@Vienreich @ZombehDino Dude, I have a 360 and don't own a PS3. I've also been a Halo fan for a good chunk of my life. You have no idea what you're talking about.

I think the Xbox One looks god awful, and I've come to this conclusion through my own thoughts. If I form an opinion and it turns out to be popular, I won't change my opinion for that reason alone.

Microsoft is digging their own grave so quickly it's not even funny.

...Actually, scratch that, it's hilarious.

I don't know about everyone else, but I liked Halo 4. I enjoyed the story and the gameplay managed to be fresh enough to make the game feel as though it was a step forward from its predecessors. But honestly, this announcement came waaaaaay too soon. It's barely been seven months since the last game came out! Give your audience a chance to breathe, 343.

@TohouAsura @shingui5 @ZombehDino I actually disagree. The game isn't perfect, to be sure, but the white sulfur bit was a great marriage of gameplay and storytelling imo.

@shingui5 @ZombehDino I couldn't agree more. I remember playing through the action set pieces in Infinite thinking, "When does the next major plot event happen? I'm getting a bit tired of this." Bioshock Infinite is an excellent example of developers having a great vision for a story, but a muddled, unfocused idea of gameplay. The shooting just felt so stock and uninspired, and that really took me out of the game. Even in shooters with far inferior stories such as Halo or Dead Space, I felt far more compelled to keep playing simply because it seemed like they were designed to be games that required my input to be enjoyed.

Indeed, many things can go wrong with how a video game's story plays out. Excessive cutscenes are especially unbearable, which Hideo Kojima really ought to pick up on. It's especially frustrating when devs think that throwing in a quick-time event suddenly makes a cutscene more engaging. In my humble opinion, the game itself needs to come before the story 95% of the time.

I do agree, Dishonored is a very good example of storytelling being intertwined with gameplay. Half-Life, The Legend of Zelda, and Mass Effect are also solid displays of this. I just hope more developers will realize that games don't need to be movies, and they honestly shouldn't be.

If Microsoft thinks saying this will fix everything, then they have another thing coming.

A great story is nice, but I personally feel what the industry needs is some fresh gameplay. I mean, come on, that's what games are all about. Even if Call of Duty games had amazing stories (Spoiler alert: they don't) I still wouldn't care for them. Fortunately, the two can be intertwined. Allow me to explain...

What made a game like Journey so cool was how minimalist its story was and how it was able to evoke emotion through gameplay. Hell, take something like Metroid Prime: the story wasn't incredibly obvious or particularly groundbreaking, but the fact you are able to unearth information by scanning objects and discovering it for yourself gives you a sense of accomplishment when you find new data. Dark Souls did something similar by having the game's backstory be revealed through item descriptions. Those are the kinds of stories I'd like to see games tell. Bioshock Infinite has a wonderful story, but I could easily see it being just as effective as a book or movie. Journey, on the other hand, really wouldn't work as anything other than a video game, which is why I really appreciate it.

A new Metroid or Donkey Kong would be cool, but honestly, I'm hoping this is a new IP. Retro is a great studio and I'd like to see what they can do when starting with a blank slate.

@NeonNinja @ZombehDino @2bitSmOkEy Be glad you skipped it. The game is atrocious from both a gameplay and artistic perspective.

Yeah, a new 2D Metroid would be awesome, although I'd definitely prefer it to be more like Super Metroid than Fusion. Can you imagine a game in the style of SM with current generation technology? I honestly don't see any conceivable way the developers could screw that up.

@NeonNinja @2bitSmOkEy It was definitely a more straightforward game and was inferior to the first two, but it's still a great game in my opinion. The boss battles were memorable, the art direction was superb, the puzzles were very well thought out, and I loved the idea behind the GFS Valhalla area.

I will concede this: it deviates from the Metroid formula somewhat, and I can understand why someone may not like it for that reason. However, I think we can all agree that Other M was FAAAAAR worse in that regard.