How To Fix Halo

Halo used to be not only a flagship game for Microsoft, but it also was a core title for video games as a whole. It transcended the gaming industry and became a cultural phenomenon outside of the gaming sphere. We are long past the days of midnight launch events and getting together at someone’s house while we lug around massive heavy CRT TVs we thought weighed a metric ton. Sadly it’s a bygone era we will never return to; but Halo can return to it’s former glory given the right amount of care and love the series desperately needs.

When Bungie bought themselves out of Microsoft’s ownership, it was the beginning of the end for the series. While Bungie did go off and be successful with their Destiny franchise, which had its own set of issues and failures. Bungie was at their peak when they were working on the Halo series. But as they left, Microsoft had to do something with the Halo brand. So it was given to 343 Studios to handle the reigns and take over where the series was left and make it their own. I actually don’t know much about the forming of 343 and at this point, I’d rather not waste my time with their history, because they’ve shown time and again they aren’t a good studio.

343 has continually dropped the ball when it comes to Microsoft’s biggest gaming franchise and icon, relegating him to a small and nearly forgotten footnote in the hardware giant’s playbook. Halo went from the biggest thing in the world, to basically a laughing stock, and 343 is to blame. Now, this isn’t an article trying to just bash 343, but just to give context to what I’m about to propose. There is a new rumor of a Halo 1 or the real title of the first Halo game called “Halo: Combat Evolved” which is normally titled “Halo CE” remake. If you are asking yourself “didn’t we already have a remake of Halo back in 2013?” Not really, we had a remaster of it, where it was an enhanced version of the existing Halo game. It featured improved upscaled textures and models, with some altered performance enhancing tweaks to core mechanics. Not a full blown remake.

So with a new full blown remake coming down the pipe, it’s rumored to leave out a core part of the game, the Multiplayer. Honestly, while Master Chief’s exploits and his tagalong companion Cortana’s adventure is a big part of Halo, I’d argue it’s the Multiplayer that is the bigger part of the Halo experience. It’s the memories we have of hanging out at each other’s house, connecting multiple Xboxes together and most people’s first dealing with ethernet cables and hooking them up to a switch. It’s those memories of being able to hear the announcer call out “King Of The Hill”, “Slayer” and “Lost The Lead” as we elbow our buddies after an especially brutal and crazy kill that is ingrained into our brains.

We need those memories back, and we lost a lot of that with the dawn of internet online gaming. While it’s great we can all play online, and it’s the only way for those of us who grew up and moved away from our friends and built up families, it's a very different experience than that original LAN party nature. And while we won’t ever get those experiences back in the exact same way, we can make new ones, and the 343 team fundamentally doesn’t understand that. Removing multiplayer is removing a core part of Halo from itself. So what can be done?

Well, I really do think they originally hit it on the head over a decade ago, the “Master Chief Collection” which is still an atrocious title for the ultimate Halo experience had half of the formula right. Halo’s campaigns, or as we used to call it, the single player story mode part of the game, should be its own thing, and the multiplayer should be its own thing. Here is my proposition:

Call the game “Halo”. Have it contain two parts, it’s single player and it’s multiplayer. Give the main storyline single player campaign to a team who specializes in great storytelling. Let them continue on with Master Chief's story and build out that universe with Spartans and all the other species fighting to take control or save the universe. That’s such a part of the series that has been neglected thanks to the online multiplayer part clearly being the more important section of the game. It always seemed like once Multiplayer got big, the story just was left as scraps to do because it was required.

Also give the Multiplayer to a team that knows what they are doing and can deliver a better experience than what is currently offered. I am not a multiplayer guy, so I can’t tell you if the experience is amazing, but I know it’s not great. I’ve only heard negative things since Halo Infinite came out. I played the beta right before it launched, and the hour of playtime I had with it was fun, but not spectacular. Since then, I’ve only heard people talk negatively about it and say it sucked.

The big glaring issue is 343, it’s clear they don’t have what it takes to helm Microsoft's biggest series. Give it to people who love, care and know what they are doing and are good at it. Focus on Halo being the “go to” for multiplayer, and also have a compelling and fun single player that expands the series beyond a 8 hour single player story that continually resolves absolutely nothing.

I’ve always been a fan of single player and storylines in games. I actually prefer a story mode, and always enjoy when a game can tell a interesting story, leaving it open for a sequel is fine, but I need things to be resolved. When stories are intiiallly designed they need that three part structure, they need some resolution. Stories in games continued this “we need to have a trilogy of games” so game stories never had a satisfying resolution because they needed to build out two sequels. It became exhausting and really not worth it, when you knew what you were playing wouldn’t wrap up in the game you were currently playing, and had to wait another 3ish years for the real ending.

The new Halo needs to have contained stories where the core conflict is resolved within that story. I’d love it if there were maybe three games, that told their own self contained stories, like vignettes or an anthology method of story telling in the greater Halo universe. Think ODST or Reach. Let Master Chief rest for a big, but continue telling spartan stories in the mean time, bring him back for that ultimate bombastic universe saving story every few years.

On the multiplayer side, let a team completely wipe the series of everything besides the basics. Rebuild multiplayer from the ground up with the original Halo 1 maps and aspects, while rebuilding them in the new engine with mind blowing visuals and graphics. Make it look spectacular. Every year, bring in the next Maps from the other games until you have the ultimate Halo Multiplayer experience. Focusing on bringing as many players back who just want to have a good time and don’t care about competitive gaming.

This is a much bigger issue and conversation, but multiplayer gaming has lost its way with focusing way too much on their hyper subset of competitive players. Sure they’ll continue playing it day and night for years, and buy all the cosmetic DLC just to keep it alive, but when these games focus so much on continually balancing the most nuanced of movesets and nerfing things to only matter to maybe a handful of people… you lose everyone else in the process.

I know I don’t care about any of that stuff, and will never achieve the level required to actually matter in my multiplayer game. But what I would love is a game that focused on creating a community that offered fun and creative experiences week in and week out. Build out the Multiplayer to make it an event again. Focus on a way to bring back that LAN party vibe. Sure we’ll never actually travel to a buddies house with our TVs in tow… but we could absolutely set aside every other Saturday night to meet up in a private lobby and play 10-20 rounds while hanging out, talking about life and trash talking to each other.

This is what I want from Multiplayer gaming, but it’s almost always impossible when the game is so focused on the players that dedicate their entire lives to the game. Give me multiplayer experiences that focus on making the game itself fun for everyone and this will bring back the people who made Halo popular in the first place. When we did LAN parties, we weren’t experts, we were just playing for the fun and love of the game. That’s the heart of Multiplayer and every company doesn’t recognize or remember that. Bring that back, and you bring back everyone and save Halo.