We're emulating one of HBO's more apropos mottos this week: beating dead horses. Really.
An offhand remark in the HBO forum about the lack of information in the Weekly Updates prompted a reasonably long thread, not just about the updates, but about the lack of information about what Bungie is working on, and branching out into the general parameters of Bungie's relationship with its fans, through those Weekly Updates and other methods.
Shishka, a former fan now working with Bungie on that project they aren't ready to talk about, had an interesting comment that I think addressed a key idea, but in a way that set me off down a completely different path, the results of which you are about to see laid before you, for good or ill.
Shishka wrote:
I think when a lot of people came into the community after discovering Halo, they learned of Bungie's connection with the community, but misinterpreted it. People have become so used to media extravaganzas, information blowouts, and gigantic hype engines that Bungie's relative silence at the beginning of development on a new title is a completely foreign concept to them. It's really not new, though.
That got me to thinking. Has Halo really spoiled the Bunige fanbase? Are we now so used to media blitzes that we aren't satisfied just to know Bungie is diligently working on what will doubtless be a fantastic game? Even before that, did the Halo and Halo 2 Updates make us so used to getting relatively substantive information so constantly that the sound of a few months of silence is deafening?
While Bungie fans are perhaps understandably curious and impatient, however, I do not think they have grown unreasonable. Nor do I think they've been spoiled, or become less patient. In fact, since Halo was announced, lengthening release cycles have required Bungie fans to be even more patient.
To substantiate that, I dug around for some dates and other information and created the Bungie Timeline; a list of important events in Bungie's history from 1993 to present. It is by no means complete; but major milestones in releases and developments, including Minotaur, Pathways Into Darkness, the Marathon trilogy, the Myth series, and Halo and Halo 2 are included, along with the acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft. I'm still collecting more information, but if you know about a date I've overlooked but should include, or if you've caught me making a mistake, drop me a line at narcogen@rampancy.net.
Reading this week's update might tempt you into becoming a cradle-robber. Or at least a crib-robber.
This week's Bungie Update is special.
No, not that special, so get your mind off Halo 3 the unnamed project.
This update focuses on the audio-video setup, or "cribs" of various people at Bungie: Frankie, Shishka, Sketch, and many others, ranging from widescreen DLP televisions with 50+ inches (can you say "compensating?") right down to hand-me-down CRTs.
Dan Chosich also won an as-yet-to-be-named prize for submitting the best fan setup.
Thanks to Frankie who posted it first in the HBO forum, along with an apology for not announcing Halo 3 this week. No apology necessary.
Recently a poster in the HBO forum retorted that he wasn't even bothering to read the latest Bungie Weekly Update because it only contained generalizations and secrets; nothing concrete.
Whether one is itching for Bungie to say something about what it's working on or not, I felt that going to the effort to say that one wasn't going to the effort of reading the Update oneself to determine if there was new information in it or not was a bit silly.
This sparked debate about a number of related issues, into which the idea was injected that Bungie isn't saying anything because they have nothing they want to say.
I won't summarize the entire exchange in any more detail; the thread in the HBO forum is still there, so those who have not yet taken a look may do so.
I think it's assumed that Bungie has nothing they want to say right now. The question for months now has been why there isn't anything Bungie wants to talk about. Especially when Frankie is writing that things are going so well and there are so many cool things and that he wants to talk about them but he can't.
That creates the impression that not only does Microsoft want to talk about some new project that may or may not be "Halo 3" but can't (or rather does, but then recants) because Bungie hasn't announced it, but that individual employees also want to talk about this new project, while others say that there isn't anything they want to talk about.
There either is, or is not, a pink elephant in the room. I think many of us would just like it acknowledged whether or not it's really there, even if we don't get any details whatsoever on what kind of pink elephant it is or when it is going to be released in stores. If it's there, we can reassure ourselves that we're not seeing things. If it's not, we can all go back to our twelve-step programs and try to put our lives back together.
Articles pertaining to the Myth series of RTS games.
Myth: The Fallen Lords (also referred to just as "Myth" or "Myth I";
Myth II: Soulblighter
Both of the above games were developed and published by Bungie Software for the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Rights to the franchise were transferred to Take Two in the buyout of Bungie by Microsoft.
A third game, utilizing a new 3-d engine, was developed by Mumbo Jumbo:
Myth III: The Wolf Age
[image:10049 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] This week's Bungie Update starts with some information on Play! A Video Game Symphony that is a rival to the Video Games Live concert series from last year You remember, the one you couldn't go to because so many dates were cancelled. Ahem. Marty O'Donnell and Mike Salvatori will be on hand to sign autographs and hang out when Play! comes to Chicago, which will be on May 27, 2006 at the Rosemont Theatre.
The program will include music from Halo, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Morrowind and others. The series has five scheduled dates, two in the US (Chicago and Philadelphia) and shows in Stockholm, Sweden, Vienna, Austria and Toronto, Canada. There is also (gasp!) information about The Next Project. Still nothing substantive, but hey, at least they've decided to put away the word CENSORED for a few years to give it a rest.
Our next project is going swimmingly. Lots of stuff is up and running, in fact, Sketch just got our debug 360 set up so that we can actually download the latest "build" of the game whenever we feel like it. Our main reason for needing builds right now is to start the documentation of a "making-of" process. Now that might end up simply being an internal record of the game's development stages, or it might be a book, or a DVD extra, we have no clue and no plan for that material at this stage, but we learned a lesson from Halo 1 & 2, which is that we should document everything, from a render to a napkin-scrawl.
I could be wrong, but this may be the first actual confirmation of any actual information: that Bungie's Next Project is for the Xbox 360. As if we didn't know that, but hey, it's something.
While some are joining Bungie, others are leaving to make their bitemark on the world on their own. GameDaily is reporting that developers from the Halo and Half-Life teams, including Hamilton Chu and and Michael Evans, formerly of Bungie, are forming a new studio called Giant Bite.
UPDATE: Frankie, Brian "sketchfactor" Jarrard and David "Evil Otto" Candland poked into a thread in the HBO forum about Giant Bite to note that Evans and Chu actually departed some time ago, and that the Bungie employees page is a bit-- which is to say, "many moons"-- out of date.
[image:10010 right hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Longtime Bungiefen and former developer at Free Radical Max "mad.max" Dyckhoff has been hired by Bungie as an AI Engineer. What will he be working on? This:
Seriously, Damian and I have a plethora of very cool ideas for things the AI characters can do that will draw you even deeper into the game world. I will be implementing behaviours in characters that will really engage the player – possibly even making them want to marry them.
I guess it IS tight quarters on the other side. You'd better use this.
This has gone beyond amusing into the realm of annoying. Shane Kim, GM of Microsoft Game Studios, responded to a question about Halo 3 thusly:
Shane Kim: I call it The Mythical Halo 3 - we haven't announced any such game yet! Obviously the Halo franchise is very important to us. When you have Bill Gates being quoted fairly constantly, talking about a game, you know it's important to the company. But his recent comments reflect the position accurately. Which is that, if there were a Halo 3 we would be careful about how we announce and introduce it.
Does anybody honestly believe that Microsoft's chairman doesn't know what's going on with a product like Halo and has to be reminded before repeatedly making public statements? Does anyone honestly not believe that what actually went on here is that Gates spilled the beans-- more than once-- and then had to be reined in to respect the right of Bungie Studios to control their own announcements about what games are under development?
Of course Bungie should jealously protect whatever rights for self-determination they received in terms of the buyout; but for everyone else, this game isn't fun anymore. If there is actually a Halo 3 under development, then the final revelation that it does, in fact, exist, is going to evoke universal reactions of "no kidding". If it isn't, then Microsoft has been playing coy all this time when it could have just said it was giving the Halo franchise a rest for awhile to let Bungie work on something else. They haven't said that. In fact, at this time, if it were announced that Halo 3 was NOT under development for the Xbox 360, you'd probably see Microsoft's stock take a hit, as if there's no system-selling game coming out once the supply problems are taken care of, there'll be little reason that all the Halo and Halo 2 fans have to upgrade. They might have survived such negative consequences had they made such an announcement right after the launch of Halo 2. But everyone is expecting Halo 3 now.
Either Halo 3 is currently in development for the Xbox 360, or we've all been so fooled by Microsoft's application of reverse psychology that our brain matter has turned to mush.
Incidentally, Bungie knew that people would be scrutinizing their last update-- a video tour of their offices which for reasons of secrecy doesn't actually feature much of their offices, unless you count Starbuck's, the alley outside, a storage area and the air conditioners part of the office-- for clues about the next project, so the titles "Pimps At Sea" and even "Marathon 4" were prominently featured on whiteboards for our amusement.
I've always thought that someone or someones at Bungie had a serious penchant for parallel constructions. Where many other reviewers looked at the reuse of level geometry in Halo 1, I saw narrative purpose. The idea of a journey out from the Pillar of Autumn and then returning there was reinforced by the territories that were crossed twice. Each of the repeated levels undergoes major changes in its repetition.
The spic-and-span Truth & Reconciliation environment in the Covenant cruiser finds its mirror opposite in the leaking, burning, Flood-infested wreckage from which you retrieve Captain Keyes' neural implants. The bright and brisk snowscapes of Assault on the Control Room over which you glide in Warthogs, Scorpions and Banshees along with your marine support troops as you mow down everything the Covenant can throw at you is mirrored perfectly by the dark and bitter cold of Two Betrayals, as you slog through pitched battles between Flood, Covenant and Sentinels without any of your compatriots for assistance. If you thought that the Pillar of Autumn was a bit beat-up when the Covenant blew it out of the sky over Halo, that's nothing compared to what happened when Guilty Spark made it the site of his last effort to stop you from preventing the installation from being activated, while the Flood try to repair the ship to use it to escape and the Covenant try and stop them.
So it is no surprise to me that I see similar patterns at work in Halo 2. Once the Arbiter is introduced, he and the Master Chief alternate starring in levels, first two by two and then one by one. Some of the environments also follow a pattern. The Chief defends a space station, the Arbiter attacks one. Some of the Arbiter levels hark back to levels in Halo 1 that had no parallel there. Quarantine Zone is a good dark parallel for Two Betrayals or Assault on the Control Room, as an outdoor snow level with vehicular combat near an important installation-- in this case, Delta Halo's library. Sacred Icon itself is an improved Library, as a better-lit labyrinth, arranged vertically instead of horizontally.
Ever have one of those days?
That's what went through my mind when I started playing Gravemind.
Halo 2 has other tough spots; the second hangar bay in Cairo Station, sniper alley in Outskirts, and Nothing But Jackal in Delta Halo. When I first played Gravemind, however, was the first time I backed off my intention to complete the game the first time around, all the levels, at Heroic difficulty or better. After banging my head against the wall that is the opening room of Gravemind, I restarted on Normal so I could get past the level and finish the game in time to write something about it before people stopped caring.
Most of the time in Halo 2, you've got a choice of weapons with which to face your foes, or recourse to go back somewhere and get them, or at least a place to hide. The audience chamber of Gravemind has none of these things. The only exit to the room won't open until you clear all the enemies, so you can't speedrun it. There are no areas that aren't exposed to fire from some angle-- and that includes the upper seating areas that Brutes will lob Brute Shot grenades into. When you start the level, the only weapon you have is a single needler, and the only dropped weapon available to you... is another needler.
UPDATE: I guess Gravemind is popular again all of a sudden, so I'm lucky posting at this precise time; Ducain at High Impact Halo has just made good on a promise to jump to the top of the level, the high building at the beginning of the outdoor areas after the marine rescue.
I am new to Halo 2 Live. I have beaten the Halo 1&2 on hardest level many many times, thinking I was somewhat of a talented player. I would tell people how good I was right up until I started to play online. Then I realized that I sucked. Started playing Slayer as a level one. Despite getting my ass kicked, I proceeded to rapidly get promoted to level 14, where I stand now. I have found that it seems easier at level 14 then level 1. I believe this for two reasons 1. there is a handful of people that somehow keep their level low so they can always win 2. I am getting a little better.
Wah wah, Halo 2 is only going to be for the Vista.
And Xbox, and Xbox 360. God forbid Bungie not allow us to buy every one of their products. After all, baby-Ts don't "run" on my "platform" (yeah, yeah, sorry) but you don't see me whining. Especially not if the same product at a close to equivalent quality exists right where I am. Its not as if the existing fan base is being alienated. Sure there will be new map abilities and a few other little hooks, but if you really want the game, you go and buy yourself a copy of windows Vista.
Dear Blob,
Halo 2 theme is amazing from what I got off of Limewire. It seems like a very long instramental. I wish I had the actual soundtrack