This is what really happened with Destiny

I don't disregard 343 is a good studio, lol. I pretty much said they were a good studio throughout my post. wtf? Anyway, 343 made Halo 4 the same way Sledgehammer made MW3. Both teams worked on it, but the project was half-way finished already. Advanced Warfare was Sledgehammer's first CoD game from the ground up, similarly... Halo 5 will be 343's. Comparing the two within development workings only.

But I disagree with what you say about the Halo franchise. It's just a fanboy franchise with marketing hype? That makes zero sense. It's one of my favorite franchises, so... I'm a fanboy then? That's news to me.

I think you just answered your own question. Halo Wars proved a RTS game can work well on a console. It was a good game. I didn't necessarily ask for a sequel, but I'll take it. If there ever was a shortage of genres, the console RTS game is it. this fills the gap nicely. So in that sense... we've all been asking for it. Besides, the Halo franchise and its lore is versatile and rich enough to accommodate many spin-offs. The Spartan twin-stick shooters are fun. The Wars RTS games are fun. Sorta like I never felt like smash Bros and Mario Kart were stepping on the toes of the mainstream Mario games.

The great fall of Bungie

Yup.

And now he's back with Microsoft, rumoured to be working on ReCore amongst other projects.

I've heard that quite a bit of content was cut from Destiny late in development to be sold later as DLC. Don't know how much truth there is to that though as I haven't read much about the game because of its multiplayer focus, an area of gaming I have no interest in whatsoever. But if it is true that's pretty slimy.

So the versions of the game where it was a big open world and the comments by them saying "see this mountain?" You can go there and explore it entirely was all a lie and they gave us a half assed version of the game with cut content sold as DLC and who knows how many things were remade to satisfy activision that should already be in the game and not only that but they also fired one of the best composers they had and betrayed him. Glad I never supported the retail release. And glad the guy won the case.

The previous showings were all a lie and false marketing. They should be sued by gamers.

Not sure why some people put so much stock in Metacritic.

Actually, that's not correct. Halo 4 was the first new game in the Halo franchise by 343. I'm not sure how you ever missed that, as the majority of people not pleased with 343 comes from their work on Halo 4, the Halo 5 beta and Halo 5 announcement that the game will not have any splitscreen of any kind (a Halo staple), and then their most recent Halo MasterChief Collection.

So, they already have done more than remakes. I'm not sure if you saw the Halo 4 MP stats, but 343 CODified that game and the community responded by ditching the title rapidly. I put in probably over a hundred hours in Halo 4 but that was the beginning of when I formed a true opinion of 343. For the record, Halo 4 was the first main Halo entry to not get 90+ at metacritic, which before launch, 343's Bonnie Ross was had stated multile times her goal was a 90+ metascoring title.

Just in case you didn't know what happened to 343's Halo 4. You can see here it was unprecedented that HALO fans ditched a major Halo (4) so quickly. The rapid online community drop off for Halo 4 was a response to the 343 changes to previous Bungie MP games (Reach, Halo 3, Halo 2, Halo 1, etc). Put simply, they CODified Halo and it felt to consumers if they wanted COD, they have a better version to play called COD.

Finally, here's a citation of how vital Metascores are to 343 which so far, including Halo 4, they have not been able to hit 90+:

BTW: Bonnie Ross came as a producer working on PC sports games. In addition to the Halo franchise, she has worked on many other M$ game titles including NBA: Inside Drive, , Zoo Tycoon, Dungeon Siege, Counter Strike, Gears of War, and Jade Empire before being handed Halo and forming 343. She was not some massive Halo fan but rather a producer executive for M$. You will see with the below article, 343 and especially their leader Bonnie Ross put a lot of stock in metacritic as most other major publishers do. We might not always agree publishers and developers should rely on metacritic as the industry does, but that's the reality. Ross' goal was to be able to do what Bungie did with Halo Reach, Halo 3, Halo 2, and Halo 1 and hit 90+ for Halo which 343's first major game, Halo 4, did not accomplish.

Microsoft Corp. has a lot riding on its new alien shooting videogame, Halo 4, which is part of the blockbuster Halo franchise and debuts Nov 6. (read “The Big Game Battle“). But there’s one thing over which Halo 4′s creators can breathe a sigh of relief: the game’s review score from Metacritic.com.

“I’d be hard pressed to buy a 60-rated game,” said Josh Holmes, “Halo 4′s” creative director. “Anything below 75–that’s the kiss of death.”

Ms. Ross has had Metacritic on her mind more than a few times in recent months. She has asked her team a couple of times in various meetings whether they could deliver a “90-plus” quality game, referring to the score. “It’s make or break,” she said.

Chris Lee, Halo’s lead producer, said making Halo meet that 90-plus standard has been hard.

“We’ve had to build a studio, hit a release date we have to hit, make sure we maintain the legacy of one of the most successful console franchises of all time and drive innovation and push the boundaries of a game experience,” he said. “We need to make sure we’re 90-plus and we have to do what we need to get there.”

One way 343 Industries is trying to ensure Halo’s quality is by throwing a lot of people at the problem. The headcount of the team making Halo 4 tops 340, more than three-times the industry average.

Another way is marketing. 343 Industries has created books, websites and an elaborate five-episode live-action mini-series called “Forward Unto Dawn,” which tells the back story of how the game’s hero, Master Chief, meets another new character. The company spent five weeks shooting the series in Vancouver, which cost “millions of dollars,” Microsoft said.

For the record, I have been with Halo since 2001's first offering when I bought my first Xbox at launch 2001 and I have owned every Halo since. After playing the Halo 5 beta, I decided I'm going to wait it out for Halo 5 and get a reading from my RL friends and a few choice reviews before paying money for it. I'm as oldschool as they get.

Since you are new to Gamespot.com, I'll include a picture I took earlier this year of some of my Halo collection that you couldn't have seen since you are new. You can see in the the upper right hand corner of the enclosed picture multiple copies of Halo 3 and Halo Reach I used to LAN my multiple Xbox 360s. Not pictured is my original Xbox Halo games (Halo 1/2) which I have in a different room. I also have multiple copies of Halo 1/2 as well as I LAN those as well. Halo 5 won't support splitscreen so the LAN feature is going to be missed (2-4 players per Xbox).

10 years. It was in the leaked contract released years ago.

Yep! Plus Bungie themselves stated Destiny was a 'ten year vision,' and 'a universe [they] will develop over the next ten years'

@SolidTy:

i mispoke i guess. i know 343 worked on Halo 4... i'm just saying they didnt start development with the titles and they didnt have the "inspirational freedom" with the game like thay have had with Halo 5. Bungie did a lot of the legwork with the 4's developement. like i mentioned to someone else, similar to Sledge with MW3.

I know i slam the fanboys for being idiots all the time. but no worries... you dont come off as either to me. nice collection btw! lol, how did you get 3 copies of halo 3?

It was never about creative freedom, hell one glance at Destiny tells you that. Even if that was their PR speak, people here knew enough to know that wasn't true. They wanted more money. Lots and lots of it. And the only way to garner the sales needed to justify the payout they wanted was multiplat.

Not that I'm faulting them for their ambition. It's just clear the remains of Bungie don't have much in the way of fresh ideas that were being repressed at MS.

I mean, even so, think about it, at the time they left, Halo was one of the biggest franchises in gaming, was it worth it to let that go, start over, and potentially risk failing? Halo was so big they already were getting tons of money.

Sure it was. As a MS studio they didn't own their work, and even if they had a bonus structure that gave them a piece of the profits, it was still just a taste of what their work was making. They were making MS far more money than they were making themselves, and that's exactly why you see bright, talented, ambitious professional leave their jobs to go into business for themselves all the time. Halo had been overshadowed by the juggernaut sales of CoD, and I'd bet they believed they could match or surpass CoD level sales with their own title, something they would never do on one platform. And with those kind of sales on an IP they own and a favorable publishing deal they'd get mega freaking Scrooge McDuck rich.

Only problem is it isn't very easy to recreate a runaway hit. Bungie and the old IW guys both tried recently and learned so many random factors - including a crapload of luck - have to come together to get a hit the level of CoD or Halo 3. Still, I can't fault guys for chasing the Dream...

As of On October 1, 2007, Bungie split from M$. Actually, Halo Reach was the last title to be developed by Bungie. After Halo Reach Bungie began work on Destiny and it was a clean break. I think you may be confused about Halo 4 because at one point in time, Halo Reach was internally referred to by Bungie and consumers as Halo 4 before Bungie announced the upcoming 2010 Halo "4" was to actually be called "Halo Reach" way later. Bungie's plan was Halo 3: Recon which later became Halo 3:ODST, Halo Reach, and their commitment to Halo was done. Bungie didn't provide a lot of the legwork with Halo 4, that was all on 343's shoulders.

June 2009:

Here's a supplement to today's column on Bungie and "Halo 3: ODST" - edited excerpts from an interview with Bungie President Harold Ryan last week at the company's Kirkland offices.

Ryan has more to say about competition for Halo and Bungie's independence from Microsoft. He also touched on Halo 4 - a new game called "Reach" that's coming next year and already being played within Bungie.

He also touched on Halo 4 - a new game called "Reach" that's coming next year and already being played within Bungie.

A month later in July 24th, 2009 we got this information:

Reports: Halo: Reach Bungie's Last Halo Game

Reports have surfaced on the web that Halo: Reach will be Bungie's last game in the franchise,

while the company's first original IP, yet to be announced, is "close" to finding its publisher.

Reports have surfaced on the web that Halo: Reach will be Bungie's last game in the franchise, while the company's first original IP, yet to be announced, is "close" to finding its publisher -- and Peter Jackson's Halo game appears to be dead.

Consumer site IGN quotes Bungie senior designer Lars Bakken as saying,

"After Reach that's it for us. We're already working on a new IP that we can't talk about yet,

I don't know when we'll be talking about it -- when we're ready I suppose."

Meanwhile, Bakken also spoke to Eurogamer, saying that a deal to publish Bungie's new, original IP game is "close". "I think internally we'll know sometime soon," said Bakken. "I don't handle these things, but I'd imagine we're going to know way before we make the public announcement of who's handling that! But sure, I think those talks are, I guess, close." No details are publicly available about what form the game will take.

As announced alongside the reveal of the Halo: Legends anime shorts compilation and Halo Waypoint Xbox Live destination site, Microsoft has formed a new internal division called 343 Industries, which, according to this LA Times report, "oversees all Halo products."

You can see here Bungie had planned 2010's Halo Reach and then were hard at work on a new IP, which turned out to be Destiny. You also can see Bungie's senior designer say that after 2010's Halo Reach, they were done with Halo and that they are working on a New IP they couldn't talk about yet.

Halo 4 was 343's game according to Bungie and 343. 343 gets all the cheers and jeers for Halo 4 as Bungie was done after Reach. This is what I remembered because I have followed developers for many years instead of brands. I remember being a little sketchy that a new developer was making a Halo game, but 343 did alright and it was a decent game. Just not an awesome Halo game imo.

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Thanks for enjoying the collection picture! It's just a small snippet of my games. :P

To answer about my copies of Halo 3. I got three copies of Halo 3 physical (and a fourth copy digital not pictured obviously) to LAN my multiple 360 machines for parties/BBQ's. One of those Halo 3's is a C.E., and the other two are vanillas I got solely for the purposes of LAN party Halo fun. You can also see in the picture I have two copies of Halo Reach but I also have a digital copy of Halo Reach as well. Very useful for LAN. I bought all of these lol, but I got my monies worth due to fun LAN times. A shame I won't be able to LAN Halo 5 four players per screen, I'll miss being able to do that as I did with all the other Halo games.

From a business perspective, it turned out it was worth it, but it was risky definitely.

However, from an artistic perspective Bungie was forced to see their developer peers go and make new IPs. In the time Bungie was working on Halo, Naughty Dog released the Jak, Uncharted, and (worked on The Last of Us). Same for Sucker Punch who went on to do Sly Cooper and then Infamous. Some studios are forced to just crank away at one IP and that's fine, but Bungie prioritized and felt it crucial for Bungie to get away from Halo. Unfortunately, not having a "Halo" is something M$ wasn't going to sit on as they just for 360 cranked out some time of Halo almost annually since 2009. When Bungie started splitting in 2007, they still kept making Halo, but by 2009 M$ formed 343 in anticipation of Bungie's stated departure to develop a new multiplat IP which we all know now is Destiny. M$ had to keep the Halo train rolling.

Was it good Halo and the fans? Probably not, but that's the breakdown as we know it.

I remember Bungie saying they were done with Halo 3. Then they made Halo ODST and then they made Halo Reach. They were trapped by their own success.

They constantly kept saying they were done back then.

Imagine being an artist and having to crank out the same kinds of pictures, movies, or music and not being able to flex that creative muscle. Some artists do that but I think Bungie didn't want to be known as the studio that make Halo and only Halo, especially after seeing other developers have that creative freedom to create new IPs and franchises from 2000-2010.

I'm going to quote myself from 5 years, 6 months ago (before we knew about Destiny, we just knew Bungie was done):

We knew M$ wasn't done with Halo, but we finally started believing Bungie was finally done. Especially when we saw 343 being created.

I know this is hard to understand for some folks, but imagine being an artist (music, art, whatever) and being forced to keep making variations of a theme. It's like musicians that hate playing their most popular songs on stage. They are sick of it. They want to do other stuff. Bungie obviously loves their creation, but they fought to be free to be able to leave Halo and do other works. Before Halo, that was the Bungie CULTURE. After Halo, they have been forced for almost a decade to pump out Halo games. It's been wonderful I'm sure, but they wanted to do other stuff.

I absolutely understand where you are coming from, but Microsoft didgive Bungie multiple chances to launch a new IP- Bungie kept mucking it up (which is also what led to Halo 2's development cycle being such a disaster for instance).

I mean, what I am saying is, while creatively there are better companies to work with than Microsoft, their current (and even previous, under Microsoft) situation is one entirely of their own making.

I agree with that. Their current situation is their own fault, both good and bad.

Hopefully they can make a Destiny game I care about sometime (I don't have a lot of hope though).

@SolidTy: The sad part is, underneath all the bullshit in Destiny? There is a very good game, or at least the seeds of one. I'm not going to be one of those people who claim that The Taken King will make Destiny what it was always meant to be, I think in its current form, the game has a fundamental structural issue, but my hope is that eventually, maybe with Destiny 2, they can realize the full potential of the franchise.

I completely agree.

I think it's in playing Destiny and seeing the potential not pan out that hurt me the most because a lot of it did play well. Bungie nailed a lot of the gameplay fundamentals with Destiny, but released something that felt half baked which is depressing considering the 4+ years of development and pedigree of the studio.

@BassMan: says the guy with a kratos avi. halo as a whole is a better shooter than 95% of FPSs on the market. 343 has done a fantastic job with the series and is certainly on par with old bungie. nothing special my ass....

After the success of Halo MS might have been open with Bungie doing whatever type of game they wanted after as well.

Under MS were they obligated to only make Halo games ?

Or could they do like a new IP as long as they kept making Halo games ?

They wanted Creative freedom to make something similar to halo?

Microsoft aren't great, but still better than Activistion and EA

@R4gn4r0k: they cancelled several new IPs while under MS. They we're even developing a new IP at the same time they we're developing Halo 3

Wow, so true! They really got it up the ass on this one thinking the grass was greener somewhere other than Microsoft's hill. The topic spells out a lot too. The game just keeps recycling levels over and over. "The Grind" made me get out of this game. It being unfinished puts a lot of sense to it.

@mems_1224:Seems like Bungie was in a really comfortable positition then.

Can't feel bad for them if they chose for Activision and it turned out worse for them.

Make new games as long as you also deliver Halo. They had multiple chances to launch new IP, they kept fucking them up, and as a result they kept having to cancel their own new projects (and they did it, not Microsoft), with this mismanagement bleeding into the development cycles of Halo and affecting it negatively, most notably with Halo 2.

hell, the concept for Destiny started forming as far back as ODST at least because there is a Destiny easter egg in there.

As I said in my previous post, this does seem Bungie's own doing.

However, we don't know how much time MS gave them for each Halo. Could be that the deadlines were so strict that they barely had time to make any new games (not saying that is the case though, just a possibility)

Eh, also not true. For example, after 2001, Bungie had until 2004 to deliver on Halo 2- especially at that time, you didn't need three years to work on a new video game. The issue was that Bungie overpromised, realized it couldn't do it, realized it didn't have the resources to do it because half of them were working on something else, realized that the other thing wouldn't be worth it because only half of them were working on it, realized they had little over a year to actually deliver Halo 2 (the only strong commitment they had), and nothing to even start from, and then they salvaged what they could out of it.

That was why Halo 2 came out the way it did.

Halo 3 also had a new IP in development alongside it, it just wasn't quite as poorly managed. But Bungie mismanaging their development goes as far back as the original Halo, which had five different reboots in development. Under Microsoft, they had enough management to actually deliver compelling products regardless, because no matter how 'evil' people like to portray Microsoft as, they were still concerned with delivering a top class flagship for their home console. Under companies like Activision, that mismanagement is made even more egregious.

"On April 16, 2010, Bungie and Activision Publishing agreed to make a five-partvideo game franchise dubbed Destiny. The original release date was set for Sept. 24, 2013 (it came out a year later in 2014). O’Donnell composed music for “every application” of the Destiny franchise."

Five...Five so what they are telling me is Destiny is just the prequel of the series. I call Bullsh!t. Which means when Destiny 5 comes out that is the ending of the overall game. Talk about stretching out a game. That is stretching it out to a new level.

Destiny sucks anyway

No, it was more like this:

Destiny
Small Expansion 1
Small Expansion 2
Major Expansion
Destiny 2
Small Expansion 1
Small Expansion 2
Major Expansion
Destiny 3
Post launch support

The bolded are the ones that count towards the 'five game' part

@charizard1605: Well that isn't as terrible as I originally thought but still convoluted and explains where the lack of story comes from. It reminds me of what the movie industry is doing with books adapted into movies.

What you say sounds very convincing. (I remember the reboots for Halo 1)

But we can not forget that MS DID force developers in the past to make certain games or drop other games/projects.

True, but they were very cautious with their handling of Bungie, they never wanted to force them to do anything- remember, Bungie was the crown jewel in their first party lineup.

Very much so. They probably treated them differently as they made such a huge game for MS and Xbox.

A similair tale we find with Take Two and 2K as a publisher. Evolve is a game where the publishers influence drips through and through.

But none dare touch Rockstar or any of their games, as it makes (Take Two in this case) so much money.

This seems to be a trend in multiple industries including gaming.. In which executives, with little to no experience, **** up the development or policy of something because all they care about is the bottom line of margin and profits..

Bungie is independent.

They are contracted to do Destiny yes, but they have the man power, resources, and name recognition to get themselves another deal on another ip, on another game. They are easily in a position to expand or have enough man power to have a cycling studio. They have however put themselves in a position where they will be working on Destiny for over 10 years.

@charizard1605: So Activision fucked up the game? Surpised?

I wonder how bad MS was last generation for Bungie to think Activision was a better choice.

Why does everyone want to ignore how much of an asshole O'Donnell was about all of this? His behavior is literally the reason this happened.

Also, Staten left the company on good terms. He was not forced out, fired, or has ever said anything negative about working on Destiny. Unhappy people don't post farewell messages on the websites of former employers they hate.

Bungie screwed themselves when they left MS. Now Bungie is nothing but a corpse of the company they once were. It's sad because when they had all their talent, they were a very good developer.

Both instances are just signs that a lot of friction happened, or too many changes. Normally if things are going good you don't just get up and leave mid project. Unless someone drops an amazing job on your lap. But when your doing a project like this, and your invested its really hard to leave until you see it through to completion. Unless things aren't going well and it becomes just a job.

The people doing this, and doing it well, are people who care greatly care about the quality of the project. Some will see the writing on the wall and move on quietly. But if your job is to do the game's music, and a publisher decides to go a different route, and your a founder of the games company getting some control of the project taken away (not releasing the music, deciding to use new music...) you probably are not.