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Bungie 'Hated' Halo's Combat Evolved Subtitle

Posted June 2, 2010 by M.H. Williams

Bungie is finishing up their last Halo game for Microsoft and is set to start a new franchise for Activision. The company revealed to Edge Magazine [thanks CVG] that their early partnership with Microsoft was not without some difficulties. Bungie says the Halo: Combat Evolved moniker was not their idea; Microsoft forced the subtitle on them. 

According to Bungie, Microsoft felt that the title of Halo alone wasn't good enough for the smash hit FPS. "Oh, man... the subtitle," Halo designer Jaime Griesemer told the magazine. "At the time, Microsoft marketing thought Halo was not a good name for a video game brand. It wasn't descriptive like all the military games we were competing with."

Bungie took umbrage to the addition as they felt the game's title was fine as is. "We told them Halo was the name. The compromise was they could add a subtitle. Everyone at Bungie hated it,” revealed Greisemer.

Greisemer admitted that the title wasn't as bad as Bungie originally thought. “It turned out to be a very sticky label and has now entered the gaming lexicon to the point where articles that have nothing to do with Halo get titles like 'Skateboarding Evolved'. So I guess in hindsight it was a good compromise."

Halo: Combat Evolved sold over five million copies, and kickstarted Microsoft's premier franchise along with the Xbox platform. Bungie's last Halo title, Halo: Reach, will be released worldwide on September 14, 2010.

M.H. Williams has been writing in some form or another for ten years and has been a hardcore gamer since the NES first graced American shores.  You can catch him on Twitter as @AutomaticZen, Google+ as himself, or on his personal Facebook page.