Bungie on Halo 2: "We screwed up."

[unixronin]

Bungie engineer Chris Butcher was blunter in his assessment.  "We had about four to five weeks to polish Halo at the end...[but] we had none of that for Halo 2," he told the magazine.  "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."

I'm inclined to wonder, why is it that Halo 2 had to be finished up in such a rush?  Is it because Microsoft, not Bungie, was driving the schedule?

Butcher was even critical of Halo 2's multiplayer element.  "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," he said.  "I ****ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer.  I cannot do it."

Quite the admission.  Kudos to Bungie.  It takes a good company to voluntarily stand up and tell the world, "We screwed up this one."

Comments

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

I'm getting really dissolutioned about the gaming industry. It was never in my reality until I got my ps2 this past year. I read the blog of a woman who was an "EA widow" and was appalled and how her husband was treated. IIRC, she was in labor during crunch time and they threatened to let him go if he went the hospital for the birth of his child.

And then there are games like Champions of Norrath and Baldur's Gate. Awesome games, imo, and co-op, which is RARE. They went out of business. Everyone who is into RPGs love them, but no other company picked them up and continued the series. Huge bummer. One could say they saw it coming as the 2nd one of each was not as good... reused maps and scenery, poopy new chars, etc. On the other side of the coin is Final Fantasy - which I can't stand - and yet it goes on and on.

When I rule the world...