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The Halo games.
I think Bungie fumbled a bit but overall did a good job telling the story of Master Chief. Halo 3 really felt like it was intended to be his end because MC was right back where he started - A super weapon kept in cryo, only this time drifting indefinitely into space with very little chance of ever being found.
Then Bungie did Halo: Reach as a follow up and showed you could have a good Halo game without MC as the protagonist, telling a new(ish) story with new characters.
Then of course Microsoft ditched Bungie and kept the IP, now looking at now the vast amount of Halo novels and comics and other media, decided to dig up Master Chief again and shoehorn him into a bunch of other game plots.
I won't say Halo 4/5/Infinite are terrible or anything to that level but I don't think 343 nailed it.
Even more frustrating now that Microsoft seems keen to remaster the whole Halo Master Chief story arc (again).
Halo 4 was terrible to me.
I marathoned it blind, and I wasnt a Halo lore nut or anything, and I love me some space opera, yet it was just... a soap opera in a bad way? I couldnt believe it was a Halo game.
I heard even worse things about 5. And Infinite was such a waste of potential given the massive budget and the giant open world they barely did anything with.
So I say it was pretty dire.
That really sounds very similar to what the later modern Doom games did to Doomguy. Where he was such a threat to demonkind they just, sealed him away or something and only summoned when in need.
Apart from Master Chief Collection and Campaign Evolved, I haven't touched a post-Bungie Halo game, so I can't really comment on the quality of 4, 5 or Infinite. From what I've heard, 4 had a divisive campaign and horrible multiplayer, Halo 5 had decent multiplayer and a terrible story, and Infinite was heavily flawed.
What I can say is that 343 Industries fucked up hard with remastering the old games. Not even Rare (a development studio with a similarly bad reputation for pumping out shit game after shit game under Microsoft) have managed the feat of fucking up a remaster. Halo 1 Anniversary genuinely has updated graphics that do not align at all with the level geometry, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the Truth & Reconciliation mission where you had to sneak past Covenant forces, and if you were playing on the updated graphics, they could see and shoot you through boulders.
The studio rebrand and switch to Unreal 5 was a huge gamble that clearly didn't pay off, because Campaign Evolved had terrible gunplay, glaring bugs, prequel missions with bad design and more exposition than a Shounen anime, and a redesign of Cortana where she has an incredibly masculine jawline and genuinely looks like Jerma985 wearing a wig.
I once saw a comment on Facebook about how the Halo Studios logo looks like an ODST being pounded in the ass with a giant dildo and I genuinely cannot unsee that image. It's also a very fitting metaphor for what they did to the Halo franchise.
Disbanding Halo Studios, waiting for Marathon to inevitably fail and then buying Bungie from Sony for chump change is probably the best thing Asha Sharma can do with the franchise right now.
I'm still kinda mad that they decided Cortana had to be sexy and ditched the purple/green pixie of the first design. The AI companion of an asexual super soldier doesn't need jiggly tits!
I think it was a consequence of them fleshing out the Halo lore after the first game became a surprise hit. To me Halo 2 Cortana will always be the best design.
I mean, it was fanservice to sell copies too. Even my child ass could see that back then.
I mean, do we really want the Destiny 2 dev working on Halo now?
I say give it to a studio with proven writing chops (Arkane, if they hadnt killed them?) or let it die.
Man, an Arkane Halo game...
Do what they did with Killer Instinct 2013 and Battletoads 2020. Bring in another studio but keep the main company associated with the IP in an advisory/support role. Rare clearly shouldn't be trusted with solo developing another game and neither should Bungie.
Or, do what Activision did with Neversoft when they effectively merged them with Infinity Ward and became one of the three core CoD developers. Merging Arkane with Bungie could make one hell of a team.
Bungie holds serious brand recognition with Halo fans.
I find the phrasing of this amusing. In my head, I'm picturing Arkane and Bungie in a room, and Sharma is pointing at Arkane and saying "Dont leave Bungie alone in a room with the cookie jar. Dont do it."
Reach was indeed the best Halo game. Bungie's last was thier finest in both tone, story and gameplay.
Did that one still have some Dunki DNA on it, or was she long gone by then?
But the Halo series was the worst. The opening scene had me, I will admit. It was bad ass to see it in real life like that, being part of some humans who had no chance in hell of survival. But the storyline from there... so stupid.