That local Co-Op was a major tenant of Infinite's design supposedly before the game existed, but here we are. And it may be a super impressive tool when all is said and done but it's possibly a year away at this point and it feels like if Forge was going to be this massive drain on their resources, they should have actually prioritized everything else content wise first and slowly chipped away at Forge as a tool set. Is Forge hugely important to Halo's identity? Yes and fans would indeed continually complain about its absence, but it also feels like they've prioritized the 'fans can make the game and then we can try and finally start dealing with Infinite on a larger scale post Forge'.

It feels like they are betting everything and I do mean everything on Forge to suddenly revitalize the game and everything else doesn't matter. And if they were really fixing more pressing issues? Maybe you'd have a point, but as far as I can tell the content issues are not being fixed by 343, the desync remains a problem a full year later despite being the biggest issue fans have begged them to resolve, and the in-game economy and systems remain wrecked with a vaguely promised In-Match XP BETA coming in the roadmap this late in.

Local Co-Op being included was a MAJOR good will intent they had for this game, so it's not something to be lightly discarded or expect fans to not be incredibly upset about. But this is not that, and they had a decade of good will lit on fire and then the little good will capital they accrued with Infinite's launch they immediately set on fire too. I am all for giving good will to studios who miss or struggle with a title, with a content update, a service even when they're smaller teams trying their best or more independent. There's the Bonobo event to even further sour people. There's the fact Infinite launched almost a year ago and we don't have much to look back on in that period and the road maps are getting more dire and they're missing targets they've set only to explain it after the fact. A studio that has been incapable of getting proper management to figure out work flow that has been given ridiculous amounts of good will numerous times despite repeated issues and that apparently can't even maintain a proper work force without resorting to excessive contract work and crunch across its entire existence. This is a massive company with Microsoft bankrolling them as an excessively massive amount of money screwing up the franchise they were created to oversee across a 12 year period time and time and time and time again at this point. This is not an indie studio, this is not a small studio, this is not a studio that screwed up once, this is not a studio that over promised and had to slow down the content rollout. I don't really get where this good will comes from.

Halo 5 split screen co op ign