANNUAL story DLC, not just new seasons of irrelevant multiplayer. Then they realized their in-house, "let's not pay the Unreal people" engine was borderline unusable and had to kill that.
@@sophiasfavorite9646 Even if it was supposed to get story dlc's it still doesn't excuse the single biome. It doesn't help that every single location looks so much the same they probably just copy and paste every location, if you seen one banish's base then you seen them all and the same goes for both of the forerunner's building and UNSC's outpost. It feels like they didn't care to put any time or effort into the campaign both the world and the story was only given the bare minimum.
Act Man gives the safest fence sitting takes on literally any media.
Trolls remorse hit act maam hard
Act man is a grifter and a shill, an egregious one at that
ACK Ma'am
Has six video where he does nothing but shts on halo 5, had 3 videos where he does nothing but sht on star wars battlefront, has two videos where he says how much he hates other gamers, says he doesn't like infinite overall. But noooo our Lord and master dishonored btch (man doesn't even have the balls to come back to RUclips) said something slightly disagreeable about him, so now he's a "fence sitter" idiots.....
@BlastingBigLoads2 it did?
Halo was absolutely a foundational game for me. Combat Evolved was the first game I ever played on the original Xbox, right at the start. I was six years old, I think, and I played it all the time with my dad. We loved it so much, and by the time Halo 2 came out, I was hooked for good. Then Halo 3, one of my favorite stories and one of the most emotional endings in all of gaming history. I too tear up when I watch that beautiful, downright poetic scene. ODST was clearly one of the best reasons I ever had to be alive, having absolutely loved the ODSTs in the previous games, and it lived up to that and then some. Reach was flawed in certain ways, but the story still hits like a train filled with trucks filled with bricks, and I shed tears over that ending too.
Then 343 came along, and fucked everything up. From the Halo 4 teaser trailer, I knew things were off, wrong. Turned out to be worse than even I imagined, yet I saw so many fall in love with that garbage and call it the deepest story Halo ever told. To this day, I'm disgusted by that. Halo 5 (Guardians... lol) seemed to turn a lot of people around, and they finally saw the light. Glad to say I never even bought that one, just played it when a friend and I shared games on Xbox One. Infinite eventually comes along, after so many fuck-ups that I couldn't be bothered to care anymore, and promised to be a return to form and feel. It was neither, and made it all even worse. Never bought it, never played it, barely managed to sit through watching the story once, and I'll go back to forgetting it exists after this.
Paramount's Halo show... the less said about that dumpster fire, the better we all are. The fact that show exists is proof we are indeed in the worst possible timeline/universe, and I refuse to acknowledge it except to shit on everything it is. They decided they didn't get enough joy out of destroying the franchise that already existed, to sequel trilogy levels. Now, they wanted to tell their own version, worse than ever and only vaguely related to anything we all knew and loved.
Halo is dead, and has been since Reach. Everything 343 has made does not exist in my world. The Halo franchise now consists only of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, Halo Wars, and the novels, The Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, Contact Harvest, and The Cole Protocol.
Remember how awesome the graphics looked to us on the original XBox? Then by #3 we couldn't believe how bad it looked, haha.
@@jasonleveck8546 I don't know about that. It got significantly better each time, and all three looked great for the era they came out.
@@ODST_Parker The first was amazing, but by the 3rd, I had watched a comparison and didn't realize how badly outdated the first looked since I hadn't played since beating it.
The only good thing 343 has done is make the original Halo games more accessible. But they should have never have tried to add to the story after Halo 3.
That took like 5-6 years to fix and fucking *still* has issues, let's not give away too much credit here.
@@nagger8216 That's a fair point. Still better than having no MCC on PC
To be fair, Bungie did include the Legendary Ending in Halo 3. We all knew back then that Chief was going to crash land on a Forerunner planet.
But 343 fumbled the ball big time with Halo 4 and Spartan Ops' stories.
I remember being pissed when Requiem ended up being destroyed at the end of SO. Like, we spent 5 years speculating what the Legendary planet was, where it was, who was there, what was going to happen to Chief. And it gets destroyed a couple months after it's introduced. Wasting of potential will always be what kills a series.
@@GhostLink92 And then they killed off Jul 'Mdama in the first mission of 5. Which annoyed me and I'm apparently the only person who thought 5 was better than 4 (faint praise, to be sure).
@@GhostLink92 That planet was absolutely going to be Onyx from the books, not gay ass Requiem.
On AI, Bungie's Marathon trilogy also has amazing portrayals of AIs, including greater discussion of how and why they go rogue.
We as halo fans should just pretend the 343 made lore is fan fiction and never happened. The story of chief ended after halo 3 he’s found he returns home and he chills in reserve.
In my opinion future halo games should have been spin offs like reach and odst where we explore the universe outside of chiefs feet.
I call it corpfic or antifanfic
Well it technically isnt canon to begin with so realistically 343 halos are pretty much fan fiction
@@Valkyrae123 corpfic. Corporate fiction. There's no fans involved in any of it.
Humanity ARE the forerunners. You know it, I know it, Marty O’Donnell knows it. 343 just seems to not give a brutes codpiece about the franchise. I always wanted to blame 343 but quite honestly Microsoft has so much responsibility to take in the way things worked out. I’m done with the franchise that got me through school, college and my early career. It hurts.
Shit, Joe Staten confirmed it twice in-universe.
@@Slender_Man_186 Joe coming back and working with 343 has thrown my reverence of him into question. My reverence of Marty remains.
@@WastedPot eh, Microsoft seems to have just thrown him into 343 last minute as a fall guy, notice how he was the one apologizing for everything Bonnie had promised years ago? Any time they had bad news they threw him up on stage to announce it.
@@Slender_Man_186 They did and I respect that he had to deal with that. Having said that he did take the role, and proceeded to be Microsoft’s fall guy for his entire tenure. Like I said my reverence of him has faded.
@@WastedPot how likely do you think it was that he was given the ultimatum of “save Halo Infinite or you’ll be leaving Microsoft publishing,” because he was let go from Microsoft shortly after they pulled him off of Halo. I doubt he had much of a choice.
I will never forgive 343 for killing the Rookie off screen and using Buck in 5. Add that he's the comic relief type character...
I have felt like 343 using Buck in Halo 5 yet sucks compared to ODST was fanservice more or less.
Wolf, it's great to hear you being so passionate about our modern day myths, and the incompetence that destroys them. Keep up the great work.
Not worse than the forerunners, worse than the FLOOD! Yeah, you know, the parasite that can wipe out an entire planet with one spore, the creature so terrifying and evil that the Covenant couldn't cover up their existence and simply relegated them to a similar if not worse level of demon than Spartans, a force so power, so terrifying that it literally put into motion the entire Halo Universe's story by wiping out the most advanced race (or most advanced human state) imaginable. Yeah, something we've never heard of until now is worse than the flood. Great writing 343!
I liked Halo 4, but yeah with Halo 5... they just destroyed alot of their own work they put into Halo 4. I mean... "killing" the Didact offscreen in a comic? What the fuck.
The most weird thing about that was that I thought he just died in the game. Which I was perfectly fine with, btw. I thought having a one-off standalone villain was neat. Then I hear a comic retconned him back to life... then killed him again. Huh?
He died, then they brought him back, then killed off again, then brought him back... in a colouring book. So pathetic, lmao
Yeah. I gave up on Halo after Halo 4. I was a teen when that game came out and it just didn't feel right. The art was wrong, the story was wrong, the lore, the gameplay... And it took me a few years to realize exactly what it was. It was 343 not understanding what made Halo itself. For my own love of the universe, I stop acknowledging the games after Reach. I'll never forgive 343 for taking away the poetry of Humanity being Forerunner. The grand mystery of our own ancient cosmic history... UGH.
In my opinion the only media from 343 that is safe to be canon are the novels Silent Storm and Oblivion. They cover how young John and the Spartan-IIs first missions fighting the Covenant. We also get to see Johnson working with the Spartans and earning their respect. Early Covenant War was always a cool time period for me.
Also a Halo Legends Spartan has a tiny cameo and I loved being able to see them. If only for a sentence or two.
I have played the games after 4 though so if there are lore violations I didn't notice them. No mention of forerunners or anything.
Master chief is still floating in space, period.
Remember when we were worried about the Forward unto Dawn show? Seems so much better by comparison
Honestly, seeing this video made my day. 100% agree with almost everything you said in regards to the story, I seriously couldn't believe it when the same people that called out Cortana's treatment in Halo 5 and said it was disgusting and unacceptable turned around and praised her nuking a city filled with millions of innocent people and blowing up Doisac just to torture Atriox for not capitulating to a fascist dictatorship. And then you had people like Act Man saying Chief's character writing was better than Bungie's writing for him, even though he tried to kill his best friend in cold blood to mildly inconvenience the Harbinger when he needs her to save the human race and they confirm this explicitly. Easily the worst thing I've ever seen in my life, hope we get more people criticizing it in the future.
No other studio in gaming history has ever been handed such a powerful IP only to absolutely destroy it and its legacy in every possible way so masterfully. Their slaughtering of MCC alone and subsequent burial to save face was enough to declare them incompetent to run this franchise
Not to mention, halo was THE GAME that gave people a reason to buy an Xbox, Master Chief is basically the mascot, and yet, Microsoft couldn’t form a better game studio than 343? Garbage
With regards to the Forerunners just being more advanced humans, that was always so genius to me as well because The Covenant were completely oblivious to it and were ironically in the process of genociding the exact race that they needed to access the Forerunner tech and fulfill all their religious shit. Like, per their religion, the Covenant probably should have been worshiping the humans? I dunno, either way I liked it
Yeah, it was divine irony at its finest. But the Prophets had already waged war and subjugated the Elites, Jackals, Grunts, and Hunters on the basis of the great Journey. They knew who the forerunners were but by that point, they were in too deep.
It’s the perfect story. Aliens finding their gods and destroying them tragically. Elites are also the real ones they didn’t even want to fight humanity they wanted them to join the Covenant. That would be an insanely cool alternate universe setting for a new Halo game once 343 gets burnt at the pyre
I've always said there is legitimate reason to believe the core leadership of 343 (most are thankfully gone...but not all) wanted to destroy Halo. You have to wonder why they chose the name 343. That character deceives and betrays Master Chief. Then, 343 the company deceives and betrays both Halo and us the customers...over and over again. Always possible it's just a coincidence, but naming yourself after that character seems very intentional and I wish I had a better explanation for the "why?" but I don't. If it was their goal, they certainly succeeded, and it would eliminated the bizarre amount of what we all assume to be "incompetence".
27:00 Not to mention: In the background of that exact image, we see a forerunner-esc ship with people in it. Implying that humanity (reclaimers) are have reclaimed their ancestors technology and are restoring prosperity to the universe. Seeing that combined with your (at that point) ancient war helmet laying in the ground, a reminder of the sacrifice humanity gave to bring humanity back to their golden era, its emotionally potent man. It's perfect. And it only works in Bungies original lore, that the Forerunners are ancient humans. Within 343's lore, that final shot of halo reach literally means nothing
I forgot how much I missed you Wolf, I fucking hate 343 and what they have done to Halo. It brings me solace hearing these words from your lips.
On the "multiple options" scenario, I found out that on the mission The Covenant, when you fight the two Scarabs, if you hop onto the passenger seat of a Hornet, the Marine will fly you to a Scarab, drop you off, and when you destroy the power core the Marine will come back and pick you up. Amazing little detail.
Frank O'Connor got fired in March also was the main reason why 343's lore, stories, and games Fucking Suck.
I had no idea Wolf was still around in some presence, I've missed that voice immensely.
He has been editing EFAP for a bit and fully runs the highlight channel.
While Kiki Wolfkill and Frank O'Connor are both gone, that doesn't fix the cultural problems in 343 that will result in more games like Infinite, 5, and 4. Halo had a perfect ending with 3, and there was no reason to continue the franchise, especially with Chief. Reach and ODST showed that you can do Halo without Chief.
If Halo is going to move forward, they need to do a Disney-retcon and remove everything that's post Halo 3-timeline wise, retcon everything that's not a game, and give it to a different studio like ID or Machine Games or something. Then, return to the roots - Halo 3's gameplay is still solid and DOOM 2016 and Eternal showed you can iterate on a game like it and have it be successful. Story-wise, more games during the war, before Reach or something after in dealing with the remaining Flood somehow and political tensions between Earth and the disparate and leaderless races.
But above all, the writing has to be good. 343's games failed because the writing in all of them are abysmal.
Halo Wars 2 was a small step in the right direction, if only they didn't change course afterwards.
@@revolverswitch Halo Wars 2 introduced the single worst thing about Infinite: the Banished.
@@revolverswitchHalo Wars 2 has some pretty massive issues, mainly when it comes to the Ark apparently keeping a nearly finished ring in its forges at all times, the lack of any major damage on the Ark, and High Charity still being intact, all of which combine to almost completely retcon Halo 3’s ending. I’m all for reusing ideas from Wars 2, like the Spirit of Fire making a return and The Banished (although they would need to be altered since the idea of them rivaling the covenant before the schism is a little nuts).
Amen. Reboot and start over with the next game to follow halo 3's events
@@Slender_Man_186 I agree. I'd almost like if the Banished were scaled down to be a threat like the Jackals in Cole Protocol. They could even be some aliens working with Innies or something so they would have a good motive to try to scavenge what Forerunner tech was left to fight the UNSC. The Banished are such a goofy idea imo.
Like the secret empire in SWTOR.
THANK YOU! This is all shit I’ve wanted other RUclipsrs who talk about Halo to talk about. Feels good to finally hear someone else rant about the things I’ve ranted about for a while now.
@@dio2076 I have. But both have never talked about things like the change to the forerunners not making sense. I haven't watched Wolf's vids since he took the off YT so maybe I'm missing remembering with him. Plus, Infinite came out after Wolf left YT. And if I remember correctly, Act Man liked the story of Infinite for the most part. It felt good to hear someone talk about how Cortana made no sense and was ruined in that game. Because most of other people (Act Man included) thought she was redeemed.
@@RonS1018
I said Act Man's video on 5 .....Not infinite.
The whole point of the forerunners were they were humans. Not a separate race. Something even Marty O Donnell confirmed. Act man not addressing was indeed a problem. I agree with you on that 100%.
And yeah I agree. Cortana's character arc should've ended at 4. Bringing her back in 5 and then killing her off again in Infinite was beyond stupid.
She's not redeemed......at all..... infinite was a nostalgia bait shit show.
@@dio2076 Yeah, I love that Cortana's explanation for her actions was "I shouldn't have tried to go out on my own. Because we work better as a team." As if that explains blowing up on entire plan and spartan base. Then she tells Chief and the Weapon, "You can learn from my mistakes." 🤣
You'd love Andy - The Bunker Dweller's videos on Halo 4 and Infinite then. That dude really hits the nail on the head on most of the issues, especially the Forerunners, and doesn't pull any punches, it's incredibly refreshing. He actually reminded me a lot of Wolf's old videos. If you want an hour long video on the topic, C3 Sabertooth also made an incredible video detailing the Forerunner retcon and what they were like before 343, going all the way back to the Halo 3 terminals, IRIS and even Halo 2's original cut ending. I'd highly recommend that one too if you're curious on the topic.
@@nagger8216 You know what… I think I have seen Andy’s videos on Halo 4 and Infinite. I remember liking them a lot. I think I’ve had C3 Sabertooth’s video on forerunners recommended to me but never got around to watching it. Will definitely put it on my video queue, thanks.
Halo infinite staring at wolf like the green goblin mask
The fight's been finished since Reach.
The rest has just been one big monument to all our sins.
The fact that a majority of people working on Halo Infinite were independent contractors asked to work on an engine they have no experience with just to fire them and hire new contractors in the same cycle to avoid paying benefits. That is how Microsoft operates the studios they acquire, that’s why they have no problem shutting them down even if they make a good game, because the talent is already long gone
Regarding which franchise fell harder I see it like this. Star Wars died in blazing train wreck of a fire that continues to burn. A crowd still watches, some lament as more burned away, some claim “it’s not so bad”, some try to put out the flames to no avail, and more continue to walk away but occasionally check on the fire to see if it still burns. Halo on the other hand I saw as more of a slow burn in which fans gradually left until the general sentiment was apathetic. To put it simply, Star Wars died with an explosion, Halo died with a whimper.
There was absolutely no excuse for MCC to not have splitscreen on PC.
One thing that is unforgivable is they tried to replace the announcer, Jeff Steitzer and replace him with the boring DEI Spartan announcer in Big Team Battle. They also don't even tell him what voice lines they'll use. 343 is an evil company
It’s weird to realize I spent my childhood as the gaming equivalent of a Star Wars fanboy in Halo, and yet I never think about it now because everything after reach is so shit.
I rarely think about it but when it comes up I feel offended and angry because Halo 1 through Reach was such a critical part of my escapism as a child, I was abused horribly from a young age but when I got to go round my mates house and split screen Halo I was okay and everything was okay for a few hours and 343 have taken that from me and perverted it and mangled it and turned it into abuse
The whole human/forerunner retcon was so contrived. I can't imagine how they ever managed to justify it to themselves. The original forerunner lore was so cool and mysterious. What we ended up getting from 343 is just...weird.
With halo 4 I was like, alright it’s different and fresh. Then with halo 5 I was like, nah burn it with fire. All of it, burn it down.
Halo infinite is so much like rise of Skywalker where they tried to bait everyone back with nostalgia bait and just ignoring the past atrocities
Halo Infinite gives us a great story in the opening cutscene, then skips over all of the exciting moments of that story in a fade-to-black, and then has us play a much less interesting story with entirely different character that takes place AFTER all the cool shit has happened and you're just kind of cleaning up the mess
Who doesn't want to participate in a ruthless battle for survival on the Ark trying to save as many UNSC forces as you can while the brutes bear down on us?
Sonic Unleashed 🤝 Halo Infinite
"The opening cutscene was the best part of the game."
yeah the book Rubicon protocol is all about the fighting on zeta halo that happened while chief was floating in space for 6 months and its a solid read I think
21:31 I think he means "There's a new alien race worse than the Flood"
Which is hilarious 343 went with that narrative since The Flood are literally the whole and only reason the Halo rings were created.
I stopped after Halo 4. I knew 343 weren’t going to do a good job continuing on and I feel very vindicated in doing so. The bungie era Halo games is where I start and stop, personally.
Halo 3’s themes are called “Never Forget” and “Remember.” Poignant.
It's great to hear Wolf again, and I'm glad he's doing better. Now, let's undo the recovery by bullying him into talking about the current state of Halo!
I still kinda want to know why he didn't like the Republic Commando novels.
I like the idea or Cortana going rampant (since she was starting to in halo 3, and its a threat to all AI), but from the sounds of it, they likely didn't do it well. (I didn't play halo 4 or beyond).
They did it well in Halo 4, afterwards is when 343 screwed it all up.
@@prufan Halo 5 at least went with "rampancy is mostly megalomania" like in Marathon. Halo 4 instead decided to have it mostly be whiny Lifetime Original Movie cancer-patient scenes.
In the lore, rampancy was due to A.I becoming sentient which would've really been cool for Cortana's progression as a character. But then in Halo 4 it was retconned that Rampancy is what happens to A.I. begins to die.
The 343 Halo games are objectively bad as well as subjectively bad
The level design is atrocious, the art design provides gameplay issues, the AI of the original game was better than the ones the 343 games had, gunplay was painful
It's not just writing, it's holistic. 343 Halo games are just bad
Exactly. Literally objectively bad writing as well.
Bonnie Ross was Kathleen Kennedy before it was cool
Nah Bonne left when it was time. Kathleen won’t let Star Wars go
@@darkspark5854 did she leave or was she forced out? I guess she doesn’t know about exploitation of children like Kennedy most certainly does
*got forced into retirement
Halo 4 felt like fan fiction
Frankie's, specifically
@@cosmictreason2242definitely Franks fanfiction
No, because to write fanfics, you need to be a fan in the first place; Halo 4 is just shitty story written by incompetent non-fans...
@@Dommie222 antifan-fiction. Corpfic, corporate fiction
@@jaredbryant8297You can tell because they still refuse to kill off his Star Wars OC, lmao
How anyone can be excited for Halo with 343 at the helm for the past decade is crazy
I think the concept of Cortana becoming a villain was a good idea. The idea that AIs become crazy after a certain number of years and putting Master Chief in this position where he has to surrender the life of his closest ally is a very good story hook. They just didn't stick the landing. They didn't commit to the idea and rushed one story beat to the next as if they didn't know if they were going to continue the story.
343 missed a huge opportunity to make a Elite focused game. Make a story of you fighting along side your Sangheili brothers and the other Covenant races that turned to your side. Hell maybe make a smaller stakes campaign like ODST or Fireteams, just doing operations or fighting on the frontlines of a larger conflict.
Especially a game that focuses on the Arbiter. Something like his backstory or something that happens after Halo 3 would be perfect... but 343 are simply too stupid to conceive the idea.
I remember hearing that after Halo 5 failed they were torn between making a Halo 5.5 that filled in the obvious blanks or a ODST 2 type story with an ODST and Elite fireteam.
343 are kids flushing diamonds down the drain, I swear
They're so fucking obsessed with Spartan shit because they want their own Marvel superheroes.
I really like what Joe Staten did with Shadow of Intent. A game based around that would have been perfect
That spinoff game ("Halo: Shadow of Intent?") could be an Elite deploying to the Ark and the Foundry up until Halo is fired with references and appearances of the Arbiter, Truth, Chief, Gravemind, Guilty Spark, Mendicant Bias, and even Tragic Solitude. The goal is to expand on what people are famliar with and love and to keep the arcane, esoteric, dangerous mystique of Halo. Multiplayer will feel like Halo 3's meshed with Reach.
A spec ops elite focused game would have been cool af and a good mirror to odst, but we are talking about 343
I appreciate you creating this supercut of this rant. ❤ I hope my timestamps helped
They should have kept the ForeRunners like ghost entities, or electronic static or something. There is ZERO mystery in the series anymore
As Rich Evans so elegantly put: "How does it feel to live long enough to see all your favorite franchises go down in flames?"
The *ONLY* thing I genuinely enjoy about Halo Infinite is driving around in a razorback with 5 Marines weilding sentinal beams. Only problem is that Infinite is so sparse and narrow, that it makes driving around with them more diffcult to enjoy more.
I also enjoy how 343 gaslit Halo Infinite players into thinking cross-core is a cool new thing, when "cross-core" is literally just default normal Halo 3 and Reach customization...
My seven unforgivable sins that 343 has comitted are:
1. Retconning Forerunners into not being Human.
2. Making Cortana a stupid wimp.
3. Butchering Chief's armor
4. Modifying the Warthog suspension to me it, "mOrR rEaLiStIc" in a scifi game....
5. Modifying the Pelican magnetic clamp that carrys vehicles into ropes to make it, "mOrE rEaLiStiC" in a scifi game...
6. Ugly alien redesigns. Elites, grunts, etc...
7. Making the Gravemind a genuine precursor, so technically speaking, the Gravemind is Humanity's ancestral grandpappyma or some shit.
I also saw somewhere that they wanted new Forerunners to have 6 fingers because one of the control panels had 6 fingers on it. The problem, is that 343 was so incredibly stupid, that they didn't realize the panel had 6 fingers NOT because Forerunners had 6 fingers, but rather so people with either right or left HANDEDNESS could use the same panel. If you overlay a left and right hand, you get six fingers... How is 343 so dumb?
One other thing, the canon title, "reclaimer" makes *ZERO* sense in 343 Halo. Ancient Humanity *NEVER* had a claim to Forerunner tech. In order to *RE* -claim something, one must *FIRST* have claimed said thing at some point. So tell me how exactly modern Humans are "RE-claiming" something they *NEVER* had a claim to in the first place.
Then you have people dismissing what Guilty Spark says because, "hE's GoNe InsAnE aNd IsN't ReLiAbLe". As if the Gravemind literally calling us the child of his enemy is also a lie? But wait a second, if the Gravemind is a Precursor, and the Precursors created us, then that means the Humanity must be a child of the Precursors. That means when the Gravemind is talking about us being the child of his enemy, his enemy must be himself?! No, in Bungie Halo clearly the Gravemind was saying Forerunners were Humanity's parents, therefore Forerunners were Human. In 343 Halo, this line make zero sense.
Guilty Spark, "Forerunners are Human"
Propet O' Truth, "Forerunners are Human"
Gravemind, "Forerunners are Human"
343 shills, "nUh Uh!, ThEy UnReLiAbLe AnD wRoNg! FoEhAmMeR nOt HuMaN!"
It is simple, Halo infinite was a soft reboot when it should have been a hard reboot. There's no coming back from H5. Halo needs to start over.
let it die.
it was meant to finish at 3, humans are forerunner
Just remember, Master Chief's forefather in WW2 wasn't killed because the enemy humans had it in their genetic code that he must live lol.
I hate that people act like Halo 4 is a blessing for Halo's storytelling when it critically redirects the series away from more payoff coming from what Bungie intended and injects a bunch of nonsense in its place.
Master Chief being sad doesn't mean he has emotional depth just because they show him being sad. The setup for it is unbelievable based on how Master Chief has been up until that point and the timeskip doesn't explain anything since he's effectively the same person he was prior to being frozen, so he comes across as dejected for no reason because if he were acting in a more consistent manner he would be looking for a practical solution to Cortana's problem and to the problem with the Didact at hand even at the cost of insubordination which he didn't even have a problem with doing just moments before that scene and which he ultimately does anyway that has no consequences for him because the antagonistic Captain is relieved. In other words, he has the solution to his problem right in front of him but takes a break to get emotional despite that not being ever reflected in his actions before and then the conflict he has doesn't even make a difference.
Furthermore, there is a plot point that is completely dropped without any exposition or discussion in that Master Chief and Cortana decide the solution to Cortana's rampancy is to get to Dr. Halsey for a probably fix. Obviously the digitization of humanity by the Didact takes priority, but the game just forgets about it instead of highlighting the possibility and showing Master Chief's conflict between accomplishing the mission and saving who is approximately his closest friend, which is literally the easiest thing the writers could have done to explain Master Chief's emotions and simply did not.
And there's a ton of other problems along the way, like how the Infinity was there at the same time as the door to the shield world was opened, how Master Chief is the chosen one which hinges upon an unreasonable amount of generational convenience, how a single Archer missile destroyed a Covenant destroyer, how the large gun on top of the big tank needed a target locater from the ground in order to fire at a big ball in the sky, how Cortana wasn't able to just beam herself into Master Chief's suit (or anywhere for that matter) despite being able to project herself in hardlight to "touch" him because "most of her is down there" even though she's a computer program and the Bungie books have her doing the same thing multiple times with ease, or how humans were obviously setup to be the descendants of the Forerunners by Bungie but now they were always a separate species and they're being handed the keys to the old empire for no reason and much much more.
343's story telling is a mess in general, and it all started with just how garbage Halo 4 was to start with.
16:45 Oh man, i agree with this so much.
But in reality, it's not about limited space of the level that matters - more so that it would be tailor-made and not just empty spaces.
For some reason (i blame skyrim) developers decided that "open world"="half-empty uninteresting world".
Also, good example of some kind of middleground between the two is BG3. It's feels like an open-world, but it essentially is just several huge as fuck "levels".
Hey Wolf, enjoyed your content since your old dishonored wolf channel glad to hear from you again.
Halo 4, they kill cortana, halo 5 they bring her back and turn her evil, halo infinite, they kill her again and bring her back again but good, least cohesive trilogy ever
Reach to this day is my personal favorite. I liked the immersion. You felt a part of something beyond the scope of "I'm hero, the save world" but an elite group that shows more then tells why they are the tip of the spear. They risk life and limb constantly, use superior knowledge and tactics to undermine the Covenant at every turn. At the time i wasn't sure if what Halsey gave to Noble 6 was alien tech AI or what, I wasn't into Halo lore then. It made sense because you wouldn't explain to a hammer why it drives the nail, it just does. Once again, immersion.
My halo sequel would be the most important event we never saw: the battle for earth. It’s crazy 343 didn’t just make a trilogy about everything else going on while chief in off in space. Would’ve been easy, so much material to cover.
Halo 3 was such a great ending for Chief. And Reach was a great wrap up for the series as a whole. I played less than an hour of Four before deciding I was done with Halo. I think I made the right choice.
The buildup of the elite alliance felt so satisfying and they threw that whole story and achievement down the drain just so we could fight elites again who were redesigned to look and act like brutes and weren’t fun to fight against.
343 have absolutely destroyed our franchise.
we interviewed an OG Halo concept artist Ed Smith who practically drew up the design for Chiefs armor, we are chilling with him again on the 27th, he has a lot to say about the current state of halo thats for sure!
Halo ended with 3
Not just worse than forerunners, they claimed it was “worse than the flood”. It’s like they’re entirely incapable of grasping or understanding the lore of the game series they took over and actively destroyed.
Ironically someone should get Halo & Retcon everything after Halo 3. Aka retcon all the 343 Trash
Bungie had a well-written AI because they already had well-written AI before, Durandal being chief among them.
If 343 wanted to go the rogue AI route so bad, they could have stolen Bungie's homework from Marathon, or even go one step further and introduce Durandal post-Marathon Infinity to Halo. He could even constantly talk shit to you and complain about you not recognizing him or something. Hell, some original plans were for Halo (original) to be in the Marathon universe. That could have been interesting.
Instead, you get the "people who hate Halo" making Halo.
Andy Bunker Dweller has excellent videos on Halo 4 and Infinite. Basically covered most of what you said here, just more in-depth.
I was genuinely shocked when I recognized Wolf's voice, glad he's better health.
It will take ages, but a highlight of all the times E:R spoke would be hilarious
70% of the clips would be all from the Boogie EFAP lol
Forerunners were humans. Retconning that was the worst thing 343/O’Connor did. Completely ruined the lore. Nothing is canon after Halo 3 to me.
Listening to people shit on 343 is very therapeutic. Most incompetent triple A devs that ever existed.