Highlights
- Halo's reputation as one of the best shooters has been overshadowed by its competition, creating uncertainty for the franchise's future.
- The series had a strong start and remained popular throughout the Xbox 360 generation, but faced issues with Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: Infinite.
- Xbox should learn from Nintendo and PlayStation in reviving stale franchises by taking time off to rework and innovate, as seen with The Legend of Zelda and God of War. A fresh approach is needed to breathe new life into Halo.
The Halo franchise has been Xbox's bread and butter for over two decades now. The series has served as the platform's flagship exclusive for years, with a new generation of titles gracing every Xbox console. Just as Mario and Kratos come to mind when mentioning Nintendo or PlayStation, Master Chief goes hand in hand when conversations revolve around Microsoft's Xbox brand.
Unfortunately, the Halo series' reputation has been tainted after the last few entries, with its once prestigious place among gamers as one of the best shooters on the market being overtaken by its competition. Although the most recent entry Halo: Infinite was by no means terrible, its troubled production and somewhat mixed reception have put the franchise's future into question. A future Halo game is inevitable, but Microsoft and 343 Industries may want to seriously consider taking the franchise back to the drawing board for a future installment.
Bringing Halo Back To Its Former Glory
There was a time when the Halo series was at the top of its game and had a crushing chokehold on the entire gaming industry. If GoldenEye on N64 opened the door for first-person shooters on consoles to be taken seriously, Halo: Combat Evolved completely kicked it off the hinges and took the world by storm. Just a few years later in 2004, Halo 2 reached a fever pitch in terms of hype, a level of interest which carried through with Halo 3 in 2007.
The series continued to stay popular throughout the Xbox 360 generation, with entries such as Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach remaining fan favorites to this day. Problems only started to arise with the franchise's foray onto the Xbox One with Halo 5: Guardians, an installment that immediately divided fans for myriad reasons. Issues only persisted with Halo: Infinite, as it suffered delays and multiple performance bugs despite initially being positioned as the flagship launch game for the Xbox Series X.
Halo Should Take a Page From the Competition's Books
As great as any franchise may be, nothing lasts forever. Eventually, a formula will grow stale and require a set of fresh ideas to reinvigorate energy into the series. This happens to even the best of the best, something Xbox should learn from by looking at how Nintendo and PlayStation have handled properties in the past few years. Skyward Sword was considered a dead-end for that era of 3D style The Legend of Zelda games, so the studio took several years off to rework the next game into a fully open-world experience with Breath of the Wild.
Similarly, God of War: Ascension felt like an indication that the series had at that point run out of ideas. Once again, PlayStation hit the reset button and came back with a completely new take on the franchise, clearly drawing inspiration from The Last of Us. Halo: Infinite did make many efforts to bring things back to basics, even returning to the iconic Halo ring of the original game that serves as the series namesake. However, in a double-edged sword fashion, this return to basics ironically felt like more of the same in many ways, while other shooter franchises pushed ahead and stole its thunder.
There are many avenues that the Halo series can venture into in order to breathe new life into itself. It can draw inspiration from other games like how God of War did with The Last of Us, or perhaps even toss an unexpected new gameplay twist into the mix to keep players engaged. It remains to be seen exactly what may happen with Halo in the years ahead, but as proven before in gaming history, sometimes things need a fresh coat of paint, and Master Chief's armor is beginning to look a little bit rusty.