When so little has changed, will people even miss Bungie as the developer of the Halo series?
Original Destiny artist Darren Bacon recalls how Bungie reacted to the art style change of Halo 4 by 343 Industries.
Bungie at that time became the most wonderful bunch of hypocrites in the gaming industry. Knowing this now, gosh the entitlement they felt was out of this world.
Nothing like buying yourself from Microsoft because you don't want to be the Halo Studio anymore, and the FIRST THING you do is sign your next IP over to Activision, for a DECADE, while they are in the middle of ousting the heads of Infinity Ward so they can exert even more control over COD while screwing out the devs at IW...
Should've come as no surprise then that Activision gutted the content of Destiny 1 before launch and was a horrible partner through Destiny 2, until history repeated itself and Bungie had to split from Activision only to wind up in the arms of another major conglomerate that also doesn't know how to handle these unmanageable devs.
Tti their credit they praised the technical abilities of 343 and I remember at the time thinking halo 4 was a huge graphical leap above reach everything else was rubbish when I actually got to play it but there was no doubt it looked good for the 360 and is probably the best looking game on the system.
But ultimately I think bungie has always had a leadership problem and going independent ultimately proved this it's only getting worse with studio heads being outed by Sony for abuse allegations seems like all bungies past success has been in spite of management not because of it.
But really I think the bungie we have today is not the same one we had in that Xbox era of Bungie
I liked the artstyle change. For the most part. Something looked worse but most of everything else looked better. Weapons and vehicles for sure. The wraith come to my mind instantly.
And how can they get mad when the bungie changed it with Halo Reach?
I know a lot of people dislike Halo 4’s arts style, but there’s thing about it I like and dislike. Personally, the Halo 4 design of Master Chief’s armour is my favourite depiction of the character’s armour.
Pure Xbox writes: "Microsoft has appointed Alan Hartman as the new Head of Xbox Game Studios. If you're not familiar with Hartman, he's been part of Forza Motorsport team at Turn 10 Studios since 2005.
Over the past couple of years he's led as Corporate Vice President of Forza and Fable, and before this was the Forza Studio Head at Turn 10."
Seems like a solid choice considering Forza and FH have been the only high quality studio, consistently for Microsoft.
*Forza and FH are the most consistent high quality and this guy ran Turn 10. Playground did FH but still high quality. Let's see if he can get some quality production out of the rest
He´s been doing an excellent job ahead of both Forza franchises integrating those studios to work together by sharing knowledge, technology and manpower.
The new ForzaTech is amazing and I can´t wait to see what it can do for the new Fable.
Phil Spencer has been promoting a huge shake up at Xbox with new leadership hopefully full of fresh ideas!
I hope Alan Hartman as head of XGS to keep the focus on single player games and RPGs. Fable looks absolutely stunning, so we can expect Forza Horizon´s level of excellence for Playground´s first RPG.
I can´t wait!
What a nice reward for the latest Forza, which is probably the most mediocre of the lot so far.
@redgrave not an excuse an explanation for why this game has less features. Not my problem you don't understand how game development works or development in general. When you move to a knew platform some things need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
I am currently migrating one of our services we provide to our customers to the cloud version and having to rebuild a lot of the add-ons we had built for them over the years.
But go ahead and keep criticizing devs when no one here has any clue what it actually takes.
Still think Rod Fergusson would have been a good shout. He's got a track record of fixing stuff and I assume he's still at Blizzard.
Not heard of this guy but I feel like anyone is better than Matt Booty
I thought Dan Greenawalt was head of Turn10 though (although I noticed he didn't do the on stage stuff at e3 this year). Is he not there anymore?
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! This is the best news I've heard since the last piece of xbox news!
Go team xbox! Xbox will rule the world!
He's over overlooked The Forza games which have been consistently good through our the years. Hopefully he has the same eye for quality for the rest if the studios going forward.
How can anyone deny that Forza has been a quality franchise for almost two decades?
“How can anyone deny that Forza has been a quality franchise for almost two decades?“
Forza Motorsport declined after FM4. And this release was one of the worst in the series.
In Halo 4, 5, and Infinite, Master Chief became a more nuanced, human character.
In spite of the Halo series’ struggles, 343 deserves praise for adding nuance and characterisation to the ever-beating heart of Halo - The Master Chief. Playing through Infinite, it's abundantly clear that the events of the current and previous trilogies have irrevocably changed the iconic hero. He’s no longer the ‘blank slate’ that was previously presented by Bungie. He’s a fatigued, damaged and fallible protagonist, and one who is meandering through currents of grief, while reveling in his newfound agency. Giving the Chief a compelling and meaningful voice was no small feat, and 343 should be proud of that victory.
This article completely misses part of the appeal of the original iteration of character in the original game trilogy. It was the Chief and Cortana vs an entire alien collective. The blank slate Bungie displayed in their games was genius, he was an mysterious hero a wide audience could identify with because he wasn't as clearly defined as most characters.
The books added a lot of lore and backstory but most Halo players just want a fun game with exposition that doesn't get in the way of gameplay, it's why the Cortana level in Halo 3 was derided.
Not every character has to be a damaged soyboy, a soldier has to suck it up and do his duty.
A lot of people give the 343 version of Master Chief a lot of slack.
But Fundamentally he is still the same character, he just has a couple more dialogues. He has not changed in terms of attitude.
"Not every character has to be a damaged soyboy, a soldier has to suck it up and do his duty."
And that's what he has done at the end of the day, he did his duty. Watch his partner die, and was ready to destroy the weapon in Halo infinite....he is still the same soilder that everyone remembers
Halo Infintes one was a nice balance between both.
The 343i Master Chief has is based on the books. However, in Halo 4-Infinite, the Master Chief overtime become. gradually becomes more willing to show some emotion.
"However, in Halo 4-Infinite, the Master Chief overtime become. gradually becomes more willing to show some emotion."
Which is awesome! I love how Master Chief become more John and less soldier.
