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Halo Infinite Lead Narrative Designer Aaron Linde Leaving 343

Papacheeks

Banned
Halo Infinite's lead narrative designer, Aaron Linde, has announced he is leaving 343 Industries in 2022. Linde said on Twitter that he is leaving to "pursue a new opportunity," but didn't share exactly where he is going just yet.

Whatever the case, Linde said it was a "terrifically difficult decision" to leave 343. "Halo Infinite will remain one of the proudest achievements of my career for the rest of my life," Linde said. "I'm so grateful to have been a part of it."


 

Beer Baelly

Al Pachinko, Konami President
Dj Khaled GIF by Music Choice
 

Fbh

Member
Best of luck to him but it doesn't seem like a big loss for 343, if anything it's an opportunity for them to improve on what is still one of their main weak points.
343 has struggled from the very beginning to give their era of Halo a compelling narrative, and as much praise as Infinite is getting for its gameplay and world, most comments I've seen from reviewers and users seem to mostly agree the story is one of the few weak points in the game.
 
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Didn't he come in after other people who had the same job had left during the development of the game? I know they had several people leave. There is hardly any story to infinite so I doubt this is a big loss one way or the other.
 

coffinbirth

Member
I wonder how much of the campaign that Staten chainsawed off ends up as expansions. Seems like Phils comments about making the campaign episodic make a lot more sense now knowing that 2/3 of the content was supposedly cut.
 

Fredrik

Member
Joe Staten is head of creative now so who cares about this guy.
It really makes you wonder in what state the game was in before Staten jumped aboard.
I’m not a fan anymore, I’ve basically stopped playing it now. The core gameplay and controls and grappling hook is tuned to perfection but the empty open world and samey main quest battles has turned it into one of my biggest disappointments 2021. I just don’t have fun anymore, I liked both Halo 4 and Halo 5 more, they felt much more varied and kept me interested enough to finish them.
 

Lone Wolf

Member
It really makes you wonder in what state the game was in before Staten jumped aboard.
I’m not a fan anymore, I’ve basically stopped playing it now. The core gameplay and controls and grappling hook is tuned to perfection but the empty open world and samey main quest battles has turned it into one of my biggest disappointments 2021. I just don’t have fun anymore, I liked both Halo 4 and Halo 5 more, they felt much more varied and kept me interested enough to finish them.
Yeah the game is overall very bare. No co-op, no Forge, no Warzone, no Firefight. No score attack mode. I expect this game to be loaded with stuff in a couple years time, but it had to be in development hell for a couple years at least. The gameplay is great but it needs more content and to drop last gen.
 

MiguelItUp

Gold Member
I haven't touched the Infinite campaign, so I don't know how the writing is, but I was unaware Linde worked on this. He used to be a Destructoid editor in the mid/late 2000's. That's pretty wild.

I wouldn't really take this as anything special, probably just received a better opportunity, so he took it. Happens all the time, people quit, change jobs, get laid off, etc. Haha.
 

fatmarco

Member
The cutscene dialogue is the biggest issue. Did anyone actually care what Escharum said when he monologued?

It's actually amazing that 343 thought those scenes were good and I'm surprised they didn't think to rewrite them / re - record them after last years reveal because Escharum excited exactly no one.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
The cutscene dialogue is the biggest issue. Did anyone actually care what Escharum said when he monologued?

It's actually amazing that 343 thought those scenes were good and I'm surprised they didn't think to rewrite them / re - record them after last years reveal because Escharum excited exactly no one.

The best Halo game narratively that 343 helped produce was Halo Wars 2, and almost like they knew they had shit on board writers they hired external contractors for that title which produced the banished and Atriox as an antagonist.

So what does 343 in house do once there back in charge? They produced what ever the fuck was infinites story, and sideline the best thing they have had since Bungie handed off the series.

All I can say is... this is most likely good news, people would have to try extremely hard to produce something as bad as infinites shoe horned relationships and exposition dumps of far more intresting events that chief was too busy being in a coma for you to handle.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
The best Halo game narratively that 343 helped produce was Halo Wars 2, and almost like they knew they had shit on board writers they hired external contractors for that title which produced the banished and Atriox as an antagonist.

So what does 343 in house do once there back in charge? They produced what ever the fuck was infinites story, and sideline the best thing they have had since Bungie handed off the series.
Except he was a full time employee, not contractual.
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Bragr

Banned
Maybe they can find someone better, Halo deserves and needs more care put into the story than what they did with Infinite.
 
Halo Infinite story was pretty bland. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either.

That said, they wrote themselves into a corner with Halo 5, so even if H:I had the greatest writers in the world working on it, there would be only so much they can do with that shit as the foundation.

Honestly, I found the continued focus on MC and Cortana to be f*cking weird and creepy. Like how is anyone supposed to take seriously a story about this big gruff armoured, faceless super soldier and his unrequited love for a naked purple hologram lady who lives in his head?

Bungie's writers should have dumped Cortana long ago, but instead, they went and made the entire series story mostly about her.... uuugh!
 

zeorhymer

Member
Oh hey look. He's a:

Narrative Writer III, R&DNarrative Writer III, R&D
Riot Games · Full-timeRiot Games · Full-timeJan 2022 - Present · 1 mo
 
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