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Bungie to Step Back From Halo Series

Posted by Zonk on from the last-one-for-a-while dept.

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."

3 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Halo world story by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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?

    --
    The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
  2. Re:If it makes enough money there'll be a third on by Sta7ic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    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 ... uhh... where'd my tin hat go?

  3. Re:If it makes enough money there'll be a third on by C0rinthian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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)