Bungie admit: “We screwed up Halo 2″
If you were disappointed with the way Halo 2 ended, or felt the weapons were unbalanced for the multiplayer side of things, it appears that you, plus thousands of others, all had the same thought as Bungie themselves. In a new interview, Chris Butcher of Bungie Studios has a lot to say about what was right and what was very wrong.
Butcher has a much more specific, prosaic theory for what made Halo great – and, it turns out, what disappoints him so bitterly about 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. 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.
“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 fucking cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it. And that’s why I know Halo 3 is going to be so much better.”
There’s a fair amount of criticism of Halo 2 amongst Bungie staff. Writer and community officer Frank O’Connor, an acerbic ex-pat Scot and former journalist, admits the cliffhanger ending was rather abrupt – “we drove off Thelma & Louise style”. He also admits that Bungie’s vocal, internal, inter-disciplinary self-analysis can be its own worst enemy sometimes: “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.”
“That’s sort of what happened with Halo 2,” agrees Greisemer. “Toward the end we were working on balancing the weapons and everybody was very vocal about a ton of things and I think eventually we just sort of polished away some of those hard edges.”
Hopefully they will get it spot on for Halo 3
Criticising your own work is a very noble thing to do, and admitting you were wrong is even tougher. There was no need for Bungie staff to say it, since it still sold incredibly well, but it’s nice to know that at heart, developers are human too and can see their own mistakes.
Let’s hope that the same mistakes are not made for Halo 3, and that this time we truly will get to finish the fight. If we don’t heaven knows what may happen! You can read the whole interview here.
So that’s from the horses mouth and the Halo Fanboys will still scream heathenous traitor.
I think it was very bold of them to admit their mistakes. These big companies just don’t realize that it is ok to communicate with the consumer. It is in no way a bad thing.
BUNGIE yore my heroes
Sounds like they were rushed, and may have been the case that Microsoft wanted them to get to work on Halo 3 as soon as possible for a potential launch with the Xbox 360? Who knows but they should have a better game with H3, and they should definately have ONLINE COOP this time!!!
I love it when companies are honest with themselves
it’s good to hear that at least this guy thinks halo 2 online is no fun, now i’m looking forward to halo 3 just a little bit more.
Hmm… Well, I had great time with Halo 2, no matter what he thinks of it. If he’s convinced that Halo 3 will be better, rock on.
bungie never ceases to build up my anticipation. the bungie staff saying halo 2 is shit compared to halo 3, what will they think of next. damn im going into cryo until then i cant wait any longer.
cool cool coolarghs
-hey a thought about the halo 3 lengendary set- wouldn’t it be funny if they had “outtakes” from the cut scenes?
Awww…they admitted they were wrong. Isn’t that nice…like three years later. Baka! I’m sorry, Halo 2 was one of my biggest (Next to Fable) let downs in the gaming industry. Good beginning, iffy center…and well, let’s be honest, NO ending. I’m not saying Halo 3 will follow this line of craptastic gaming story telling, but I know it’ll take alot to get me to buy a copy.
Man you should really get some cleaner for that sand in your vagina
Glad you said it, because if I did there would probably be about 50 replies after my post by now.
Man! This article is what I needed to hear. Halo 2, don’t get me wrong, is a great game but it isn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be. I was afraid that Halo 3 would also be a letdown. Know I know that bungie still knows what to do to make a really great game and that Halo 1 wasn’t just a fluke.
Funny what you can say in retrospec. The weeks leading up to this game they were tellin us (as all developers do) how great this game was gonna be and how much better than part 1 it was gonna be. And now it was a piece of shit? I like bungie and all but I hope they get their act together for this last chapter. I really hope its the destroyer of all games like i want it to be.
Sorry but can’t you all see that this is amongst the time in which all the halo 3 hype is at it’s peak, thats clearly why they are apologizing, not just because it needed to be said but so they can fill this day like many previous days with a load of hype — halo 2 sucked in many ways — the multiplayer was crap, they say these things so they can pitch you some stuff about halo 3 saying that they won’t make the mistake on halo 3 and that the multiplayer will be so much better
I just don’t like the way they resorted to “End Boss” in Halo 2, instead of the brilliant ending in Halo, which had NO BOSSES.
I agree with some of you that I don’t see this as being noble by Bungie. Personally, I enjoyed Halo 2 but was disappointed because it did not have the same epic feeling from the first game plus the story was weak.
The MP seemed better than Halo 1 but needed a lot of fine tuning. The graphics were good but Riddick made Halo 2 with it’s glitches look average. Personally, from what I have seen so far from Halo 3, I’m not impressed. They have a long way to go in impressing me again and admitting your prior mistakes don’t help at all because we didn’t need them to say it because we all say and played in the mess. Guess that says alot to PC gamers for Halo 2.
BTW someone needs to tell Bungie stop showing us pics, videos of stuff that will never be in the game. They did that with Halo 2 alot and they need to stop that crap.
On the same point.
What the fuck is with the (in may only be UK, not sure) advert for Lost Planet.
“Graphics are representitive of the actual game”
Bollocks, and why could they just not show the game anyway, it looks good enough anyway (without the Sony style CGI lies) they do for all the other ones.
WE WANT WORMS WE WANT WORMS
it seems like you already have worms :p
Hay worm man your gay