I'm concerned. I'm all for new Halo content, and that trailer blew me away (give me more cinematic CGI!), but there are some concerns I'd like to toss out there to see if anyone else feels the same.

New Hands.

For starters, Halo has always been Bungie's child. Getting someone else to raise your child after so many years would surely be a sticky situation. Despite the fact that I am assured that Ensemble, and soon to be Wingnut, are a very capable studios, I still feel the need to voice some concern. I described the situation best in IRC actually; having Halo reimagined by another studio is like having Peter Jackson, for example, directing one movie, and having George Lucas direct the sequel. Both very capable directors, but both have their own distinct way of doing things.

These new games, developed externally, will no doubt feel like an external addition to the Halo universe. I will have a very hard time accepting these two new games, no matter how good they are in their own element, as part of the true Halo experience.

Perhaps Bungie will play a strong role in making these studios adhere to their guidelines, but it's just unneccessary deconstruction and reconstrucion of ideas. Bungie imagines Halo, breaks it down for the external partner, the external partner interprets it and uses a team, who, while skilled perhaps, has never dealt with the IP before. There's definitely room for error. I would imagine that there is already room for error within Bungie itself, but constant overseeing seems to stamp that out, would that exist with these new 'capable' hands?

Genre Hopping

I'm unsure about the 'unannouced' Jackson game, but the RTS game will, undoubtedly, raise an issue with me personally. While Halo sure did begin as an RTS, it has become an FPS, and quite frankly, I find it hard to see it "coming 'round full circle."

The Halo universe has always been experienced from the ground based perspective... It seems as though any other perspective would feel like gimmicky or like a fan made mod... not an "offical" Halo experience.

One of the main pullers of the Halo series, for me, was the amazing story telling. Aside from beautiful cinematics, much of the story was conveyed through the game. With an RTS, I find this a bit hard to fathom. The perspective seems a bit disconnected. You are not a Spartan battling the war on the field, you're this presence commanding an army and watching it blindly do your bidding. I have never played an RTS myself, so I may be way off here, but from what I've seen, it's basically "team A here, team B here, fight." Cool... for about 20 minutes, at least story wise. I can't see any story being more than "Humans and Covenant are fighting over this land! *match occurs* Humans/Covenant have won this territory!"

No cool operation. No finding the "Silent Cartographer," obtaining an "Index" or foiling some diabolical Monitor AI from eons ago...

Also, I'm curious as to how Spartans will be incorporated. The mainstay of Halo's story no doubt. RTS games seem to focus on large scale battles. That's cool. But Spartans, to me have always been the covert guys running very dangerous and specially important ops that you just don't see in RTS games. If I end up seeing a Spartan just battering his way down the field, I think I might tear up a bit.

Now what I'd love to see, is my good old trusted FPS field view of these battles at the side as I run a harrowing mission to cripple Covenant communication and allow reinforcements to make one final drive that I have the chance to partake in. Badass. A guy can dream...

Perhaps I'm too afraid of change, but as the saying goes "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Slight changes to Halo occured on its way to Halo 2 and it caused an uproar. An entire genre switch can only mean a can of worms in this respect. While it's interesting to see the Halo universe from this perspective, it would seem that it was just never meant to be viewed and experienced this way (or at least ever since it became an FPS).

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If there's one thing to pull from my incessant rambling here is that, while more Halo would appear to be a great thing, that's not always the case. Star Wars Episodes 1 - 3? Rocky 6? Die Hard 4? Final Fantasy One-fucking-Billion? Halo 4?.... nah, not even that.

Maybe I'm afraid of change here, but I'm worried that Halo's direction is going to be derailed in the near future. Yeah I know... my glass is more than half empty. The bottom line, however, is that despite my fears, I will buy these games. No denying that. So maybe the direction for Halo envisioned here (evidently not Bungie's vision, I'd hope) is a "good" one. And by "good" I definitely mean "lucrative to the max."

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Comments

rapture's picture

I think we're all wishing that Bungie would keep all of this stuff in-house. We've come to expect excellence out of a HALO-based game.

For years people have been crying for someone to make a HALO movie. That movie has essentially been farmed out. Mind you, it got farmed out to WETA which is one of the best houses in the world, but it was farmed out; Bungie isn’t making the HALO movie. Bungie/Microsoft made a great decision in going with WETA to make this film. It shows that while it’s not in-house, they care about quality.

The HALO graphic novel might be considered to be farmed out. I think that worked out just fine and exceeded my expectations. Marvel made this thing – again, a top-of-the-line comic house.

Similarly, I think Bungie is farming out the RTS to a top-notch house. This isn't some startup with 12 employees porting games from one platform to the other. These guys are experienced. According to Wikipedia, Ensemble has 100 employees!

Just as we trust Bungie to make great games and media in-house, I think we should trust them when they contract work to other people and firms. Of course, we got burned when they hired KP. I think we've all given them a break on that one.

Anonymous's picture

In reply to: My glass half full

The difference here with the movies, novel and other "farmed-out" content and the new games is that Bungie has had more than their finger in each project. I really don't get the impression that this is the case this time around... all of the updates and words striaght from Bungie constantly refer to the new content as "their project, not ours." Up until now, Bungie has never treated any Halo content as "their project." Joe Staten was in New Zeland with Jackson quite a bit, perhaps working on that game as well, I hope. But the RTS, at least, sounds like it will be built with Ensemble's vision in mind, held loosely in line by a few checkups with Bungie. Not neccessarily ideal...