‘I Made It Proper and They Are Breaking It for No Motive’ — One of many Key Members of the Authentic Halo Dev Group Would not Sound Thrilled With Microsoft’s Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced

Microsoft has lastly unveiled Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced, a remake of the marketing campaign portion of Bungie’s beloved Halo: Fight Advanced. Halo followers have spent a lot of the weekend debating the adjustments Halo Studios has made for this upcoming 2026 shooter, from the addition of dash to the extra pristine artwork fashion. However what do the builders of Halo: Fight Advanced itself make of the remake?

Jaime Griesemer is without doubt one of the key builders behind Halo. He was most concerned with designing Halo’s well-known ‘30 seconds of enjoyable’ gameplay loop and designed a lot of the marketing campaign itself. Now artistic director at Highwire Video games (Six Days in Fallujah), Griesemer took to X / Twitter to ship an early verdict on gameplay footage popping out of Microsoft’s Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced reveal.

He didn’t sound impressed.

“You aren’t supposed to have the ability to take the Warthog as much as steamroll the Hunters,” Griesemer stated. “I deliberately positioned rocks in the way in which so that you needed to battle them on foot. When you’ll be able to simply smash the crates out of the way in which it wrecks the encounters.

“However the worst half? They put bushes within the touchdown space of the WooHoo Bounce. Lame.”

Let’s unpack this a bit. Griesemer is criticizing a key a part of the enduring marketing campaign mission, The Silent Cartographer: the primary encounter with two Hunters. Within the authentic Halo, this battle is supposed to be performed with Grasp Chief on-foot (gamers quickly found it was doable to brute power a Warthog into the sector). However in Microsoft’s remake, gamers can freely take their Warthog as much as the Hunters and experience roughshod over their hapless victims. I think about the Hunters, with their dying breaths, gurgling: “no truthful!”

(Oh, and that WooHoo Bounce? Griesemer defined: “There’s a ramp that’s imagined to have a bunch of jackals on the touchdown spot. Your gunner would at all times say ‘Woohoo!’ If you received airborne.”)

It’s truthful to say Griesemer’s tweet, seen 2.3 million occasions, has sparked a response on-line, with some followers insisting the extent structure change ruins the gameplay movement, others saying this transformation and others like it’s going to make the sport extra enjoyable. As for Griesemer, in a subsequent tweet, he defined that if Microsoft goes to alter Halo’s crates to be dynamic, then they need to have additionally redesigned the encounters that use them as everlasting cowl.”

He continued: “Most individuals pressured the Warthog via BECAUSE of the Hunters. The introduction of the Hunters was imagined to be intimidating and tough, however within the mild so you’ll be able to perceive them. Then you definitely meet them in an enclosed darkish space and they’re even more durable. However then you definately get Rockets and Autos and switch the tables. It’s a 3 act play of enemy design and also you need to throw it in a blender. Fantastic, it’ll go down simpler however it’s not going to style pretty much as good.”

And: “It’s just like the dance remix of a traditional tune that skips the intro and the bridge and simply thumps the refrain time and again.”

Griesemer later supplied a possible rationalization for this transformation: “On additional evaluation I’m positive it’s as a result of the autos take harm and so that you’re simply as more likely to destroy the hog as get it over the rocks. If something that makes it -worse- as a result of -none- of the automobile tips are going to work anymore.”

One other facet of Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced that Griesemer has taken problem with is the addition of an non-compulsory infinite dash button. Dash appears to be the most important speaking level about Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced; when you can select to not dash, some are saying utilizing it destroys Halo: Fight Advanced’s traditional, thought of gameplay tempo and thus its sense of marvel. Others say consider it’s important for the enjoyable issue.

Griesemer doesn’t sound like a fan of sprinting within the Halo remake, both. In one other tweet, he identified that the participant was capable of dash into The Silent Cartographer’s shaft vignette so quick that it broke the music transition. “Who is that this for?” he requested.

Then: “If the world isn’t scaled to dash, it is possible for you to to trivially skip encounters.”

Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced’s Needler, too, has precipitated fairly the kerfuffle. This iconic Halo weapon shoots lethal needles into an enemy, then, after a cool-sounding cost, they explode. The Needler stands out as a result of the ammo — the needles themselves — stick out the highest of the gun, so you’ll be able to simply see how a lot ammo you will have at any given second. Nonetheless, Microsoft noticed match so as to add an ammo counter on the Needler, simply in case.

This modification has drawn some ridicule on-line, and Griesemer is clearly not a fan. “By far probably the most comically pointless embellishment in the entire announcement,” he stated. “I’m unsure it isn’t intentional satire.”

Then: “However why would you add an ammo counter to a weapon that IS an ammo counter within the first place?”

In response to Griesemer’s authentic, now viral tweet on Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced, one person accused the veteran designer of “crying” about nostalgia, to which he responded: “As a result of I made it proper and they’re breaking it for no cause.”

He continued: “… I feel there are dozens of adjustments (reload speeds, no well being packs, falling harm, and so forth) that make the sport ‘slicker’ however finally much less fascinating.”

After Bungie left Halo behind to develop Future, Microsoft, by way of what was referred to as 343 Industries, continued the franchise with Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, and 2021’s Halo: Infinite. The web would recommend that with these video games, Microsoft has struggled to recreate the Bungie “magic,” for need of a greater time period. Definitely Bungie’s Halo video games are extra fondly remembered than Microsoft’s. However why has Microsoft struggled so?

Griesemer was requested this query, and in his response revealed his ideas on the thought of remaking Halo and persevering with to make new Halo video games now, practically 25 years after Fight Advanced got here out.

“It’s not the early 2000s anymore,” he stated. “Halo is of its time, perhaps greater than some other recreation franchise. So they’re always making an attempt to both take Halo out of 2001 and modernize it (which breaks it) or take gamers again to 2001 with nostalgia (which is not possible).”

One member of the unique Halo workforce who sounds thrilled with Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced is Marcus Lehto, who was the artwork director on Fight Advanced and thus closely concerned within the iconic look of Halo itself. Lehto, who just lately left the now shuttered Battlefield 6 developer Ridgeline Video games (and hit out at EA for not correctly credited former employees), supplied a optimistic evaluation of Halo Studios’ work.

“My sincere impression of seeing the brand new Halo Marketing campaign Advanced is that this,” he stated on X / Twitter. “I completely love the place that is going. The sport appears to be like and feels real. It is beautiful in a method I want we might have constructed it initially again in 2001. It warms my coronary heart to see Halo CE like this.”

Halo: Marketing campaign Advanced isn’t out till 2026 (and possibly close to to the sport’s twenty fifth anniversary in November), so Halo Studios has time to react to a few of the suggestions it’s seen and make adjustments — if that’s what it needs to do, in fact. It might stick with its weapons on the likes of dash, these rocks, and the Needler’s ammo counter. In the meantime, the Halo group continues to debate the adjustments, fussing over each element and what it means for the tone, really feel, and gameplay of Bungie’s seminal shooter. I believe this will likely be a operating theme properly into 2026.

Wesley is Director, Information at IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.