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

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I remember Chris Butcher as a lad of 21, just about to finish his PhD before he got the call from Bungie to go and work for them.

Nice kid. Haven't heard from him in years. Glad to see he's turned out well.