Originally published at: Microsoft pounds on the dead horse that is the Master Chief, hoping money falls out | Boing Boing
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It’s funny because Bungie wanted to make a game like Destiny, Microsoft said no thank you and Activision gave them a huge ass budget to make it. And now 343 is now making a live game like Infinite to deal with a live game demand haha.
Not saying the way Bungie is doing things these days are perfect (i’m still laughing over the fact they are in a way trying to sell the Gjallarhorn for around $25 to $30) but they certainly had more time to figure out this live game thing more than 343 did.
But I still think Microsoft is smart for trying to push the series in this direction. Traditional fps series like Call Of Duty and Battlefield aren’t doing too well sales wise this year but the stand alone CoD battle royale game is doing well while EA’s Apex Legends is now widely considered the company’s premiere fps game and not Battlefield.
Talk about bad storytelling, Destiny is the worst! Bungie went from having the Ultimate Video Game Hero to some seriously non-sensical crap. The gameplay, early ‘raids’ like Vault of Glass and PVP were great. The weapons grinding wasn’t so awful – but the story just got more and more awful.
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I always read that as Master Chef.
It would be a different game, and tasty!
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This franchise needs to be retired before there is a Police Academy crossover.
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Honestly, they tried to do a lot (and I mean A LOT) of storytelling outside of the game which had led to many problems in the past. There’s entire youtube channels out there dedicated to trying to untangle those strings. They have gotten so much better with in game story these days (with stories that touch on themes about loss, forgiveness, identity, xenophobia and domestic terrorism) but it’s all a matter of opinion. I really can’t blame you for getting burned though.
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Ramen shop, baby.
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Came here to say much the same thing. There was definitely a protracted period of “Lost” (tv show) level lore chaos. It’s still a mess, but it’s at least getting a little better.
The most infuriating thing to me is the D2 team apparently ignored everything that the live team figured out (eventually) in D1. We’re just finally getting to a point where D2 isn’t a boring slog with with decidedly anti-player game systems.
Inventory management (vault, lack of loadouts, etc) is laughably bad this far along, the HELM/tower separation is obnoxious, cheating is still prolific, and matchmaking in PvP is still hot garbage…
…but it’s much better than it was.
RIP Cayde-6.
But hey! We’ll give you this Drifter character, who might be interesting except your interaction will revolve around this game mode that people really don’t like and we will basically ignore except to make you periodically grind for reasons.
I am amazed that Bungie was able to create a game that had a good deal of paperwork the players had to do every day to stay current.
Madness. I remember the frustration when everything they’d figured out in Destiny 1 – from weapons balance to raids, to PVP and Uber-PVP only to toss it all and start over in D2 with only the worst parts.
This was independent of the critically poor storytelling and character development. Killing Cayde-6 was literally removing the only part of the story-element anyone enjoyed at that point. I have no idea what happened after the 93rd sister or brother or father or uncle or whatever of Crota showed up and I couldn’t have any good weapons because there was no way to get a squad together that could survive in the uber-PVP and the raids were so awful and boring. Stand here, run there, stand there, pour out DPS and run-- hope everyone does what they are told. Not a lot of fun involved. Early raids were really masterpieces.
Paperwork.
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I was going to say some of this. 500 inventory slots are not enough. Supposedly, their solution is going to be weapon crafting but I have the feeling it’s going to be slightly similar to how you could reroll weapons back in the House Of Wolves expansion back in year 1 in D1. Selectable perks would cut alot of the unnecessary grind out of the game.
At least they had enough brains to not let console players match with pc players in PvP (which is something Halo players are complaining about with it’s current cheater problems).
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Ha- Paperwork… err… “Rituals” indeed.
And apparently the only person at Bungie who knew how to make a sort/filter was an intern back in the Summer of 2017.
But don’t worry, third party Devs can fill this space, just always use DIM. Except of course, we won’t let them manage mods because for some dumb effing reason those cost one of our 95 different currencies to change around on equipment.
As for cheaters… it’s gotten slightly better, but there are still plenty of them in crucible. I have a spinfoil hat theory that anti-cheat is only enabled for Trials. Halo cheaters were fast, but it doesn’t feel as prolific as Destiny (yet).
I hate PVP and Battle Royale stuff. It’s not my thing. For my part, I got tired of trying to decipher the descriptions and figure out if a CoD or Battlefield release had a single player campaign or not.
So at least for my minuscule contribution to their sales slump, it’s because a single player fan can’t tell if their games have much for him, while the stand alone BR game does exactly what it says on the tin.
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I play a lot of Destiny but I’ll pick Halo Multiplayer over Destiny anyday. Currently it’s full of too many insta-kills, ultra quick ttks, mods, weapons and variants of weapons it’s never going to be a fully even fight. Being dead before you can react gets boring fast. Once I burn though the campaign of Halo I’ll be right back running Destiny content when I want coop play and story.
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I played through the first Halo again when I got a week of free Game Pass in January, and I don’t really get why people remember it so fondly. There’s a couple of cool bits in big open spaces but for the most part it’s a boring slog through hordes of samey enemies in copy-pasted hallways and small rooms. Was it just the first time somebody made a decently playable shooter on a console? Or is it just about the multiplayer? I mostly played Quake 3 at the time for that.
I think there’s an element of that. Looking back, the first game is a bit sparse but I remember enjoying it at the time and I spent many hours playing split-screen multiplayer with my mates.
The next couple of games really built on what was a solid starting point with things like dual-wielding and more vehicles (as I recall) plus of course online multiplayer.
I never really pay much attention to the storyline in video games but I think I played through at least the first three games more than once, often in co-op, so I think the campaigns were pretty decent. I very much got into PvP multiplayer too though as with any online multiplayer game it needs a fair amount of work to be able to compete.
+1 for Quake 3. I played so much of that in my pre-Xbox days (mainly with the Threewave mod). I played a bit of Quake Champions more recently and couldn’t believe the speed of it.
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First thing: I LOVE the headline. 
Second: I’m glad that Cortana is back to wearing something that looks like a uniform and has ceased being (male) fanservice.
Third: I remember concept art for the original Halo indicating that the Warthog vehicles were powered by electric motors in each of the wheels. Tremendously disappointing that the developers decided to include internal combustion engine sound effects. Apparently they’re really leaning into that ancient technology this time.
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Fuck whoever wrote this “article” btw, and fuck Google for recommending it me. This “article” sounds so brain dead and ramble-y, and terribly misinformed to boot. Actually do the damn research before writing half-assed “articles” like this
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Thank you for putting “article” in quotes as this is a “blog post” and accurately, not an “article.” I am surprised by your complaint that the “blog post” is “ramble-y” as most other complainants claim it is empty and too short to hold any useful information.
The outrage at this sharing of a trailer is odd. I said I am hopeful the multiplayer is good? Why was this post controversial at all?
Can you please explain what part of the “blog post” is misinformed? Is Cortana not embittered?
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