"There will never be another game quite like Halo 4" thank fucking god for that. Though this video has shown a lot of things that I didn't know that make me empathize a lot with the team
Both are valid. Nothing is wrong with pointing out that a product was garbage, regardless of sympathy for the devs. Talented and amazing people make shit products sometimes - such is the circle of creativity.
This 'sympathize with the devs' thing is so stupid. This is the only game series that gets this pass. No ones out there defending Ubisofts trench devs when Far Cry or AC turns out garbage. No reviewer or comments are out here defending those devs. Why does working for 343 somehow give you keyboard warrior white knights to defend a decade of bad games?? This whole mindset had come out of 343, nothing else. And the worst part is that the 343 devs hate you. They openly stated it. The mission statement for the company at one point was to get people who hated Halo on the team to make it something its not. If anything, The devs working for 343 are even more culpable with the state of the franchise than many other series. I dont blame the artists for the state of Assassins Creed, they're nailing it. I dont even blame the combat mechanic devs, because the combat was actually determined by higher ups who wanted to chase the Witcher/souls trend. Many of 343 Halos issues can boil down to how it was built, the individual pieces and how they fit together, the individual parts that individual devs worked on that are just abjectly bad. But its Halo, so we have to mea culpa the entire workforce and blame Microsoft because surely that'll wind up with a better result next time.
"Its a bunch of new people working with new tools, it was unfamiliar territory" Which is why they did the exact same thing 2 more times for the next Halo games, winding up with a bunch of temp contract workers. Great work.
@@seereebee I'm willing to bet $1000 the conditions under Ubisoft studios devs are 50x worse than at 343 and MS. Yet its clear they put way way more effort and talent into bad games year over year. People have some deranged Stockholm syndrome in defending everyone working at 343 like they're these saintly artists under the bootheel of Microsoft and every faceless executive.
@@117johnpar because both Bungie Devs and former 343 devs, as well as other studio devs owned by Microsoft prior said it happened. It feels like a weird Stockholm syndrome when people want to defend the corporate overlord that had a decent number of people step forward and say "this is how Microsoft works with it's subsidiaries" The 2007 Bungie employee Emails leaked to media sources about how Microsoft treated them and why they were leaving should be enough to illustrate this. But then there's the Game enthusiasts who remarked this happening to other studios prior back when G4 was on TV, so reports are that old. According to Bungie testimony the devs that worked on Halo 2's multiplayer left Bungie to start certain affinity almost the time Microsoft showed up to micromanage the development of 3. Jason Jones attempted breach of contract and then failing that, according to Marty, took as much vacation as possible to get away, likely from the Microsoft suits and then conveniently started working on a different game in secret from the publisher. That's all very telling. 343 is made and when the original announcement on Bungie's website about it debuted it was Frank O'Conner was spearheading it, when in reality it wasn't revealed until 2012 that 343 was started by Bonnie Ross, A Microsoft JR VP for Xbox, not Franky, a former Bungie dev they obviously hired to buy trust from old fans and to be used as a scape goat since his authority was basically non existent according to former 343 devs and himself when he went up to bat against Microsoft to stop their bad ideas (MCC) and shot him down. In 2014 there were dev leaks saying the same thing that happened to Bungie in 2005 was basically the norm at 343 after 2012. In 2022 when Microsoft fired devs on contract, those devs repeated the same sentiment that they all have to jump when Microsoft says so and there's basically no development due to the publisher treating games like computer manufacturing. 343 was always a dummy studio for Microsoft since the publisher was given a black eye by Bungie for not playing ball and finding loopholes out of what they wanted. A studio isn't formed around 18 month non renewable contracts, focus group testings, and mass 3rd party hires from different companies out of a love of game design, it's how a spreadsheet pencil pushing corporate entity sees all business creative or not. Say you don't believe any of that (there's actually more btw) what's more believable: 1- That Microsoft, the publisher, is signing blank checks and the developers are not doing everything they can to make a decent product despite having a library of resources and experience, and the money to do so. 2- that Microsoft looks at game design the same way a hammer does a nail, and that the bottom dollar sale in units is more important than the quality of the product at the expense of both the fans and developers.
The fact that the algorithm somehow figured out i decided to give halo 4 campaign another go just today and than recommended this video is a bit concerning, that said great work on it i quite enjoyed it
Awesome video would live to see you cover halo 5s development because I want to know what the fuck happened there It's insane because despite halo 4s short comings, overall it easily had the best story and campaign out of the new trilogy. I mean 5 was an absolute mess and infinite barely had a story. God I miss good halo
i remember infinite have so much horrible honeymoon phase that everybody including big halo youtuber praise the story so much even one of them said it was better than original trilogy glad everybody opened their eye and saw infinite campaign is the most horrible one
@@Kittysune12 I believe that only halo 5 is worse because of the blatant character assassination of cortana and others. I remember the way the RU-vidrs I followed talked about the story on release and it just goes to show they will literally praise anything if they get special treatment in return. I hate what they've done to this franchise
Great video, curious how it’s coming out among a sea of videos either showing big Halo content creators faking extreme outrage about the aforementioned because they know that’s what many people like seeing nowadays or videos where people just echo things ad nauseam, it’s nice to see something of quality out for a change, especially when it’s something the general public doesn’t know about. Subscribed, please do more videos like this one!
You definitely deserve more subscribers! Wonderful video! Honestly I liked Halo 4 allot, albeit having some flaws, this video shows the fact that it even releasing was honestly a miracle.
I love halo 4. I have been a fan of the halo series since halo CE, it was obviously going to be hard to start a new trilogy with a brand new studio built from scratch. I put the blame on the poor leadership and continuous lack of confidence on the work that where making, had 343 been in the good management they would had lost less time on remaking things and expanded the game better. I personally dont think the art style or the graphics to be horrible i think most of the fans are over reacting like babies like if 343 attacked their personal life, had 343 done nothing new they would have been hated for copy and pasting the bungie work. To this day i think Halo 4 to be the best Halo made by 343 with most passion to work on, nowdays the future of Halo looks bleek, the studio changed the direction and the story so many times it just got confusing. For me the story ended with Halo 4 im still waiting for them to brink back the emotional feeling of the characters with a new game hopefully the new management will be better.
I’ve always loved Halo 4 and at times likely defended it harder than I would otherwise due to how vehement the criticisms were, but as my involvement in the Halo community has waned and through moving on to other franchises, I’ve been able to look back on it a bit more objectively. It certainly has its flaws and I don’t replay it nearly as often as other titles like 2 or ODST, but there’s something special to the game that not only deserves credit, but is severely lacking in Guardians and Infinite. I’m not sure how many people give this much thought, but Halo 4 is the only game in the entire series that feels like straight, good old science fiction. Classic Halo has a blend of military tacticool from Aliens and Starship Troopers mixed with religious mysticism, ODST throws in a splash of Blade Runner-esque noir, and Guardians is just a MCU superhero game. But 4 took the idea of the Halo trilogy’s mysticism and horror elements and re-tooled them in the philosophical vibes of classic sci-fi, and I really liked that. The art style change goes a long way to helping realize that new direction, but it certainly changed too much too fast. If I’m honest, if there were one or two games between Bungie’s games and 4 that had a more transitional art style I think fans would have been much more tolerant, as most people don’t seem to notice that every Covenant vehicle and most of their weapons are recoloured Reach assets, all of which were replaced with new designs in H5. There are a handful of other Reach models that are present in 4 (like the magnum and mongoose) and collectively there is enough present that I believe backlash against the new art style would have been much more subdued if they had just kept a few but key designs from Reach (or based off of Reach), such as the Covenant units themselves, the marines, and (to an extent) Spartan armour. The audio mixing is also horrendous. I actually adore Neil Davidge’s work for H4 but you rarely get to actually enjoy the music in game, as it is usually far too quiet and overpowered by the audio effects of, well, literally everything else. Like seriously, the bumping and sliding of Chief’s armour pieces is way too loud. Tracks like Aliens, Haven, and Foreshadow are pretty awesome and sell the haunting and sometimes creepy vibes of the prometheans and how some stones are better left unturned. But those tracks deserved to sit alongside new renditions of classic pieces; the glaring lack of any classic music piece made the soundtrack dead on arrival for many fans, which is a shame as that means none of H4’s music made it into Infinite and will likely never make a reappearance. And I think that right there is essentially my takeaway about the game as a whole. Yeah there are glaring flaws that should never return to the series, but the way the fans, 343i, and Microsoft interact with each other means that none of the good from Halo 4 will likely ever return to the series, and that’s a shame.
Halo 4 had a lot working against it and I wish they had more time and resources to flesh the game out. I’m a long time Halo fan, but the fact that the story and characters in 4 were basically dumped instead of iterated on after 4 gives me contempt for the halo community and 343.
What a wonderful documentary. Well made. For all its faults, I really love how the game opens. I thought it was a perfect transition. Almost felt next gen. I think 343 painted themselves in a corner however by keeping the chief isolated throughout the story along with the rampancy angle. Necessary yet limiting. An impossible situation to please fans. For example, It gives you a warthog… that no one can help you operate. Anyhoo, great video. Hope to see more soon.
i genuinely enjoyed halo 4, albeit not my favorite, i think a lot of people hate it because it's 343's first halo project (i don't think they should've deviated too far from the main canon and artstyle, but unfortunately here we are). compared to 5 and the clustertruck that occured in the early days of MCC and current infinite, i think everyone treated 4 too harshly
I loved Halo 4 narratively, and appreciate everything the team did for Halo. I only wish they had more time to properly transition from the Bungie era and that Halo 5 was a proper sequel
Halo 4 will always be one of my favourite Halo games. I loved everything about it; Campaign, multiplayer, spartan ops, etc. And to see just how much pressure 343 was under to deliver after the monumental success of Bungie's Halo games will always make me appreciate this game even more.
Art design was the only real complaint I had about Halo 4. New sandbox weapons to play around with was a great breath of fresh air, and the new enemies were actually pretty fun, while still being Halo. I feel like if they'd taken time to build the next game leaning into those strengths, things would've turned out okay. Same for the story. We had a new setting, with little context which would be solved with lightly digging into the lore. Slightly better dialogue and world building would've easily solved that problem. Instead, Halo 5 had to INNOVATE the entire game in ways that strayed too far from Halo Identity. Weapon sandbox was solid towards the end. But man that story was just unforgivable, the art design was too far gone, micro transactions and ADS mechanics choked the multiplayer while slapping it around with balance issues...it could've been great
Instead of making a “clone” of the Halo games prior… they made a game to COMPETE with itself. Basically making a game that’s NOT Halo but it’s called Halo. The simple solution = Same universe NEW characters. Instead they butchered the Master Chef and reboot him and Cortana. Killing her off, a decent idea ONLY to bring her back… then kill her off AGAIN. But replace her… with herself. Halo Wars 2 is proof of just = Let’s follow new characters… and just like that, they completely blew it with NEW characters without bothering to look back. Atriox in Halo Infinite is absent and replaced with his #1 fan. Should’ve let Master Chef sleep.
I can’t tell who’s talking in the background at 15:50 about the guns but it’s interesting for a game where everyone usually see it as 343 trying to be different and change everything, settling and maybe even planning on making the new forerunner guns so similar to what everybody already knew for the sake of simplicity and not rocking the boat. But personally I think they goofed a bit on them the first go. I like how they changed them for halo 5. I just wish the suppressor didn’t have tracking bolts. Or make the it burst fire like the bolt shot is. And make the bolt shot a heavy hitting slow fire pistol or something. But anyways. So interesting to hear the guy say that @ 15:50
At the time it released I was upset mostly that the multiplayer switched to ordinance drops and customizable loadouts with perks in what was essentially Halo's take on Modern Warfare. But in later years I have come around to the multiplayer since returning to the game. The rebalancing they did and the introduction of traditional arena modes went a long way to making the game feel fun to play. A lot of people hate on the art style, but I for one always loved it. Halo 4 is a gorgeous game that still looks beautiful today, and in particular I really adore the designs for Chief's Armor and Cortana (Cortana's design in 4 was the best in the series IMO). Lastly, I think the story itself was really emotional and touching. The relationship between Chief and Cortana was explored in a way that really displayed some humanity mixed in with some real heartache. I really appreciated it.
I mean, considering all the problems and controversy they still have stuck to their goals with the cross media, the books and other games have connected and even given more context to what’s happening in the main line games
Bungie changed it first because Call of duty devouring Halo from 2007 onwards And if Halo didnt need to change then it sounds like youre the perfect Call of Duty consumer
@@anomalyinc3239 lmao What the fuck, how? I'll give you Sprint, but seriously what else? If you say loadouts then that's just hilarious. Also how is wanting Halo to remain unique and to not change itself to be like every other FPS out there make you the "perfect Call of Duty consumer?" That's the most backwards ass, retarded logic I've ever heard.
@@nagger8216 "not change itself to be like every other FPS out there make you the "perfect Call of Duty consumer?"" , i think he means because CoD tends to be similar with each instalment, so the logic would be: someone who wants a game to remain similar to its prior entries would be perfect for CoD because they do that too. Not that i agree with it, but I assume thats the strawman they were going for.
@@TMek42 How is it a strawman lol COD has been ridiculed for over a decade for recycling what makes it "unique" as you weirdos like to put t, but a new game needs to justofy its existence first and foremost otherwise just keep updating the existing one, Halo 3 got devoured by COD because Halo was getting stale and thats why Bungie put loadouts in Reach, chasing trends to keep Halo relevant Hell Halo players wouldn't have left Halo for COD if they didn't enjoy those mechanics.
This gave me a lot of sympathy for 343 and a LOT of hatred for Microsoft. Despite their failures, 343 has done a pretty good job. Especially with the Lore they introduced for the pre-Halo Era with the Forerunners and Precursors.
Them saying “The Didact fired the Halo Rings” bluntly would have made this so much better. It’s inaccurate now, sure, but something along those line-telling the player outright who the fuck this guy is and why he’s so dangerous-would have cleared the confusion and raised the stakes immensely. Microsoft is to blame for putting such a massive project on an unblooded team, then repeatedly shitcanning everyone when they didn’t live up to impossible standards. They just wanted Bungie 2.0 without any of the investment of time needed to build a cohesive team . No wonder the second trilogy was a disaster.
@@anomalyinc3239ot everyone pays attention to things like that especially if they’re hidden like the terminals. That’s the issue most have with the 343 style of storytelling. They rely on the expanded universe and leave the casual fan to be confused. Halo 5 was the worst in this regard
@@elementalramen6792 Halo 4 did not need external material to be understood (Halo 5 did) The Chief Cortana stuff is straight forward and the Didact Composer stuff is also straightforward thanks to the ingame cutscenes (the librarian and composer) You dont need to know anything more than that to understand the story or the stakes "The Didact firing the Halos" literally has no bearing on H4s story whatsoever
“How do you tell a heroes journey when he’s an already a hero?” The answer is that you don’t tell a hero’s journey. Instead you tell an epic, which is what halo already is in a way
exactlyyyyy - Halo has traditionally not really been about Masterchief at all, he is a player-projectable vehicle for other stories to evolve around. Yes there is lore around his character, but bungie never intended for us to over-focus on him in game.
Sucks that the Prometheans had some interesting guns in development, but because the playtesters didn't like them, we just got a bunch of lame "human weapons, but they're alien looking" guns instead.
For me personally the biggest thing I dislike about 4 and 5 was the drastic change in artstyle. Certain things look nice, like I love the hand models for chief, the H4 and 5 AR is probably the best design ever, I really like the DMR in H4, the hud in H5 is great,
True that. The designs felt very forced upon the fans and sometimes didn't even look as good as Bungie's designs. Now i think the new art direction COULD have worked if they provided more context and good reasoning to how the designs shifted though.
this trend was happening with all sorts of media at that time. artstyles and designs went from colorful and simplistic to bleak and realistic, alot of people credit Christopher Nolan's realistic approach to Batman for this popular change in designs in certain media at the time. this approach just really took off, i dont know why.
@@yeetin_yeti69 I mean cool if you think so. Its all subjective anyway. I grew up on CE and 2 and feel every game after was just a better more developed (obviously) version of what CE was trying to do
I don't want to be that guy, but the art style changes are actually a result of Halo Reach. Reach has the first ever mocap body (the op video is technically wrong) and it caused the armor to become both more spacious and to rethink textures and design due to a hard push for "realism" after 2008 to make objects bogged down by too much detail, and that the military was moving away from "less is more" just like videogames were. Halo 4 has the added bonus as having an in universe excuse to make armor, vehicle, and general every day objects look completely different due to advanced science unavailable during the games prior. The person who designed the armor in Halo reach, I forgot his name, said had they knew what they know now with the motion of the human body and technology, Master chief and by proxy everything else would have looked, and I'm quoting him "totally and completely different from Halo 1-3" There's a lot of literally unbreakable logic behind some of the more drastic changes, that simply met with "I don't care, I don't like how it looks" which invalidates it's existence as an art style to many.......which shouldn't have been a thing honestly.
And would have addressed many of the complaints to come - such as the Knights rolling to a new location instead of teleporting, and light glow for the Prometheans being blue which is more inline with Forerunner tech than the yellow lights.
I think the worst part of Halo 4/5 for me and likely many other people is the art style shift. Ten years later and I still genuinely do not understand why they decided to redesign some of the most iconic characters and set pieces in gaming. Whenever I think of Halo 4/5 the first thing that comes to mind is the art style. So many of the redesigns are just straight up strange and unnecessary. I get that they wanted to move in a new direction, but it’s still probably the most baffling decision 343 has ever made.
I probably would have liked 4 if it looked like a more detailed version of 3. I always thought the game was ugly as shit and didn't really make sense in the universe. Same with 5.
@@GallowayJesse honestly I don't give a fuck about art style halo fans are just Lil bitches that complain non stop even in the bungie days, oh halo 2 sucks, oh halo 3 sucks oh halo reach sucks everyone has said halo is too much like cod since reach yall just wanna bitch
That is sad about Greg Bear's death. I read the Forerunner trilogy, and it was incredible. I didn't mind the game's redesign too much, but it was confusing how the changes to his armor were implemented. The Prometheans were definitely unique, but the damage they too was crazy.
@@Souldestroy199 Some people like Jason Jones and Joe Staten were burned out after Halo 2 and weren't as involved in Halo 3 because of it, but that's the most I know of Halo 3 having any development "trouble"
It baffles me how they went about "innovating" in halo 4 and onwards, especially with the previous experience on the mgs series. Each MGS game built off each other and innovated in ways that benefited the gameplay and aesthetic while still being recognizable as metal gear solid in every step of the process. This was the same process bungie took with halo from CE to 3, each game innovated just enough to be new and meaningful while still staying true the core game. Wanting the game to be "radically different and unrecognizable as a sequel" was the biggest mistake in an already proven and beloved franchise. They didn't want to make a halo game, they wanted to make a completely different game.
Underrated video, I hope it picks up! The original designs for the Prometheans were genuinely good and actually Forerunner-y for a Halo 3 sequel! Really cool. I wish they didn't feel such pressure fro above to throw out Halo's style for almost a decade. So frustrating to see all the ideas that could have made Halo 4's tools more interesting be shot down by playtesters who were disinterested.
@@anomalyinc3239 I wish they had workshopped them a bit more instead of just turning them into archetypes. I'm sure something could have been salvaged.
@@maximiliantomasoski4032 only bits and pieces i know about the gravity gun but i kinda forget the rest its been awhile since i saw the Josh Holmes imterview
I think the narrative failure of halo 4 and 343 as a whole was even trying to explore the forerunners. There’s something worthwhile about just not knowing. It’s like midicholorians in Star Wars. It’s gonna be hard to come back from that. Mechanics wise, it was a lot of trying to fix what wasn’t broke, and trying to foster competitive play when the spirit was always on the variety. Halo infinite is suffering from its initial focus on the competitive scene, the dev team was simply too scared to just have fun with the map design.
I agree, the forerunners were ultimately an advanced (presumably human) race, not a separate species all together. Changing what the forerunners are in the lore totally ruined the franchise.
10000% agree with you. I personally loved the mystery behind the Forerunners and the structures they left behind, it added a unique backdrop to the original trilogy. I wish they kept that mystery alive in the new games, only introducing new Forerunner structures/halo-like planets where you would learn just a little bit more about the ancient race but never truly revealing too much as it only serves as a backdrop to a newer story. These new Forerunner structures could have brought on new threats which is where I thought Bungie would have taken Halo 4 given the Halo 3 post-credit scene.
@sultanqasim7639 it didn't ruin the franchise at all. It didn't even affect it. The didactic could've been an ancient mutated human and the prometheans robots and not a single thing would've changed about how the games play or feel.
Well that's just a bad example given midichlorians have 0 affect on the lore of star wars. That said, exploring the forerunners does remove the mystery but it doesn't ruin anything. If nothing else it opens up the franchise to explore the forerunner human conflict, tho neither Microsoft nor the fans would have the balls to allow that
I’ve never held Halo 4 in high regard but this video is so important and sheds light on many aspects I didn’t care for in 4. Thank you for this video, this story needed to be told for sometime now.
Damn...really makes me feel like I gave Halo 4 too much hate at the time. Also brilliant video and editing style. Would love to see more videos in this style.
I don’t particularly understand this… they had a great amount of resources: staff, money, time. Think they really suffered from lack of leadership (i.e. telling a new story). Chief’s story ended in 3 - Legendary ending hits so hard compared to anything in the series. Resurrecting him & Cortana, changing their camaraderie to some sexual desire (the touching counts), and putting a spotlight on Forerunners - which killed the mystery of what they were, were not good decisions and made the story weak. They needed a new goal, some vision with the world that the rest of the team could follow. The direction they went seems to have led to stagnation and mediocrity in spite of the talent brought aboard. I remember playing this campaign the 1st time and having no desire to play it again. Boring and repetitive.
Great video im glad someone is finally telling the story of Halo 4s incredibly difficult development You probably couldve mentioned how Bonnie Ross wanted to launch Halo 4 on Xbox one but Microsoft wanted to ship Halo 4 at the end of the Xbox360 life span with led to a ton of issues But Microsoft allowing some extra development time that 343 definitely earned to polish the game abit more and include some of their more interesting ideas would been beneficial to the game and tk Microsoft who didnt have a launch title for their new console All in all Halo 4 was awesome and its honestly a miracle it turned out aswell as it did
@@fullauto86 Its not just that, what actually happened is because there was no launch title for the Xbox One and Halo 5 was still 3 years away Microsoft wanted something bigger for Halo on the Xbox One before 2015 so they rejected 343s initial plan for just a second anniversary edition which then 343 decided okay lets do MCC but they had nowhere near enough time to get it done which they didnt realise until they were in the middle of development and MCC also took dev time and resources away from Halo 5 which stuffed up that game in many areas aswell Also Microsoft had the bright idea to releasing Halo 4 six days before Black Ops 2 which is the reason Halo 4s population dropped faster than any other Halo game since it lost around half its population in a day and was the only Halo game up til that point to release not only with a direct competitor that was kicking Halos ass since 2007 but in the very SAME week! People love to leave out that key detail because they wanted to construct a narrative of people simply not liking the game because they wanted a Halo 3 clone but that in no way translates to half a ganes population dropping to buy the newest FPS that they were going to buy anyway Halos main competitor which had been siphoning players from Halo and elsewhere for 5 years up til that point In short its just a complete mess borderlining on sabotage and a very large proportion of the troubles 343 have had with Halo can be traced back to Microsoft forcing it onto the Xbox 360 which only had another year of life in it anyway and by late 2013 people were playing the new console which at the time wasnt even backwards compatible
Just because he explained how hard it was for 343 to take a shit doesn't mean it still isn't a piece of shit. 343 should've never existed, an already seasoned developer would've been Microsoft's best bet. They are such a shitty development company it took them 5 YEARS to fix halo MCC, they couldn't even develop remasters. Thats how laughable this studio is.
Didn't like this game, don't like 343 and anything they did with Halo. But I can't deny that they put their hearts and souls into making Halo 4 and it was an interesting listen.
The backlash would've been MUCH less if they had moved the series on with a new protagonist/spartan. That would've really made the series their own and marked a new beginning with a new art style, story, and an expansion of the universe.
Besides the little grunt mouths and the fact that they didn’t have any interesting quips like in past halos, i liked the direction and the artstyle. Felt future militaristic and i liked the dynamic between chief and cortana. As they said, what was left for the hero to do but explore and overcome his humanity at that point after H3. H4 is easily my fave halo which i know isn’t popular but it still leaves a poor taste in my mouth considering all the consistent retconning in H5 and Infinite. Wish we could have had a second trilogy but they couldnt commit to a consistent vision for even 2 games
It very much stems from a “stick it to the man” mentality at the core of their company. The book Halo: A Space Opera From Bungie goes into a lot of the ideology behind the studio as they were forming and throughout their time developing. That mentality went beyond just Microsoft, but also extended to external studios like Ensemble, according to some employees. Marty, despite his amazing work on the soundtracks, does not seem like the most friendly and agreeable person.
Marty came in as a contract worker for bungie at first. And he can have a rough personality sometimes but he has his heart 100% at the right place. He always puts the art and developers first and that doesn’t really sit well with CEOs of big companies (look up the golden goose story). He fought with microsoft over creative vision (they didn’t want a piano in the Halo 3 presentation lmao) and with Activision over the Destiny soundtrack. Thats where the "Marty is a bad person" bs comes from really. Smear campaigns and lawsuit fighting with big greedy companies. 🪿
@@nopmop4248The smear campaign got even worse for him when it came to those entitled Reddit Moderators and their dystopian rules didn't wanted him posting his music on the Destiny subreddit. Plus there's a legion of jackasses on Twitter making up bs saying that "Marty doesn't care about Halo, the fanboys just want to worship him" and another calling him a "Thief". And another there was a Destiny subreddit moderator calling him an asshole because of the Destiny subreddit incident.
@@117johnpar or looked, I remember when 4 came to mcc I was right at the back of it and thought the texture hadn't loaded in right. Wasn't until I stepped back a good bit did I realise it's actually really low res 2D detail like hooks and whatever
I'm sure a lot of stuff was cut for reasons. For example, those lich battles in Composer *sound* cool, but they don't thematically fit the rest of the level and would likely be fairly boring after the initial novelty wore off, due to each one having the same layout.
I didn’t even know Greg Bear passed away. Its sad to know that most definitely part of the greatest part of the EU was written and can’t be finished by the man that started it. I hope if 343 ever manages to correct Halo, the Didact isn’t done wrong.
They should have used the MkVI GEN1 for Chief in H4 and the MP MkVI GEN2 in H5. This "Mod" armor was stupid and disgusting, plus it's existence didn't make any sence in the lore. They've messed up the Elites, Grunts. The Promethians looked too organic. Etc.
Dont tell me you believe the nanobot explanation for the community snobs Lorewise its the SAME armor 343 just changed the aesthetic to give a more textured gritty look thats why chief still has the dent in his chest plate from Halo 3 If nanobots changed his armor they also changed the battle rifle assault rifle magnum and the entire forward unto dawn Nanobots was a dumb excuse that 343 never needed to provide because the same people cringe whinging about this stuff had nothing to say about lore consistency when 343 regressed chiefs armor and banished/covenant armor designs for fanservice in Halo Infinite They didnt care because they got their baby bottle back
@@anomalyinc3239 I didn't believe Franky's stupid reasoning at all. So, if I swear on the original GEN1 in H4 and the MP GEN2 in H5, is that valid? I DO that anyway, just curious. I've made redesigns for Chief and the for the entire Blue Team too. I don't play H4 and H5 Campaigns mostly because I can't stand that ugly Mod armor. If they really weren't serious about the nanobot nonsense, why did they make a different version for Multiplayer? I'm glad they did btw.
This game was the beginning of the end. I still don't get why change drastically something, and thought everyone would like it, specially in their playtests. 343i was filled with talented people that don't know Halo and assumed rather than investigate.
They hired people that hated Halo… This was stated multiple times in multiple interviews and even gaming media outlets. It wasn’t a secret that 343i didn’t care about the state of the Halo games.
@@zachsmusic9171 I've seen some contrarians say "that isn't true, they never hired people who hated halo" ok, even if it was not true (though it was) 343 was very anti-classic Halo and anti OG Halo fan through all their games. If OG fans liked it 343 would make sure to do the opposite. With statements pretty much saying they wanted to make 'their' Halo for new players, not the 'old guard'. They didn't care about what made Halo, they had the name and IP and rode off of that doing all sort of weird things following the gaming trends of the time instead of doing what Halo was always known for: Making trends.
It's a pity that video's that do nothing but try to cash in on people's disappointment in a game by painting narratives of 343 as some Saturday morning cartoon villians out to destroy peoples childhoods get so many views, where stuff like this that drop the manufacted fandom drama don't get anywhere near the same attention.
I personally don't really enjoy Halo 4, and I think a lot of the people who worked on it were severely misguided, focusing way too much on irrelevant details without ever getting the basics figured out. But this video gave me a newfound respect for the developers and how they pulled off the insane miracle of getting this game ready for release under extremely unfair circumstances.
i played the whole campaign the day it game out, was so mid i genuinely cant remember any part of it, where halo 3 was so good i remember every second of the campaign like i played it yesterday and i haven't played it in a decade
I too cant remember a single thing about the campaign, any MP maps, or the general lore this game created. I have how ever played every bungie halo like 10x each minimum. 343 sucks so bad it's a shame what they've done.
@@TMek42 lol setpieces Like the 1st half of the campsign with chief in africa and people saying go here next mission defebd base next mission go here next mission Only good setpiece was the scarab the ark the covenant and the finsl warthog run Not much
Making a sequel with the mindset of "I want it to be unrecognizable" is where It all went wrong. Why are you making a sequel then? Spin-off games lile Halo Wars and the Arcade shooter paid more respect to the original gamds than anything halo 4/5 did.
Halo 4 had such a dreadful direction. And only 2 years to release it with this team? What on earth was Microsoft thinking. The multiplayer was a whole can of worms, i’m glad they reversed that direction in 5 😅
The change in art style is such a corporate and pointless design choice that I hate to see in any franchise. “You know this iconic piece of imagery that people love and immediately associate with our product? Let’s completely change it and alienate everyone who liked the original!” If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. No one asked for the art style to change, people loved the original. So why bother changing it and risk alienating everyone who liked what came before? You can make something new within the confines of a set of rules.
Considering the sheer hell of 343 trying to find their personal footing on top of making a AAA game for Microsoft's biggest franchise, it's a wonder this game came out finished at all. Yeah, their playtesters probably should've been chosen better, but that was probably something Microsoft demanded of them. Considering all of the things you mentioned in this video, I'm actually very sympathetic towards 343, no matter what the haters say. Doing what they did must've been a monumental task, one ultimately doomed to fail in some way. However, if there's one thing I know, it's that 343 haters are not in the least bit sympathetic. Such a shame. I'd like to see how well they perform under the same circumstances. Most would probably fail just as hard, if not harder
halo fans are actually the most forgiving of fans, problem was 343 nvr gave 2 ducks about the fanbase and nvr listened to what they had to say, the ontop of that was the dogdookie management that ruined the set expectations that THEY SET. To give you an idea, 343 had 6 years over to complete Infinite, bungie got halo 2 done in 3 years (with the final build being done from scratch in 9 months) , then they had 2x-3x the budget of Halo 2's and ontop of that 100s more employee's working at the company with other companies helping by doing their outsourced work. if any other game fandom was in the shoes of halo ones they wouldve started the fire 343 trend right after Halo 5, 343 has had too many chances and they just dont seem to care. sad situation rlly
Those play testers were saying what most after release said. People hated the prometheans, they didn't fit the lore or style and were bad to fight. The weapons didn't fit the gameplay and so for the most part were ignored for UNSC and Covenant weapons just as with the play testers. The decision to tell an emotional story with master chief was beyond dumb, and the fact they had greg bear write his books before them even nailing down the story for the game speaks volumes. They literally had no clue what they were doing. Halo 4 is essentially just a reskin of reach with unrelated art direction and a story that doesn't actually relate at all to the main trilogy. Multiplayer was a simple industry trends copy of COD, same with every other 343 game. 4 was COD, 5 was micro transactions, and Infinite was live service. 343 is a intellectually bankrupt studio which gets way more praise than it should.
@@skaimask29 considering how 343 has had a very tumultuous production cycle for all of their products, you are only proving my point further. 2-3x the budget of Halo 2 doesn't mean anything when prices for production have increased exponentially, not by a factor of 2. Do you also notice that the team for Halo 4-Infinite usually has never more than 50% of the same people from the previous game? That also speaks volumes for the difference between Bungie and 343 production. It's never that 343 doesn't care. It's that the Halo Bungie stans are way too hard without realizing what is going on behind the scenes and Microsoft listens to only the negative feedback from them.
@@Powerof7even did you even watch the video? It was _because_ of the playtesters that we pretty much got the Forerunner versions of the DMR, shotgun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher. Some of the better weapons in the sandbox that everyone remembers have no near-identical clone like the grenade launcher, needler, and magnum. I'm also willing to bet that the Prometheans would've been much better to fight if half of their roster wasn't scrapped, making them closer to the Covenant in terms of combat variety. There is only so much you can do with 3 unit types. If you were paying attention at all to the video, you would see that the reason they had no idea what they were doing was because they were trying to work out how to do things. You don't expect a team to perform at top notch from the get-go. That's incredibly unrealistic. That they had to do that and make a game at the same time, so it's no surprise they failed in a lot of ways with Halo 4. The trend-chasing of COD is something that pretty much only works in Halo 4, not 5, so stop trying to use it. Infinite only shares the traits of the store from COD, literally nothing else. If you actually watch some of the documentaries and retrospectives that go into the production of 343's games, you'll see the repeating pattern of them wanting to get creative, but having to follow the constraints of Microsoft. Stop blaming solely 343, always add Microsoft to the mix.
I’d like to counter your argument for 343 deserving sympathy. Not on the grounds that “343 are scum hurr durr” or something, but on the grounds of the consumer being valid regardless of what the developers went through. Andrew Prokhorov, the creative director of 4A Games (Metro series), responded to journalists claiming that people were not showing enough sympathy for the developers in Metro 2033’s reviews and scores. He responded, flatly, that “We deserve the ratings we get. After all, the final consumer doesn't care about our conditions. And this is RIGHT. We need no indulgence.” If a Ukrainian development studio that made a legendary gaming franchise can acknowledge this, why can’t 343 and Microsoft be held to the same standard when their audience lambasts their poor performance? 4A is a studio that worked without heating in freezing winter, a studio that worked on a barely-functioning power grid and had to use generators just to work, that lacked office chairs and basic work desks, that had to smuggle PCs and dev kits into the country to prevent theft, and that had to work on a deadline and budget far tighter and much smaller than 343 ever did. Yet, they admirably accept that any dissatisfaction and low audience opinions are the responsibility of 4A’s shortcomings, and that the audience and reviewers would be wrong to be held responsible instead just because the developers struggled. So why exactly does AAA developer _343 Industries_ and megacorporation parent company _Microsoft_ get a free pass? Why exactly does the consumer paying for their products need to show sympathy towards a _PRODUCT_ that they purchased because the people who made it struggled in doing so? Stop simping for corporations. Good people behind the scenes can make bad products at release, and disgruntled consumers not happy with the product calling that out isn’t a matter of sympathy - it’s a matter of review, and one that is valid regardless of sympathy or lack thereof for the developers.
This is a great video and hit a lot of details I wasn't familiar with even as a 20+ year Halo fan. Looks like you combed through some GDC talks and less mainstream interviews for some of this? Analyzing the dev builds is a great idea, all of the videos that modders put out themselves are frankly hard to watch and tend to be very surface level. Would love to see more games covered in this style, Halo, Bungie, or otherwise.
I don’t mind halo 4,?it’s not a bungee halo title for sure, don’t get me wrong. However with the considerations 343 we’re dealing with I think they did alright, idk about some of the combat design lol but the game as a whole isn’t terrible, other than reach 4 has my fav assault rifle.
The narrative issues stem solely from Mr. Frank O’Conner. He fundamentally misunderstood Bungies intention for Halos story (mostly the forerunners), leading to the creation of the Forerunner book trilogy which really just served as a massive retcon to all of Bungies previously established lore. Halo 4 then built onto that, serving only as a sequel to those books, not as a sequel to Halo 3. It’s essentially a really terrible reboot. I can never forgive 343 for what they did to Halo.
You did this whole video and covered the pre-release builds, but didn't go through the Halo 4 mods tools?In the GDC talk where they discuss the promethean knight they talk about the "Jackal replacement" we now know it was supposed to be an enemy that "Socketed" in abilites dynamically but was cut for time which is why the watcher had 4 things it can do at once. Or the fact that we now Know that Bungie ENGINEERS were co developing destiny 1 before it was split off.
It's sad how badly 343 keep messing up Halo, to the point their best product is arguably just ports of Bungie's Halo games. Even then, the MCC was in a poor state for half a decade before it got good. The worst casualty is the lore and the story. Some fans have been convinced that 343 didn't retcon or change anything, but they altered so much, and made it so much less interesting.
The approach 343 had to the forerunners always felt uninspired to me. Nothing against the forerunner saga but it left the forerunners feeling a lot less interesting. They always felt godly even if they weren’t in actuality. They built galaxy genociding weapons but covered them with life. They destroyed all life including themselves in order to beat something worse but repopulated the galaxy w/o themselves as penance. They were always meant to be humans but a version that had unlocked the secrets of the universe. But then we get another species that is just like us but in the least interesting ways. Space politics, space class society. Nothing that makes them feel meaningfully different from humans, just more technologically advanced.
They make SUUUCH a huge deal about people working together for the first time. Like bringing up how the Voice actors were recording lines in the same room for the first time. How does anything every get done anywhere if two people working together for the first time is such a shellshock idea that supposedly causes all of this development trouble?
I think I might have liked Halo 4 more if they went with those trapped AI knight designs and better combat the teleporting was annoying. Lots of art design aspects I didn't like.
Seems to me earlier on they had something closer to halo. Had the zagged when they ziggee who knows where 343 and Halo might be now. But yhats pure speculation.
man halo 4 truly has a pretty hectic development cycle from the early stages itself as well as truly making the game simultaneously being a studio from through all at once itself and not only that the very game was constantly facing production hurdles continuously until the very game was truly finished along with so many problems that was all suddenly appearing from through all at once itself and also the hole team truly had a lot of pressure that was all seemingly coming there way itself and this sure does feel like the very development stages of Halo 2 all over again for so many reasons ways like developing Xbox Live simultaneously as well as completing the game right before the day of launched without no delay itself and honestly I do think that Halo 4 had a lot of expectations that was all truly coming towards them from through all at once itself as well as starting a studio and making a new game from established ip for your very own company itself. but all in all this is truly a precautionary tale of how you should not start up a studio itself and also the development of Halo 4 truly gives me a lot of vibes of xenogears hectic development from within that very moment itself but all in all pretty good video itself
Its such a weird experience seeing the devs take the wrong feedback from playtesters and make the decisions that would ultimately make this game such a mess and so unfun to play
5:15 this little piece of info is a little inaccurate, first time for master chief but for the rest of the series and Cortana they've used mocap in reach before this and in halo wars
Thank you for pointing this out! By “the characters” I meant Chief and Cortana, but you’re absolutely right, mocap was used before in the series. When was it used for Cortana prior to Halo 4? Her brief cameo in Reach? Now that I think about it, there’s also her appearance in the Forward Unto Dawn web series that was likely mocap too.