If people want a brand new “feature complete” Halo game they’re going to have to wait 7-9 years due to the nature of game development.
Halo 3 built upon Halo 2 and Halo 2 built upon Halo 1. Like the Forza Motorsport games Forza Horizon games, they able to iterate on pre-existing engines and tools to help shorten development time.
A new game would presumably use a new engine. Something they may have to develop and would take a good couple years to develop an early version. If they’re using a pre-existing engine they may take a good 6 to 8 months to become intimately familiar with it. So there’s no benefit of an iterative process.
Add to that the ever increasing asks for detail and fidelity and you’re extending development time there.
I would compare this to something like Grand Theft Auto in where there is a project so large that no other game compares. Completely different types of projects but the scope of software development is just as large when we look at all of Halo’s features.
Listing them out here:
- full length campaign with a variety of locales, full mocap, voice acting, mission design (many video games are this alone)
- full online multiplayer gaming suite with a dozen maps, full range of weapons and vehicles (a ton of FPS games don’t even have vehicles), full range of modes (a game like Halo has far more modes than most multiplayer games), and fully featured pre and postgame lobby and party system. Include previously found features like the assassin ability with assassin customizations (missing an Infinite and a complete shame. It could have even been an MTX gold mine). Full progression system.
- full on level creator (again, there’s no other multiplayer FPS game with something like this)
- full-on programming script so people can make their own mods for the game from within the game (I can’t think of another game that has this)
- in-depth mode editor to create custom modes (heck I can’t even think of a game that does even this)
- support for split screen in multiplayer (thankfully this has never gone away in any of the Halo games)
- support for split screen in campaign mode (while it isn’t in Halo Infinite I think it should make a return)
- full armor customization including armor parts, colors, and skins.
- full weapon customization including parts and skins
- full vehicle customizations
- fully featured theatre mode
- fully featured machinima mode (again it’s hard to find any other game that does this, there may be some but it’s just increasingly rare)
- fully featured UGC browser to find, download, share, remix, and rate user created content from levels to prefabs to code to mods to modes.
- advanced Online features like match composer and custom games (their early omission from Halo Infinite was noticed by a lot of people, and the addition was quite welcome, So I have to mention these small little things If we’re talking about future completeness)
- robust AI bots used by the training mode and online multiplayer (was never a staple of the Halo series but Halo is the only game where any new feature introduced must be now included in all future games to be feature complete)
So as you can see the number of features in a game like Halo far surpasses 99.9% of games available out there and the scope of which as a software product compares to some of the biggest games out there that feature development times 8 years and greater.
People complain about GTA 6 taking so long but if it isn’t completely iterative like we saw with the GTA 4 expansions and with the online DLC for GTA V, it’s going to take a decade. Completely new engine and then expecting all of the previously released features to show up in this new one… You can’t do that in half a decade.