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Time’s Up: Halo Will Never Be A Cross-Platform Mega-Franchise.


Ghost Recon

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The reason Halo was such a breakout success was because of how good it was for the time.

 

Halo: CE introduced good, solid FPS controls for the first time on consoles. It also blended outdoor and indoor environments seamlessly, whereas other FPS games at the time (and most games in general) stuck with just one or the other. Its music was great and atmospheric, perfectly complementing the beautiful art direction and cutting edge graphics. The multiplayer was also well done, despite being cobbled together in just a few weeks, with memorable maps. But most importantly, the story and the characters were interesting, providing something more than just gameplay to string everyone along.

 

Halo 2 built off that success by introducing matchmaking, a revolutionary system that was further complemented by its fun gameplay. The graphics, music, and story were all better as well by leaps and bounds, with more detailed models and textures, more varied and quality music, and a cinematic storyline that wasn't matched until Halo 4.

 

Halo 3 then blew things out of the water with not only its further improvements to multiplayer, but also its new and revolutionary Theater and Forge modes, providing for unprecedented creativity and replayability. Halo 3 became the biggest selling media launch of all time, the golden age of Machinima began, and everyone was playing.

 

And then, of course, Halo 3: ODST came out. A marvelous game, and one of my favorites, but just a small spinoff that lacked matchmaking and content, and put up against Modern Warfare 2. Then Halo Reach, my favorite of the series, was released the following year, but its anachronistic story wasn't as sellable as, say, Halo 4's.

 

I mean, if you remember Halo 3's trailers, the first was Master Chief in the ruins of an Earthen city overlooking a giant excavation by a massive Covenant fleet, only for a huge machine to fire up a big death cannon, followed by one where Master Chief gets thrown out of a Warthog in the middle of an intense battlezone, then dodging a Wraith mortar by using a new Bubble Shield, and charging into a pack of Brutes. And of course, the diorama commercials were just pure works of art. None of that magic and emotion was captured in the following releases, and we still have yet to see anything like it.

 

Although when you look at the numbers, Reach and Halo 4 sold just as well as Halo 3. The franchise is still popular and thriving, nowhere near dead.

 

But, like the article says, the coffin was both crafted and sealed by the movie deal with Peter Jackson. How on God's green Earth that fell through the floor is a mystery, but had that been released in 2008 or 2009, things would be much different. Halo would still be in the public consciousness, and it'd be something everyone can enjoy. Mom and Dad can watch it on TV, and the kids can play it on Xbox.

 

Bungie also had a hand in Halo's fall from mainstream. Their decision to leave the franchise meant that the next five years would be without a solid followup to the story in Halo 3, the one that we all remembered and anticipated. This was five years of plot stagnation filled with Call of Duty and Battlefield. All so they could leave the evil Microsoft to be bought buy the saintly Activision to make one of the most overhyped and flawed triple-A releases I've ever seen.

 

The future of Halo lies on the Xbox One. The Master Chief Collection is a nice rallying call, stringing together the story and gameplay we all recognize and putting it in one valuable package, and then shooting us to Halo 5 through the new Halo 2 cutscenes with Locke and the Arbiter, Halo: Nightfall, and the Halo 5 beta. It falls on Halo 5 to have some outstanding marketing and story, as well as some truly revolutionary features akin to Theater and Forge. Halo 4 was acceptable as a good continuation of the story and the first game developed by the nascent 343 Industries, but Halo 5 needs to live up to the legacy of the first three and take big leaps.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I thought spartan assault from rubbish and kick in the teeth for pc players expecting a "proper" halo game on the pc, only to get some arcade tablet junk. very disappointing, god knows why it's getting a sequel.....

 

bs that microsoft will loose console sales if they ported the rest of the games to pc. if anything it'll boost sales, not everyone wants a pc, there will always be people buying consoles.

 

it's a bad move not to release the whole series on pc as well as consoles. Only halo 1 was decent on the pc, halo 2 was a bad port..

 

i ended up buying a used 360 and finishing the fight and then selling it in the hope one day i would replay them on pc....still nothing.

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1. Yup!!

2. Yup!!

3. Hope so!! If there is, it would have to be many movies that are game accurate and in chronological order

4. ?

5. ?

6. ?

7. Probably many people played it and they told others and others and others and others....

8. ?

9. ?

10. Hope so. It would be cool to have custom USB's

11. Hope so too. It would be cool to have a bunch of electronics and gadgets all Halo themed!!  :bananachief:  :bananachief:

All 11 questions answered!!

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