The Tragedy of Modern Halo 

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It's actually baffling when you realize 343 has had the Halo IP longer than Bungie has had and they still have fumbled at almost every turn

"We recruited everyone who hated the franchise to make more of it, what could go wrong?"

"UI limitations" continue to be the funniest phrase Ive ever heard

Hearing the backstory of Halo 2, the fact that the franchise made it through that with a huge victory is a miracle.

I love how the feeling of hope, at the video's end, is crushed by the first minute of the video.

Curious if this is gonna be a two parter, because there is no way he doesn’t talk about infinite

There has to be a part 2, this video felt as incomplete as halo infinite

I came late to the party at Halo's peak in 2007. It's a tragedy what's happened to the series. Halo had everything to succeed, a massive fanbase, deep funding and a stellar foundation and despite all that it failed. The days of having a blast on multiplayer are long gone and it hurts.

I feel bad for anybody who never got to play Halo back in its prime because I believe the magic it had can never be recreated. You just had to be there.

It’s crazy what a chokehold Halo had on the FPS genre back in the day. What a shame greedy companies always have to ruin greatness.

Growing up with Halo 4 as my first and main Halo game and later entering the larger Halo fandom has definitely been a wild experience I can say that.

How privileged we all were to grow up during the birth and prime of the Halo franchise. We'll never see something like this again

343 will forever be known as the studio who killed Halo.

I am absolutely stunned by how bad the picks for the beginning of 343 are. Now the fall of the franchise makes complete sense.

amazing video, the ending reminds me of everytime i rewatch revenge of the sith and i'm hoping for the story i already know to for some reason change, we're gonna get the good ending now right??? everything is gonna be okay and halo 6 is gonna be perfection!

One of the saddest stories of modern gaming.

Tbh this whole situation just kinda makes me sad. It’s like having a friend who you were super close with then over the years you drift apart and watch him slowly throw his life away. You still want the best for him and hope that he’ll get better, but the hope is slim and it may just be easier to cut him out.

Absolute ridiculous how a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT dev team practically fixed the lore and art style with halo wars 2, then gave them the blue prints to continue it only to bumble it yet AGAIN. Its almost impressive.

Halo: Reach changed my life until Halo 4 launched in late 2012. I remember when 4 released the entire franchise died almost instantly and it never recovered. It’s strange, I’ve never seen the relevancy of a cultural juggernaut vanish so quickly, to the point where the idea of Halo being just that feels like a lie.

It's still crazy to play the Halo trilogy (and Reach) after going through the Marathon trilogy (and Pathways). The depth of writing, complex themes, and high science-fiction concepts endure in both series. Great stuff.

343 was made in Don Mattrick's Xbox one era. That alone is a giant cause for concern. There is no worse time in Xbox's history. It may truly be cursed like everything of that time was.

That ending was like halo 2’s. We need a second part, please.

15:52 This is it, that's when Halo died, when passionate and talented people were replaced by corporate hires that only work because they need to get paid.

24:19 New game feature: Ability to change your race

I don’t think people understand how much fun Halo 2 and Halo 3 custom games were

as a child of halo (born 94), this really hurts a lot more than it should... At least I can remember the community of the 360... I think if heaven's real, that's where my heaven will be. Just got home from school Friday night, had friends come over with me, we order pizza and some drinks, sit down, and slam ourselves against the co-op campaign of Halo 3 on legendary together. That will be my slice of heaven.

Apple didn't pay attention to Bungie due to Halo at first. It was with Marathon, released on Mac, that Bungie earned Apple's trust.

How have I only just noticed that Rogue One is literally just a star wars version of Halo Reach

Old halo felt mystical. Like if the legends happened in the future. And they left certain things unanswered on purpose. It made you wonder.

The sheer amount of views halo vids like this get just shows the amount of love for the franchise. Halo holds a special place in our hearts

It's incredible how Bungie went from 5 successful Halo games in 10 years to very successful Destiny games in 7 years and 343 couldn't build a working game over 12 years.

I'm not crying for the Death and Total mismanagement of a Beloved Franchise YOU ARE...Someone is- just cutting a bunch of onions...in my room...Right next to my computer.

Alright. One last Halo’s downfall video and I can put the franchise, and all those precious memories, behind me.

I think the worst part about this whole situation is how long it took the fans to finally say enough is enough

Normally I have videos playing in the background while I game, but I actually sit and watch every one of yours because of your background images and editing. This is fantastic.

27:14 I still have never heard a viable explanation for this image. His armor is perfectly capable of keeping him safe in space, and it remained airtight after he *jumped out of a spaceship and crash landed after free-falling for several fucking miles* .What the hell is that ratty burlap sack he’s wearing protecting him from?

Don't forget about the whole El Dewrito thing, that was an incredible story in and of itself!

At a time when we needed him most, he returned

This video has insanely good editing skills, and it greatly enhances the storytelling. Holy hell, I am so hooked!

Great editing. You can tell it took a lot of work and effort

As a Halo fan, I know we're not losing, we've lost.

Halo is a literal gold mine of an IP. Instead of a flood horror game, sergeant Johnson spinoff game, ODST 2, or a 3rd person marine game, we got the Halo TV show instead. Good job Microsoft and 343.

Bungie giving up Halo will forever be the saddest tragedy to happen in the history of videogames.

What really made Halo special to me was the custom games. The fact that you could create your own map and game modes lead to some super fun gameplay. I’m in a group that still plays and even today Halo 3 custom games holds up as a very enjoyable. The fact that even 16 years after release I am able to play full lobby custom games speaks to how special this was.

God seeing how far it's fallen absolutely breaks my heart. I made so many great memories playing Halo w/ friends and my brother. Talking abt RvB. Unlocking the birthday skull as quickly as possible to have the confetti. Man those were the days.

Watch the developer commentary on Halo 1 and 2. Its amazing. You can feel the love and passion the old Bungie had. We may never see their like again.

I’m old school man and you really nailed this. Good on you for putting so much time and effort into it.

Big boss really left us with a Halo 2 style cliffhanger

4:00 props for also crediting Michael Salvatore. He often gets a bit under appreciated compared to Martin, even though he played a huge role for making the soundtrack

I've been with this franchise from the very start in 2001, and the first 16 minutes of this video had me grinning ear to ear. The entire Bungie-era Halo really was a phenomenon. And then the segment on 343 Industries started and my smile and optimism completely vanished. It really is depressing for me to see what Halo has become, but I am thankful for the fun times and memories it gave me from 2001 all the way to 2010.

It's crazy how this video is entertaining, nostalgic, Informative and hilarious all at one and for such a long time. Phenomenal work my dude! Keep 'em comin

You really hit us with a cliffhanger like Halo 2.

Started to wonder if he was going to do a part 2, then I realized this video is meant to be watched on loop.

Halo 3 especially the online multiplayer was the peak of video gaming and it hurts that there will probably never be a game experience like that again.

3:35 holy shit. This is sparia remix. That brings back memories

26:20 this is for that disgusting Trend started of releasing games unfinished and buggy as hell

The mental image of Steve Jobs calling up Ballmer and screaming at him for thirty minutes straight is genuinely hilarious, thank you for that.

Old bungie: i can make a banger game in one year. Modern bungie: sorry we only work on our game if its a bug benefiting the player

Halo as a franchise is like the start of Halo Wars "At first it was going well, then setback after setback."

The bait and switch 343 pulled in Halo 4 was legendary, surpassed only by infinite. Unbelievable

To this day MCC still doesn't have the OG credits, the OG loading screens and the main menu backgrounds. It's almost as if they want to make people forget about the original devs and make them think 343 was the original dev.

Imagine STILL not having splitscreen in The Master Chief Collection...

I distinctly remember the feeling of playing halo 3 for the first time. I was obsessed. Thinking qbout it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Gameplay on the surface that is so simple, a story that was so compelling, multiplayer that was so competitive and fun. It had an aura of mystery around it. I wish 343 would just replicate the conditions that bungee had for halo 3. Reduce number of people involved. Allow enough time to make the game good and prove it out. Keep gameplay simple and make it an achievement to earn armour sets rather than lootbox nonsense or skin purchases and people will invest in everything else if you want to introduce DLC.

Your references are GOLD! loved the American psycho hahah

Halo has been a part of my life for practically two decades, starting with Combat Evolved. It blew me away, an experience unlike anything I'd ever played before. My baby brain could only handle the campaign on easy back then, but that didn't stop me from putting down countless playthroughs, even today I have most of it's encounters memorized. If I went clinically braindead my muscle memory could probably still power through a heroic playthrough. All the way up to Halo: Reach, the Halo franchise was 90% of what I played. There were always issues I had along the way; never at any one time has Halo peaked to 100% of it's potential. The lore of the tumultuous Bungie Halo development has as much depth as the extended universe, and my extensive knowledge of both guarantees me no bitches. Halo under 343 has been an exercise in patience and broken promises all culminating to a severe case of apathy. Halo has been without Bungie more than with, and by extent has been rudderless and without direction for about as long. Every 343 Halo game feels like each comes from a distinct alternative universe where the franchise had an entirely different design philosophy. Halo 4 comes from the universe that emphasized trend chasing, Halo 5 comes from the universe that emphasized competitive play, and Halo MCC comes from the universe where every Halo game was released broken and then fixed in this universe years later. I haven't touched Halo Infinite in months, before the Bandit was added. I got my Onyx, my LASO playthrough and was just done. The gameplay loop was eminently good - great even, but everything attached was terrible: UI, progression, matchmaking, and entirely absent social aspects. The Campaign was also great for a first playthrough, but with no mission select, an open world filled with Ubisoft-tier filler, and homogeneous level design made it very hard to slog through repeat playthroughs. Now I mostly just play with mods with admittedly great Steam Workshop support to spice up the old Halo games. Ruby Weapon Rebalance for Halo CE is a full game overhaul that is one of the few instances I can account for a mod superseding the original product in quality. There's so much cool shit like this the community cooks up, and all the while the mainline franchise withers and- maybe sooner than I think, dies out for good. Halo Wars 2 was pretty good though, all my Halo Wars 2 homies rise up with your favorite leader.

The master chief collection becoming updated after that long is like updating team fortress classic after tf2

I like the way the ending of the video links back to the beginning, almost cyclically. Really well done.

Have a massive budget, have the IP already established and popular, have the ability to select the talent you want, have the formula of success given to you. Yet still somehow fail at every single attempt at following up on the success

I feel bad for those people who didn’t get to live through the days of bungie halo. That 2001-2007/8 period was perhaps the perfected and greatest time to be a gamer. Such good memories, the epic moments, the banter and just everything was just awesome and pure and new. Its truly sad to see those days gone. We will never again see anything like it i dont think.

I have played every single Halo game. Even Fireteam Raven. And honestly it’s one of my favorite franchises of all time. Seeing it fall as it has lately is just soul crushing

That end of the video left like a cliffhanger. :( I hope part 2 will be here soon. Great work man. 😎

This video is so well put together. Really well done.

Man ODST is underrated af, the sound track, the atmosphere, the story.

Damnit I love you Big Boss. The shot with peter griffin and the cyberpunk character creator really had me set for the next 30+ minutes of pure genius.

343 thought the number after Halo meant that’s how many years they had to actually fix the game, so they pulled a pro gamer move and named it Halo Infinite.

I mean other than my own personal hatred for killing Cortana in halo 4 and twisting her character into something absolutely no one wanted in halo 5, they really have fumbled just about everything including the halo tv series. I’m so disappointed that this is the reality we live in, and I hope that maybe one day, we can all look back at these less than ideal times with a sense of relief, that we no longer have to deal with such an incompetent studio.

Halo CE soundtrack is genuinely perfection The m&m of Marty and Micheal made a set of musical orgasmic energy so strong you could literally feel the pure soul put into this holy presence The power such sounds create inside your mind is unmatched and unparalleled by anything this earth can muster

I remember seeing the dev team for 4 and was like “so a bunch of devs from the 90s who never developed an fps arena shooter” ohh boy!

Only vid where I watched the sponsor section instead of skipping

It was wise for Bungie to leave the end of CE open with “we’re just getting started”. They clearly were hoping for the opportunity.

Always a great century when Boss casually returns after 50 years with quality milk

People from all around the world come together through the wonders of internet to universerly trash talk you and your mother through game chat 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Damn, the part with Halo 3 being the biggest game launches in history sent me chills I want it all back

16:27 in and I am in tears. As a Halo fan since CE and experiencing all of the climax moments for each game, this mini-doc is spot on. lots of memories [flood]ing in. I guess ... this is mourning. I am mourning my adolescent years and reminiscing the good times with old friends.

Now you've got me thinking about the alternate timeline where Rare worked on Halo.

Man, I can remember going to GameStop for the midnight release of Halo 3. We got there around 3p that day, and saw the line continue to grow and grow. Ended up playing the campaign that night with a buddy and beat it. Such a legendary IP. Bungie provided me with some of the best memories growing up from H1 ---> H3.

Halo Reach will forever be the best in my opinion. My uncle gifted me the deluxe version before he passed, I never got to play with him, but I played with my brother for hours. We made forge maps together, built up entire battle fields frozen in time. We battled endlessly in firefight, we assassinated each other over and over again. We played three the game on Legendary. We got the cliff jumper achievement after hours of handing the controller back and forth trying to get that damn Elite. We loved that game.

The ending of Halo 3 should be a case study on proper story closure. Best ending ever, in my opinion.

32:06 I actually had to look up if that was real or a fan made animation and it turns out its official and still on xbox youtube chanel

The timing of this video is actually pretty perfect. Halo didn't show up on either the Xbox showcase or the extended Xbox showcase despite season 4 of Halo Infinite launching in 8 days. It really looks like Microsoft has given up on Halo.

I love how this video perfectly loops with it's ending and beginning.

I dont think you realize how many bungie devs i see in Bellevue, washington just vibing at pubs

I was 10 when the original halo came out. My mom told me to pack my stuff to stay the night at a friends….huge question mark it was a school night. She said “George called and you’re staying the night there” - when I got to his house he said Travis is in his room and there is pizza on the way. When I entered my friends room he was sat there playing halo with the an extra controller still in its package. Stayed up all night playing co-op and missed school the next day to play more. This is still one of the favorite memories till this day

13:54 hit me so unexplainably hard in the nostalgia. I remember going thru all those bad file shares, like those ones saying free recon 😂

The American psycho cameo for the Reycon ad is by far the best Reycon ad I’ve ever heard I’ve ever heard. It was and unexpected surprise but a pleasant one to be sure. You’ve just made my day

the editing in this is sick, well done.

I remember my dad had to go out of his way to drill holes in the walls so I could get my Xbox hooked up for Halo 2 multiplayer. So glad I didn't miss out on that chapter of gaming history, was glorious and my first experience with console gaming online.

Halo's best days are behind us boys. Don't be sad it's over. Be happy for the time we had. F

20:59 I will say, despite Halo 4’s different music. I absolutely ADORE Halo 4’s OST. It’s SOOOOO GOOOD. Probably my favorite thing about the game.