8 Video Game Franchises That Ruined Their Identity
4. Halo
Halo's unique brand of arena combat, stunning sci-fi art direction and - of course - epic overarching story made it the kind of series that people buy a console to play.
Since original developers Bungie left the franchise following prequel Halo: Reach, though, things have not gone well. New devs 343 Industries debuted Halo 4 as a franchise reinvention, and initially, things seemed fine. While it was clear the sequel was missing some of the Bungie magic, it was still an impressive continuation of a story thought to be complete.
With Halo 5, though, the wheels started to come off. Haunted by a misleading marketing campaign that sold a completely different story to what was actually in the game, the series' identity crisis began in earnest, incorporating live-service elements into the multiplayer, chopping fan-favourite features and altering mechanics to better fit with other successful shooters of the time.
Sequel Halo: Infinite, after a last minute delay anyway, looked like it was trying to return to the spirit of the original Halo. Evoking that title's art style and initially trying to do right by fans, Infinite had a solid start, but felt surprisingly empty over time. Once again, the community-driven elements that made the series so beloved to begin with - couch co-op, Forge mode etc. - were absent, proving that the developers lacked the understanding of what allowed Halo to stand out to begin with.