Is There Any Hope for Halo?

Thanks to Bespoke Post for sponsoring this video! New subscribers get 20% off their first box - go to www.bespokepost.com/act20 and enter code ACT20 at checkout. With the recent layoffs at Microsoft and 343 Industries, many have started to question the future of Halo Infinite and the franchise itself. Is there any hope for Halo? After so much has gone wrong? Only one way to find out...

Joe was the master of Halo storytelling but when the world needed him most….he vanished.

As someone who owns a PS5 (personal preference). I have to say it's sad to see what's happening to Halo. It's such an iconic and important franchise. The legacy and inspiration it's had can't be denied.

Halo will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart. Halo CE-Reach was just perfection. The golden ages.

When you said that Halo 5 came out 7 years ago, you hit me with a big old nostalgia slap

Dual wielding weapons should have made a comeback, its one of the things that made the older games fun

I was a kid in highschool when Liquid Development was working on halo 4's Armor, I got a sneak peak into the design change and was appalled. Not their fault of course but seeing you mention them brought back that memory.

As someone who works in the film industry, I think that incompetent leadership is just everywhere in art and entertainment. A lot of people at the top have never created anything in their lives, so they just lack any perspective on what it takes to make a AAA game or billion dollar movie.

A lot of times Contractors are working in the same building, eating the same food, working on the same work. Contractors are not inherently worse, but this dynamic creates workers who are doing the same amount of work at the same degree of difficulty for a quarter of the pay (and they know it) it creates a disgruntled, jaded workforce.

Infinite's art direction was one of the things they got right.

I will give 343 massive credit for delivering and polishing the MCC on PC over the last 3 years. When new Halo games are blundered and broken, at least we'll always have a functional MCC.

What they need, which seems less and less common in all forms of media, is planning. Think beyond just the next game. Know where you plan to land, and have a parachute, before you actually do anything. Don't just jump out of the plane and hope.

You know, when I first heard of the 10 year service that Infinite promised I thought that perhaps they will expand the campaign in chapters. Tbh I wish they did that even if it was dlc because one of the main things about Halo is the story itself. Shame that it's probably never going to happen 😞.

I’ve finally accepted that Halo will never be the same. Reach was supposed to be the end, and it was.

The intros for both halo 2 and 3 were better than all of the 343s campaigns combined

Never played Halo but I'm so invested in these Halo videos

Watching this happen to halo over the last decade has been like watching a part of my childhood die

I remember how excited I was as a kid waiting for Halo 3 ODST to come out. I had just gotten my first console shortly before it was announced, and constantly watching trailers and development videos trying to convince my parents to let me get it even though it was rated M… good times. Halo was (and still is) one of my favorite series and pretty much helped get me into gaming in the first place playing the CE campaign on splitscreen with my uncle on the original Xbox when I was like 7, reading the books as a teenager, getting back into the series again before Halo 4 came out. It’s sad to see it fall to this point

It feels like what’s carrying Halo right now is the community with 343 supporting as much as they can & as much as Microsoft is willing, not the other way around.

AS a programer I can say without a shadow of a doubt that trying to fix someone else's code is fkn hard af especially when you dont have the person who worked on it to ask questions

I just wish a new begin, a brand new Halo 4 with Chief, Cortana some aliens… and a decent story campaign

"The problem was you have 3 AI companions from start to finish" Halo 5 gave me Gears of War PTSD of AI teammates going from Brick intelligence to Sub-Brick when you go down and they try to reanimate you. Just to get executed or die of sadness and cringe

It seemed like the campaign map was designed to be opened up. There were distant islands that looked quite developed and open to exploration.

I think this would be an awesome way to move forward for Halo: Since we didn't really get much of a story in Infinite, and we end off still on Zeta Halo, I think they should pick up where they left off (something 343 doesnt know how to do) and continue with the open world concept that they started and fine tune it to perfection. The main story should still be about Chief and the endless, but they need to add an Arbiter element. They should have side quests (kind of like flashbacks/memory fragments) of you playing a small, special unit of Elites (main player being Arbiter) as they stealthfully uncover the secrets of Zeta Halo during the Infinite campaigns timeline (which will fill in the gaps that were left from Infinite's lack of storytelling). In doing so, they will be tying in where Halo 5 left off with Chief and Arbiters' relationship and adding a sexy new stealth/co-op element to spice things up a bit. So, the main, open world campaign can be with the UNSC and Chief fighting off the endless while having a side campaign basically having a main purpose of filling in the gaps that 343 left behind in their last three entries, through the eyes of the Arbiter and the handful of Spartans that survived from Infinite's crash. So, in essence, they should make the REAL Infinite game next. Thoughts??

The community leaders should be hired as consultants, and supplemental coding should be crowdsourced or built in. Profit should be the result of a good product, not the intent.

I had another rewatch of Crowbcat's "Remember Halo" video yesterday... I don't think it's possible to have that experience again. Not just because of youth and nostalgia; but online systems, mobile phones and spoilers, streamers, terrible management and messaging and the fall of the industry. It'll never bee the same again. But those days were marvellous...

As hard as fate has hit us, and it's bad luck, I will say this now, and mark my words. HALO WILL NOT BE DENIED! We will continue to stand atop our podium, no matter what you throw at us. We will raise our statue back up from the depths, and we will be victorious in this battle. I can, with enough confidence, say that yes: there is hope, for Halo.

Firefight for all Halo's and "Forge able" Firefight would make some very great addition to the MCC i think? Maybe even connecting Infinite to the MCC in some way?

I would like too see a halo game developed by Treyarch or DICE

I don't know how much more of this my heart can handle.

Halo needs to be a universe with different games and gameplays in it: Halo, the arena FPS that doesn't need to be super big anymore, the BF/CoD arcade FPS, the Dishonored type of immersive sim solo game, etc... All connected aesthetically and narratively, but with different gameplays.

I still can't believe that after all their failures, 343 had the arrogance to think they could pull off a live service game.

I like to point out that 343 genuinely did have a lot of talent at the studio it sucks to see such talent so poorly mishandled Microsoft after the activision acquisition ( if it even goes through) they need to stop and focus on games it’s getting ridiculous how many good series they have and all of them never get to see the light of day until 10 years later

At this point I would like to see other studios take a crack at the gameplay loop. Perhaps a frostbite-realistic environment approach could give a unique sandbox. I’m thinking battlefront but with banished and unsc factions. Could give them an opportunity to flesh out weapons and vehicles to accommodate large maps and modes. Anyways this is what I wanted after warzone and invasion but one can dream

There is a lot of halo that had some great stuff in them they can round up and put all together in one pot to make an amazing game. But I also know the issues you can have working with so many different teams to pull something together. Everyone has their input but when you try to make it work it just back fires. Remember the time a bunch of devs hung out in a basement to make a game and it blew up in popularity? It's just far better to have a core group than a mixed bag of devs, not saying contracting is wrong just it adds more too many hands in the cookie jar situation.

Sparth leaving the Halo development team was probably one of the bigger impacts on it's art direction as a whole. The dude is a legend and had been making Halo concept art since the Bungie and Halo 3 days. I have concept art books with his stuff in it. Also not sure if this would be on your radar Act Man, but maybe delving into how companies have switched from dedicated beta and alpha testers (hired as part of the dev team), towards using players and player feedback for debugging and testing their games would make an interesting video.

I have avoided Halo everything for years because the series is sacred to me and when I played Halo 4, I swear it gave me PTSD. I've avoided all of it since then. Now I'm finally playing Halo Infinite and I google a bit about the current state of the series... right back into depression

One of the best things 343 has done with halo, is create that scene of the Spartan looking super sad and alone. It allows everyone to express how they are feeling, as the chief.

The multiplayer is NOT BAD. That's all I ever care about anyway. I play the campaign once on legendary, and that's only if I manage to care. Its usually just a thing that I want to accomplish and forget about.

Even as a sony fan it's sad to see something like this happen to one of the greatest and most iconic shooters, hope better days are ahead for everyone

I work in tech and our company has shifted to using THOUSANDS of contractors. It’s has been atrocious. It’s a cost saving measure that absolutely DESTROYS the end product. It’s amazing how short sighted these companies can be.

As I've grown, I've learned that it was not Halo that made gaming feel special to me, it was Bungie. I can look back fondly at my time with Halo, but ultimately I look forward to the bright future that Destiny has and all of these tragic situations with Halo just seem to fade away.

When you started listing all the contracted work that was done on Infinite, something interesting clicked to me. The utility industry has a very similar trend, most of them do not have engineering departments anymore. Why? Because it's cheaper to hire out contracted work from a consultant than employee a full team of engineers. Maybe not front, but if you look at the long term (paying for benefits, pensions, etc.) it comes down to a numbers game.

I remember the Halo 5 days, and your older videos. I thought the worst of Halo was behind us. It's disappointing to see the state of Infinite right now. This should've been revival for the series.

They had hired me in November 2022 and their onboarding process took 3 weeks and they laid me off when I was just finishing it with no warning at all and that was 2 days before thanksgiving aswell. Still confused but it is what it is.

I worked in one of the three Microsoft Global HR shared service centers. It's not only the sheer number of contracting companies. Microsoft also has a policy for orange badges called "18x6", this consists of a contractor being able to work 18 months straight, and then they have to "rest" for 6 months. This is a global policy and affects all subsidiaries and products, from LinkedIn to office, azure, etc. That perhaps could explain a lot

The problem is they ruined the story in 4 by having the elites and the covenant as the baddies instead of the banished or the remnants of the covenant controlled by the brutes. They also contained ruining the story with 5 and infinite having a makeshift story to rectify the mistakes of 4 and 5.

i think the whole "advertise and then years of silence" is a business strategy to not stem too much hype, or let hype die down incase the game doesnt perform aswell as the business wanted, or as well as the customer was expecting, i mean we know what happened to no mans sky

yes, community-made content via Forge and other tools are spicing up Halo Infinite and MCC as we speak and will surely keep the fanbase alive even if 343 can't provide content

4:37 "Now is not a good time to ask when are playable elites coming back, you know the answer, its never" that hurts like energy daggers in both hearts

Management has been killer across the industry. I feel that management focusing solely in profits is what's hurting them, as chasing the dollar signs is hurting the creative process/making not a fun game/product. Whereas if they focused on making a good, fun, playable product then the profits will follow.

Vacuum of knowledge isn't the issue... its the vacuum of "Vision, direction, and planning" that is the issue.... Leadership changes put everything in flux, on hold, and no decisions are made every time...

I'm in the tech industry and hold a strategic role. The economic "recession" for the tech industry is actually most related to their boom during the pandemic. Now they all have to go back to operating at a slower pace which means they need to offload a portion of the staff they hired for it. Low 0-5% mid 10% ish and a high of 20% layoffs expected. They may not feel the hurt right now as much but they are trying to decrease overhead spending to protect themselves going into lean times. In addition to many of those markets also becoming oversaturated, they need to diversify their businesses to compete which is very difficult for most models and requires a large resource sink. Also bad management can completely gut a team or organization through employee turnover alone.

I feel like they had a vision, but as time went on throught the development, they would get data from what the community wants from best selling games and their investors would often force them to change Halo a bit to meet the "want" from gamers. Remember, it's all about the money. That is why it looks like they over correct it because when the game releases, its too late. The industry moved on to a new fad or game style that is selling a lot of and Halo is always like 5 years behind. They are scared of being stale by making the same shit but also afraid of offering something new to their fans that they might not like. Not only that they have to stick to their plan or vision of the game, it needs to be something that's 5 years ahead. Not a game that would sell today. A game that gamers want and would sell 5 years from now. What innovations they can accomplish without reinventing the wheel and keep nostalgia or what makes Halo... Halo.

Man I was really hoping halo would make a come back. Maybe in another life

19:56 hits hard They didn’t listen to anything the fans told them. We told them exactly what they were doing wrong, how to fix it, what to do next. And they just ignored it all.

been worried about the future of the halo franchise since 2014, and I will be everytime I see 343 industries develop another halo game.

Seeing that 343 and Microsoft will never give up Halo and continue to ruin it. I think the only thing we can do is give up on it and all just make our own game. Doesn't have to be exactly like Halo. But something fun enough to capture that same joy.

Bloody well said & put together mate.

I really don't like the directions 343's taken Halo like at all but I feel like reinventing the series has to be something that Microsoft is asking for. At the very least, Microsoft is demanding things be put in the games and 343's solution is to package it as, "Oh, hey, wow! Look at this new thing that's super important!" They're the fall guy but they were playing along when they should have stood up with a vision for what they wanted to say instead of being nothing but a conduit for the shit a bunch of suits in a boardroom thought would sell more shit.

I truly believe that Reach was the last truly GOOD Halo game. It went in a different direction, but it was excellent in its own right. Halo 4 was OKAY, but not all that great IMO. I miss those days man- back when I had the extra time and energy to play all the time. I used to be pretty good. Now I’m 35, bald, and tired all the time 😂.

I want to believe the franchise can recover... I want halo fans to have a good time :c

We've really hit rockbottom when we're rooting for EA of all companies to bring back Dead Space vs mustering any faith to have in 343.

The thing that hurts the most is all the abandoned story threads they gave up on and then off screen killing off characters. Remember in halo 4 when master chief’s evolution was accelerated by the librarian?? Nothing since 😢

It's crazy cause I thought with Microsofts huge budget, how could Halo infinite fail? Boy was I wrong.

My heart is just broken for my beloved franchise 😢

I wouldn’t mind a new halo story in different time. Just needs to be consistent with the past and future. Story can’t seem forced for events to play out. Might be best for writing of good books in the universe. I’m ok with Chief ending his story. He’s done enough

I work as a contractor for Microsoft and have been effected by their hiring freeze ( I don't work with the gaming side of things) and yeah their relationship with contractors leads to some crappy decisions. I have been in company wide meetings where the Microsoft managers tell us things are going great and we are hitting all of our targets, only for a week later those same managers come back and tell us we are all losing our jobs and a different company was taking our contract and we were to teach the new company how to replace us. Guess how good their training was...

In all honesty I believe Microsoft is priming 343 to merge with Certain Affinity. Who are the devs behind the upcoming BR spinoff game for Infinite.

In Max Hoberman of Certain Affinity, I trust! He, Marcus Lehto, Jaime Griesemer, Shi Kai Wang, Jason Jones, Tyson Green, Joe Staten, & Marty all knew what Halo was, & delivered a global hit.

Man there was so much good with the show, it's so sad it went were they took it. If they can get reach messed up and get slipspacin' to halo I think they can un-fuck it, but man, the damage the last part of the season did was rough. I feel the helmet thing was at least a decent moment compared to when we got Master Cheeks lol

Man the only thing I wanted from infinite was split screen so I can play with my mum, so naturally I've barely touched the game after completing the campaign

Leadership and their motives are immutable. The end has been here for a while. I'm content with the Bungie classics, which will never be topped. As for the future, i'm going to enjoy watching 343's failures as they come.

I feel so bad for you, Halo fans. I don't know what the future holds, but most of us who like space games; we're here for you.

When they killed the Ur-Didact off screen, I knew there was trouble in the water. They made a massive mistake when pushing huge story points through the secondary media. Not everyone that plays the games reads the comics or novels. They could make standalone games with John off on some other mission. I wouldn't have minded playing as Locke in Infinite. Leave John on the overarching story of dealing with Cortana, and have the Infinite story be something different like ODST was.

Just got done watching your review of Half-Life, I'd be interested in seeing you review Half-Life 2 (Probably just bundle episode 1 & 2 in the same review). Also Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Skyrim, and Oblivion would be good reviews to do too.

"What has surprised me the most about humanity during the Great War is not our ability to survive as a species, but our willingness in victory to so quickly return to the old." - Dr. Leonard Church

10:40 That statistic is likely due to 2042 knocking out really good updates one after another and is in a pretty good state atm. Meanwhile Halo is just spinning it wheels

In the words of Gandalf “there never was much hope, just a fools hope” And that fool is me still hoping

Once again, the Act Man being the most honest and upfront Halo youtuber regarding 343 and its state. Thanks for these videos, as painful as they are.

I think it might be best to continue to support Infinite for some time and then just put the franchise to rest for a good time, maybe a whole decade. And then one day, with a new studio, enough resources, good schedule and good management they could make Halo great again.

Sad part of it is Chief, I doubt I care enough anymore to find out either way.

Movement and shooting in halo infinite multiplayer has never felt better in a Halo game. There’s something for whomever is next to build on. Now, net code issues are another matter…..

The "QA" issue with halo and cyberpunk is probably why starfield is delayed. they want extensive QA testing.

Honestly my enthusiasm for the game just bled out in that 1 year period waiting for co-op to release. Hope all of you that play the campaigns solo or play the MP got a good ride out of it at least. For me it's the first and only FPS Halo game that I gave up on without finishing. Pretty sad really.

These are truly the dark times. I don't think the franchise has ever been in worse than it is right now.

honestly the state of halo almost brings me to tears, I kinda grew up with the games and now it feels like the franchise will be gone soon

This isn't the first time they abruptly stopped development of a storyline. Y'all remember Spartan Ops in Halo 4? It really said "Season 1" at the top like they were going to have multiple seasons

when you said elder scrolls VI was announced 4 years and I looked it up to find out u were telling the truth I literally shit and pants and started crying in shock, where did that time go

I always thought Halo 4 wasn't that bad, I feel like people give it way more hate than deserved because it wasn't Bungie that made it. And yeah, the game had some gameplay dilemmas and the new art style was interesting, but I thought the story was cool as hell. It showed the community that the writers at 343 were not going to hold back. Remember that Bungie toyed with the idea of making Cortana an antagonist way back in the development of Halo CE, and 343 took that idea and ran with it, and it was so cool. Halo 5 was an unmitigated disaster on all levels except for graphics. Objectively the graphics of Halo 5 were fucking amazing, but too bad the story was illogical and gameplay was this weird hybrid between Halo and CoD. Even back then we heard outcries from 343 staff about corporate mismanagement. The story of Halo 5 was supposed to be a lot different, but then Microsoft sent in their guys and gave us the steaming pile of shit that was the Halo 5 campaign. I ditched Halo once they announced Halo Infinite. It just proves that Halo 5 was so bad they had to distance themselves from it by dropping the numeric title. I've never played it, never really watched gameplay, and that's because I know I don't have to in order to understand how bad it is. This is a story about corporate mismanagement. Bungie had some tensions with Microsoft towards the end, but Bungie always had the leverage because they were the original developers and their formulas were tried and tested. 343 has none of that autonomy. 343 Halo is what Halo looks like when it is run by corporate managers who have never played a video game in their life.

They need to focus on campaign and forge as the main staples. Then build from there on the rest of the content.

My biggest gripe with Halo Infinite was that I couldn't command Marines and even when I saved them they would just follow me around and disappear if I fast travelled. I really wish I could've assigned them to fire bases and have them defend those areas cause it's not like the banished would just ignore losing territory

If former employees are slandering 343; then they were likely not even given severance

I actually hop on infinite occasionally bc the custom games browser is pretty fun

It's so frustrating seeing them restart 3 times. Infinite is my favorite course correction so far but if they change it again I'm gonna mald

I've been following the state of the franchise fairly closely and good lord the section of the video with the list of all of the Senior Developers and Executives at 343 Industries who have left in the last 4 years was incredibly depressing to watch

Another great video, thank you.

The thing I loved most about the old halo games was I could unlock cool armor on my own, create my own game mode, and maps. It just really felt like a community. I remember a lot of multiplayer matches ending and the whole lobby joins a custom match after. Miss those days

It really is extremely hard for me to express the anger and disappointment I feel at a lot of the game development companies that I used to love lately. Bioware, Blizzard, Total War, Bethesda and, of course, 343i. The biggest gut punch for me will always be the failure of 343 to deliver split-screen co-op. One of my fondest memories of my marriage is playing Halo Reach with my eventual wife. We played all of the Halo games together. We pre-ordered Halo 5 and an Xbox One in anticipation of continuing our tradition. The very next day, I saw that Halo 5 would not have split-screen co-op. I canceled that whole preorder. I had hope that 343 would have learned their lesson and made split-screen co-op a priority with Halo Infinite. Clearly, the fuckers did not do that as split-screen co-op is now dead, despite it being the very first thing they announced about Halo Infinite. I will not be surprised if 343 announces that support for Halo Infinite will be ended very soon. The writing is on the wall. Why has it been so hard for 343 to get this right? Are they really this incompetent? Have they always been this incompetent?

That comment that said "This is bad news disguised as good news" was pretty on point. Like the Costa Concordia when the ship was sinking and the intercom told people things were fine.