Microsoft, the owners of the Halo franchise, had stated that they are planning something big for one of their most iconic and successful franchises to date. The first of the series Halo: Combat Evolved is often touted as one of the very first games at the time that really gained and till to this day maintains a core audience of dedicated players eager to learn and follow Master Chief’s story. Microsoft is also planning to celebrate Call of Duty, (since they own Activision now) and Starcraft.
The Saga Of Halo
Bungie (the developers of Destiny) were the original creators of this genre defining franchise, first started out with Halo: Combat Evolved as an Real Time Strategy (RTS) game and was showcased at an Apple Event of all places.
Microsoft saw the potential of the game and quickly bought Bungie so that they develop this game solely for the Xbox console. It quickly became the runaway success of the company with Xbox consoles selling out and since the game had multiplayer, that feature also garnered towards its critical acclaim and success.
Halo 2 came out in 2004 and to no one’s surprise it was also a smash hit, introduced dual wielding for Master Chief and a story that had the ability to keep anyone engaged. What was a significant factor was the marketing push of Halo 2 as it was covered by late night shows and news channels too.
It was also one of the first games on the newly featured Xbox Live and the multiplayer side got onto a much bigger scale. It quickly became one of the first games to be broadcasted as an e-sport on Major League Gaming MLG.
It Ended With Halo Reach
Halo 3 launched in 2007 with lines and crowds waiting outside game shops to somehow buy a copy. Its popularity was enough for it to generate around 170 million dollars as first day sales. The game itself had a much more ingrained story and offered a satisfying and heart wrenching closure which at the time was understood as being a finale and ending as a trilogy and to no one’s surprise the multiplayer side of things is more successful than ever before.
Halo ODT and Halo: Reach were the last games to be developed by Bungie as they had stated that they wished to become an independent studio after Halo 3 and releasing Halo:ODST and Reach were the final games and an official send off from them to the Halo Franchise.
Here Comes 343 Industries
343 Industries was created by Microsoft by hand picking developers who had previously worked at other big companies at the time such as EA, Valve, Rockstar and sometimes Bungie itself. While the reveal at E3 had people hyped, upon the actual release of the game they had realized that 343’s lack of experience was showing. Most of the iconic features of Halo were gone and the story was at best, extremely convoluted.
Halo 4 struggled to stay in the spotlight unlike its predecessors and eventually couldn’t retain the player base as Bungie’s game’s did and thus before the release of Halo 5 they had remastered the previous titles in the series offering much better graphics and character cutscenes bundling all titles in the Master Chief Collection.
This release also was shipped broken much like what we’ve come to expect from Ubisoft titles and while 343 stated that they were working round the clock to fix all the game breaking bugs that it shipped it, the trust that was built was crumbling faster than the bugs that were being patched.
First Rule Of Halo, Don’t Talk About Halo 5
It should be stated that Halo 5 isn’t talked about for one reason and one reason only, it was so bad at launch because of its condescending and frankly a story so far removed from the events of Halo 4 it left everyone quite baffled as they suddenly are seeing that their beloved Master Chief is being labeled a rogue soldier and Cortana, the AI who was thought to have died in Halo 4, is back and she is evil for some reason.
What Comes After
It is unclear what direction 343 will go next, Halo:Infinite was a modest success but it didn’t have an interesting plot and the overall feel of a Halo game. While the multiplayer had garnered some attention for a few weeks it ultimately could retain the peak of what the franchise achieved before.
We likely won’t know won’t know when Halo 7 will release but hopefully it will carry on whatever fans Halo:Infinite brought back, rumors are swirling that development on Halo 7 has begun it is advised to be optimistic but also cautious of 343’s next Halo release. It seems 343 industries have learned from their mistakes and are slowly trying to bring back what made the franchise iconic in the first place.
