Halo coming to the PC after nearly 12 years with the Master Chief Collection - Sensationalist Headlines

I'm hopeful for Infinite but worried about yet another timeskip to start off a game. They've already done it with both 4 and 5 and it got only more jarring each time. 4 felt better because the story picks up with Chief still aboard the Forward Unto Dawn, but in 5 it's a year later in totally new places with seven new main cast Spartans. The more I think about 5 the more weird and disconnected it feels from everything else. It feels like 5 really could have used two or three missions in the beginning with either familiar territory or familiar characters, like where maybe you're playing as Chief in a solo mission first before being reintroduced to Blue Team, then going on a mission with them to chase the Didact, and finally killing him only to reveal the threat of Cortana looming much larger. Then you can have Blue Team go AWOL, and then you bring in Fireteam Osiris doing their thing before being tasked with hunting down Chief & friends.

That's what happens when you shove so much of your story and worldbuilding into non-game formats. The expectation that even a fraction of people buying a mainline Halo game will also spend a significant amount on your EU offerings as well and so putting your eggs into that basket is extremely misguided at best. If you have to purchase external media to get a grasp on who and where you even are at the outset of a game's story then there's something fundamentally wrong with your storytelling. The only 343 era novel I've read so far was Glasslands and yet I'm still dumbfounded they killed 'Mdama off in a fucking cutscene with zero introduction.

The Didact was a dumpster fire of a villain, which made the story as a whole extremely unengaging. I didn't care about the dude, he looked uninteresting and he was extremely cartoonishly evil. Then he dies in a cutscene within the same game, having absolutely no time to actually do anything. The most hilarious thing is that they brought him back in a comic, only to kill him in the same fucking comic just like in the games.

The Didact could immobilize you by waving his hand and he still lost. If he'd taken 5 minutes to defeat you in person at any point there wouldn't be a Halo 6.

Bad Blood (which happens right after Halo 5's ending) is pretty good because it's about Buck and his old ODST crew BUT THEY KILLED THE ROOKIE TWO BOOKS PRIOR

timeskips aren't inherently bad, but halo 5 just feels like it starts off partway into the story. the inciting incident in halo 5's plot is that forerunner stuff everywhere is activating all at once and causing massive destruction, but we don't actually get to see that starting off to make us care about it. instead, we start off with osiris off on some mission to fetch halsey in response to events that already happened a few days ago, with just a few sentences of exposition on the pelican to give us any context about what's going on.

Yeah infinite is dropping the story completely, but they also said it will be new Player friendly. They've compared it to Halo ,1 where you dropped into the middle of a war you know nothing about.

One of the things they got wrong with 4 and 5 is that the Chief talks too much. I hope they dial it down a little.

At least until the lore people go "Well hey, what about this? You can't exactly just leave on a massive cliffhanger ofCortana being a villainous mastermind bent on essentially destroying the galaxyand then just plop us on a Halo ring and say "none of that previous shit happened." What happened with Cortana? What are the results of her actions since Halo 5?" I too would prefer Halo 5 never happened, god damn I wish it never happened, but it has happened, and simply ignoring it won't invalidate the fact that it did happen.

She showed up on a Halo and ended up imprisoned by its defenses. Beat her to the control room to win!

I don't know what will happen in Halo Infinite's story, but I do know this: It WILL end in a Warthog run

Maybe the halo ring that Chief and those marines are on is one of many where all of humanity was teleported to as a result of Cortana activating the Guardians? Like, in order to enforce the Mantle and keep everybody under permanent martial law, every sentient being was brought to Forerunner installations, and now Infinite will be about trying to regroup and escape from Cortana's reach. That could actually be pretty neat, if it means bringing all the Covenant remnants, all the Sangheili, all the humans, and all the Spartans onto the rings for some good ol' fashioned brawling like back in Halo 1.

I wonder what fan favorite characters are going to be killed next in a book. Still pissed about Rookie. That's probably my biggest complaint about 343 story wise, they have important events happen in books that should've happened in games. Killing off major characters in side media is just gonna confuse people when they ask what happened to so and so.

I just want it to come out already

Halo Reach testing starts some time this month.

is that confirmed or still tentative? "we plan to" vs "we must"

Apparently if all goes well. I think delays could happen but so far nothing points to it based on what they've said.

just sounds like it's on track unless there's a big "OH FUCK" moment

Yeah, 343 seems to be very cautious about giving release dates just in case things go wrong, which is a very good way to go about it. It keeps expectations low.

i mean considering expectations before the announcement were "halo is never coming back to pc", i think any expectation at this point is a high bar lol

Also considering the state MCC originally launched in back in late 2014 (it's really been just over 4 years since MCC has been out...), and how long it took them to be able to commit to fixing it, they don't want to make the same mistake again for PC. ESPECIALLY NOT for PC. PC audiences are especially critical if a port is not up to their standards. Multiply this by 5 (or 7 if you count H:CE A and H2A as their own ports), and you're gonna have a torrent of stress and outrage coming your way if you get none of these right. Locking yourself to a rigid schedule of "THIS HAS TO BE DONE NOW" or "THIS HAS TO RELEASE ON THIS DAY" is definitely a sure fire way for that to happen again. Taking your time, putting in lots of public testing, and only releasing it when there's no major hurdles or issues though? That's ideal. That is most certainly how they should approach it. In today's gaming market of rushing games out to meet financial deadlines and "fixing it later" under the guise of the "live service experience," I applaud 343, Ruffian, and Splash Damage for taking the approach they are with this. If MCC on PC not being complete until mid to late 2020 means each port of each game is solid, then I'd gladly take that over rushing them all out to be done by late Summer or early Fall of this year.

Not to mention that all the zelda art styles actually look good.

I was given an email a few days ago saying the first batch of insiders will be picked "within a few weeks". =/= this month, but it may (see what I did there.)