Fresh off the total failure of HALO: Campaign DEvolved, Microslop moved a couple of days ago to essentially shut down Halo Studios, or whatever it is called, and has now shunted all future HALO development to… Activision:

Xbox announced another major shift Tuesday in the brand’s structure, including more layoffs and significant consolidation within its remaining web of studios after months of setting developers lose to find independence or other means of survival. This time, there are some pretty stunning details.

• The biggest news is that Activision, not Halo Studios, will now develop the next mainline Halo game. As for what that means for Halo Studios, you may be able to guess as 268 roles are being cut within that developer. Some will remain to support “the Halo community and games in-market.” The Activision Halo team is new and separated out from Call of Duty development. Activision will now also have World’s Edge and Rare under its umbrella.

[…]

Here’s what Activision said about the big news, as it is now far and away the most important studio at Xbox:

“We’re thrilled to welcome Halo, Rare, and World’s Edge to Activision. It’s an honor and a responsibility that we do not take lightly.  These teams and their games have inspired fans around the world for decades.  

“For Halo, our goal is clear: make the greatest Halo game ever, worthy of its universe and legacy, while staying true to what made players love it in the first place.  It is a bold ambition, one that this franchise deserves. We have already begun assembling a purpose-built team, unique in capability and talent, ready and excited to deliver this next chapter with the community. To the World’s Edge and Rare teams, we can’t wait to get to work together.”

This may be the biggest move the Asha Sharma administration has made thus far, and while more layoffs are unfortunate, the general position of the Halo community may be one of relief, as many believe that the series has not thrived under 343/Halo Studios’ leadership for several games now. Though there is equal skepticism about Activision taking over as well.

That scepticism – Ameribros, please note, CORRECT spelling there – is entirely warranted. It is important to keep in mind that Activision Blizzard is the company that Microslop acquired 3 years ago, and Activision’s legacy is that of games like Call of Duty in all of its infinite permutations and combinations, each one more preposterously stupid than the next.

There are plenty of people who really like the CoD franchise, and that is entirely their right. But the point of CoD is the multiplayer aspect. It is NOT a campaign-driven game series, at all. There is no rich lore around CoD that longtime hardcore fans can really sink their teeth into and enjoy, to anything like the extent that one can with the HALO universe.

We must add to that the fact that the “CoDification”, so to speak, of HALO, is a HUGE part of the reason why the latter franchise is in the trouble it is now.

The rot set in with HALO 4, which made sprint a permanent part of the gameplay – though I personally loved the game, and thoroughly enjoy playing it to this day. But, when you have Frank O’Connor himself literally admitting that they brought in people who hated HALO to make that game, and they did so to get “different perspectives”, then it is no surprise that the game felt as half-baked and weird as it did. There were real elements of the HALO franchise in that game, along with some great new developments, but overall, it just did not feel the same, and even hardcore fans like me, who really like that game, will admit that.

It got MUCH worse with HALO 5: Guardians that game NOBODY talks about or plays anymore, where the devs implemented “aiming down sights”, made sprint unlimited and permanent, and monetised the absolute shit out of the multiplayer aspect. On top of that, the campaign was hopeless, it made no sense whatsoever, and the Chief himself barely featured in it – and actually, neither did a Halo ring of any kind. The fans turned hard against HALO because of that game, and it has never recovered since then.

The soul and identity of HALO has been destroyed, and the franchise itself has morphed from a genre-defining leader, into a bland and unrecognisable follower. All of the great stuff that made HALO so unique and distinct, has been eroded away by YEARS of stupid politically correct decisions.

The hard reality is that HALO succeeded precisely because it was a right-wing, religiously-centred, masculine game – in spite of its own developers, who were for the most part your typical liberal weenies:

All you have to do, is to play the early HALO games to get a sense of just how balls-out MANLY they were – especially the original, which is still endlessly playable in spite of its flaws.

The Marines were all men. The guns were loud and heavy. The Master Chief was an unstoppable 7-foot-tall walking tank, who could mow down hordes of enemies using his suit, tactics, weapons, and deep understanding of combat. The gameplay was intense and thrilling, the enemies were tough and brutal, and the story was deeply engaging.

All of the Bungie-era HALO games preserved these elements, for the most part – the core ethos of the games was of an outnumbered and outmatched humanity fighting heroically and tragically against an overwhelmingly superior and religiously motivated foe. This was not a game or a franchise for weaklings, soyboys, and trannies – it was a franchise for MEN, who wanted to play as a strong, silent, powerful hero giving his all to save his species. Those games worked because they preserved that core identity, while tinkering a bit around the edges – HALO: Reach, for instance, allows you to play SPARTAN B-312 as a woman, if you want, but the canon says clearly that Noble 6 was male, and died a man’s death.

HALO 4 changed that formula somewhat, by having a more emotive and vocal Master Chief. Many old-school fans would argue that they turned him into a total simp for Cortana, but… well, given what H4tana looked like, can you really blame him?

From H5:G onwards, nothing about the tone, character, gameplay, or general story really make a whole lot of sense anymore. HALO Infinite did a great job of salvaging much of what was lost, but it was too little, too late.

And now, with HALO being passed over to Activision, I think it is safe to say that the franchise’s identity will be destroyed completely. There will be nothing left to distinguish it from the usual CoD-slop with endless battle passes and seasons, annual releases with limited quality control, and purely multiplayer focus with no time or effort spent on world-building and lore.

I think it is time for us old-school fans to admit that HALO is dead and gone. It was great while it lasted, but Activision is not going to succeed in creating a genuinely great HALO game – because it is not in that organisation’s DNA to understand what made the franchise great in the first place. They do not understand those core elements, they never built a studio structurally around those things, and their approach to building games – starting from the game engines themselves – is antithetical to everything that makes HALO what it was.

On a personal level, all I can say is that the latest new era of HALO – we’ve been through like 6 of them already by now – is so bad that I haven’t even lived up to my original aim of completing HALO: Campaign DEvolved. Seriously, I got so fed up of playing it, that I switched over to the MCC and started playing H:CEA again – and I’m loving it.

The remaster is a completely different game and needs to be played differently from the original – that much is obvious – but then we should never have been sold a “remaster” in the first place. We should have been told that it is a new game with a touched-up face that only superficially resembles the legendary construct that it replaced.

As for Activision-Halo – well, I am not about to get my hopes up. Indeed, if anything, I think that, once the next HALO game fails spectacularly, we might finally get Microslop to jettison the property and its IP completely. If they finally sell it all, then we might one day get someone making a genuinely great HALO game – but it will be a long time before that happens.