Well we are already in 2024 I created five videos that I loved making and now I find myself a little embarrassed because I have been putting off something for several months now, a very particular subject that rocked me throughout my adolescence I didn't really know how to approach it because it is more personal and emotional than the others if in my five previous videos I did the narrative review with a little gameplay there, it will be purely storytelling on a subject that is very dear to me in this video I am not going to talk about a game in particular but rather an experience obviously it is always specific to everyone especially in the way of marking us for some it has been a sport in particular for others it could have been certain holidays spent in the tropics and for me It was Halo well you can laugh it is indeed the speech of the enormous geek who has never particularly appreciated sunbathing for those who expect a complete retrospective of the license today that's not exactly going to be the case I'm going to explain a lot of elements to help you understand its golden age while going through the reasons for its fall which is still current with Halo Infinite, or Halo 6, the last one today, Halo is a license that has completely disappeared from the video game landscape and even if infinite which I have just mentioned has made a slight comeback in recent months it has put the last nail on the coffin of the confidence that the fans had in Halo you have to keep in mind that at the time this license was doing much better sales than Call of Duty obviously today this is no longer the case with all the changes made to the license from the 4th episode but it there are still certain rare occasions where we can see Halo fans come out from their nest like here for example, during a trailer at the E3 2018 for those who don't know, it was the biggest video game gathering in the world with lots of conferences Including this one, showing us at the very end Halo infinite, which finally seems to restore its letters of nobility to the licence WELL I think you understood, the license no longer has its former glory and this video is not intended to take aim at the very questionable second trilogy which caused its downfall I want to focus on the essential to make you understand why I loved Halo so much but the licence is 22 years old and there are many episodes I will still point out a few important points. it is a license which appeared in 2001 at the same time as the first Xbox and which destroyed everything if Xbox was able to enter gaming and create the trilogy that many know it is mainly thanks to this game which revolutionized first person shooter games to give an example some have surely learned it recently with the TGR (french youtuber) video but if today health recharges automatically in Call of Duty it is thanks to Halo In fact, there isn't a single thing that Halo 1 didn't excel at it was one of the precursors of FPS as we know them today with a well-developed storyline unique gameplay that is both easy to learn and difficult to master music of rare quality directed by Martin O'Donnell a.k.a GOD stunning graphics and brilliant multiplayer that could entertain anyone no but really, for the time Halo 1 was an earthquake in the world of video games wich attracted 6 MILLION SALES or a quarter of console buyers It's ENORMOUS it was the best-selling game in the United Kingdom in 2001 and in the United States in 2002 for a new license on a new console, it is unthinkable and if it was so successful in attracting crowds imagine what it must have been like a few hours before the release of the second episode 3 years later Halo 2 obliterated ALL EXPECTATIONS they really wanted to take the license to a higher level graphically it was sublime with cutscenes of a quality never seen before for the gameplay it's simple we had more different weapons and you can have one in each hand the scenario is just exceptional full of twists and turns which will lead us to be plunged into the problems of the Covenant yes I haven't talked about it yet but it's the aliens that we face and we're even going to play on their side by playing a high-ranking officer who was deposed because of the events of the first episode normally when I'm not playing the main character in a game it can quickly annoy me but here it was brilliantly executed in addition to not expecting it at and you remember earlier when i was talking about the music of Halo 1? well there... it's even better and i just don't have words you remember the revolutionary multiplayer in Halo 1? well Halo 2 did it again, thanks to the creation of Xbox Live know that if you can play your game of Warzone quietly today, that's because at the time, Xbox improved console online multiplayer by creating a service that was super efficient and accessible to everyone before on console, it was rarely stable and you had a sure chance of seeing yourself disconnected in Halo 2 we were treated to a new graphics engine which was specially designed for online gaming if before we could play with 4 to 8 players now we upgrade to 16 which is much more intense and immersive so obviously the game has scored some crazy sales scores with 2.4 million sales on the first day of its release in comparison with the direct competitor of Xbox, PlayStation has barely broken this record with spiderman 2, reaching 2,5M sales in one day and I'm not here to say my console is better no i absolutely DON'T CARE factually at the time they smashed everything and no one knew that Halo 2 was revolutionizing online multiplayer on console no more need to use broken dedicated servers no there you could join a group of friends by pressing a simple button and everything I have just told you about takes us directly to the heart of the golden age of Halo but you all know all good things come to an end to make you understand this era as well as the emotional investment of the players I must first show you the reasons for its decline which really began in 2012 rom this date and more precisely November 6, 2012 the saga begins its very slow descent into hell the reason simply comes from the fact that Bungie, the initial developers, want to work on something else they think they did a good job and want to work on Destiny so, they produce two last episodes, Halo 3 : ODST and Halo : Reach, then after that, over, they go on their side so, we absolutely have to find a replacement because Halo makes money so on Microsoft's side, we will do everything to maintain the license they therefore take well in advance from 2007 to create the studio 343 Industries they will take care of the license after Halo : Reach, the final episode of Bungie released in 2010 which is a prequel to the first episode which is a prequel to the first episode yes I can't imagine what a headache it must be when you don't know it, roughly it looks like this with Halo 3 which closing the license 343 Industries will therefore produce the 4th episode of the saga in 2012 and yeah unfortunately as you can imagine, the reception was very mixed because a new team means a new vision of things and that didn't please everyone. Well, for my part, I wasn't super objective in 2012, i loved everything I could obtain this license i found that the new direction was not that bad, the game was beautiful and it is also the most beautiful game on the Xbox 360 we see the Master Chief in another form the staging is excellent the scenario is much more highlighted compared to the previous episode for the soundtrack it is still divine, (but marty > all) even if they changed the mythical composer all in a very mystical atmosphere which can make us remind the best moments of the first game there were really some nice things in Halo 4 as I said, the music, the atmosphere, the scenario, everything was so good even if I can obviously understand some of the criticism I loved it buuuut... 343 Industries didn't understand its audience By prioritizing a more scripted and serious campaign they put aside the most important If the license started to sink because of the new direction taken by 343 Industries it is largely because of the general lack of fun in their games for me, it's the most important element in any game video you just need to know that in a Halo, it is immediately felt thanks to what the developers called the 30 seconds of fun SO this speech will be 20 years old and it is in my opinion still current because fun is ESSENTIAL and as I said just before the notion of fun is different depending on each or each game if we take an example from my videos I will find my fun in Red Dead thanks to its exceptional immersion in Hunt it will be with its Sound Design which is one of the best in the industry and in dying light it will be thanks to its gameplay which rewards risk-taking it's always different and as I said in the video about it (dying light) Nintendo is in my opinion the creator who has perfectly understood this concept it's the way in which the whole once put end to end will allow you to have an awesome experience but why am i talking about that ? to tell you how it works in Halo we have to put ourselves back in the context of the time we don't really have a feeling of progression and we has only one weapon per genre we have the assault rifle for the assault rifle the pistol for the pistol or the rocket launcher for the rocket launcher We didn't have tons of customisations and attachments like in Modern Warfare 2 (2009, not 2007, we can still make the comparison with MW1 from 2007) so we only have two main weapons on us grenades and a character who is not super fast but but but but That was the strength of Halo an easy-to-understand sandbox in which simple basics are given to allow the creation of hundreds of different situations Halo 1 and 2 already had its bases at the time but Halo 3 went further by improving and refining everything the whole game is more dynamic with excellent physics and a whole host of great new objects to use which can create understandable and terribly fun chaos it was also a time when we were satisfied with little in terms of progression and reward Halo 3 and its predecessors had absolutely everything in their game design to keep you in the game and I'm doing my little expert with this video but know that I started to know the license from the end of 2007 I must have been 12 or 13 years old and I understood nothing to the scenario but that didn't stop me at all from having fun, wanting to find all the secrets hidden in the different levels of the campaign because I knew I was going to have fun doing it at that time people were spitting on Halo 3 because it's story was inferior to Halo 2 it's true it was a little less worked but it was to highlight a multiplayer which would mark an entire generation of players they put almost everything into it and when a game comes out it's impossible to know the repercussions that an online mode can have, especially at a time when it's just becoming popular, we were already super happy to play with someone who wasn't in the same room and if this episode has made the license sacred by hitting 3 million sales on the day of its release It's not just because of the game itself because you should know that following in the footsteps of its two predecessors Halo was released on the Xbox 360 a console which once again improved the quality of online services and I really realized when writing this script that the Xbox multiplayer is more particularly Halo, it's the era which gives me the most nostalgia the moments when you received incessant messages from your best friend to play firefight on Halo 3 : ODST the invitations to join a group of friends in matchmaking or the period when receiving a voice message full of insults because you crushed an opponent was completely normal at the time I was a weird kid, not at all sociable but on my 360 I had some very special encounters just reading their nickname, which has now been disconnected for years, breaks my heart Names that disappeared overnight this console had really highlighted the relationship with others we can see it just by clicking on the main button of the controller we have a whole social part which is revealed with our friends the different invitations to a group the messages or even other social activities today they are simply stupid tabs which are no longer even highlighted it was simple, super effective and it perfectly shows the philosophy of Microsoft at the time to create an ecosystem which grows players interacting at a time not so long ago we had to go through online forums to connect and perhaps even had to do some manipulation otherwise it could crash it was as annoying as launching Amashi to play Minecraft with your friends in 2014 so it created a kind of excitement a desire to go and discover this world online because it seemed crazy to be able to simply turn on your console and play with others so easily as you could see, it doesn't lead always in the finest discussions, but it was normal to put on your headset and talk to others In Halo, it was even more usual to talk because it's a team game like in a Battlefield Bad Company 1 at the time, there is instantly a team spirit which is felt because by being together we are stronger but in Halo we will have to pay attention to something which is disappearing more and more these days friendly fire rip to this poor guy, i needed a good visual lol damn trully perfect scene friendly fire is always activated and for me it is really extremely important in a team game it is an element which has been there since the beginning of the license and which brings a whole dynamic of protection between the players we don't throw explosives everywhere because it could put you at a disadvantage by eliminating an ally yes indeed it can be annoying on a mistake if an ally kills you but the game will offer you to exclude him if he does it too often it leads to thinking about others they are in your game and you play with them in games today you are both in a team and on your own and if you had appreciated the people with whom you played hop there was a little button to continue with them it has a whole meaning, it sends a message to the other members of your party HI DO YOU WANNA PLAY WITH ME HELL YEAH in addition to that if there is something funny thing that happened during the game you could go into theatre mode which saved your last 10 Games to record anything (like this) u sukkkk and it's also thanks to him that I was able to do the quarter of my visuals for this video but you know what for the moment I talked about the campaign and the multiplayer games but that's not exactly that which was able to create the legendary community strength of Halo because if I consider that the license really began its golden age with the 3rd episode it is because with it a very special new mode was introduced. THE FORGE you could become this little boy, wander around the multiplayer map of your choice and then improve it with lots of small objects that you will have at your disposal the basic structures are untouchable but we could still have fun with it around thirty small elements to place it was not that huge and yet enough to allow a creative player to do what he wanted In Halo 3, there were originally 11 maps which were all very different and obviously it necessary starts somewhere, it's the sandtrap map that attracted all the first glances from the creators it really represents the mentality of the developers Maybe a team will have an advantage at the beginning of the fight, but we don’t care! we just want to have fun! and I'm not going to make jokes but it was really a sandbox it is super varied and allows lots of types of possible confrontation with a large playground limited areas at the border that kills you unless you’re in a vehicle. mystical interiors for close combat, a new incredible vehicle, exclusive to this map ! no more was needed, it allowed the first spark to be born among the players This place... was the first that started the designers’ intangible thirst, including myself it was awesome to discover all the forge's possibilities there was a wide variety of game modes that helped us discover every inch of a map hey bruh do u know Sgauth ?? ohh yehhh the one copying Ego ??? (french youtuber) EGJACTLY But it was still lacking something, because after having fun for a while with the forge, we realize that there’s no real element that allows to create a map trully different from the others you could enjoy putting boxes, weapons, vehicles,.. but we wanted more because there was a real potential in the forge i don’t remember if I’ve already told you that the developers were… awesome? On December 11th 2007, just a little bit more than 2 months after the Halo 3 release, appeared the map Foundry a simple, square place where you could change everything i liked changing maps that already existed, adding lots of little things here and there to see what it would look like but the best was to delete everything, to see what you could create It’s from this point that we realized all that the game could offer there was a huge enthusiasm helped by the game’s community system you could easily access to other player’s maps, you could put a dozen files under your profile to share them, it really made you want to take interest in the others every week, Bungie would display a few maps, modes and clips to which everyone could access. sometimes the files were messy but it was a real pleasure to wander on some player’s profile to see what they were happy to share. this system highlighted the creation of hundreds of maps and modes which have become legendary today It totally put invested players in the spotlight i couldn’t even tell how much maps I’ve created or even played on, but there must have been thousands it was simple, effective and seeing the success, the developers had one more time, a genius idea yeah in french it's also sandbox but we would translate it "bac à sable" 27 february 2009 According to Bungie, Sandbox was the ultimate map for the forge. you need an open field to create competitive and interesting maps? Check you want to play ball with friends or create a claustrophobic map for a zombie mode? Check you really want to create an aerial map but never found what you were looking for? Check the map was really interesting and honestly for the time, i don’t see how it was possible to offer more than that and I mainly talked about three cards for this video, but there were many more. this is a vast subject and as usual, I’d rather focus on my feeling there was not a moment that I considered lost because it allowed me both to have fun online and be creative because I love everything that is directly or indirectly related to the imagination you know, there’s only a few games that allows you to create maps with your friends. without searching very far, I could cite Garry’s Mod, Minecraft, Roblox and even Fortnite. and if the first aims to give free rein to the madness of the players by doing anything with anyone the other three are games which have a creative mode or even an online level editor and honestly, I think that none of these 3 games would’ve gone this far without this feature. giving the tools of its own game to its community is the best way to ask them to get involved in the best possible way. i think there’s no better feeling for a developer than seeing the creations of passionate players. I had this exact pleasure in-game on my Xbox 360 of course I played lots of other games but I spent most of my time in the Forge of Halo 3 because I always had new ideas in mind i was curious to do everything I could think of Time was flying so quickly and it was impossible doing better than Halo 3’s forge well... that’s what I thought in 2009 Released in 2010, Halo : Reach is for me a centerpiece with a much more serious and dramatic tone in the future, I’m going to make unique episodes on every Halo game that affected me and Reach might be the first one, though I have to say, Halo 3 ODST is a huge competitor Reach’s story is extremely good, gameplay introduces new features like sprinting, which was a lot criticized at the time musically, God managed to make all of his themes more mature and impactful he composes the music according to each scene this guy is so good i love him so much the cooperation is even better with the firefight oh and there’s something that I already told you about but I can’t remember Shit, what was it? Oh yeah! There that was what Bungie could do best, with a spectacular forge the possibilities went from infinite to infinite x2 because the forge was largely enhanced for example, if you wanted to make some object fly in Halo 3 it was a fcking torture You had to create a special little scaffolding to put the object on top of it, and then it had to stabilize making something straight was painful OR you had to ask a friend to take a teleporter, put the object you want on it, and wait until it’s stable, and then repeat it with EVERY. OTHERS. OBJECTS. basically, designing a good map on Halo 3 was about exploiting every bug possible
(this guys is probably a good forge buddy) fortunately we could block things in the air after a Halo 3 update in 2009, and it was enhanced in Reach where you could put an object inside the other Bungie understood that the huge success of Halo 3 was partly due to the forge so it was logic that they would invest a lot in Reach’s forge and they didn’t disappoint today it doesn’t look that impressive but for the time it was huge you could created what you wanted where you wanted generally, games engine and other creation system are complex, but in Reach’s enhanced forge, it was really complete and easy to learn if you were a little inventive it was easy creating a good map and I don’t know why I’m talking in past tense as everything is accessible on the Master Chief Collection on PC or Xbox (not sponsored, just buy it) Usually, in this kind of video, nostalgia is too important and distort the speech of course I always had good memories of these games because of everything I experienced in it but after playing it again for this video, i realized that it wasn’t the case I had to do hundreds of shots through all the levels of the campaign, listen again to the game’s soundtrack that I already know by heart, play custom games on Halo 3 and Reach and I LOVED it i thought I would get a bit bored but no, i didn't as I said in my Red Dead Redemption’s video, i usually waste my time trying to complete something, get xp or a new skin but in Halo i just didn’t care, i wanted to have fun today I feel like there’s an over-abundance of competition in online multiplayer games we play i remember playing Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, 2 years after discovering Halo 3, i was surprised by the amount of people who gave immense importance to their ratio because I had been lulled by bungie's mentality now with all the ranked game systems found in all the games in the world,
**or maybe it was BO1 the year after I don’t remember exactly** it grew so much that nobody realized the importance it took in the multiplayer game industry and the best example for this video is Halo 5 a big part of its marketing campaign was about this video from Crowbcat competition was never off their lips, that's all they had on their minds and it's for me with him that they lost a large part of their already very mixed fan base with halo 4 and its catastrophic multiplayer realize that they removed local cooperation from the 5th episode and Halo Infinite’s Forge was released after a year delay even though it represents the essence of this licence's community it makes you wonder if they don’t do everything backwards on purpose maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault because now it's different, you have to adapt to your time, the opposite of my old fool's speech but what represent the strength of the exceptional entertainment of this licence isn’t its ranked games we’d play one of these every now and then but we never said no to do some custom games against our opponents and that’s the main problem with 343 Industries, they do not intended to give fun to us, it’s the total opposite from Bungie, they only want to create beautiful cutscenes, destroy the Master Chief by humanizing him, take off his f*****g helmet in their f*****g shitty show YEAH i can't f*****g feel like him without taking it off, YOU HAD TO DO IT It’s not like a whole licence proved the contrary UGHHH I rarely get mad but they have the gift for smashing my nutz come on Marty, make me happy with some Halo 3 ODST it feels good, doesn't it ? aaaand we go gain again when I talked about the concept of 30 seconds of fun it was mainly to show Bungie's mentality in general their own way to design a game they knew how to make you want to be creative by giving them places and objects full of inventiveness They knew very well their customers and which way was good to take the developers themselves knew it very well, as shown in the following extract from a making-of, where one of them talks about the sandbox concept in their game (For the fact, in the french youtube, those vidocs are not that known, while in your side, plenty of youtubers already talked about it) no idea about his name but i like him For me, Halo is the licence that had the better way to do things in a video-game now I only rarely feel a real person behind its avatar, i won’t have the same feeling because I don’t feel attached to them in any way the last game that made me feel like that was Battlefield 1, of course for other reasons like its immersion, soundtrack or sound design but when a game breathes that much its developers love it can only be a success now I rarely hear someone talk in voice channels, and even if some games seem to go back to that essential feature, in my opinion it is too rare as it has a huge fun potential thanks to this, Halo was that kind of game that could create awesome random moments it’s in my gamer’s life, the incarnation of nostalgia, of a time that will never come back because it belongs to its own time and to the discovery of online multiplayer gaming it's a license that above all wanted to have a good time for its players and that's the fundamental goal of video games for me I met around a hundred people with whom we would meet to go and create maps play in a campaign or simply do anything in a custom game I can’t thank them enough for allowing me to experience this, without them... It would not have been the same as I did with Dice in my Battlefield 1 video, i can only thank Bungie to have existed they allowed a whole generation to live great times and I’m proud to be a part of it Halo is an era, a time that millions of nostalgic players will never forget who in 2022, just before the official closure of the servers on Xbox 360, met for one last time yooo how is everybody doing today ? pretty god damn good ! Yourself ? good ! first time in like half a decade i've played Halo3 i want to be there for it's last night before the shut down
(sorry the mic is terrible i can't hear correctly) yeahhh, you're f*cking here man good job ! you're f*cking here... laughs servers are shutting down
(mics are more easy to understand i let you hear) Thanks to donators and friends and finally, a huge thank you to all of you, know that I read each of you, who have given meaning to my life with this YouTube channel.
You are my strength. It was my most intense video to produce, grueling but I'm proud of the end result. If a tear falls during my editing, it’s because I like it.
There wasn't just one. Do not hesitate to tell me if you liked this video, i read every comment and try to answer as i can.
You can follow me on Twitter, even if you speak english, it would be a pleasure to talk with you See you soon,
Sgauth
