Halo’s identity crisis has been fixed — now Activision has to sell the public on the whole package

The team behind Halo has been closed down by Microsoft. The company has cut Halo Studios down to its bones as part of a wave of layoffs tied to the Xbox Reset, and what remains of the studio will now only oversee the franchise in vague, nebulous ways. Halo Studios is no longer making Halo.

A bold step has been taken. For many years, Halo Studios stood as the public face of Microsoft’s attempt to rebuild the series after the departure of Bungie. Now that work has been handed to Activision, which owns Call of Duty. And as both a Halo and Call of Duty fan, the pairing isn’, and its work was exactly exciting.

What Halo Studios Got Right

Let’s start by recognizing what Halo Studios got right before moving on to the negatives. The multiplayer at the heart of its games stayed intact throughout.

• Core Halo multiplayer: 4v4 arena modes and Big Team Battle stayed intact.
• Art direction: By Halo Infinite, the studio found a striking look for Halo, and the Spartans looked amazing.
• Gunplay: Especially in Infinite, Halo Studios raised the bar for the series.
• Maps: Halo maps remained strange, asymmetrical battlegrounds suited for floaty physics.
• Forge: By Infinite, Halo’s level creator was so powerful that the community was making minigames and maps good enough to enter the official rotation.

The studio knew what made Halo feel like Halo, and it showed in how well it handled its strengths.

Where Halo Studios Fell Short

The weak point was the campaigns. Over two games we spent our time firing at Prometheans, which were like Covenant but worse. The story took Master Chief way too seriously and turned him into a hero of destiny, somehow making him uncool along the way.

Every multiplayer trend of the last decade-plus found its way into Halo as a testing ground, including create-a-class, loot boxes, battle passes, and MOBA-like modes, each one giving the series a new identity crisis. The timing was the real issue: there was a six-year gap between Halo 5 and Infinite, followed by another five years before Halo: Campaign Evolved.

The final figure stands out. A five-year gap between two Halo games marks a lengthy interval for a series that has typically issued titles with regular frequency.

Why Activision Might Fix It

The wager behind Microsoft’s choice is straightforward: Activision understands how to deliver finished campaigns. Call of Duty remains capable of producing a decent campaign, even as the rest of the industry grapples with longer development timelines, a problem Activision has sidestepped by keeping a steady pace.

That pace has come with real compromise. Fans never know if this year’s CoD will be embarrassingly bad or merely good enough. That’s the risk Microsoft is taking by handing Halo to a studio that has made a career out of shipping games quickly.

What Halo Infinite Actually Did Differently

Halo Infinite distinguished itself from Call of Duty through a distinct approach to design. The game moved at a slower pace, featured hipfiring guns, allowed mirrored loadouts, introduced power weapons, and built vertical maps that harked back to classic arena shooters rather than following the boots-on-the-ground style that Modern Warfare established.

The distinction between the two games is what counts. The qualities that set Halo apart from Call of Duty are also what earned it its affection. A developer that has spent years chasing the CoD formula may fail to recognize the worth in keeping those particular traits alive.

Trusting the Call of Duty Machine

The challenge facing Activision is considerable. The company must find a way to give Halo a fresh twist that improves on the recent releases, all while earning back fans’ trust by protecting whatever parts of the series they hold most dear.

The Call of Duty franchise is known for shifting its setting, tone, characters, and gameplay with each new studio involved. Players have grown accustomed to the abrupt changes over the years, though the series’ unstable identity comes at a cost. Whether Activision chooses to accept this instability as part of a rapid release schedule or has embraced it on purpose, neither approach works well for Halo.

Preserving What Made Halo Great

What I hold dearest about Halo has drifted from favor. Weapon sets that are tight and easy to grasp, a focus on vehicles, plain modes, open social lobbies, and custom games built by the community are no longer in style. Should a studio aim to make Halo one of the most-played multiplayer shooters around, I don’t see how it can do so while keeping alive the very qualities that define the series, 25 years down the line.

A real conflict exists: the company that inherits Halo must make it competitive without losing the qualities that made it stand out.

The Staff That Microsoft Fired

Activision is certainly keen to get Halo back into the spotlight, though it would be a shame if they couldn’t measure up to the care taken by the people who worked on the game at Halo Studios, now laid off by Microsoft. The quality of their finished work may be open to question, but there’s no denying their devotion to the franchise.

This studio kept refining The Master Chief Collection until it reached the peak of preservation. It let fans sift through the records and put an unfinished Halo 2 E3 demo on Steam Workshop for all to see. It cared deeply about even the smallest details of Halo, running 15-year-old Halo Reach code under the hood of Campaign Evolved to get the jump physics and grenade bounces right.

That level of care is rare. It’s the kind of attention that doesn’t show up in trailers, but it shows up in the finished product.

What Comes Next

The question rests on whether Activision can thread the needle. It must make a Halo campaign that honors the series’ identity while also putting out releases often enough to keep the franchise relevant.

Halo has been a mainstay on PC for 25 years now, and players have grown fond of particular elements of the series that newer trends have moved away from. There is a danger that a studio built on getting games out fast will iron out those rough spots until Halo no longer looks like recognizable Halo.

We won’t know the answer for a while. But one thing is clear: the move to Activision is a gamble. Microsoft is betting that a studio with a proven track record of shipping campaigns can fix Halo’s biggest problems. Whether that bet pays off depends on whether Activision can respect the legacy while also moving the franchise forward.

Source material: “Halo needed to change, but Activision faces a huge challenge to fix it,” PC Gamer.

Activision · Call of Duty · game industry · Halo · Xbox