Wish Xbox had Helldivers 2? Amid the hype, Ex-Halo dev teases pitched game ideas that didn't make the cut

Amid all the Helldivers 2 hype, one former 343 Industries (Halo) developer has teased a few game pitches they saw for the legendary Xbox franchise back in the day. While none of them were greenlit as far as we know, there are some real bangers in there.

This dev in question is Kevin Schmitt, who now works as a senior designer on special projects at Epic Games. However, from 2012 - 2023, Schmitt was working inside 343 as a senior designer for the most part. It's in this window that the events of Schmitt's interesting tweet take place.

"We must have pitched 20-30 game ideas over the 12 years I was there that would have totally worked in the Halo universe. Many Single Player & Multi-Player ODST themed ones. Some galaxy-spanning, some more intimate…and one that was really dark. lol."

While the Halo we know today is a daisychain of mainline entries, broken up briefly by spinioffs like Halo Wars and Spartan Assault, it looks like there was no shortage of fresh ideas for how to take the series to new and exciting places. In the context of Helldivers 2, which spawned this tease by Schmitt in the first place, the "many SP & MP ODST themed ones" is quite sad to hear. You can totally imagine Halo's ODST troopers dropping down into near-death missions as we do in Helldivers - but the excellent vibes of New Mumbasa drop and Halo 3: ODST haven't really been approached since by 343. Imagine a challenging defence mission in that setting!

Schmitt would follow this up with another post, this time providing much-needed insight on the game pitching process. According to Schmitt, timing is the ultimate foe for dope ideas. "Been in gamedev for almost 30 years. Probably pitched well over a hundred games. There are thousands of reasons they don’t get made. It’s rarely corpo greed or some other nefarious reason. I find it’s a lot about timing." it's true that, while Helldivers 2 is proving astronomically successful right now, hindsight is 20:20. Maybe it wouldn't have popped off so hard a few years back?

Schmitt wasn't alone with the teases. Another former 343 dev, Kolbe Payne, who's now a level designer at Cystal Dynamics, reacted to this conversation around pitched Halo games. He would say, in response to a user pointing out that this kind of gold mine of pitches would be present at any major studio with a giant IP: "Oh 100%. I just hope Microsoft allows other Halo games to be made that are entirely different genres. Halo’s universe is so expansive. Only having an RTS and FPS is becoming very stale."

Right now, when Halo Infinte stands alone as the sole Halo game, would you like to see some more variation from 343 and the Halo franchise? Maybe a Helldivers-style game? Or do you think that's a bad idea - that by the time one comes out, people's desires may have shifted? Let us know!