With the state of Halo Infinite now, Halo 4 is looking damn good on its 10th anniversary

Halo 4 10 years ago today it came out. What happened?

The game had incomprehensibly big shoes to fill after the conclusion of the OG Halo trilogy. Passed from Bungie to 343 Industries, it truly was the start of a new era for the sci-fi series. Bungie went to work on a new universe (you may have heard of it) now that he had wrapped up his story with great flourish and bombast.

343 arrived as a mix of construction worker and interior decorator, building an extension to a lavish house and seeing if he could replicate (or even evolve) the entire structure. Who knows? Maybe if he did a good job, the franchise could shine a decade from now?

Fast-forward to 2022 and the custody study has absolutely screwed it up. Admittedly, Halo Infinite’s campaign was a brave step into the open world. The last 10 years of narrative leaps 343 took are quickly over as Master Chief embarks on his next big non-split-screen adventure. Multiplayer is a different story entirely, with core gameplay of genuine quality but an overall package that’s hungry for meaningful updates thanks to the dismal live service it’s found itself in, and a money-hungry cosmetic ecosystem that’s always giving off frustration. and depression of its user base.

So what happened to that energy? That glorious bridge between the old work Bungie had done and the new ideas 343 had, without abandoning what made the original games great? This is best represented in the weaponry, which was greatly stretched with Halo 4. The SAW, which stood out as an amped-up assault rifle with much more power, fit nicely into the pre-existing arsenal of weapons. The railgun too… God, the railgun! This pistol achieved the same oomph as the Harpoon from Halo Infinite, but with more seriousness and feedback.

True, this was not true for some of the other new additions, especially with the Promethean weapons. Visually, they were great; digging deeper into the Forerunner-style tech we saw before with vibrant oranges and all sorts of floating elements everywhere. It’s a different look that’s still amazing. In terms of what they added in terms of gameplay… You got a slightly different shotgun that lacked that legendary power, the Boltshot that fell flat on the magnum in most ways, the silencer that fired bolts of uninteresting ammo. You have to give it up for the Promethean Sniper and Incineration Cannon though – they were great, even if they were a bit redundant against the pre-existing weapons.

As for the campaign, 343 had a good attempt at introducing a new faction of enemies, trying to capture what a post-Halo 3 Covenant would do and giving us fans a real reason to continue to care about what’s going on in the Halo universe. Halo. after Bungie. The studio did so by digging into the big unknowns established in previous titles, taking Master Chief into unique worlds we’ve never seen before, and (controversially), playing with Cortana. How did I like it in the past? Meh, it was fine. But it did set the stage for a new storyline, and it gave Master Chief and players something to do besides wade through the stagnant world that Bungie has already visited, explored from pole to pole, and rocketed away from.

But the multiplayer mode was so good. Some really brilliant maps were introduced with the game, such as Adrift, Exile, and Haven. God, Haven was so good. All the game modes that people loved – I remember losing days with SWAT or Big Team Battle. I remember building a massive collection of Spartan armor, unlocked by leveling up to raunchy levels or completing really hard Commendations that pushed you to accomplish unique goals that mixed things up. Hey guys, in the past, you could actually unlock this kind of stuff through in-game feats. wild right? There’s also no battle pass in sight, just DLC map packs that let you spend money on new content – wild.

Spartan Ops was perhaps the first whiff of live service hell in the Halo franchise. Replacing the gunfight, this was a series of weekly PvE content updates that you (and maybe a few friends) could take to keep up with the post-campaign narrative. The Spartan IVs and Halsey did all kinds of nonsense. If you had told people that this, a constant churning of lackluster mulch that lacks the energetic pulse that made Halo special in the first place, with Halo’s aesthetic being like a skinned face on a horror movie monster, would better represent the series a decade later. line… Well, there would be calls to Lenny the series, and he would be up front holding the shotgun while the gem that once shone on the Xbox Emerald crown looks out and dreams of rabbits.

Fast forward to today and we don’t even get that. And if we did, it would be released on a bi-monthly schedule, with each release evaporating before our eyes like a sacrifice on the altar of FOMO. The game also had Forge, which later iterations would ignore, as well as a general feeling that the game wasn’t fighting for your time against an industry full of time vampires. It was, in my mind as a 14-year-old, the starting line of a really exciting time for Halo. A few years later, I wouldn’t even complete Halo 5. A few years after that, I just look at Infinite with sadness.

In hindsight, Halo 4 was absolutely a starting point for an exciting new era of Halo that could have been. One with a new vision, fresh ideas, and passionate hearts and minds behind the company.

With Halo 4, we see the glory in that effort. Back then, it really was as if we were waving to the Titanic from the shore, smiling as she gloriously sailed into icy waters.