Call of Duty Vanguard Champion Hill Alpha Reviews From Many

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343 Dev Speaks Out And Says They Are Overworked!
A lot of people are frustrated with the announcement, so I thought I'd shed some light on it, because we are insanely frustrated internally too. Not because the delay happened - not at all, but because we wanted to tell you earlier. The team has been pushing not just delays to Forge and Coop, but Campaign in general. I can see Multiplayer making release date in a great state, with basically all of the main modes plus a couple grab bag goodies, including some original stuff we're cooking up - a different variant of Infection with original resources and a severely updated Invasion mode with new maps. However, Campaign is under some MASSIVE strain.
We achieved some balance by basically making the Campaign much more connect the dots, with the objectives being obligatory to a degree with an optional side structure here and there, and naturally leading the player through a few key encounters before each stage. Power weapons are rarer in Campaign, but you can find them in a lot of these little side alcoves with a decent max ammo pool to make it count, so there's some incentive there too, plus some new Forerunner vehicles. The game started to take this shape properly in February this year, although the concepts started last year - you can imagine people were a little stretched thin, but as long as it was just reshuffling content, it was fine. I expect the Campaign will be well-received, even if some of the side areas will probably be seen as not worth the effort - but people will go for it, because Halo. The fun is going after the stuff. Some stuff will be left on the cutting room floor due to release date, but we'll make it.
To be blunt, it's buggy. It's buggy as all hell and then some. For the first while, respawn worked respawn worked the same as old games - wait for teammates to be safe and come back to life near them, but this caused a lot of painful issues when players were far apart and was really buggy on the code, so we didn't like it. We explored a respawn station idea, but it was much too limiting, so then we proposed fixed respawn points around the map, a ways away from fighting locations, but that was both boring (players had to walk/drive back to the fight) and also made it so it was really hard for the entire team to get wiped, since it'd be a constant conga of guys running from respawn. Around March, we decided to swing back to the original respawn method, and the bugs have been constant.
Between these two, Campaign Coop is a mess and downright unplayable, but there's no way in hell we're going to be allowed to delay the launch by the powers that be. Delaying the Campaign altogether was severely considered, with a Multiplayer only launch, but the suits told us a straight no - the game will ship with a paid campaign, come hell or high water, and we can pay it back over time. At the very least, I can guarantee that whilst there is some crunch going on, it's far from the most inhumane I've seen working in the industry, and a far cry from something like CDPR's Cyberpunk. Morale is high, even after this. We think this is going to be a great game, but I do wish we could cook the campaign a little longer.

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