10 years ago, on November 6, 2012, Halo 4 was released to the masses. For long-time Halo fans, this wasn't just another sequel; this was the first big step in a new direction for their beloved series, and it was 343 Industries' one and only chance to make a good first impression. Expectations were monumentally high, and fans were divided on if 343 was capable of reaching them. 10 years ago today, 343 Industries released a disappointing sequel, one which can now be seen as an omen for the rest of its time with the Halo franchise.
When Halo 4 was first announced, fans were pretty divided. On one half, fans were just ecstatic that they were getting another Halo game, with Halo Reach widely regarded as the final entry in the franchise, at least for a while. But on the other half, fans were skeptical of a new, non-Bungie studio taking over the Halo reins, especially one that hadn't really had any experience in creating a AAA game from the ground-up. When looking back on it 10 years later, there's a clear case that the latter half deserved to be worried.
Halo 4 Was a Disappointing Debut for 343 Industries
343 Industries was first formed in 2007, shortly after Bungie announced its split from Microsoft. With Microsoft still holding the rights to the Halo franchise, it naturally wanted to keep the train rolling, and created 343 Industries with the intention of continuing the Halo series. Bungie ended up making a few more Halo titles with Microsoft regardless, and in the meantime, 343 Industries was tasked with creating an animated series, which ended up becoming Halo Legends. In 2009, 343 began working on a sequel to Halo 3.
After Halo Reach's release, 343 Industries began working on some new multiplayer maps for the game, and the studio was eventually tasked with remastering the first Halo game for its 10th anniversary. Though some of its visual choices were divisive, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary released in 2011, and was a fairly faithful remaster. In 2012, 343 was handed the Halo franchise for good, and Halo 4 was announced soon after.
Halo 4 reviewed very well across the board, but for fans, something was missing. On the surface, Halo 4 was a decent AAA Sci-Fi shooter, with some very responsive gameplay, a good selection of multiplayer maps and modes, top-notch visuals and sound design, and enough modern FPS features to really bring the Halo franchise into the modern era. Still, it just didn't feel like Halo.
Halo 4's campaign is disappointing. With new enemies that aren't very visually-interesting or compelling, old enemies that don't make much sense in the plot, and a confusing overarching villain, Halo 4's campaign lacks a lot of the polish found in previous entries. This also extends to the campaign's design as a whole; each mission feels very repetitive, and the lackluster environmental design leads to most of the environments blending together. While gray Forerunner structures are a staple of the Halo franchise, they're often broken up with lush, green foliage, sand dunes, water, and other visual variations. In Halo 4, gray Forerunner structures are the basis for most of the campaign's environments.
One of the biggest saving graces of Halo 4 was its portrayal of the Master Chief and Cortana's relationship. Though the plot gets muddied by doomsday weapons and ancient Promethean god-like beings, the overarching narrative of Cortana losing herself to Rampancy is an extremely compelling one, which leads to a ton of surprisingly heartfelt, emotional moments between the two leads. While 343 Industries may have dropped the ball on a lot of Halo 4, it did manage to give John-117 more emotion and personality than Bungie did in its original trilogy.
Halo 4 Was Just a Sign of Things to Come
Halo 4 is certainly not a bad game; it's just not the sequel that long-time fans either wanted, or expected. 343 Industries clearly did the best job it could, but the studio just bit off more than it could chew, trying to live up to the legacy of one of the greatest gaming franchises of all time with its first solo game. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though 343 Industries has ever learned its lesson.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection released in 2014, and suffered a disastrous launch. The game's online multiplayer component was riddled with bugs for weeks after the game's launch. When a game's multiplayer is one of its main draws, broken online play can greatly impact its reception, and that's exactly what happened to Halo: The Master Chief Collection. A year later, Halo 5: Guardians released with a campaign that's widely considered to be even worse than Halo 4's. Though its multiplayer mode was solid, Halo 5's campaign was a confused, anticlimactic mess that failed to live up to the pre-release marketing, and had an ending twist that is universally hated.
In trying to be overly ambitious, 343 Industries keeps dropping the ball with Halo, and that's even more evident with its latest release, Halo Infinite. Its multiplayer released first as free-to-play, and so Halo Infinite did extremely well in its first few weeks, even managing to convince fans that this was the return to form for the franchise that they'd been waiting for. When its campaign launched, the reception remained fairly positive. Though Halo Infinite's campaign has a bit of a lackluster plot again, it's palatable, and its character development keeps it engaging. Halo Infinite's campaign gameplay was also pretty good, if a bit barebones, with 343 Industries moving the franchise to open-world for the first time.
But in the year that has followed Halo Infinite's launch, things have gotten a lot worse. Aiming for a live-service approach, Halo Infinite's multiplayer was pretty stark when it first launched. While other live-service games ensure that they're updating the game frequently to make up for the lack of content at launch, Halo Infinite hasn't followed suit, with just one or two major updates since the game's launch a year ago. To make matters worse, Halo Infinite's promised co-op campaign mode has been delayed repeatedly, and will now ship with restrictions that weren't part of the original plan. The game's Forge mode is also missing, with no release date given for its release. Once again, it seems as though 343 Industries has bitten off more than it could chew, and when looking back at Halo 4, the writing was on the wall this whole time.
Halo 4 is available on PC, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.