BF2S Forums [Halo 2] Bungie Screwed Up

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'We Screwed Up' Halo 2, says Bungie

Halo 2 was and is a great game, but it's certainly not perfect. Now developer Bungie is acknowledging that certain aspects of the game (most notably its ending) needed a lot more work. One employee even went so far as to say that Bungie "screwed up" on Halo 2.

It's hard to criticize a game that puts up $125 million in sales on its first day of availability and goes on to sell around 6.5 million copies worldwide, but for a lot of Xbox gamers, looking back at 2004's blockbuster adventure with Master Chief is frustrating because of the game's somewhat lackluster ending. In hindsight, developer Bungie agrees.

In a fantastic article on the inner workings of the Microsoft-owned studio, Edge Online cites technical lead Chris Butcher on the irritating fact that Bungie just ran out of time on Halo 2. "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," he said. "The team was all there, everything was working great, the Xbox hardware was finally there and good, and we just were able to relentlessly execute on that. The entire game came together within that four- to six-week period.

Butcher continued, "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. 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."

Writer and community officer Frank O'Connor agreed completely that Halo 2's ending just wasn't satisfactory. "We drove off Thelma & Louise style," he said, adding, "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."

Butcher and Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell also shed some light on Bungie's existence as a Microsoft studio and their relationship with the parent company. "The concept that Bungie wouldn't have a launch title for the Xbox 360 was almost impossible to conceive of," remarked O'Donnell. "That was really hard for the suits to swallow, it was like, no no no, we have to have a Bungie launch title. But I remember saying that there's nothing better than for Bungie not to be able to have a launch title, and for Bungie not to be defining the Xbox 360. I know it's scary for everybody, but it's not scary for us. We make games. We don't ship platforms. We don't push platforms. As soon as we think that that's what we're about, as soon as we think that Bungie's a platform company, we are, in my opinion, doomed."

Butcher fully backed O'Donnell's sentiments: "Even through the Microsoft acquisition, Bungie's purpose is not to make money for Microsoft and support the platform. Bungie's purpose is to make great stuff."