Joseph Staten back in charge of Halo's Campaign

The same blog post announcing this reaffirms 2021 release. Joe isn’t starting over. He is making sure stuff fits together cohesively into a finished product for the campaign.

Yes saw it but we’ll see if they manage the project like it should or maybe there are problems deeper than we thought.

Uh huh…I don’t believe it for a second.

I’ve thought for a while this game has been in complete developmental hell and this only reaffirms it.

You don’t make a move like this just to reaffirm things or just see the process out, sorry I just can’t buy that.

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All games are development hell. Even the Bungie Halo’s. Even the Last of Us was development hell. Of course the blog is marketing but I prefer to trust that more then some random forum poster.

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Eh? This kinda thing happens all the time in all forms of business. Bringing trusted veterans into the fold to land the plane, so to speak. The purpose of this is to bring in someone who has been in this situation before and successfully got the game (Halo 2) across the finish line.

I don’t really get this notion the game was in ‘development hell’. Every single source on that stems from unsubstantiated rumors (usually debunked ones) and the impression the visuals/tech was way behind target.

The only credible rumor we did get on the matter pointed more to a disconnect b/t engineering (aka graphics tech leads) and marketing ignoring their concerns and pushing ahead. Literally nobody was complaining about the game design shown in July. It sounds like it was purely a visuals issue. That takes a while to fix and get right, but making sure the campaign gameplay and storytelling are nailed down is Joe’s department. 15 months to sort the visuals should be enough time given how much work has already gone into the assets.

Who knows what’s going on over at 343 but MS would be crazy to spend the amount of time effort and money on them again when they have other studios now that could pick up the slack.

5+ years, 500 mil., Other 1st party studios working on it, Changes at high positions in 343 during dev., Certain Affinity brought in, Delay after first gameplay showing, New SP and MP “project heads” brought in

Yup…totally smooth…

Not saying it has gone totally smooth. I’m saying that the issues with its graphics are certainly resolvable in 15 months. Especially with all the help. I don’t think you bothered reading the thread. Joe is not overturning anything or starting over and the new MP “lead” is there because he has a great track record with flighting, which if anything suggests they will move to do public betas.

Certain affinity has been helping on infinite since last year so I doubt it. They are most likely making multiplayer maps.

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Good point. Only just read about their timeline a moment ago.

Halo Infinite was going to launch this November so im pretty sure the game itself is done and probably playable from start to finish. My guess is that Staten is there to make sure it’s polished, fine tuned, they add Ray Tracing, eliminate the technical issues like the pop-in, etc. so it can be fully ready to launch in November 2021.

I don’t see it getting pushed into 2022 because again, the game is basically done and has been built for years around Xbox One so whatever design decisions have been made simply aren’t going to change at this point.

Why would they delay the game an entire year if its basically done

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I think he is here to rally the campaign team, put the parts together and polish it, and get it done. Somehow like Rod Fergusson.

Great news !

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Virtually no game has a smooth development cycle. There’s a fascinating article written by Geoff Keighley about the development of half life 2 which was delayed for a year just a week before it was supposed to launch. They even considered cutting that game in half to ship it on time. (Does that sound familiar?) 5 years is obviously a long time but that’s nowhere near the most for a modern game. Last of us 2 took 6 years despite dropping multiplayer and had 2000 staff working on it by the end. Suicide squad will have 7 years of Dev time before they are done and cyberpunk is into year 8. Red dead 2 took 8 years and still didn’t ship with its multiplayer. The new cod will hit it’s date because they had an entirely different team working on the single player.

As for the state of Halo infinite the graphics were certainly rough but I didn’t see anything else wrong with it. The movement and gunplay looked solid and ran at what looked like a locked 60fps. Maybe the ai was a little lacking and maybe there could be a touch more acceleration with the grappleshot, but that’s pretty much it. There’s been some hate for the writing but there was more life in that 1 minute interaction between the chief and the pilot than anything in either Destiny. The music we’ve heard so far has been fantastic. The more open design is absolutely the right move for the franchise and the multiplayer just needs to build on the very solid foundations set by Halo 5. The forge mode in Halo 5 was comfortably the best in the series. I don’t see why this will be any different.

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The game itself is probably done meaning they can play it but its not done for retail. Look at Cyberpunk 2077. CDPR said months ago that the game is finished and completely playable from start to finish yet it’s still as of now, almost three months away. The design is finished, the world, the enemies, all that stuff.

It’s just fine tuning, bug testing, QA, polishing, fixing the lighting, add Ray Tracing which does need to be properly implemented and fixing the technical issues. Plus, they are all working from home so what would probably be a six month delay is more like a year.

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Great news! They’re bringing some of the band back together. Sounds like the single player campaign is what is needing the most work right now. If anyone can get it done, it’s Joe. I don’t think anyone can say he doesn’t understand Halo!

We’re not even to September yet. There’s still time to do a lot of great things and get this out before summer. That’s my selfish hope at least!

2022 baby!!! Bank on it

The blog clearly states he’s just there for “a bit.” Not some ten year long plan.

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Who says it’s an entire year? It kinda depends what they wanna do with the visuals I bet.

Papa Staten returns!