'I Made It Right and They Are Breaking It for No Reason' — One of the Key Members of the Original Halo Dev Team Doesn't Sound Thrilled With Microsoft
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Zacfoldor
Member
Not surprised if many of the Bungie team felt this way about Halo.
Also this guy is a hipster who doesn't see the need for remakes, so I'm not really agreeing with him. Fuck it. Modern games need modern QoL features and I'm sorry if that pisses you off.
It isn't that serious and most people don't give a shit about small things like one encounter with one pack of enemies being able to be cheesed with a warthog.
What they do care about is their 2026 fps not having a fucking sprint button. Fallout 3 times have passed.
Also this guy is a hipster who doesn't see the need for remakes, so I'm not really agreeing with him. Fuck it. Modern games need modern QoL features and I'm sorry if that pisses you off.
It isn't that serious and most people don't give a shit about small things like one encounter with one pack of enemies being able to be cheesed with a warthog.
What they do care about is their 2026 fps not having a fucking sprint button. Fallout 3 times have passed.
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The other dev was the art director and not involved in the game design.
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Signalis
Member
Okay Mr.T-1000
GermanZepp
Member
i think its really cool when you get to know all the nuances and the design choiches arroung the map, enemies and objet placement. Seems like a lot of though was put in the original. Cool stuff
Dorago
Member
'I Made It Right and They Are Breaking It for No Reason' — One of the Key Members of the Original Halo Dev Team Doesn't Sound Thrilled With Microsoft's Halo: Campaign Evolved - IGN
Microsoft has finally unveiled Halo: Campaign Evolved, a remake of the campaign portion of Bungie’s beloved Halo: Combat Evolved. Halo fans have spent most of the weekend debating the changes Halo Studios has made for this upcoming 2026 shooter, from the addition of sprint to the more pristine...www.ign.com
TL;DR - The Halo: CE remake by Halo Studios has fundamental design changes that one of the key developers of the original game isn't happy about. Namely, they both removed and added things that ruined immersion, and they don't appear to have a clear vision on what they wanted out of the remake.
His complaints just from The Silent Cartographer gameplay footage alone:
- You aren't supposed to be able to take the Warthog up to steamroll the Hunters. I intentionally placed rocks in the way so you had to fight them on foot. When you can just smash the crates out of the way it wrecks the encounters.
- On further analysis I'm sure it's because the vehicles take damage and so you're just as likely to destroy the hog as get it over the rocks. If anything that makes it -worse- because -none- of the vehicle tricks are going to work anymore.
- Most people forced the Warthog through BECAUSE of the Hunters. The introduction of the Hunters was supposed to be intimidating and difficult, but in the light so you can understand them. Then you meet them in an enclosed dark area and they are even harder. But then you get Rockets and Vehicles and turn the tables. It's a three act play of enemy design and you want to throw it in a blender. Fine, it'll go down easier but it's not going to taste as good.
- They put trees in the landing area of the WooHoo Jump. Lame. There's a ramp that is supposed to have a bunch of jackals at the landing spot. Your gunner would always say 'Woohoo!' When you got airborne.
- It's like the dance remix of a classic song that skips the intro and the bridge and just thumps the chorus over and over.
- If the world isn't scaled to sprint, you will be able to trivially skip encounters.
- By far the most comically unnecessary embellishment in the whole announcement. I'm not sure it isn't intentional satire. But why would you add an ammo counter to a weapon that IS an ammo counter in the first place?
- NOTE: This is in regard to the Needler having a HUD that shows your ammo count when the Needler was designed to not need that since you can clearly see the ammo sticking out of the top of the gun.
- I think there are dozens of changes (reload speeds, no health packs, falling damage, etc) that make the game 'slicker' but ultimately less interesting.
- Halo is of its time, maybe more than any other game franchise. So they are constantly trying to either take Halo out of 2001 and modernize it (which breaks it) or take players back to 2001 with nostalgia (which is impossible).
They already remade Halo twice essentially with Anniversary and MCC.
This remake is the most pointless exercise in history.
They made three extremely expensive failed sequels. Infinite was supposed to be an infinite money printer that sustained the entire ecosystem. It failed so hard it was cheaper to buy Activision than to fix it.'
Here we are with their last hope, and it will fail too.
Halo was fun because of Co-Op campaign (2 people on 1 screen) and local deathmatch (2-16 people with 4 or 6 being the sweet spot).
This wont have that, so what's the point?
yogaflame
Member
I hope a Vlogger or streamer will invite them to finally get some answers from both sides.
Durin
Member
The amount of crap they put into books during their trans-media days with Halo was so cringe, where you're expected to do homework to understand plot events (forget if Halo 4 or 5 was worse with this).
Forgot about that long post from Hailey....it still amazes me the ego on 343 people who never made anything that mattered like Halo magically assuming they could do it better, and that they'd get no benefit talking to the OGs. The whole point of continuing a franchise is to build on what's already made, and have the built-in fanbase that they regularly fought with instead.
YeulEmeralda
Linux User
Microsoft studios right now.
geary
Member
Yeah, they clearly spent time figuring out how to work around the system's limitations.
Not every design choice back then came from deep creative vision — a lot of it was just finding ways to get past the technical constraints of the time.
I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here, but this constant worship of old game design, as if every decision was made purely for the player's benefit, really needs to stop.
Killer8
Member
Wonder if the solution here would've been to do a remake that was more in line with something like Metal Gear Solid Delta ie. the level design is kept completely intact, as well as most of the gameplay albeit with some quality of life additions. That game wasn't perfect either, as some of the bosses were made trivially easy due to the aiming changes, but it seems like Delta will end up more faithful than Campaign Evolved when all is said and done.
Only thing i'd like to probe Jaime Griesemer on is the design of some of the latter parts of the game. I'm not nearly as down on later levels like Two Betrayals like some other people are, but i'd be lying if I didn't get the impression that Bungie were running out of time near the end. I feel a case could be made for more sweeping changes there, but it has to be carefully considered. They still did good work with the encounter design even if the level was rehashed.
I'm not totally against making changes in a remake. I just wish developers today would think as well as developers decades ago when making them, especially when it starts to affect game balance.
I do also think that sometimes a bit of blame can be laid at the players feet, as sometimes we demand things that just don't work. I just finished REmake, specifically the HD remaster, and I turned off the new fully 3D controls and went back to the classic tank controls after about 1 minute. The former had been much requested by players and there was a narrative around release that everyone hates tank controls because they are cumbersome and dated.
But you quickly realize that the reason the developers designed these games with tank controls in mind is that with fixed camera angles, tank controls don't fuck with the character orientation every time the camera angle changes. 3D control becomes a nightmare very quickly and I really hope players realized that too and respected Capcom's intelligence a bit more.
Katatonic
Member
Pedro Pascal
ioo
Neo Member
"You aren't supposed to be able to take the Warthog up to steamroll the Hunters," Griesemer said. "I intentionally placed rocks in the way so you had to fight them on foot. When you can just smash the crates out of the way it wrecks the encounters."
Bro never played his own game i suppose
Bro never played his own game i suppose
DreamcastSkies
Gold Member
It doesn't get as much hate but I love the Final Fantasy VII Remake project (I think it's a triumph, some of Square's best work) and it feels half of the discourse around that series is negativity. So I can empathize with how hopeful Halo fans may be feeling.i have seen quite a negative reception to this remake/remaster online.... No one like Xbox anymore
P:axMagellanic
Member
I'm more agreeable to the original guy, this Is a pretty shit looking remaster so far on a sausage water engine.
Hypereides
Member
After Halo 2A, Saber Interactive should have gotten another chance to update Halo CE in MCC anniversary graphics. Until then Halo CE classic mode is the way to play. I hope 343i's next game fails so hard they are forced to sell the Halo IP.
This is what I'm talking about when I say that corporate AAA c-suites aren't interested in working with passionate creators. The folks, like the original Halo team, come with strong and clear artistic visions for what they want to do which makes them "difficult to work with" and thus persona non grata or non-cooperative. Its probably a big reason why Microsoft/343 wants to disassociate with them. Big league c-suite types are only fixated on the brand and think that'll suffice in the long run.
The reality is, ultimately, it doesn't.
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darrylgorn
Member
I think it will have the same reception as Oblivion but this is some stalker ex kinda shit.
Also, play Stalker.
Also, play Stalker.
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EverydayBeast
ChatGPT 0.001
I'm grateful for remakes, ocarina of time and majoras mask were incredible, obviously there's little changes like the water temple boss fight, but Halo needs to do something to stay alive, it's a matter of time before Microsoft has Halo executed like Sony did with many shooters.
Feel Like I'm On 42
Member
I agree but don't think Halo 1 that messes up the artstyle of the original was the right choice. Craziest thing is it looks like Halo Ce anniversary again but with more fidelity. Doesn't have the darker blue starry sky that was key to CE's atmosphere. How they managed to mess that key aspect up i dont know.
But the big mistake is not just focusing on a NEW HALO GAME. There's still plenty of interest in the franchise for them to throw in the towel like this and feel they have to do the most safe and boring thing possible ...a remake of the first game. They need to just make a great Halo game and right the wrongs of Halo Infinite! Namely, make a world that isn't just ONE BIOME! Have a proper story driven Halo (as opposed to the pathetically simple plot of Infinite which had hardly any characters, dialogue, or even set pieces), that follows a similar formula to Halo 1-3. Flesh out the open world if you're going to do an open world! Or, here's a crazy idea...don't make it open world and go with something wide-linear.
They just didn't release a full game with Infinite. It felt half finished with how little meat there was in the open world structure. A second open world outing would be much better simply because it'd be 343's second time doing it- they now have the experience needed to know how to make a great one.
343/Halo studios is certainly incompetent in many ways but they're not a shit developer there is enough talent they should be able to make a great game. I do think MS and 343 management is the main problem though because each Halo game they've done has had great aspects found within, they just can't put all the pieces together for some reason.
The multiplayer of Infinite was pretty damn good but the lack of content and gaas/free to play aspect is what killed that.
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Hero_Select
Member
Master Chief Collection is there if you want the prettier graphics with the same old gameplay.
Halo came out in 2001. Changing things up and modernizing the gameplay by this point is fine but I guess everyone needs to complain about something every time.
Halo came out in 2001. Changing things up and modernizing the gameplay by this point is fine but I guess everyone needs to complain about something every time.
SeanyQuest
Member
Are you A.I.?