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Inside Bungie - Living The Spartan Life
Straight from the latest issue of Edge, a great feature all about the life inside Bungie studios. The article gets into a good bit of detail on the mindset of this insular part of Microsoft's development network. Interviewed developers discuss what it is like working for Microsoft, and how hard it is not to be hard on themselves. Specifically, the developers have some surprisingly harsh criticism of their own opus - Halo 2. From the article, comments by technical lead Chris Butcher: "One of the things that stuns me when I think about it, and I can't believe this is true - we had [no time to polish] for Halo 2. Take that polish period and completely get rid of it. We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it. Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right. It's astounding to me. I f***ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it. And that's why I know Halo 3 is going to be so much better."
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Hopefully an update to the game will solve the multiplayer issues.
Anyway, this isn't the first of the last game to come to market with issues, not enough tested, not polished. Too bad this happens, and PS3 wouldn't have been a real danger to XBox360 market share even without Halo2
I liked the first half of Halo 1. The parts where you could jump on a jeep (whatever) and a guy would climb in and drive, or gun, or whatever you didn't do. It really felt like a war game where there was some tactics and such.
The last half completely dropped that and was boring.
Halo 2... I never bothered with it. My nephews played it, and I heard a little on the web about it, but not much. So I left it alone.
I'm hoping Halo 3 really DOES have the 'polish time' they need to make it right and fun in single player. (I don't give a rat's ass about multi, despite liking the 'work together' stuff with the NPCs.) I'm not really holding my breath, though.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
You can download Marathon Aleph One for free, the FPS predecessor of Halo.
And you can still play Myth II online for free (serial number not needed if you forgot yours).
They didn't survive that crash.
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Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
Show me a developer that's ever completely happy with the finished game and I'll show you a director that's completely happy with the final theatrical cut of his film.
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SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Halo 2 is still one of the most played and most stable games. And one of the best looking for its generation. This is just marketing to try to hype up expectation for Halo 3. Halo 2 is not perfect, no game is. But to say there isn't any polish on it is just a flat out lie.
But since they were bought by Microsoft, they aren't really relevant to the gaming community at large anymore (other than as a vehicle for the Roosterteeth guys). The problem is that Microsoft basically boxed them into the X-Box. (no pun intended) Those of us who are PC gamers (and we are legion) are essentially being shut out of the HALO franchise unless we meet certain Microsoft criterion. A) we must own an X-box or X-box 360, or B) we must own Vista.
/. article, there are some very influential people in the gaming community that just don't see a compelling reason to drink the Microsoft DX10 koolaid. With the availabilty of inexpensive and fully compatible alternative engines, it's becoming less and less compelling to even bother with Direct X, other than as a convenience because it's what many programmers are already used to. Put all these factors together, and the PC gaming community isn't likely to be rushing to Vista any time soon.
Now, that's all fine and good, Microsoft can do what it pleases with it's products. But make no mistake that this immediately relegates the HALO franchise to irrelevancy with HUGE sections of the gaming community. As noted by an earlier
What does this mean for the HALO franchise? Well, since they are locked into Vista and the X-Box, that pretty much relegates them to that minority section of the market. Which means for the vast amount of gamers, Bungie might as well be non-existent for the amount of effect they have on those gamers. Halo 1 was nice. Halo 2 did OK considering it's an X-Box only title. Halo2 Vista and Halo3 should do a small amount better, but not much. Until the majority of PC's are Vista (at least 4 years, if not longer) Bungie is a non-entity in the PC gaming market.
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Can some one post the article on here? I am behind a content filter...
And that's why I know Halo 3 is going to be so much better
As someone who worked in the video game industry for six years, the next time around the schedule will be caught in half. If they thought losing the polish time was time was bad, losing time to finish the game is even worse.
Guy 1: This is insane! This is madness!!
Guy 2: Madness? This is BUNGIE!!
[Guy 1 kicked into a well]
This is not news to me, nor should it be to anyone who watched the Making of Documentary that came with the special edition Halo 2. Basically, Bungie sat around on their asses doing nothing until about a year/6 months before the release date, and then started working like crazy. It shows you that the New Mombasa E3 demo was not built on the existing game engine and had to be completely scrapped. I doubt this will happen again, as it sounds like they're far into production already, but if it should, I doubt I'll buy the game.
"It's a reverse vampire...they....they crave the sun!"
That's last month's story.
Console first-person shooting was viable in 1997. See Goldeneye.