Has Halo Reached the End of the Ring?

There comes a time in every long-running franchise’s life where a question begins to fester in fans and non-fans’ minds: should this still be going? Look at Sonic, the MCU, DCEU, and countless others for examples. At a certain point, usually followed by a number of high-profile duds, the discussion keeps growing and growing until… well, until you’re Halo, I guess.

Bungie’s Halo 2 released for the original Xbox November 9, 2004. A decade later, on November 11, 2014, 343 Industries put out Halo: The Master Chief Collection, a remaster of the then-four mainline entries that contained a remake of the second game as its main selling point. If Halo 3 was the original blockbuster game as we know it today, a lot of that is thanks to the legwork done by its predecessor. In what’s commonplace nowadays, Microsoft promoted the game as a big cultural event you just had to be a part of. Then-executive Peter Moore famously revealed the game’s release with a tattoo on his arm at E3 2004 and the alternate reality game I Love Bees targeted the internet crowd, while trailers played in movie theaters (the first game to do so). Even rock bands like Breaking Benjamin and Hoobastank contributing “inspired-by” songs to the game’s soundtrack were part of a concentrated effort to hit non-players over the head that this was a game worth paying attention to.

And it was worth paying attention to: within the first day of its release, Halo 2 sold 2.4 million copies and made $125 million in revenue, becoming the biggest entertainment release in history. Critics called it a great sequel in nearly every way, and its multiplayer was the most-played title on Xbox Live for nearly two whole years until the original Gears of War launched on the Xbox 360. A healthy supply of post-launch DLC and the 360 being backwards compatible kept it going for a loooooooong time, to the point that Microsoft repeatedly pushed back the date it was going to shut down its servers. Master Chief Collection, while not without its faults, did its main job in bringing Halo 2 to a new console generation—and ensured on a playability level that Halo wouldn’t be forgotten.

Since 343 took full stewardship of the series, things haven’t entirely gone to plan. In 2015, Halo 5: Guardians saw a mixed response—much of it directed toward its campaign and narrative—that eventually resulted in 2021’s Halo Infinite. That game had a lot to carry on its back; along with celebrating the franchise’s 20th anniversary, it had a rough first showing and a reportedly troubled development that later resulted in several key team members leaving 343. It also had to clean up Guardians’ narrative threads and prepare the franchise for its next saga, and it didn’t really do that. Hearts and minds were won with Infinite’s free-to-play multiplayer, but whatever original ambitions the studio had for Infinite were considerably scaled back. Combined with a middling TV show and a diminished expanded universe, it’s grown clear in the past few years that Halo is disarray. Some of it’s self-inflicted, some may stem from Microsoft’s own uncertainty about what it wants from (or to do) with Xbox overall, but it’s been hard to ignore the elephant in the room.

In October, 343 changed its name to Halo Studios and revealed several new Halo game projects were being made with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. Its Unreal-made concepts all walk the Spartan walk and look the part, but they also show how limited the series’ visual playbook has become now. (Guardians tried to mix things up, but the game’s efforts to grow Halo weren’t all met positively.) Halo’s multiplayer is still aces and the most consistently good thing about the series; most of its ongoing issues surround its narrative. In some ways, Halo 2 is where this all started, given how controversial its campaign ended up being with the surprise reveal of two protagonists—players also take on the role of the Arbiter, a disgraced Covenant warrior tasked with hunting down dissenters voiced by Keith “The Man” David—and controversial cliffhanger ending.

But times have changed, and the franchise landscape is so different that cliffhangers feel more dangerous than ever. These days, a series could easily cut off whatever’s deemed expendable if it’s not an instantly beloved hit instead of giving it time to grow into itself. This has been the Halo’s biggest issue after Bungie moved on to other ventures, and it’s put the series’ single-player outings in a state of arrested development. It’s just not healthy for a series that’s been pulled around in so many directions so many times to try and keep going, especially one that continuously talks a big game and then stumbles when it comes to narrative payoff. Infinite wasn’t bad by any means, but it may have burned up whatever leftover goodwill and nostalgia from the original games that the series had.

None of this is to say that Microsoft just should melee Halo in the back of the head and bury it; Dragon Age: The Veilguard has shown that any series can make a comeback. Triple-A games are being afforded less time these days to make a genuine case for themselves pre and post-launch, and it would suck for Halo to be permanently declared MIA. But if Xbox is serious about keeping the franchise around and not wholly ditching it for Call of Duty, the series might need to take some proper time off so Halo Studios can determine both what it wants Halo to be and how to best get there.

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