Post
by Raid » Mon Oct 07, 2024 11:04 am
I'm not sure I get the rebranding; 343 Industries was already a clear link to the Halo franchise (named, as far as I'm aware, after 343 Guilty Spark, the AI monitor of the original Halo ring). Granted, the character itself was destroyed 15 years ago (and was Bungie's creation) so it's hardly relevant any more, but "Halo Studios" is just so mundane. It feels like a tedious marketing exercise ("we're not the 343 Industries that nobody thought much of any more!"), not anything positive.
The move to Unreal tech though? That's interesting to me, largely because with the UEVR mod, any modern Unreal-tech game (I think it supports versions 4 and 5, it may go back as far as 3) can be played in a VR headset with a bit of profile tweaking, including adding 6DoF motion controls. Microsoft don't appear to have any real interest in supporting VR as a medium so this could be the way into having an actual VR Halo game. Halo: Infinite looked fine, at least after release, but it didn't look impressive, which was surprising for a game with so much importance riding on it and paid for by the console manufacturer. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft had dictated this to them as a result.
You're right on the writing though. Halo Infinite's campaign played well, but it was dire from a story-telling perspective. 90% of the events in that campaign are talked about but not shown - you can put that partly down to the development hell it seemingly went through leaving no time to actually illustrate the stuff that happened off-screen, but perhaps that wouldn't have happened had they started from a well-known and well-supported game engine. Moving to Unreal isn't going to fix the issues they've had with major, story-dependent events happening in other media (I understand from the Eurogamer comments that Halo 4's antagonist was pretty much created in the books, which explains why he's never explained and seemingly appears from nowhere in the game).
And a final thought; Halo Infinite was originally sold as a platform, that it would be the base for new campaigns / expansions for a decade after release. That, like every other time I can think of where a developer has claimed it, evidently isn't the case. It's more fuel for why I've just straight up stopped believing any games company when they sell stuff on the promise of what it'll be later.
