backtop

Software Bungie Admits That It "Screwed Up" Halo 2
Brandon Hill (Blog) - January 24, 2007 1:29 PM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 45 comment(s) - last by sxr7171.. on Jan 25 at 4:53 PM
Bungie admits to what most everyone has already said about Halo 2

When it comes to Halo 2, the developers of the game aren't content with how things turned. Sure the game went on to rack up $125 million USD in sales on its first day and has sold more than 6.5 million copies worldwide since its launch, but those successes seem to ring a bit hollow with Bungie.

Many Halo fans that plunked down their hard-earned money for Halo 2 were disappointed with the game’s storyline and ending -- Bungie's Frank O'Connor agrees. "We drove off Thelma & Louise style," said O'Connor. "The trick is to avoid designing or writing by committee. You have to take what's best from the input you're getting and not have it turn into that too many cooks situation."

Part of the reason for the discontent with the game stems from the fact that Bungie didn't have the four to six week "polishing period" that it had with the original Halo blockbuster. "We had about four to five weeks to polish Halo at the end. No more than that. And that last five per cent is responsible for 30 per cent of the success of the game, or more. That's the period in which we really had a perfect storm," said 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 none of that for Halo 2 ... We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that."

Even more harsh words were reserved for Halo 2's multiplayer. "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," adds Butcher.

Bungie has a chance to not only improve on the tremendous sales success of Halo 2, but also to improve on the many letdowns brought forth with that title. Bungie has already notified testers selected for the Halo 3 beta and the title is expected to hit store shelves in time for the Holiday 2007 season. Bungie has a little less than a year to truly wow Xbox 360 owners out there and hopefully they won't let them down. Gears of War is already shaping up to be the “next big thing” for the Xbox 360 platform, so the Halo franchise isn’t the only game in town anymore.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
At least they admit it
By Monkmachine on 1/24/2007 2:05:32 PM , Rating: 3
At least they admit they f***ed up, most companies wouldn't. I like some honesty.... I do wish that had said f*** the schedule and finished it properly rather than rushing it to make some money.




RE: At least they admit it
By brunswickite on 1/24/2007 2:12:44 PM , Rating: 5
This is a PR move to sell more copies of Halo 3.

Whatever it is, I bought the first two, will probably buy this one was well.


RE: At least they admit it
By VIAN on 1/24/2007 2:37:27 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly, it's all PR. I played Halo 2 and I think that 6 weeks wouldn't have been enough to fix what was wrong with that game.

I'll probably still buy Halo 3, to see how the story ends. But of course, it has to get 80% or greater at gamerankings.com for me to bite.


RE: At least they admit it
By sviola on 1/24/2007 3:25:50 PM , Rating: 2
That depends...if the 6 weeks was in the game design phase of the project it could have made the whole difference.


RE: At least they admit it
By ZeeStorm on 1/24/2007 3:21:09 PM , Rating: 1
This is exactly what MS just did recently. They talked about how much they screwed up XP and are fixing it in Vista. It's all BS hype. I highly doubt Halo 3 is going to be any better. All they're going to do is change the graphics to look better with horrible gameplay.


RE: At least they admit it
By tuteja1986 on 1/24/2007 9:42:53 PM , Rating: 2
Actually no ... if any had the collector edition of HALO 2 and watched the documentary on the 2nd disk you would see that Developer knowing they fucked up bad. You could see it by anger and depression when they didn't have time to complete the game or test it properly.


RE: At least they admit it
By wushuktl on 1/24/2007 2:18:00 PM , Rating: 2
i remember reading about that game total annihilation in an issue of PCGamer. Chris Taylor said they once missed a milestone during the game's development so for that period Microsoft didn't pay them. I can imagine if Bungie missed their launch date Microsoft would throw a pretty big fit and i'd imagine i wouldn't want to be on Bungie's end of that.


RE: At least they admit it
By sxr7171 on 1/25/2007 4:32:08 PM , Rating: 2
That's what happens when you have a big fvcking company riding your ass. No good ever can come from it. Gaming today IMHO has gone down the tubes since it's gotten too big with big fvcking corporations getting in there (yes including the worst of them all: Sony followed by EA). When it was more Nintendo and Sega in the market, things were way better in terms of creativity and quality of games. Now even Nintendo and Sega have to copy the big companies to survive and you can see it in the decline of the quality of even their software. At least this time around Nintendo saw the light and decided to go it alone with a different strategy. I think at least they will make some good games for the Wii, being focused on games, not specs, hype and dazzle.


RE: At least they admit it
By tenguman on 1/24/2007 2:33:33 PM , Rating: 2
I hope they screw up with Halo 3 because Halo 2 friggin' rocked my socks and continues to do so this very day. Well GoW is getting more playtime but still, I still love to throw in Halo 2 4-5 times a week and play with my buddies.


RE: At least they admit it
By daftrok on 1/25/2007 1:03:35 AM , Rating: 2
If Halo Xbox went online it would have railed Halo 2.


RE: At least they admit it
By borowki on 1/24/2007 2:55:19 PM , Rating: 2
I don't know, the comment sounds mildly insulting to me. He's basically implying that the game's fans can't tell chicken shit from chicken salad.


RE: At least they admit it
By KaiserCSS on 1/24/2007 3:19:21 PM , Rating: 2
You're kidding right?

Have you played Halo 2? Surely you must have realized that something felt off. For example, the Brutes felt like they were just thrown in there with limited inteligence; they were, to quote the Halo 3 documentary Et tu, Brute?, "bullet sponges." And the plot line could have benefited from some last-minute revision and polishing. The scale of the game also severely dissapointed me.

Do you remember the announcement trailer in which the Earth is covered in massive explosions? Well, that wasn't included in the finished product, and I felt left down. A single ship managed to penetrate the orbital defences, reconed a small city in Africa, found something, and left. And that was all for Earth. Small skirmishes in a city which seemed COMPLETELY lifeless. It just seemed like a long string of small skirmishes and no massive battles. I didn't feel like I was saving the Earth or anything else than myself, for that matter. There was a lack of emotion that I found rather dull.

When I saw the Halo 3 trailers for the first time, I felt emotions like awe and excitement, as well as saddness, desperation, and hopelessness. THIS is what I want from Halo 3. A game that will touch me deep down and leave a lasting emotional impact which will set it aside from other games.

If I recall, the Halo 3 engine is capable of rendering +10 kilometers of geometry. HOPEFULLY they will utilize this to create massive worlds without "invisible walls" and not just for pretty mountains.

Now, if fans have something to worry about, it's those bastard children "Halo Wars" and the "Unnamed Halo Project." Those worry more than Bungie screwing up, because if these LICENSED games are terrible, the entire franchise will suffer.

But I have confidence in Bungie. They want to do it right, and that's what counts. If the developers have the heart, talent, and motivation, as they seem to be displaying, they will do great things.


RE: At least they admit it
By vdig on 1/24/2007 3:47:20 PM , Rating: 2
I must add my two cents.

I too have felt that Halo 2 was underwhelming. It just did not feel like the epic battles that it should have been.

A personal gripe of Halo 2 that I hope does not happen again are the snipers that kill Master Chief in one shot on Legendary difficulty. I thought Master Chief received an upgrade with his shields, not a downgrade. I liked the challenge the first title's Legendary provided, as the challenge was not necessarily memorization of the location of cheap targets, but actual tact. As long as you had patience and ammo, you could peck away at the enemy. Halo 2? There's a sniper at x location. He sees you. You don't see him. You die. WTF. Memorize where that bullet came from, loser.

....No thanks. I'll play one difficulty lower.

Remove the one shot snipers, please. I thought the plasma sword enemies were good enough in that regard, and at least allowed you time to run or retaliate.


damage control ...
By Homerboy on 1/24/2007 1:53:03 PM , Rating: 2
...and hype for Halo 3

Personally they ruined it when they made it for a console to start :)




RE: damage control ...
By darkpaw on 1/24/07, Rating: -1
RE: damage control ...
By CascadingDarkness on 1/24/2007 2:22:31 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
FPS games on consoles completely suck

I wouldn't say completely suck. I still remember they days of Golden Eye on 64. I to this day love pwning my friends constantly. I don't think Halo was so bad on XBox (though I would have perferred PC), but was supremely disappointed the PC version took a year and was awful.

I do agree, basically all games would be better on PC. You have far more options for controls and graphics. Can you imagine trying to fly a helicopter in BF2 on a console? That just wouldn't work.

The only point to consoles in my opinion would be for parties. You don't see many people clustering around a PC to watch, and Lan parties tend to be a pain.


RE: damage control ...
By RyuDeshi on 1/24/2007 4:37:10 PM , Rating: 2
Flying a helicopter on BF2 with a keyboard and mouse is horrible, you add in a joystick and it is so much easier, and I could imagine the same for a controller due to the analog thumbsticks.. so I'd have to say I disagree there.


RE: damage control ...
By Tyler 86 on 1/24/2007 6:58:17 PM , Rating: 3
Yes, and PCs have Joysticks and game-pad plug-ins for that reason.

I know it's hard to imagine, but flying a Helicopter in BF2 does not count as 'First Person Shooting', that's branching over into 'Flight Simulation'.

Keyboard and mouse work wonders for the gunner seats though.

Aiming a crosshair and directing a vehicle, while similar, are not the same thing. Mice are better for aiming, as they are sort of arbitrary point specifiers -- you can target any object quickly with a margin of error, whereas joysticks are relatively incremental -- constant change in direction, with more emphasis on axial alignment and predictable course.

It's like comparing running on the ground (mouse aim) to swimming in the water (joystick pilot). It's an entirely different concept of locomotion, or in this case, 'loco-direction'.

Personally I like the Wii controller concept of left-hand piloting, right-hand aiming... can't wait to see that implemented into some PC games. There's already unofficial driver mock-ups floating about to use them.


RE: damage control ...
By knowyourenemy on 1/24/2007 11:20:45 PM , Rating: 2
On that note, personally, I prefer using my kb/mouse over my joy for flying the helos. Matter of preference? Of course.


RE: damage control ...