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Hermen Hulst on Bungie and what's next for PlayStation Studios (PS Blog)

Lone Wolf

Member
I didn't make this post in haste because I wanted to be completely sure I knew what I was talking about before discussing this topic. Here are the OG Halo devs that are still working for Bungie.
Jason Jones - Does he even make games anymore? After Halo 2 he stopped getting actively involved in game development and took the role of studio management. But in 2013 he scrapped the original version of Destiny because it was "too linear", made a team called "Iron Bar" lead by Christopher Barrett to release the Year 1 version of Destiny. After that he let others like Luke Smith lead the game and resigned himself from game development again.

The new writers that were bought in after the original writing team left preferred Staten's original story and put it in the Grimoire Cards. A lot of the leaks from the original version of Destiny coincide with revelations in Shadowkeep, so the story is still being based on some lore blueprint left behind by Staten. The backstory of Savathun(antagonist of Witch Queen) was first provided in Book of Sorrows and it also hinted about "The Final Shape" which is supposed the last expansion of Destiny 2 and is supposedly where the original 10 year story ends.
Michael Salvatori - While Halo's music is attributed Marty O'Donell, many iconic tracks like A Walk In The Woods had the involvement of Michael Salvatori providing assistance to Marty. Michael Salvatori appeared in many interviews alongside and acted as his assistant.

I liked Destiny 1 music more than Destiny 2 music(but Destiny 2 music had its moments). Destiny 1 music had this "mysterious tone" that Destiny 2 lost and was more focused in "heroism". Bungie used Marty's Music of the Spheres in Destiny 1 without crediting him which led to lawsuits. I see a lot of the OG Halo devs like Marty, Marcus Lehto(designed the original prototype of Destiny) or Joe Staten never mention Destiny but happily talk about Halo.
Christopher Barrett - Not involved with Destiny since Rise of Iron. Has been working on a new IP.
Lars Bakken - Halo 3 Multiplayer Designer and Halo Reach Co-op lead
Tyson Green - aka Ferrex
Chris Butcher - Management and overseeing new IP
Ben Wallace - Seems to be working with Chris Butcher
Zach Russell - QA/Programming and Tech
These four joined after they left Microsoft and the OG trilogy, had minor roles in ODST/Reach but major roles later in Destiny
Alex Pfeiffer - Designer in Halo ODST/Reach. Now Design Lead.
Derek Carrol - Credited as a multiplayer designer in Halo Reach and "... And the Rest of the Bungie Crew" in ODST. Now Senior Designer.
Mark Noseworthy - Engineering Producer at Halo Reach, but was already Gameplay and Campaign preproducer in Destiny at the time. Now Vice President.
James Tsai - Designer of Firefight in Halo Reach. Now Director of Witch Queen.
These people were not Halo devs but still part of old Bungie studio.
Pete Parsons - Then Studio Head, now CEO. Had the same role that Bonnie Ross now does at 343i.
Luke Smith - Every Destiny fan knows this guy. He was originally a freelance writer for Kotaku and then a news editor at 1up.com. He was known for his lengthy article focusing on problems in Halo 2. He joined Bungie in 2007 as a for writing the Bungie.net content updates. He became a Design Lead in Destiny and Game Director in Destiny 2.
LinkedIn mentions 1154 people working in Bungie. So barely 1% of the OG Halo crew is still working in Destiny. Not a single person from the OG writing team has remained, although quite a few engineering/tech leads are here. Its very disingenuous to try to pretend you have the "original developers of Halo who launched the Xbox" without any of the recognizable names like Joseph Staten, Marcus Lehto, Marty O'Donell or Max Hoberman(I get Jason Jones, but he has resigned himself from game development anyway). This is the same as "Back 4 Blood - from the creators of Left 4 Dead". I see people in twitter or even here believing that the original creators of Halo are making the next big thing(some even think it would be as popular as GTA or Fortnite). I can't see Bungie making a new original sci fi IP with lore on par with Halo or Destiny without there original writing team. It would be embarrassing if their next IP is marketed as "from the creators of Halo", with Destiny it made since some were still around till Destiny 1 launch.
And people speculate about how Bungie will be handled comparing them with Rare, how not much of the OG Rare crew is still present but Bungie will be different. But they already are in a position worse than Rare hardly retaining anyone from the OG team.
Don’t forget Alex Seropian. A founder of Bungie. He left in 2002. Bungie started changing after the first Halo. Im not knocking the studio, but it’s definitely changed over the years.
 

BlackM1st

Banned
Horizon Forbidden West is only a few weeks away. I’ve been playing it for a while now, and it’s everything that I know Guerrilla wanted it to be.

dating app GIF

Nice. Lowered expectations! They always wanted it to be xgen...



We also announced that this year, MLB The Show will be on Nintendo Switch, as well as PS4, PS5, and Xbox.
What a joke.

All in all a nothing burger...I'm glad I stopped reading PS.Blog years ago.
 

yurinka

Member
The more i think about this, the more i think we're getting a Sony show until April.
He literally just mentioned Horizon, GT7 and MLB.
MLB releases on April and Forspoken releases in late May. I assume both will get a dedicated State of Play.

So I think their big show will be after Forspoken, once they released all their big H1 exclusives. Probably in June, maybe as a pre-E3 or post-E3 conference. They would showcase already announced and would announce new H2 2022 and 2023 exclusives like GoWR, FFXVI, Spider-Man 2, TLOU MP game or Firewalk's game plus some big multi games with marketing deal as Howgarts, Pragmata or Dragon's Dogma 2.

Not sure in this same stream or in a separate one but there would be also the full Discord integration, PS5 tournaments and Spartacus announcement and release, plus PSVR2 headset, price and release dates and the announcement of some PSVR2 launch window games.

I can't imagine Sony wasting that TLOU hype this year with the TV show.

We already have some sources saying the remake is close to being done. It's been in development since like 2018...4 years for a remake is more than enough. For Factions, we even have some leaked footage from 2020. It's been 2 years.
I'm pretty sure that a few months before the tv show they will release:
-The TLOU2 MP game
-TLOU remake + PS5 version of TLOU2 bundle, similar to the Director's Cuts or more specifically Spider-Man Morales+Spider-Man Remastered bundle or the Uncharted 4+ULL bundle. Let's call it TLOU Director's Cut for PS5
-A few months later, TLOU Director's Cut PC port (as they are doing with the refurbished U4+ULL bundle)

For me the question is if the TLOU will be ready to be released late 2022 or if it's going to be released early 2023. I'd assume these game projects are pretty much done and basically waiting to be released as a combined marketing campaign of the games and the TV show.

Edit: reading kyliethicc kyliethicc I see it seems that the TV show would be released around mid 2023. In this case maybe they could release TLOUDC bundle on PS5 during Q4 2022, TLOU2MP during Q1 2023 and TLOUDC PC during Q2 2023.
 
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Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Don’t forget Alex Seropian. A founder of Bungie. He left in 2002. Bungie started changing after the first Halo. Im not knocking the studio, but it’s definitely changed over the years.
If they move over to new things, its not an issue. But stop pretending to be "creators of Halo".
 
Adding a world class studio to the Sony family is going to jump start PlayStation Studios AND Bungie.

Every studio they add that collaborates with each other just sharpens the steel across the board.

When you get to the point where you can put out a big title every quarter, it's really impressive. At some point I think you'll see 4-6 big titles from Sony every year.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Don’t forget Alex Seropian. A founder of Bungie. He left in 2002. Bungie started changing after the first Halo. Im not knocking the studio, but it’s definitely changed over the years.
IMO, the only flawless game Bungie has produced since the first Halo is Halo 3. The SP was epic in scale. A true next gen showcase. A worthy finale, and an incredible multiplayer. Reach was good, but not awe-inspiring. Destiny was flawed from day one even if you could see there was an incredible game hidden in there if you got past all the bs. Destiny 2 was a major step back, and like Halo 2 just couldnt live up to the potential of Halo 1.

Which brings me back to that Halo 2 E3 demo and how they fucked that up. To me, I have yet to see a game on that scale. An entire city at war. It was phenomenal for a game running on the OG Xbox. Except that it wasnt and was fake. I think if a studio has to fake stuff to fool their audience, they have already lost their way. Xbox 360 was only a year away, if the OG Xbox was too much for their vision, they shouldve delayed it for a year and used the power of the 360 to deliver the original vision.

I still think acquiring bungie is a good move since it keeps MS from buying them and creating an FPS monopoly but Bungie is a very flawed studio with some very flawed designers and leads at the helm. if Sony wants collobration, they picked the wrong studio.
 
I think something to consider when it comes to talent moving around is that it is to be expected. What you're really looking for is to sustain the core of the culture and the quality of the talent.

You look at Naughty Dog and Jason Rubin has been gone for for almost 20 years and his partner Andy Gavin has also been gone. Neither were involved in The Last of US or Uncharted 2.

People come and go and as long as they were good mentors or recruitment has been good the people who replace them can be just as good if not better.

I think western studios are very different in that respect than Japanese studios since it's more of a collaboration here than it is with creative directors in Japanese studios.
 
IMO, the only flawless game Bungie has produced since the first Halo is Halo 3. The SP was epic in scale. A true next gen showcase. A worthy finale, and an incredible multiplayer. Reach was good, but not awe-inspiring. Destiny was flawed from day one even if you could see there was an incredible game hidden in there if you got past all the bs. Destiny 2 was a major step back, and like Halo 2 just couldnt live up to the potential of Halo 1.

Which brings me back to that Halo 2 E3 demo and how they fucked that up. To me, I have yet to see a game on that scale. An entire city at war. It was phenomenal for a game running on the OG Xbox. Except that it wasnt and was fake. I think if a studio has to fake stuff to fool their audience, they have already lost their way. Xbox 360 was only a year away, if the OG Xbox was too much for their vision, they shouldve delayed it for a year and used the power of the 360 to deliver the original vision.

I still think acquiring bungie is a good move since it keeps MS from buying them and creating an FPS monopoly but Bungie is a very flawed studio with some very flawed designers and leads at the helm. if Sony wants collobration, they picked the wrong studio.
I mean I don't think Naughty Dog is going to work with Bungie on a game anytime soon. The collaboration we're talking about is sharing tech and knowledge, which we've seen the PlayStation studios teams do VERY well. I don't expect Bungie will be any different. They'll sharpen each other.
 

Bernkastel

Ask me about my fanboy energy!
Halo Reach was not awe-inspiring? The multiplayer may be underwhelming(but had the best armor customization), but the campaign was the one of the best things ever. Joe Staten really outdid himself with its single player. It even went on to inspire Rogue One. Halo 3 was just a complete package, but I don't quite remember the single player as much as Halo 2 or Reach or even CE.
 
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M16

Member
I still think acquiring bungie is a good move since it keeps MS from buying them and creating an FPS monopoly
actually microsoft already tried to buy them, but they couldnt make a deal because bungie wanted to stay independent(same as the sony deal)
 

Lone Wolf

Member
IMO, the only flawless game Bungie has produced since the first Halo is Halo 3. The SP was epic in scale. A true next gen showcase. A worthy finale, and an incredible multiplayer. Reach was good, but not awe-inspiring. Destiny was flawed from day one even if you could see there was an incredible game hidden in there if you got past all the bs. Destiny 2 was a major step back, and like Halo 2 just couldnt live up to the potential of Halo 1.

Which brings me back to that Halo 2 E3 demo and how they fucked that up. To me, I have yet to see a game on that scale. An entire city at war. It was phenomenal for a game running on the OG Xbox. Except that it wasnt and was fake. I think if a studio has to fake stuff to fool their audience, they have already lost their way. Xbox 360 was only a year away, if the OG Xbox was too much for their vision, they shouldve delayed it for a year and used the power of the 360 to deliver the original vision.

I still think acquiring bungie is a good move since it keeps MS from buying them and creating an FPS monopoly but Bungie is a very flawed studio with some very flawed designers and leads at the helm. if Sony wants collobration, they picked the wrong studio.
I agree with some of what you said, but games like Halo Reach and ODST are in my top games of all time, campaign wise. And that was all Joe Staten.
 
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