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Bungie to Step Back From Halo Series
Thanks to the BBC for their articles on the near future of Bungie. With Halo 2 ready to ship, it appears the company is stepping back from the Halo series for the moment. While they have over 100 years of plot fleshed out for the gameworld, plans for the future are in flux. For now, "Most people will take a week or two, some up to a month, but almost everyone will be back here in time for the game launch, to witness it first hand."
They saved the universe! That's a plot!
Every 90 seconds, somewhere in the world, a woman is gving birth.
She must be found, and stopped.
takes place in the world of the Marathon series, right?
Just like Tribes takes place in the Starsiege/Earthsiege universe.
So, shouldn't it already have a lot of backstory?
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I sure hope the Master Chef is still in it!
Two games does not a series make.
It's not even a trilogy yet!
After reading the articles, this appears to me to be nothing more than a well deserved vacation for all the people that have been tirelessly working to meet a deadline for all of us gamers. Maybe I read a bit too much into the title, which to me seemed to suggest some sort of abandonment.
I thought they'd already stated a Looooong time ago that Halo 2 was the last game in the series. Props though to Bungie that they've been so tight lipped about it, that even now, just a month before the game comes out, even a new screenshot is a big deal.
Only question being how much money that is..
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I hate replying to posts that sound like trolls. Who cares if it originally demoed on a Cray or an SGI? Game development frequently takes a few years and plans can change. Once upon a time, Halo was supposed to be a PlayStation game too.
e xboxhistory040904&p=42
i on=History&subsection=Main&page=6
But that was when it was a Myth/scifi hybrid. It was much more of a RTS game, not any sort of first-person game.
Bungie posted a history of Halo a few months ago...
http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=pr
And of course they're pretty upfront about their history too.
http://www.bungie.net/Inside/CustomPage.aspx?sect
Just wanted to get some tru7h out there...
Cheers,
-Geoff
That's one of the funny things about Bungie, they don't always seem to follow the straight and narrow money trail. Just look at their titles.
... uhh... where'd my tin hat go?
Minotaur.
Pathways into Darkness.
Marathon Trilogy (the third, IIRC, wasn't quite done in-house even).
Myth.
Oni.
Halo.
Now call me naive (STA7IC YOU NAIVE FOOL), but there isn't an entirely straight line here. The Marathon Trilogy won awards in the Mac community and developed a cult following (even if the Windows M2 port didn't go very far), but when asked about a sequel, they responded that they'd be beating a dead horse for money. They finished the story that they wanted to tell, and were moving on.
Myth was a great piece of work. They left the door ajar for Myth 2, and took that, but pretty much wrapped the story up at the end... unless you want to go backwards or forwards some 1000 years or so in the storyline. Take Two exploited this option when they put together Myth 3, which is pretty much ignored now.
Oni was a one-shot storyline and great fun. We're not expecting to see any sequels, prequels, or addons here, unless Take Two is *really* after money. Bungie packaged that game up nicely.
From the day it shipped, everyone knew that Halo 2 was in the works -- they *had* to keep it up, tell more about what that damn blue glowbug is up to. Visiting Earth will be a trip. From the day XBox Live was announced, everyone knew that Halo 2 was necessary for the continued good of XBox Live. I'd be interested in seeing the relationship between XBL subscriptions and Halo 2 shipping.
But from here... who knows. Hopefully Bungie will surprise us with a new universe to romp through, whether it be scifi or fantasy. Or something set between 1900-1915 or 1950-2100. Postmodernism and historical fiction are both underdeveloped catagories in the gaming department if you don't have a war involved. Whatever they do, keep an eye on Bungie in a couple years, and ignore all the shiny weapons, vehicles, and maps they're sure to bring in over time as downloadable content. It's just another division of the Office of Bungie Mind Control that keeps me
If microsoft drops a bomb and lowers the price of the Xbox to $99 when Halo 2 is launched that would be sweet.
Maybe they're going to re-do the Marathon Trilogy, but with new technology. That'd kick 13 kinds of ass.
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I'd have to say that Bungie has amazing control over what they put out, and that they do a good job of maintaining the plot they set out with. But you do have to hand it to the guys, they sure put a whole lot of extra work into it, that's almost unnecessary. Cortana Letter's, anyone?
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They're now a part of Microsoft.
Now, don't jump ahead of me here, i'm not taking the bandwagon stance of "omgz they're with M$ so now they're just a mindless arm of M$ omgz".
It's more of a Microsoft has a little more influence now on 'em, so if they wave a few more bucks at them combined with whatever the massive sales will be (and they WILL be massive), there could be a 3rd game in the series, or perhaps an offshot of it, something other than a pure FPS, who knows.
All I know is that the IP(intellectual property) will be used again, it's too good not to.
All your base are belong to Google.
Save Earth? Probably. Save the galaxy? Maybe, but maybe he'll 'let' the Monitor activate the Halo in the Covenant's part of the galaxy and blow them away ending the war.
So far there's only 2 posts higher than a +2....and that's funny...
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Yeah, the Cortana letters were completely unneeded, but very cool and generated a lot of hype.
The little details, while often overlooked are what make the difference in the long run. The Marathon series is good proof of that. You don't need to read all the stuff in every console to get your objectives and complete the game, but they add a lot of depth to the game universe.
Now, I waiting for Halo 2 just to find out if Cortana DID go rampant... (Theres some good circumstantial evidence of this)
Given the range of the Halo found in the first game, more than likely it WAS the one in range of the Covenant homeworld.
Oh, and Earth too...
"Great googely-moogely."
Wait for Halo 2 to clear out a million units at 49.99
Then do a price dropped bundle of xbox + halo 2 for 129.99, and xbox, halo, halo 2 for 149.99. And then do a Halo 2 edition xbox with halo 2 + patches and whatever for 199.99 with shinier plastic, master chief action figure and ghost/warthog vehical by McFarlane toys.
There was another game the Bungie people were working on after Halo - that being the mysterious 'Phoenix'.
Nobody outside Bungie really knows what sort of game it was, but according to Matt Soell, "the game formerly known as Phoenix has indeed been shelved. The consensus was that we could finish the game but we would not be happy with the result. If the team didn't think they'd enjoy the game as designed, they could not seriously expect others to enjoy it."
Who knows how many other game ideas they've been having...
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It all depends on Halo 2.
Enough buzz in the industry has been created that Halo 2 is already pre-destined to make a fortune for Bungie and Xbox. The question is that once everyone has bought it, will it live up to the hype.
From the public's response to Doom 3, it is obvious that very good graphics and controls do not a "superior" game make.
First-Person-Shooters have suffered from market flush. Too many titles and they all play the same.
My fear is that Halo 2 is the same game as Halo 1, but with better graphics and a few new quirks and weapons.
What I would like to see:
- Even more evolution in enemy intelligence. Halo 1 had rock solid AI. The smart enemies dodged, swerved, flanked, and found cover. The stupid enemies at least knew when to run away. If Bungie can extend this even more in Halo 2 then this game will become the king of all FPS.
- Increase the "good team" AI. Make the Non-Player Soldiers around you better shots, find cover, and use turrets and other stationary weapons better.
- Balance the Covenant weapons. In Halo 1 you might have used the laser pistol/rifle for a little while, but most of the human weapons were better so long as you had ammo.
- Unique missions. Most of what we have seen, go up there.. click a button to open a door, go down, flick a switch to activate an elevator... etc. It is all played out. Make the world more dynamic.. Have enemies of different rank that command their troops.. The more Sergeants and Officers you kill the worse the enemies fight. Missions should evolve around your actions, and not the other way around.
The "Halo 3" could easily be written around the premise.. "The Covenant came to Earth, its time to bring to fight to them. Attack their home world!"
This was from the same weekly update that was posted earlier about Halo 2 being "ready to ship".
Uh, surprise surprise - they finished their part of a major software project - when ELSE will a product team finally be *allowed* to take some vacation guilt-free (believe me, trying to squeeze it in at some "lull" in a project schedule rarely works out as planned)? If I was upper management at Bungie (yes, they're part of MS, but I'm sure they still have their own internal reporting structure), I'd definitely give the team a chance to regroup, make up for missing hours with spouses and kids, see the ball of fire that our planet keeps spinning around, etc.
They're not putting the Halo series on the shelf for X years or something - at least, this quote should NOT be construed as such a statement. They're just finally taking a (hopefully) well-deserved break after all the blood, sweat, tears, and hours they've put into making Halo 2.
I have little doubt they'll get cracking on Halo3 - probably for "XBox Next" or whatever you want to call it - in due course. After all, Sgt. Johnson claims he'll finally "get a woman" in Halo 4, we can't keep him waiting for too long, can we?
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When you said historical fiction was underdeveloped it made try to think of games of that type. The only one I could think of was The Last Express. A war is kind of involved there but not at all in the gameplay. Are there more?
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Bungie has had a team of 55 people working on the game for at least 16 hours a day to make sure it was ready in time.
So, I guess there won't be many bugs in the final product then, right?
I'd sure like to see a sequel to Oni that actually let you remap the keys into a usable configuration without gettin carpal tunnel in your left hand while trying to do a running jump kick...
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