u/GeminiTrash1

Back in the Luna's and Not Forgotten meta one of the few weapons still holding it down in the Crucible was was Inaugural Address. That baby would run through your ass in the Midtown streets with little resistance. Also had great sound design. I was always a fan of the Omolon gun sounds. It's almost like a bird chirping

I haven't seen anything about it, but focusing rolls with multiple perks was so convenient for Vault space. Having a Blowout With Field Prep and Demolitionist with Explosive Light was versatile and there are a lot of other guns I want with multiple trait combos.

Prestige-ing for extra perks in your trait columns was also just a good passive grind. No matter what you were doing or how you were doing it you know that eventually your efforts would be rewarded. I feel like it was a colossal mistake to ax this system

I'll be starting with management

•Studio Head: Pierre Hintze

Formally the Halo MCC game lead many of you might know him as the guy why fixed MCC, but I still know him as the guy who abandoned MCC because he couldn't monetize Spartan Points.

•Chief of Staff: Angela Hession

Formally a Twitch Chief of Customer Trust with a tenure of 3 years 8 months, the Microsoft Gaming Chief of Safety and Trust, and the founder of the Hession A.I. Consulting Co. This person is now in charge of the culture within Halo Studios. A mishmash of Twitch and Microsoft culture sounds hilarious.

•General Manager of Franchise: Brian Koski

343 vet, in charge of marketing and monetization. You see his work in Infinite.

•Business Operations: Elizabeth Van Wyck

Actually the former COO of 343 Industries and as such was core leadership under 343

--- So it's 3 343i vets in management and 1 Microsoft/Twitch vet. Let's see the creative lead staff.

•Franchise Writer: Alex Wakeford

Previously a 343 Community Writer, joined in 2021 and was pushed up to lead in 2025. In fairness he hasn't been around long enough for his work to have impacted a game. He came up quick so I'm hopeful with this guys writing.

•Franchise/Narrative Writer: Jeff Easterling

This guy joined 343 in 2014 and worked on Halo 5's story. Honestly this guy's writing is silly. I don't think I need to go deeper than that. I'd probably trust a coked up street bum to write Halo over this guy.

•Creative Director: John JJ Williams

This guy was formally the gameplay designer in Call of Duty and Apex Legends. I remember a core issue with 343 Halo is it played like CoD so this is an interesting decision. I like my Halo to play like Halo, not like CoD with a Halo skin.

---The Community Management remains unchanged.

•Community Managers

Community Director Brian Jarrard "Ske7ch" and Senior Community Manager John Junyszek "Unyshek".

These guys were both there basically from the beginning and I'm looking forward to their famous radio silence when Halo Studios trips up. The way these guys operate at their job when the going gets rough is frustrating because you can expect them to evaporate right out of existence.

--- That is the full and complete leadership under Halo Studios and there was only 1 person from management and 1 from creative that weren't formally 343. They were however Microsoft and CoD vets which is uninspiring

This isn't necessarily a call to rewrite Darth Maul, just a conversation on a "what if" scenario and it's a writing technique I haven't seen mentioned a lot. Throughout our all of Phantom Menace movie Darth Maul only says 3 lines. "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi, at last we will have our revenge.", "Yes, my master.", and "I will find them quickly my master.". Beyond that all we see is smoldering hateful stares from his golden Sith eyes, indifference, and gloating smiles as he sends sparks flying into Obi-wan's eyes believing that he had already won.

I don't know if there are any fans of Halo here, but Halo and Star Wars were always my two favorite franchise. I used to watch all of Bungie's ViDocs and sometimes I still do. Something that stuck with me was the lead writer Joe Staten's approach to writing the Master Chief. Joe Staten said that he actually didn't consider the Master Chief the main character, he wrote Cortana the Master Chief's A.I. companion as the main character. Despite Master Chief being the Main Protagonist he was also the Player Vessel an empty avatar for the player to fill. Joe Staten talked about the challenges this created for keeping the story interesting and ultimately he solved it by keeping the Master Chief surrounded with interesting characters like Cortana, Johnson, Spark, and Arbiter.

Joe Staten's approach I think was fitting for a stoic and it allowed him to write a protagonist that mostly delivered more impactful one-liners in a way that still felt very natural. As it relates to Darth Maul you maybe don't have to be as extreme a writing a vessel but this style of writing would allow you to let Maul process his loss to Obi-wan build him back up as a character slowly. He could remain concise in conversation as well allowing his lines to be more punchy. I think adding Savage Oppress was very smart for this approach because in this scenario he would essentially be the main character for a time even though the focus would be central to Maul. It's almost like 3rd person writing. Of course Savage can't be around Maul all the time, but you could add more substantial allies from the Death Watch and even the Pikes.

For some time now writing has had my attention and as of late so has the idea of a more stoic Darth Maul. I think a spin on Maul inspired by Joe Staten's work with Master Chief would've been very nice. Imagine how much more impactful Maul wildly yelling "KEEEENOBII"would be after mostly remaining mostly collected in the story. It's cool to think about.