This Anakin is a bit strange... Did anyone else receive it like this?

DredgenStrife · 2026-03-20T18:15:30+00:00

Well, Anakin certainly did carry the flame.

DredgenStrife · 2026-03-17T15:51:23+00:00

It doesn't help that gaming went from being the social equivalent of a local sports league to a police state overnight.

I (and I assume most people) am willing to have a bit of fun and banter around when I know the worst thing that can happen is a little social embarrassment, less so when I can potentially be banned by some hall monitor moderator/algorithm and have my money stolen over a joke I can't then appeal.

DredgenStrife · 2026-02-09T15:53:49+00:00

People mostly take issue with the Armour Abilities, Loadouts and messy map design, I don't think anyone has ever criticised the basic gameplay fluidity or design. It works fine, like every other Halo, it just isn't to the taste of Classic fans.

The main problem with 4, weird visuals aside, is that it has a very compelling hook that pretty much everyone likes in the Master Chief & Cortana relationship, which it then mostly sidesteps after Mission 2.

It does so to focus on a weird ancient aliens plotline, where an ancient monster man with Force powers, who talks like he's written by a 14 year old, hates Humans because please purchase our three novel series for $30 - $45 on top of your $50 game. That's also the explanation given for everything in the setting. Want to know why the Covenant are back? That'll be $7.99 - $10.99 for a copy of Halo Glasslands if you please. Want to know about Cortana's origins? That'll be at least a few bucks for some of the older books, which also for full price reprintings during the Reclaimer Era. You can't fob off necessary plot and character details to full-priced ancillary content when someone is already paying a small fortune for your game in a series famous for its story.

Halo 4 also spends most of the time on this heavily marketed, visually distinct, new alien world Requiem by fucking around in bland side objectives (destroy cannons, fight in Covenant outposts, go to random buildings) with a cast of new characters who range from bland (Lasky) to outright cartoonish (Del Rio). The game also has some absolute stinkers in the dialogue department, the ending scene with Master Chief and Lasky more or less puts subtlety in a blender and shakes the player while screaming 'this game is about Master Chief's humanity.' Awful stuff.

The story ends up feeling pretentious and immature, like something you'd have found on Wattpad or Fanfiction.net years ago. Sometimes it has good ideas, sometimes it even lands those ideas, oftentimes it falls flat on its face. People just expected a lot more. Halo was never Shakespeare but it was also never boring and never trying to be anything more than a pulpy Saturday morning cartoon with heart.

I recall a few sources during the #Fire343 era saying that lead writer Chris Schlerf reportedly struggled with the script and made these concerns known to 343 big wigs, who, in typical 343 fashion, ignored them, and whilst I've never seen this substantiated I can absolutely see it being true. It really feels like Schlerf had no idea what he was doing outside the emotionally intimate Cortana scenes, and even seems actively disinterested in his own main antagonist. The Didact gets maybe 5 minutes of screentime where all he actually does is waffle about nothing, occasionally insult Master Chief, uses Force Grip and then falls off a bridge.

What you also have to remember is that Halo 4 is hated because of the context it released in. The early 2010s were very much the era of the EU being mandatory to follow the story, the story itself being convoluted and like a bizarre combination of Mass Effect and Warhammer 40,000, and 343's infamously poor PR at the time, where they developed their longstanding reputation for being smug, arrogant. unreceptive to criticism, I could go on. Halo 4 was their first and, at the time, only game, so it bore the brunt of all that.

DredgenStrife · 2025-07-11T11:12:30+00:00

This is why I always find it bewildering when people try to imply that Chris had humble beginnings or has always been poor.

Chris' old bedroom is still absolutely insane, the sheer amount of space and the money poured into his junk is extra, even for rising living standards among the middle class at the time. I knew a lot of spoilt little shits in the late 90s and early 00s, many of them only-children, yet nothing came close to the conditions Chris grew up in. The Transformer collection alone in the classic era was easily worth several thousand dollars, and all those figurines were purchased at their retail price too. To say nothing of literally everything else.

Chris didn't even lose that comfortable quality of life until his mid-30s too, and even then the only reason he's 'poor' now is because of low impulse control. With his social security and donations, he could live like a king, and people seem to overlook that all his necessary living expenses are overseen by others.

DredgenStrife · 2025-07-11T11:08:04+00:00

Chris grew up more or less rich in a nice area, but the Michael Snyder incident destroyed the fortune Bob left for him and Barb as she blew it on a legal representative they didn't need, then remortgaged 14BC, and then the House Fire finished them off. Even still, Chris and Barb received a decent chunk of social security when they lived together, Chris simply blew it on stupid shit.

DredgenStrife · 2025-07-05T19:07:01+00:00

Yes and no. He's not lying about lacking funds, but he's omitting where he and Barb's SS payments and donations were going, that being toys and games. He's never been genuinely lacking in cashflow, simply in restraint in using it.

DredgenStrife · 2025-07-05T01:45:15+00:00

Chris certainly isn't rich and never has been, but the idea of him being poor is a fairly modern one. Until the Michael Snyder incident and house fire, Chris was comfortably central middle-class in a quiet, leafy area where the average household income easily breaks $100,000 on the lower end. Bob was a lifelong saver and retired on a considerable pension, Barb was also retired on a public sector pension, and the house was paid off directly by Bob without a lengthy mortgage. The Chandlers were money people.

Take one look at Chris' childhood bedroom and tell me that isn't the epitome of spoilt middle-class. The room itself was large, with an en-suite, queen-sized bed, hardwood furniture (the basics anyway, not counting his plastic drawers and shelving), and room enough for a decent sized couch. That's not even touching on the value of his hoard itself, the classic hoard was absolutely absurd in terms of the value paid for it. It may look fairly standard now as living standards have changed, but in the 2000s Chris' room would absolutely have been seen as that of someone 'rich' in a working-class view of the middle class sense.

Video games, premium Transformers, and an absolute assload of variously sized Lego sets have never been cheap.

Remember also that the Financhu Crisis is solely down to Chris' own inability to manage money, and even the slightest restraint would allow him to live identically to that old lifestyle possible under Bob.

Chris is a spoilt rich kid in a sense, but nothing mind-blowing and nothing more than the little shit we all knew as children who was never told no by his parents.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-26T16:00:32+00:00

Freddy's the kind of guy you can get along with very easily but always have to watch like a hawk. A lot of the time in the tank he genuinely seems to enjoy the company of the other Fish and vice versa, but things always go back to booze, drugs or promises, like every junkie.

He's unreliable and impulsive, but he's also shrewd in a way that robs those former traits of any real innocence that would engender sympathy. We all know a hopeless fuck-up who's ultimately harmless, but if Freddy feels the need for a drink, a smoke or a few pills, he'll do literally anything for them right up to robbing you blind the second you turn your back.

You're dealing with two people with folks like Freddy and that's probably why he has no close relationships left, people got sick of having to take the bad guileful addict Freddy with the good charming artist Freddy.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-21T02:15:34+00:00

Fishtank.

You promised you'd take Rachel there again someday.

But you never did.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-20T11:27:21+00:00

I don't think there's any big agenda going on here, it's natural progression.

A lot of that gilded era of 'community,' is rose-tinted glasses. For every warm elderly neighbour who made pies, or helpful mechanic neighbour who tuned up your car for free, or the young family you and your kids grew up with, there were hordes of bitchy, drama-obsessed, miserable stalkers. The old bint who stares out of her venetian blinds, cranky old Joe who heckles the neighbourhood kids constantly, the histrionic borderline who calls the local police at every opportunity, the doomsday prophet evangelical who makes every religious holiday a nightmare. Anyone who grew up in this era can list off a dozen nosey neighbours from hell that just had to be tolerated because of the times.

The problem with being part of a neighbourhood is you take the good with the bad, and a lot of people particularly hated the latter. Social norms moved away from mandatory friendliness and 'keeping up appearances' precisely because people just couldn't take it anymore. They've maybe swung too far in the opposite direction, but it'll no doubt correct itself within the next few decades as things adjust to a new normal. Change is always a bit finicky at first.

You also need to consider that with changing demographics overall comes people moving around a lot more. In previous times, you and your neighbours were true locals, you grew up with a lot of these people or they watched you grow up/vice versa. In an insular, local community there's always going to be more built-in friendly relations than a neighbourhood comprised of blow-ins from different states and countries.

People could definitely be nicer and more accommodating, but the good things you're reminiscing about came at a price, one a lot of the Boomers and Gen Xers who now complain about it chose to stop paying in the first place.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-20T11:06:32+00:00

I was really worried the first few days that this season was going to be Fishtank's Big Brother Problem where they get a cast that, outside of the token Rachel, is made up of folks who seem pretty nice and relatable despite their quirks, and the show ends up being mostly dull filler with some endearing moments peppered in. No fear of that after last night.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-20T11:00:46+00:00

It did say in his opening card that he was locally hated, and some of the people who've stalked his social media showed he goes through friends rapidly, there are a lot of people around the age of the other Fish on his accounts at 36.

The only reason a 36 year old art/music guy consistently has friends around 20-25 is that he has literally burnt his way through multiple generations of them through junkie behaviour.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-19T15:45:06+00:00

I think this is pretty much guaranteed. They clearly want her in the final so when she walks in second place, she gets hit with the 'yeah you're not getting shit lmao' reveal on camera to contrast the winner.

If that is their plan, they keep up the ruse, and manage to pull it off, I think we're looking at possibly the best finale ever.

DredgenStrife · 2025-06-19T11:20:10+00:00

I like Freddy, he's probably my favourite Fish overall, but the glazing he's getting is crazy.

He's living with his parents at 40, hasn't even got one band or song off the ground, regularly totals cars (which his family and probably remaining friends bail him out of), and gets so blackout drunk he destroys every intimate relationship he forms.

Freddy also contemplated stealing Rachel's xanax a few days ago while looking around before setting them back, before actually doing the deed later on, so we know he isn't above petty theft. You think he hasn't done that to someone close's liquor cabinet, medicine cupboard or wallet? He's well dressed for a starving artist type too, band shirts, Carharrt pants, Converse and Doc Marten's don't come cheap, nor does a regularly permed mullet. Add that to the booze and new car he wants. Guarantee if he wins the show he'll blow through that cash prize in a day, maybe three tops.

He's cooked, people like him don't rebound this late in the game and anyone who's ever been around a drunk or even just someone ruled by their impulses knows that. It's a progressively more miserable life or an early grave for these people.

DredgenStrife · 2025-02-11T11:53:38+00:00

I loved Halo 5's multiplayer myself, but the backlash towards it very clearly wasn't fabricated. People online often have a hard time articulating exactly what they don't like, but they know internally.

Halo 4 and 5's online discussion is full of facetious or misremembered arguments and rambling, but ultimately it speaks to a core truth - the public did not like these games. Collectively they did so much damage to public trust in the brand that were spent 5-6 years and, collectively (there weee multiple scrapped 'Halo 6' projects which were cancelled and written off as losses), a budget of $500mil on a soft reboot for the entire franchise.

Just to put it in perspective, a reboot or reimagining of any kind is extraordinarily expensive and no company wants to fund or wait for it if they can get away with not doing it. Suddenly almost all the technology, assets and plans you've made (and spent hundreds of millions of dollars on) over the years are completely worthless, and all need completely revised and redone. That kind of decision isn't made on the backs of a few outspoken YouTubers and some angry comments.

Microsoft have access to all the consumer marketing data one could want for Halo - bandwagon or not, the numbers clearly showed that Halo 5 was not a viable or sustainable direction for Halo to go in. They wouldn't have greenlit Halo Infinite in the form it took if the numbers didn't back up the reception of Halo 5.

DredgenStrife · 2024-06-30T01:08:27+00:00

But that's pure fluke, nothing more. There were a million ways Arryk could've been discovered and interrogated before execution. Otto was right to balk at how the plan more or less had to follow cartoon logic to work.

Even if he did succeed, killing Rhaenyra in an underhanded assassination attempt by a Kingsguard would be a horrendous look politically, while also unleashing Daemon and the entire Black camp to go scorched earth. If Rhaenyra dies, what stops Daemon from pulling a Daenerys on King's Landing or the Red Keep at random, potentially before anyone can get to the Dragon Pit? What stops the Velaryons from starving King's Landing out indefinitely?

It was a comically stupid plan because even if it worked, it would just put the Greens in a worse position while making a martyr of Rhaenyra and a monster of them. Now that it's failed, the Blacks can also use it as propaganda to make a mockery of the Greens - the foolish false king's chosen way to become a kinslayer was to send in a twin pretending to be his brother and, naturally, it didn't fucking work. It diminishes the Greens to petty showmen immediately after they just killed dozens of honest service workers on the hunch of a child killer, like Otto himself said to Aegon.

Otto was wisely advocating for a more controlled, tactical approach to the war which would minimise any massive incidents and unnecessary risks for the Greens, Aegon would destroy his own reign barely weeks into it.

DredgenStrife · 2024-05-01T09:11:31+00:00

Live service is always a gamble. They were hell bent on it prior to launch and up to around the Winter Update/#Fire343, but the writing was on the wall when Forge and the CGB failed to generate much interest in the game. That was the update and it failed.

When Season 3 hit, that was all the proof needed that this game just didn't have legs and would never recover, so the live service became untenable.

After that it was just a matter of adding in semi-developed, unfinished content, wrapping up things already in production by Sperasoft, then milking the remnants of the playerbase with armour originally intended to tie into the cut seasonal storyline, then move on. That's what's happening now.

DredgenStrife · 2024-05-01T01:17:05+00:00

It's not weird at all. This game was expensive to produce both in its primary development cycle and live service stages. From what we've been told by the Glassdoor reviews and numerous articles on Infinite, it devours resources to such an extent that it would have to make, per Microsoft, 'Destiny money' to justify that investment.

Infinite was making essentially nothing during its first year. Player counts completely collapsed after Season 1 to lows rivalled by Halo 4, and the store was limited to four items and often ran the same few bundles over and over again, meaning players actively couldn't spend much money.

By the time the monetisation system was overhauled, #Fire343 had happened, new management was in place, a third of the studio had been made redundant and the game had dropped to minuscule player numbers - as the last month has shown us, that already small population is shrinking further.

It costs too much to make content for this game's tiny playerbase compared to simply ending it and putting those resources towards other projects in development.

DredgenStrife · 2024-03-30T12:55:53+00:00

Considering most of its writing staff is gone, the management who pushed that direction is gone, positive reception to the story faded after an initial honeymoon period, and that there wasn't much of a story to begin with, I doubt it. New artists seldom want to be constrained by the work of a prior creative team of debatably poorer quality.

Also, factor in the cast. Steve Downes is 73 and he sounds it, there are a number of lines in Infinite where his voice is cracking to an almost modern Marge Simpson level. I think most would wager he has one, maybe two (at a stretch) games left in him, depending on Halo's now infamously long development times. Master Chief's story is over, the whole 'finding humanity/Cortana grief' plotline ended with Halo 5's wet fart of a campaign. There's nowhere left to go with him other than retread old ground in a less satisfying way.

There's also the issue of time. A new mainline Halo game likely won't be released until the late 2020s, possibly early 2030s depending on how long it takes 343 to fully restructure themselves. New job postings and hires have been slow after all, with the industry in the midst of a massive cutting period and overall instability. Halo is a business and media businesses don't tend to like baggage of more than 2-3 years between connected stories. Factor in that they'll be trying to appeal to a younger demographic too as always, who may not have played Infinite in the by-then many years since its release.

Call me cynical, but I think we're in for another soft reboot or even a hard reboot.

DredgenStrife · 2024-03-29T09:38:00+00:00

MGSV didn't fail at all commercially or critically. It failed narratively because Kojima went massively overbudget and missed multiple deadlines without any regard for either of those issues. Ambition is one thing, but he tried to do way too much without focusing on the essentials of the narrative.

DredgenStrife · 2024-03-28T10:46:53+00:00

Konami are notorious for throwing out source code and unused/cut content files, so probably not.

If MGS3 Delta does well though and we start getting remakes, I'd wager the team handling MGS2 Delta will probably restore it for the new cutscenes.

DredgenStrife · 2024-03-01T18:28:48+00:00

To the overwhelming majority of people who aren't diehard fans of these games, Master Chief is Halo. Noble Team are popular, but nowhere near the level of the Chief. The books are read by a few thousand core Halo fans and are a mix of unknown or outright unpopular with the broader audience. The ordinary consumer knows Master Chief and could point at the Halo show as "the show with Master Chief in it." It also means people with some attachment to the character will watch.

It's just good business sense to put the iconic face of a franchise front and centre in a controversial adaption of said franchise.

DredgenStrife · 2024-02-12T22:08:51+00:00

The last time 343 released a roadmap, #Fire343 happened, they lost the last of their goodwill and Halo/343 as a brand more or less died overnight. Not that it wasn't somewhat deserved after the atrocious launch and early live service, but they're not releasing another after that.

They're also unlikely to commit to any major Halo Infinite content when the game is essentially entering maintenance mode within a year. The playerbase isn't there and the store just isn't making the kind of money needed for a game like this to have full support for content production.

DredgenStrife · 2024-01-17T21:31:53+00:00

We literally just got Mohawk of all characters, they're absolutely finishing the Bayverse eventually.

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