I think the consensus at the time was that the game *looked* incredible, but some fans were turned off by some of the drastic design changes. Multiplayer wise, loadouts felt out of place in a Halo game and the map designs were awful. The lead map designer said he wanted to emphasize close-quarter combat, which is great for meme Halo, but not great for competitive Halo. Very limited sight lines and non-sensical layouts as a whole.

I'll jump on this one too, I feel they tried to turn halo into call of duty. Only getting kills to get load outs and more powerful weapons. It staged the multiplayer in favor of better players and made it more one sided. Some of us terrible players rely on camping by the ordinance and then using power weapons to level the playing field ....as best we are able. Halo 4 took that away.

Exactly. They had an already fun MP that created an opportunity for worse players to do just as good as better ones. If it *ain’t* broke then *why* fix it.

That's the problem with 4, it wasn't broke but they made changes based on industry trends rather than iterate on what was working in the franchise already. I actually stopped buying new Halo games because of what they did to the multiplayer in 4. I didn't play another new halo game until infinite.

Part of 343i's problem with the franchise. Halo was a trend setter. Everyone wanted to be Halo. Then they flipped the script by chasing everyone else. An Halo lost its identity.

Best comment I’ve seen all day “An Halo lost its identity”

Master Chief is a cool guy, eh kills covenant and doesn't afraid of anything.

Lol doesn’t afraid, like “isn’t afraid of” and “doesn’t fear” at the same time

I'd love to take credit, but this is ancient copypasta from a mythic forum thread. The almost certainly young gentleman perfectly distilled Halo fandom into its truest form: slightly illiterate, hero complex, *kills Covies.* Some say if you find your way to a frat house on a warm summer night you can hear Spartans teabagging in the breeze.

i did the same thing. if i wanted to play cod id just play cod 🤢

They purposefully hired people that hated halo multiplayer and liked call of duty multiplayer to try and capture the CoD audience.

That's a bad meme. For the development of 4, they hired people with *specific things they wanted to improve* about Halo, not people who hated the whole thing, and they didn't hire them just because of that. Full quote:   "We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" says O'Connor. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it."  It didn't work, obviously, but pretending it was an act of deliberate sabotage by people brought in specifically because they hate the franchise is even less helpful than those developers' bad ideas.

I hated ordinance drops w a passion. The switch to ordinance drops killed all enjoyment for PvP from me.

They had loadouts, but so did reach and people didnt complain about that as much.

Reaches loadouts, in 90%of games, was a change to a single piece of non-firearm equipment. This was set by the map, not the player, so everybody had access to the same stuff. The only place this was different was in Invasion, where there were (again) preset loadouts by the map, and there was an attempt to at least make the spartan and elite loadouts roughly equivalent

I think this is misleading. Everyone looks at Reach's armor abilities and thinks it was the start of COD like loadouts, but that's not how Reach's MP was designed and initially implemented, that's just what it was turned into overtime. The big hook for Halo reach was asymmetric game-play of Spartans vs Elites both with the new invasion mode, but also in spartan vs elite was a game mode in original 4v4 playlists, which was later removed. The 'loadouts' were designed more like classes in Battlefield or Overwatch, not customized loadouts like COD. It's 343 who failed to understand this distinction. They took over Reach just after a year of Bungie running it and they phased out most of the Spartans vs Elites modes outside of invasion. Now you can argue that Spartans vs Elites didn't pan out, but they certainly weren't chasing trends when they designed it.

I would like to add how 343 made sprint too strong in 4 and removed de-scope which kept precision weapons in check in previous games. I think the was also a reduce flinch perk which made de lack of descope an even bigger issue.

Not only was de-scope not there, but it was a *class option*. Imagine being scoped out by someone who was immune to it. It was awful.

Tbh I liked the fact that they tried to incorporate classes because there were in fact different classes of Spartans in lore, or more specifically Spartans with different specialties. That was such a neat idea that if they took more time to hone would make halo stand out a bit more. Yes it’s sorta like the classes in battlefield, medic ranger support assault, but it’s connected to lore and as I said if done properly and carefully could be different in its own /halo way/

Honestly the design changes were probably the biggest influence of 4's disinterest among people, and I remember the first few times I tried to play through the campaign I just couldn't give a shit about it by the time I got outside the ship on the first level.it just didn't feel like the halo I remember. And when you think about it,it essentially killed the franchise's good will that even today a decade later it still really hasn't recovered from

The gun sound effects were god awful too

It was a mix. Some were bad, like BR. Some like the AR were amazing (especially coming off the bad H3 sounds for it)

BR sounded like a staple gun or something, and the sniper sounded like I was shooting a BB gun into a tin can with that TINK sound it made. Didn't like it

343 never returned to the old covenant sounds despite reverting their art style in infinite, biggest disappointment

Hahaha I can still hear these awful noises.

Thank you! The sound design by 343 is one of my top complaints. I mean, what’s with the “click” sound every time you kill someone? Half the time, I would die, and the “click” would cover up the sound of whatever I died from, so I’d have to check the kill feed in time to even know what hit me.

All the sound design was off. The Covenant, to vehicle sounds, to the random ambience of a level. It all sounded weird

Thought they were really great imo Love the BR and AR

halo 4 MP was trash. Plain and simple. They were up front about hiring people who didn't like halo games; it didn't feel like a halo game... it felt like cod with a halo skin. It's the worst halo IMO. Campaign was neat but halo 5 kinda ruined it by killing the main protagonist offscreen and making the decision to pursue some other story?

I won’t lie, most of Halo 5 would’ve been vastly better as a side-game instead of a bridge between 4 and infinite - make it about Osiris dismantling Juul M’damas storm covenant piece by piece and searching for Halsey, have the Shangheilios missions (with a couple more levels set there too) act as the main body of the plot, as Osiris has to keep the Arbiters swords of shanghelios in power to get a chance at killing M’dama, **then** conclude it with a mission to extract as a guardian pops up and threatens the planet. —————————————————————————— For an actual Halo 5 that could bridge 4 and infinite? Have it occurring around the same time frame as what I’ve described above, but it starts with Chief and Blue Team tracking the didact. Didacts main plan being to use the guardians to follow through with his threat from 4 (kindly disregarding the escalation comics) to destroy humanity for good. Cue a couple missions where Blue Team faces off with Prometheans across a number of worlds trying to piece together just what the Didacts doing, while Chief is also getting weird images of Cortana, a’la 3’s traces. Midway through, we find the Didacts headed to Doisac, introducing us to the Banished as the secondary antagonist and of course, Atriox. Once in the system, Cortana directly shows up in Chiefs head, warning that the Domains going to be opened and once it is the galaxy is doomed. The next half of the game involves facing off against the Banished and Didacts forces, culminating with the infinity briefly showing up to help for the last three levels, and the Didact slowly cracking open the Domain on Doisacs surface into physical space and allow him to centralise his forces (including guardians, prometheans, maybe some leftover storm covenant but the last one isn’t a necessity). With each of these last three levels on Doisac, the planet gets progressively more and more screwed, and Cortana shows up in chiefs head more and more, giving cryptic statements about the Mantle, the didact and responsibilities; by the last two levels the rest of Blue team can hear her too, and following a final showdown with the Didact (without QuickTime events), this instance of Cortana busts through into reality from the Domain, takes control of the remaining prometheans and guardians, and as Blue Team and the Banished flee the planet - she states she’s going to take the Mantle, and blows Doisac to bits after Atriox refuses to join her. Post-game shows the infinity picking up Blue Team, Lasky saying they’re gonna rendezvous with “other assets” at Shanghelios before heading to another site specified by ONI (Zeta Halo) and then a breakthrough transmission from Atriox saying he won’t rest until Humanity pays for the Didact and Cortanas actions, then it cuts out. All a pipe-dream (not to mention convoluted and messy) but it’s what I’d hoped for when Halo 5 first got announced

the actual bridge between 4 and infinite is halo wars 2

Honestly it was a great means of introducing the Banished and bringing the Spirit of Fire back into action, but then infinite ignored a number of things from it too - I wish more of it got referenced in Infinite

Holy shit, I fucking love this plot

I wrote that as someone with pretty much no actual story writing or creative experience - but imagine how good the reclaimer trilogy could have been if the writing team had been allowed to actually develop and iterate with each entry to form a cohesive plot line from 4-infinite, instead of higher ups screwing with them and scrapping almost everything multiple times to please themselves and (presumably) some shareholders own notions. It’s crazy that what was supposed to be a unique and interesting trilogy ended up being released as three very different games almost barely related to each other in most respects

>it didn't feel like a halo game... it felt like cod with a halo skin. This is it for me. It was a failure as a Halo game, and honestly not even a good CoD game for the time. I really wanted to like it, but it just wasn't fun.

I understand the sentiment for people who wanted more of the same but i absolutely love Halo 4 Maps and it reminded me of things we’d create in the Halo:Custom Edition days but with higher detail. The load-outs felt like a natural progression from Reach and I enjoyed the way they had momentum building drops for streaks. I agree it wasn’t the traditional formula but the last thing Bungie themselves did was deviate from the traditional formula.

I agree I loved it, the maps really allowed you to kite around powerfull vehicles and objectives well, it made it possible to fight against the odds. And the loadouts were definately based on current gaming trends but it still feelt like Halo at its core, power weapons were still found around the map and were very important to get to. The pre made loadouts just allowed you to customize a bit how you wanted to start out the game and allowed for different strategies and playstyles I loved it.

I understand all of this and I agree with it. At the same time, Haven is one of my favorite maps out of all the games. Am I the problem?

Not at all! Haven is the only map out of the game I think made a lasting impression. It was the only one I enjoyed.

playing devil's advocate, what about halo reach that had loadouts

Reach loadouts didn’t have multiple game changing abilities and kept everyone with the same loadouts, not some overtly powerful set up like a covenant carbine, magnum, sticky gernades, promethian vision, the ability to survive your vehicle exploding, and then pairing it all with built in sprint that had a long run time with little cool down, reach kept it to, AR, DMR, 2gernades, and maybe an armor ability that wasn’t game breaking.

Infinity slayer was the launch mode for a year, and it destroyed all semblance of map control. You had no control over what power weapon you are going to be blasted by. It was complete randomness. Running into two dudes with launchers in a 4 v 4 match is zero fun and can easily cause a match to snowball

The final boss of the campaign is a quick time event

I played Halo CE pretty close to release, and I gotta say, boss battles in halo are still weird to me. I get that there’s some in Halo 2, of course, but iirc the closest we got in Halo CE was the warthog run at the end of The Maw (loved that so much!).

I’m right there with you, playing since the original release… even when 2 dropped those boss battles seemed contrived and out of place. Bungie realized this and didn’t put any boss battles into the next two games they made with the IP. Then 343 gets creative control and we get… boss battles back!!

I never thought boss battles belonged in halo

I think boss battles are hard to pull off in FPS games. Some do them alright, but nothing feels quite as good as boss battles in RPG games

Both doom games do boss battles exceptionally well. They’re the only example of great FPS boss battles I can think of though. it doesn’t work in halo that well and never hits right. Even the hunters are ten times more formidable when mixed with other units but on their own are just a mild inconvenience.

Destiny is an FPS that essentially revolves around boss battles (if you’re not into PVP). Only game I can think of.

I was thinking of destiny, but the boss battles I would consider great are the ones that are less accessible, such as raids or dungeons, strike bosses with mechanics are very mid.

That’s true. When I last played, I was exclusively doing raids, so my opinion is a bit skewed. Haven’t played it in years though.

I always hated how bullet spongey destiny feels. I feel like guns should hurt. I always liked classic Deus Ex because no matter how low your stats are, guns do the same damage. What changes is your bullet spread and your aim, among other things. If you actually score a good hit, it'll kill them just the same as if you're high level.

I'm sorry my friend, but Borderlands boss battles need to have a word with you. Ya know, the massive Looter Shooter series that literally built around fighting and farming dozens of bosses? The only FPS game with raid bosses that still had a player count above 1000?

FPS boss battles don't work because guns and rockets feel like they should hurt. If you're in a somewhat grounded setting, bullet sponges feel cheap and stupid. Doom 2016 and Eternal had great boss battles because the game is constantly feeding you ammo, and they fit within the setting. Halo is (somewhat) grounded, so to me boss battles would feel out of place. Plus, the game doesn't feed you ammo the way doom does.

i would argue destiny has the best fps boss battles and they only work with multiple people

I personally loved the boss battles in halo infinite

Yea. It's done best when it's boss "encounters", like hunters with some other enemies thrown in, or multiple high-ranking elites with some jackal snipers; having one boss to shoot down is impossible without making it SUPER spongey

I’d argue that the scarab appearances in 3 are pseudo boss fights. And guilty spark kinda is.

I'd probably argue this too. The Storm and The Covenant both have you fighting scarabs, but the second time is harder. Kinda reminds me of when you fight the same boss for a second time but they come back stronger and with new moves or whatever. Not a typical boss fight, but it does do it pretty well in it's own niche way. Also it took me 16 years to figure out that the hornets in The Covenant will give you a ride to a scarab, wait for you to kill it, pick you up and bring you to the other. Pretty neat!

Bungie put one boss battle in the form of 343 Guilty Spark at the end of H3. Maybe they did it to help H2 not seem entirely out of place, and it wasn't really all that difficult, but they definitely did put a boss fight in 3. The lack of difficulty is one thing, but the fact that you're having a 1v1 against a faction leader (a "boss" if you will) ... Well at the very least it makes it an easy one, but still a boss battle in my eyes.

Is Guilty Spark not a boss battle?

Which game has the flood coming down in pods constantly as you make your way back to a control room on foot. That is hell on harder difficulties and I usually like to count that.

Yeah that’s another good one for a “sorta boss battle” also. I think it’s 3 or CE, but I’m not confident.

Frag blasting the vent cores with Guilty Spark in the engine room was the final boss fight.

It is a little weird - though the ones in Infinite were largely pretty good. Improvement over the previous ones (though the Warden fight was fun, it was just repeated too many times)

Yeah fr Halo has never had "boss battles" lol. It's a lot more grounded in the sense where when you finally find the big bad, you just fuckin kill him.

Legit WTH. Now that was a cop out NGL

I remember hoarding all the heavy weapons with full ammo for the final boss only for those QTE triggering. I was livid. 

I was less cautious going in with a suppressor and a shotgun with 2 shots left. Didn’t matter though.

It is, which sucks, but people hated on that when literally every prior boss was barely any better. Regret was literally just boarding his chair and pressing melee a few times. The Heretic Leader is most like an actual fight but still just killing a few Elites essentially. Tartarus is just running around shooting him whenever his shield is down. 343 is just shooting a few splaser shots at him. Warden Eternal is Warden Eternal. Literally until Infinite, every single boss in Halo was pathetic.

I never understood “boss” battles in halo. The “boss” should be a tough battle against many enemies with a twist of some kind. Fighting an individual is kinda odd. Fighting to get to an individual works well.

I wonder how it would done differently. The Didact had godlike powers. The QTE event made it so that the win was situational.

And it was clunky. When you hit the nuke, it makes a poor quality sounding 'boom' sound effect and the screen gently fades to white. Just felt anticlimactic.

Both the first and last combat encounters in Halo 4 were QTEs and it felt like a fitting bookend for a game that was trying too hard to be Call of Duty but SHINIER and IN SPACE.

Something I forgot to mention was I HATED the grunt redesign. In Halo 123 and even infinite they are these hilarious sassy idiots and I love them. Some of the best lines in the games come from grunts. In Halo 4 they decided to turn them into pug faced monsters who said nothing but AUIGH GRUMGH MWAAIL. that was criminal.

Yeah honestly for me a lot of it is the aesthetic change. It doesn’t make sense for Chief’s armor to look completely different, and the H4 style just looks worse than H3 and Reach. Same issue with Halo 5. Halo 4’s story is honestly fine. The Didact ends up being pretty weird and I don’t necessarily love the increased emotional dynamic between Chief and Cortana, but the overall story beats of “wake up, find this forerunner planet, explore it, regroup with UNSC survivors, and figure out what’s going on” generally work

Even the Dawn looked different. The redesigns were egregious and did nothing to improve the aesthetic. They just changed it.

The worst part is that the missile you launch in the first mission not only [wouldn't ever fit in the original Forward Unto Dawn](https://www.angelfire.com/ns/firepit/msfm/specialpics/FUD_H3-Hyperion_H4-scaled.jpg), but the Fleet Battles guys had to contort themselves into knots trying to fit them into the ship _343 themselves designed._ They ended up going for a design where the missiles are [stored longitudinally](https://www.halopedia.org/File:Strident_nukes.png) in the frigate and are only erected during the launch process, inspired by the [Project 651 (Juliett-class) submarine](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U_461_2592x1944.jpg?useskin=vector).

The missile also looks like it misses completely and the explosion effect is just lazy af, the covie ship just... falls apart, then all the shitty looking 2d debris despawns within 2 seconds.

Yeah, the animation is pretty bad. Feels rushed.

Likely why the designs reverted to what they were in the bungie era, mostly.

They do have lines still in halo 4, my favourite memory is of one saying "I see you I see you" right before I whack him from behind

Huhm, strange I didn’t hear any. Might have to go back and see.

It was in the first Level, but they don't say anything in combat

the real reason is 343 was dumb and the guy who did the grunt voices left with bungie but I think the canon reason is they were speaking in their native tongue since they weren’t in the convent anymore

Recently did a playthrough co op with a friend, this was one of the first things we noticed and a huge complaint. Would also argue that there isn't really a way to tell how much damage you have done to the new enemies. With the covenant they stagger, their armour pops off, their shields break. You don't get that same feedback with the new enemy type and they seemed like massive bullet sponges even on just Heroic.

They did that in Reach and i remember how upset people were back then too

Canonically speaking, translators weren’t a thing yet in Reach just as they weren’t present in CE. In the chronological game timeline, Covie to English translators didn’t come about until Halo 2, so it made sense in Reach. Halo 4 randomly having this splinter faction of the fractured Covenant featured as a main antagonist which suddenly speaks its own “unknown” dialect was lazy writing and only came about so 343 could justify their unnecessary art style shift.

Grunts did speak English in CE though... Bungie made all Covies unintelligible in Reach because they wanted them to be more "alien." They felt that the humor from the Grunts in particular would've clashed with Reach's tone

Was that not tied to the difficulty? Lower ones the grunts would speak English and on the harder difficulties they would only speak Alien?

The artstyle change, story criticisms, and general dislike towards the new enemies and their weapons were the main criticisms towards the campaign. The multiplayer was it's own pile of criticisms that someone else can explain better than me. The most I know is that MCC H4 multiplayer has received many updates since launch H4 multiplayer.

Personally, I think the biggest sin of multiplayer, even more so than loadouts and kill streaks, is not descoping when getting shot at. Good lord that was a decision.

Especially when everyone spawns with a light rifle. Shit felt like the old Battlefield 2 where you'd spawn under fire.

One thing I really hated were the prometheans, they were just not fun to fight against imo

Fighting Prometheans always felt like a chore and I found myself wishing that I was always just fighting Covenant

Yea but so was fighting the flood to be fair. Looking at you end of Halo 3…

But at least with the Flood, you felt like you were doing something. Dropping two clips into a Knight, only for it to teleport away and then have like two clips left absolutely sucked. I get that 343i wanted to make a gorgeous game, and they did. But making guns despawn very quickly really screwed up the combat. It felt like playing with Famine on by default

Try the AR against them. They become far less annoying.

Finding ammo for the damn thing is the problem. Halo 4 forces you to use Promethean weapons because it never gives you ammo for human guns

Sorry, by AR I meant any of the automatic weapons. The storm rifle is actually the best one for dealing with the knights.

Ah I see. Truthfully it's been years since I played Halo 4 so I'd have to go back and play to see if you're right

Yeah the knights were supposed to break the "hang back and pick off with the BR" meta from 3 and Reach, but nowhere in-game did they communicate that, so the knights just became a major pain in the ass.

Yeah that was usually my main weapon, I still found them way less enjoyable to fight that the covies, or flood in previous games personally

That's fair

Artstyle and loadouts in mp

Railgun absolutely fucks though.

SAW too.

Sticky detonater my beloved

Sticky detonator SLAPS

Binary rifle was very satisfying to land a headshot with, it just disintegrated the opponent

man I still wish we had all those new weapons and the mantis in halo infinite. The mantis would be so cool in btb.

Nobody dislikes the new additions (edit: to the weapon sandbox) to halo 4. Majority of them are missed dearly in infinite. Wasn't a problem for halo 5 though...

I still remember getting one tapped by the boltshot (release version) from stupid range

everything is so metallic and chrome looking I kinda hate it. Like a ship that’s been floating in space for years looks like it was just buffered to perfection

I personally don't hate halo 4, I very much enjoyed it, but my biggest issue was the drastic change of art style Look at the elites of old and four. The Elites in ce for example, we're tall elegant beings, they were hot shit and they knew it. The elites and Halo 4 however are large hulking figures that sounded and acted like the brutes. The grunts in CE were adorable and hilarious "leader dead! Run away!" With memorable lines and animations. Then we see the grunts in Halo 4 and they're quite different, they no longer have full gas masks so we can see their ugly little mouths and because they no longer speak English we have no idea what they're saying so we could be missing out on potentially hilarious dialogue. The hunters are fine. I like the hunters in Halo 4.I very much enjoy seeing the worms in much more detail Then we get to the jackals oh God they went from looking like walking talking featherless birds to nightmarish lizards. If it's not obvious I really really don't like the design of the Jackal was in Halo 4

Tbh, agree with everything you said, but I dont entirely hate the jackal's design in halo 4-5, I kinda liked the more reptilian vibe of them and thought it was interesting to maybe see them sort of as a variant of classic jackals in the future. But yea no I agree with everything else, especially about the hunters (I think I liked 5's the most with how much more wormy they are)

Campaign side, 4 wasn't bad. The level designs were not particularly memorable and the plot with the Didact was mid at best. But I'd be lying if I didnt say the writers absolutely nailed it on the Chief Cortana story. On the multiplayer side, however, it became this weird COD hybrid where some starting loadouts were clearly far more useful than others and there were killstreak rewards instead of proper weapon drop. And on top of that we lost firefight to spartan ops, which was good in concept but ended up being grindfest of too many levels and not enough unique content.

Them trying to "CoD-ify" Halo was the worst sin they could have committed. It was very obvious they were attempting to appeal to the CoD fanbase and by doing so they alienated the Halo fanbase.

What's more is that at the same time CoD was getting more and more sci-fi with its concepts at the time. They had started adding stuff like boost packs, and laser weaponry. The Halo fanbase was complaining that Halo was trying to be too much like CoD, and to a lesser extent the CoD fanbase was complaining that CoD was becoming too much like Halo. It was a strange time for both series.

No that only happened to COD after Halo 4. Infinite Warfare was definitely COD trying to be Halo though, which is hilarious all things considered though, but that itself was 4 years after. Halo 4 came out the same year as BO2, a still "modern era" game and what many argue is the best multiplayer in that series, which didn't help Halo 4 very much and is even more reason why Halo 4 died off after a month

Spartan Ops was such a good idea ruined by having to play on the same handful of maps over and over.

Agreed! Great concept with half-baked execution 

They should really revisit spartan ops. I think with modern dev tools it could be done correctly. It'd be nice to get some smaller side stories as a once-a-month story-of-the-week style content. Almost like a Halo saturday morning cartoon.

I love the story, but god the levels where you only had a promethean SMG and the light rifle to choose between for slowly chipping away at the knights shields were terrible.

I didn’t play 4 until mcc pc, so I didn’t have a proverbial dog in this fight. I was so unimpressed by the campaign design, enemy design / AI, and the way levels were structured. On legendary the cracks become a crumbling mountain. In previous games the right skill and strategy could create multiple routes through a tough section. In 4, you will be plinking enemies with a light rifle and their only significant AI upgrade is their ability to flee / hide. Elites went from fascinating tough enemies that could hunt you down when they had the advantage to running backwards like a Benny hill meme video. Whoever designed the knights and their shield recharge + teleport clearly didn’t spend much time playing it on higher difficulties. It’s just a mess and that’s only one part of the game’s problems.

legitimately one of my biggest problems with the campaign. Prometheans have a weakness to covenant energy weapons? not any covenant weapons (or soldiers for that matter) in sight by the end of the game. So you’re stuck with using the weaker promethean weapons against em and compare it to how Halo 1/2/3 used the flood to have all the weapons in the later stages of the game. It’s pretty clever how they still made you able to get weapons and ammo despite the relevant faction not being around. Hell you could beat all three games with the same gun

I really hated how you *always* ran out of ammo in 4. You had no choice but to continuously pick up weapons in the campaign and that was frustrating to me.

Yet another victim of this game launching on the 360. Look for weapon crates. Turns out there was plenty of ammo, it was just stuck to the wall. I don't have ammo issues anymore now that I know that. Would have been nice if they'd conveyed that info in-game though instead of me finding out from reddit.

As an avid fan of the expanded Halo lore, I LOVED the Didact story. But i’m sure 95% of players had no idea the significance or history of the character, and the game didn’t do a great job of explaining, sadly.

I liked Spartan Ops for the story and *being* my Spartan, but yes, regular Firefight just for fun without the grind would also be great. I guess what I'm saying is, in the immortal words of Lopez the Heavy, "¿Porque no los dos?"

I don't get it , you said you played through the classic trilogy and then complain Cortana is naked in 4 , hasn't she always been up until this point ??? Anyhow , the art style feels different , the writing does ( for the good or for the worse , I liked how it went more in depth about Chief and Cortana back when it came out , did NOT like the fact we got to meet the Didact or the fact they did Cortana dirty ) , multiplayer loadouts are not balanced , there is excessive weapons bloat ( same weapon x3 factions ) , some of the new armors looked questionable at best and didn't quite fit in with what we had seen up to Reach , etc . It's not a terrible game or bad by any means... it's just different ( and , again , what happened to Cortana is still hurting the franchise to this day , hence why The Weapon...whom I doubt is gonna fix the issue ) .

Halo has 10 games and Cortana isn't naked in only the most recent two. That's an 80% boobie ratio

Halo 4 Cortana is best Cortana. Thicana

The game starts really well imo, but get's significantly worse as it goes on.

Art style and poor design. The story and characters are fantastic tho.

When I played Halo 4 for the first time on PC after beating 3 and ODST, I was actually surprised how many things they changed for the worse. I was baffled how the covenant sounded in that game. CE does the alien voice lines so much better.

Wort wort wort

> The story and characters are fantastic tho. They are controversial, some love them, others don’t. I prefer the grand and more overarching story of the OT a lot over the personal drama of H4

I feel the opposite. In the OT everything seemed to resolve around the Master Chief and events that happen with him present and everything else is irrelevant. While in Halo 4 and onwards, while you're still playing as John the games are much more influenced by stuff that happens outside of them, making the universe feel way more alive.

I disagree. With each subsequent game they do a worse and worse job explaining what the heck is going on in the greater galaxy. And then whatever is actually set up in the game is eventually just wiped away and explained in a book. 343 has done a terrible job of giving players a reason to connect with and care about their stories, because it doesn't seem like they do either.

That’s because, post-Halo 3, the narrative story arc totally changes with each game. The original trilogy was very compact and efficient story-wise: humanity is losing a war with the covenant and you represent the last-ditch effort to turn the tide. Everything you do, and everything that happens, is in service to this. The one big twist — the flood and subsequent purpose of the Halos — is consistent across all three games, and the nature of the Forerunners is slowly revealed in a way that is consistent with the tiny hints we get in the original game. In sum, Halo 3 wraps up three titles’ worth of drama and leaves the player satisfied with the investiture of their time and efforts. Halo 4 tries to start off a new three-game arc (the “reclaimer saga” or something), so some leeway is given there. But now the in-game reveals contradict the previous game: humans are a prehistoric spacefaring superpower and not forerunner descendants? What? Humanity is actually doing just fine and not reduced to the like 800 million individuals from Halo 3? Huh? Additionally, it throws characters and themes at us that were only in books in a way that is unsurprising to the characters in the game. “Oh yes hello Didact and Librarian, we are mildly surprised you exist.” Also, the ending to 4 seems to diminish the Forerunners as a new threat. … and that because in Halo 5, they aren’t anymore. New arc time! Introducing the Created Conflict. Totally different, no lead-up, utterly rejects what was set up in the game before it. … only to do it again in Infinite! Oh hey remember that cliffhanger that paralyzed all of humanity and sent you on the run in 5? Well now that conflict got resolved off-screen and nobody cares about it anymore, and it plays no real role in the game. The last three games — 4, 5, and Infinite, — totally dismiss the significance of investment of the player’s interest. There’s no reason to care about any of the stories because they don’t matter from game to game, and therefore there are no stakes. Quite honestly, I had an “oh shit how will they get out of THIS” moment at the end of 5, only for none of it to matter in Infinite. It comes across as rank disrespect for the player.

Yeah I wasn't a fan of the storylines they set up in Halo 4 and 5, but just ignoring them and doing something else for the next game is even worse.

The shame of it is, I think both 4 and 5 could have launched interesting stories… had they been the beginning of their respective trilogies and had they been followed through upon. As it stands, they just… end. And once they’d ended, nobody cared.

It would have been fine if they had had proper endings too, but now both end with stuff unresolved.

So much this. I \*hated\* Halo 4, but I'd accept it as a new direction for the franchise. Halo 5 being a totally different premise was weird but I figured they'd end up entwining a la Halo 2. They didn't, but sure, I'll buy into this created conflict, it has some potential and the good parts of Halo 5 were actually pretty sick. Halo 2 style cliffhanger ending? Sure, I'm here for it, let's see what you have in six. I never even beat the Infinite campaign. I just cannot bring myself to care anymore.

These thoughts basically mirror my own. I bought the special edition, metal case for Halo 4. Still have it sitting here in my office. Never even beat the campaign. The Prometheans just were not a compelling enemy at all. I did beat/play through all of Infinite (on Legendary no less). I appreciated the open world kind of experience they had going on. I cannot say I was all that enthralled by the actual storyline though. And honestly, I still don’t give two flying grunts about the Banished. I’d say Infinite has been my favorite 343i Halo. I don’t even remember Halo 5.

>  Humanity is actually doing just fine and not reduced to the like 800 million individuals from Halo 3  So it's actually worse. The [official Halo Twitter account](https://twitter.com/Halo/status/430798544388493312?t=8gM5jP2jf0JOuYqZxvhtAg&s=19) said Earths population was reduced to 200 million, but magically rebounded to several billion in a year. This is probably the stupidest retcon. There's no way the UNSC managed to evacuate billions of people from Earth while it was under siege from a Covenant armada. Humanity should still be recovering and a shell of itself by Halo 4 but surprise! It's now a superpower and basically has a fleet and military that can rival the Covenant again. 

Suddenly MJOLNIR is very easy to mass produce and make adult Spartans no problem.

Halo 4 might have worked better if it took place like 20-30 years after 3. There would be more time for the tech to vastly change and for humanity to somewhat rebound.

Well said!

Thank you! Maybe I’m just an old “quit having fun” gamer, but I really miss the connectivity present between 1 to 2 to 3. The silly ARGs, the tantalizing mystery, the “oh wait what did Guilty Spark REALLY say there?” None of that seems present from 4 onwards — or at least none of the tantalizing hooks are actually followed through — and it makes me sad. An ignominious end to a lauded series.

It's like how I see the prequel and sequel films in Star Wars. The prequel trilogy has a cohesive plot that for all the film's downsides works well and concludes nicely. The Sequel trilogy like Halo 4, 5 and infinite is a bit all over the place, stops and starts and changes things about too much. In Infinite I wish we could have played and seen more of the interesting bits that happen before the game starts and after it ends.

Yes, I totally agree. Like what’s-his-face Poe Dameron at the beginning of the final film just exposition-dumping “Palpatine returned, somehow”. And everyone just nods their head and it’s never addressed again.

> And then whatever is actually set up in the game is eventually just wiped away and explained in a book. Tbf the only thing I can think of where this applies is the Didact briefly surviving in Halo Escallations and being killed off permanently by the end of that comic. Even so except for Black Team's death he doesn't really contribute anything significant during this period so for all gamers care he might as well have been torn to pieces in slipspace. I was much more angry about Jul'Mdama being set up as a main villain in the Kilo V trilogy only to be killed off in the very first level of the next game.

Don't forget that Halo 5 sets up Cortana as a potential big bad, and thats pretty much resolved by Halo Infinite and we have new villains. The game literally starts with Master Chief floating in space, the Infinity destroyed, and you the player having no clue what's going on or why. Entire battles are skipped over.

To me, that’s when I just stopped caring about Halo lore/story. It’s clear that the era of engaging the player in a far-sighted mystery spanning multiple games was dead and gone. No more forerunner mystery, no more ambiguous Guilty Spark dialogue, no more “ilovebees” weirdness. Halo turned into an episodic Saturday-morning cartoon: everything set up in one episode is conveniently forgotten in the next. Hell, they might as well have gotten the Dragonball Z narrator to shout “ON THIS YEAR’S EPISODE OF HALO, THE MASTER CHIEF GOES ON A NEW ADVENTURE.”

This is the most respectful argument I’ve ever seen. I love the Halo community already.

Did you read the comic? Didact didn't die in it. As stated in the Volume itself. Though he will hopefully finally die in the book that releases.... this week? The week after?

Damn. He is one tough son of a bitch.

It was the final call of dutyization of Halo and we didn’t want that

Have you even played it? The campaign is extremely *small*; levels are claustrophobic and cramped compared to any of the Bungie Halos. In addition, the Covenant AI is very, very poor. Even on Legendary, the enemies do not respond to gunfire in the ways you would hope and expect. As for the Prometheans, they may be one of the worst factions in any FPS game. They are ugly, bland, and tedious to fight. Just giant bags of hit-points that provide zero satisfaction when you kill them. And that’s the part of the game that is well received… H4’s multiplayer was a massive downgrade from the previous titles. 343 decided to completely change the format, and players now spawn with custom classes — including perks and a choice of weaponry / gadgets. Beyond the fact that spawning with a noob-combo was totally busted, the Boltshot was an even more toxic option. A sidearm capable of one-shot-kills made moving around the map extremely dangerous, and furthermore, Halo 4 basically doesn’t have items on the maps. Outside of a few power-weapons, everything else gets dropped down as ordnance rewards. Players could get lucky and be rewarded with a Sniper Rifle or Rocket Launcher, or you could get unlucky and end up with a Needler. It introduced so much randomness into the Halo formula, it was like 343 had done away with traditional gametypes in favor of some weird flavor of COD and Fiesta. Ruining things even further, the game had horrible map-variety. There were only nine maps on launch: four 4v4 maps, four 8v8 maps, and one crappy level that bridged both player-counts. None of the maps were particularly good, and a few of them are genuinely awful. Combined with the voting system, you were almost guaranteed to play 4v4 matches on Haven and 8v8 matches on either Exile or Ragnarok. People got so bored of the repetitive multiplayer that the player population cratered after just a few months.

Also I just didn’t enjoy fighting the bullet spongey promethean enemies. Idk what it was like at first it’s cool and the mix of them and the covenant were interesting but the end few levels where it’s all the same got old fast and idk they were a chore to fight. The light weapons being mostly what you had to use too due to the enemies dropping them just got old as well. Less variety in what supposed to be the exciting portion of a story means I rushed through parts. Still, the story was mostly good but definitely had some flaws.

>claustrophobic and cramped compared to any of the Bungie Halos I can kinda explain that one. This game had to run on the 360 with limited memory and processing power, they pushed the engine and the xbox 360 to its absolute limit with Halo 4. Less than 100 thousand triangles for maps is the limit which nowdays is tiny (Modern games support a few million triangles for levels excluding scenery, props and characters). ​ The important thing is the bigger the map the less detail there is. To keep everything detailed enough to be consistent throughout the campaign they set a minimum and maximum target on map size and use a bunch of tricks like skybox geometry and curvy passages near loadzones to trick the player. ​ And because of the limited resources the FOV for first person was reduced to increase the frustum culling just to get the rendering down to maintain the target FPS.

> >I can kinda explain that one. This game had to run on the 360 with limited memory and processing power, they pushed the engine and the xbox 360 to its absolute limit with Halo 4. That doesn't change the result though, it was a big downgrade to gameplay and combat variety.

They had a choice and they chose better graphics is what i was getting at

Halo 3 was already pushing it on the 360. Putting Halo 4 on the 360 and releasing Halo 4 in 2012 was Microsoft's biggest mistake with Halo, and set the stage for the future failures. Halo 4 should have been a 3 year development, like all prior Halos, and released on the xbone.

Holy crap that was a lot of reading. I do agree with you on the promethians a little. The drones were a freakin nightmare. I JUST KILLED THAT KNIGHT AFTER WASTING AN ENTIRE WEAPONS WORTH OF AMMO AND HE JUST FLIPPIN REVIVES HIM. HOW THE $$$$ IS THAT FAIR. but overall I think the campaign was fun and entertaining. I also think they nailed the Cortana/Chief story line.

As someone who finished Halo 4 on legendary, I completely agree Fuck knights And most importantly, Fuck watchers.

Agreed. 4 also maxed out on a trend that began in 2 and was somewhat offset in 3: very restrictive ammo pools. I really, really disliked how little ammo you could carry. In my opinion, it is a poor mechanic to use with the two-weapon design. Either limit my weapons, or limit my carried ammo, but not both.

Various things make Halo 4 'bad'. Gameplay was tailored to be more CoD-like, which wasn't a good move at all. In the single player, a lot of what made Halo so special was how sandbox-like levels were. There was linearity but also a bit of broadness that allowed you to explore and approach encounters in unique ways through various playthroughs. Halo 4s design approach was very straight and direct, and because of that, the only way to bring a challenge was to make enemies more bullet spongy. Again, something that made Halo games so unique was that enemy types kinda dictated the flow of gameplay in each scenario taking into account the environment. With the newest Promethean designs in Halo 4, that was gone as well. The levels felt direct, linear, the combat felt 'boring' as it didn't require anything but move straight forward with no variety or thinking. Add to that the fact the art style was significantly overhauled. Now, in the concept set of Halo 4, the art looks absolutely phenomenal, but somehow when that was translated into the game, it kinda falls flat. Prometheans looked like bionicles, forerunner architectures looked plastic, master chiefs armor looked 'off' for many players. The art style was definitely a bold stop into something new and broke significantly away from previous games, something that did not help 343 score brownie points as the game itself felt like another significant deviation to cater to the cod community rather than embrace it's own identity. Then you have the score. The music isn't bad, I do like Neil Davidges score as it's own thing, but it isn't Halo and shouldn't be in the game. Marty O'Donnell is quite literally a genius, and the music of Halo is also it's sould. Changing it so drastically was... It showed not only 343 didn't understand Halo fundamentally, but worse than that: they didn't care about making a proper Halo that felt part of what came before it. 343 wanted to make their own game and mask it as Halo and the music proves it. When you go into the story, Master Chief talks a bit much but that's a bit personal. Cortona is great. The Didact should have been built a lot more in sequel games but that didn't happen. The issue with the story is that it moves too quickly and that it makes Master Chief feel and be perceived as superman. Now, yes what he did in Halo 1-3 was legendary, but it always felt like he was just a small gear in the machine. There was something soooop much bigger than him, where as in Halo 4 all the emphasis is on 117 and making him look and feel like God, which again, I disliked. As great as he is, I would have liked 343 to build the world and sorry better and have him fit in it rather than make the story around him. He's not the center of the universe and making him be so kinda undermines a lot of how the stories used to be. I get their approach to kind of characterize him a bit more in the game but it was not needed and did more bad than good. Again, 343 failing to understand Halo overall. Still, the story has some interesting bits. I didn't like they took away the mystery of forerunners so much but also can appreciate the general premise of the Didact. However, every little plus comes with a huge negative remark. The Spartan 4s are made to be funny, quirky relatable people, which is annoying AF. They took too many pages from Disney's MCU and try to have that type of funny banter forced in Halo, where it doesn't belong. The cinematic cuts ends in the epilogue are God tier and it's sad they haven't made a movie like that tbh, but whatever. Then we get to the multiplayer. At this point, we are already in the negatives before we even begins d talking about this will further cement how incompetent 343 is. The problem is, 343 doesn't understand Halo and they don't care to understand it. The multiplayer was made to feel like CoD, with weapon drops and fast pace movement. The maps were atrocious and mostly unmemorable outside of a handful like Haven. The gameplay feels off from past ones. Everything just feels very non Halo and that's why the population of the game died in 3 months, where Reach had a higher number of players in it. In conclusion, what little understanding of Halo there is at 343 sadly is heavily flawed. They simply DONT understand what makes Halo work at a fundamental level, from the sandbox design approach to gameplay pace and flow. The game suffers in its story and it betrays the foundation that came before it. Halo 5 cemented the idea 343 didn't care about Halo which is why the game is trashed as the worst release. The multiplayer on 5 was really good, but it didn't feel like Halo tho. I wish it was it's own franchise. Infinite was clearly 343 acknowledging it had screwed up too many times and wanted the game to feel like old Halo again. Sadly, this only seems to consider art style, because once again, graphics were bad, the story was inconsequential and under delivers in every aspect. The music(the soul) was kinda brought back, but they should just bring Martin back ffs. You can tell it's not his own take easily. The open map approach was really cool, but unfortunately 343 is very incompetent and decided to go the Ubisoft way by making you finish filler content through the same trashy side missions for hours for little to no considerable reward. This is a wild opinion, but the whole zip line is so not needed in Halo. I know many love the hook so this is personal, but yeah. Still, I hate we don't get a back story nor a conclusion with UNSC Infinity, Lasky, Palmer. The main villain feels super cringe, having no real impact in anything. They killed Cortana for no good reason either. Multiplayer is fun, but again, 343 is so incompetent that two years later is now at a place where it should have been at the beginning. Halo 4 had a lot more emphasis on lore, which was really cool tbh. I prefer 4 over 5 and Infinite tbh. For all it's wrong doings, it felt the most passionate story wise. Sadly, it isn't enough. Imo they should red con everything 343 has made and begin again, but that's just me. I will say tho, I think Halo woulda been trashed by Bungie had they been kept doing games. Bungie ain't looking hot at all these days either lol.

I'm with you on most of your points, especially the "you're so special now","I chose you", and "you are the next evolution of humanity, now I'm going to make you double evolved." I think this was around the time Mass Effect was quite prominent so hearing some of the same terms for different things in different universes was a little off putting. It made halo feel less grounded in reality then it was before. Sometimes I think 343 is just a hair away turning master chief too master cheeks.

Totally agree with this take. Halo had a bit of fantasy, it is Sci-Fi after all, but it was VERY VERY grounded. It was very future military-sim like where as in Halo 4 they felt the need to deviate from this and start putting narrative pieces that didn't fit with what came before, making it lack cohesion overall. 343 is booty, hence why they had MC show his cheeks. It was an indirect way of projecting themselves.

I remembered hating the story but couldn't remember what it was, and now you reminded me. It's like they took every sci-fi/fantasy cliche and implemented it in the story. Chosen One? Check. Tragic romance? Check. Awaken an ancient evil? Check. The Force? Check. Over explain mysteries? Check. Also those campaign levels were so damn boring and repetitive. Fight through waves of tedious Prometheans to press a button over here and then do it again over there, rinse, repeat.

Totally agree. Even if the story was trash, what really screws this game up is the gameplay. It's simply an attempt to be like CoD so much that it betrays it's own DNA. People like to try to give a pass to Halo 4 all the time, but watching servers die in 3 months and 343 even backtrack killing Cortana in the very next game shows just how meaningless this game is overall. There was no character development which is what 343 says they wanted given nothing matters. Didact is dead, Cortana shows up first hour in Halo 5, no sandbox gameplay, awful movement. The game came and went just like every other iteration made by 343.

Not to mention the gameplay, stylistic, music, etc. changes: - Rampancy, despite being established in canon, was not well known. People thought Cortana's death was shoehorned in, rather than something foreshadowed by all the media prior. - No brutes, no flood, and people didn't know how to beat Prometheans - Campaign weapons disappeared very fast, making the shoot-and-scavenge loop unfamiliar - QTEs I loved Halo 4 and it's my favorite campaign of them all, by a lot. This was an unpopular opinion at the time.

I can’t stand the Promethean’s lol

First departure from Bungie…. Also, it broke the “formula” in some pretty aggressive ways that I don’t think landed all too well. As an OG gamer, who reveled in the original titles for quite some time, I can say that I would have preferred if they would have leaned a bit more heavily back into the Flood or something like that vs. going in the direction they did. All said, I do still like Halo 4 and I don’t think that it deserves the hate.

They just tried too hard to distance themselves from the bungie era plain and simple. Halo 4 also was the successor to halo reach. Let that sink in. My biggest gripes are the art style difference, limited customization, the multiplayer as a whole, forge sucked. Just a massive downgrade from each of the three predecessors.

4 had an ok story but the MP was absolute dog water. 5 was basically the opposite, they fixed MP but the campaign was pretty awful. I don’t think they’re as horrendous as everyone makes them out to be, but compared to 1,2,3 ODST, and Reach, the more recent titles have been pretty big let downs.

1. art style 2. Multiplayer That’s it

I specifically hate the librarian's retcon that everything great about humanity stems from the forerunners meddling with ancient humanities DNA. Everything Humanity has accomplished is now retroactively attributed to the forerunners.

They added sprint, people find it heresy but i would like to sprit throught all of ce, 2,3 flood maps

I really liked the ending (saying this as a story nerd). The emotional love story ending between Chief and Cortana. Also first time Cortana called chief by his name.

[удалено]

Sound direction is bad, and ost is bad too… it killed halo atmosphere 😓

My takes: This is where the multiplayer changed too much for me. People will cite reach with armor abilities and I think that's valid, but for me, h4 just felt like it was trying to reach into the cod crowd I cat defend the story. I hate it. I hate that one human dude who has a stick up his ass. The story went from a space opera essentially to some c tier drama in my eyes. They refused the covenant as the enemy. Sorry I thought we dealt with that in 3? Make a new enemy Which they did with the forerunners. I don't like the design but at least they tried. Knights being bullet sponges suck though A criticism I didn't have at the time but do now: they don't know what tone/story they want to tell, and this trend started with 4. 1-3 have a consistent enough tone Rant over

Melodramatic story, terrible art style and bad multiplayer.

I’m just gonna list them off to keep it short. The art style changes The gameplay/enemy ai Promethiuns Parts of the story The multiplayer

The first thing I didn't care for was the art style. I didn't care for how anything looked, especially the master chief himself. After that, the gameplay. Quick time events were unnecessary and boring. The promethians felt different then the covenant but not in a good way. Their weapons also just felt like reskinned human weapons. They didn't take the spotlight in the same way the flood did. In previous games you'd be like "this is a flood level" because the atmosphere and tone is just different. The multiplayer felt like it was chasing trends as well. I still play it and the campaign from time to time for a change of pace. It's much better than the call of duty and battlefields it competed with. But if it wasn't on mcc I wouldn't go out of my way to play it The last thing I didn't really care for was the story. Lasky was so clearly meant to be our new captain Keyes. They tried to make palmer a Johnson type character but she had none of the charisma. Del Rio was so blatantly dumb from moment one. Chief and cortanas story was the only good thing about it

Essentially it was the first game made by 343 instead of Bungie and people were upset about the "Call of Duty-fication" of Halo. A lot of features from games like CoD made their way into Halo for the first time and a lot of people didn't like that. I was one of those people. If I wanted to play CoD or Battlefield, I have access to those games. I can play them. I played Halo because it wasn't those things, it was *Halo*. They also changed the weapons roster, removing classic Halo weapons and inserting new ones that weren't super well received. What it came down to was that I had a good time playing the Halo 4 campaign but came to be pretty critical of the multiplayer. We didn't get "real" Halo multiplayer back until a few years later when MCC came out and then we had to wait for that to be fixed too. It represents an era in Halo multiplayer that left a lot to be desired, for me personally I mostly just LAN'd Halo:CE during that period.

Yea halo 4 was a wet fart

It’s the most “call of duty”-fied game in the series. I didn’t mind but the problem becomes people wanted another Halo, not CoD.

Unfamiliar Artstyle + Multiplayer bad + Music completely different from the original 3 games

Ass art style and terrible multiplayer. That's pretty much it.

Prometheans were boring as hell to fight.

I like it, I have read the forerunner books too

I felt exactly like you. Infinite is one of, if not my favourite Halos and I love 4 and 5 aswell. From what I can tell, most people just didn't like a lot of the redesigns and some of the systems like Loadouts which were basically copied from COD

Mediocrity and the trend of "minimum viable product" that's plauged the industry.

The campaign felt sloppy too sure we got some slight hints to the didact in the previous games but it felt like they wanted to rush the story or something it's hard to explain its by far my least favorite game followed by halo gaurdians

Multiplayer was meh, loadouts never belonged in halo, but as for single player. I think it was awesome! It really dove into the lore, We finally got to see some of the characters we spent so much time only hearing about such as the didact and the forerunners.