Halo- How The Franchise Can Improve

For me personally, 2007's sensational Halo 3 was the grand pinnicle of the science-fiction saga, a stunning finale to one of the best video gaming trilogies of all time. Since then, we've basically had spin-offs and prequels on an annual basis- but is that right? If Halo 4 (due 2012), 5 and 6 release on consecutive years, all on the Xbox 360, then the console will have had no less than eight Halo games in eight years. Admittedly, Call of Duty is nearing the same landmark by intentionally releasing on an annual basis, whereas Bungie have only released their new games when they have deemed them to be completely ready, yet to use a technical term found on the excellent Angry Joe Show, I'm starting to feel 'Haloed out'. Last year saw the release of Reach, a massive prequel to the main trilogy that boasted a new engine and a more believable (and better still, more understandable) storyline, not to mention all of the comprehensive multiplayer components that kept 3 and ODST on the top of the Xbox Live leaderboards for most played online. However, in terms of the single-player campaign, bar the brief inclusion of space travel there were very few jumps forward, a shortcoming made even worse when neither the famed battle against a giant Scarab nor the Master Chief himself made an appearance at any point. The quality of the visuals, the gameplay and the intimate plot managed to still score Reach a worthy 10/10, and having recently replayed the game I have no qualms about maintaining that score, but Halo 3's full marks felt far more earned by Bungie as there were some massive advancements both visually and in the engine itself. Reach's engine feels more like a work in progress than anything, with a lot of quite samey cliff-based and building-based environments lacking the colour and general bombast found in the environments of its predecessors, and this is certainly something I hope will be addressed in Combat Evolved: Anniversary and/or Halo 4 if the series is to survive. Both ODST and Reach had great storylines, allowing for more empathy with their protagonists, but they were lacking in the epic scale of 3 as 3 was lacking in their emotive nature, so if the two types of plot were able to be merged we might get the perfect Halo storyline. All of this makes my opinion of the Halo franchise seem fairly negative, but quite honestly nothing could be further from the truth: although in my view nothing has topped it since, Halo 3 remains one of my favourite video games of all time, and its successors managed to carry the torch valiantly. All that needs to be done in entries to come is for new developer 343 Industries to keep innovating, keep finding ways to make the story and gameplay fresh and unpredictable just like Bungie did with the original trilogy, and above all listen to the vast Halo fan community- above all, they know best what they want in the next game. Considering the quality of the original game, I think this November's Combat Evolved: Anniversary should do wonders, showing us why we love this franchise and that it's in safe hands with Microsoft and 343. As long as we never reach a point where I'm as tired with the series as I was with COD by Black Ops, I'm happy.