IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Interview: Bungie on Halo's Evolution and 'Going Out With a Bang'

Posted March 24, 2010 by James Brightman

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While Bungie is now independent, the studio may very well produce the most important Xbox 360 title in 2010 in Halo: Reach. Microsoft is already proclaiming that the game will top all other titles this year, and Bungie is eager to make its last Halo game its most memorable. At GDC, IndustryGamers met up with community manager Brian Jarrard to talk about Halo's evolution as a franchise, what Bungie is hoping to achieve with Reach, the future of Bungie and more. 

IndustryGamers: General thinking is that Halo: Reach could be the last Halo title from Bungie. There aren't too many developers out there that get to create a game franchise of that caliber. You have GTA, you have Final Fantasy, etc., but there's a certain caliber that you guys have hit with that blockbuster status. Looking back at the property and the franchise, what are you most proud about?

Brian Jarrard: What are we most proud of? That's a tough question. If you talked to different people we'd probably all have some different opinions on that. I know that when the team first started making Halo about ten years ago, these guys sat down and it sounds cliché, but it's always been the Bungie approach to look at every game that we're making and start with simply a motivation of, 'This is the kind of game we would like to play and no one currently makes this kind of game so we're going to make it ourselves.' That's really the essence of how Halo came to fruition, and no one ever thought it would really ever springboard into this billion dollar franchise/pop culture phenomenon that it is today. So I think people would be most proud overall of the fact that we were able to build a core universe that is so rich and interesting and that people want to spend time in; and if that hadn't been the genesis of the Halo: Combat Evolved game experience I don't think we'd be able to make successful sequels and follow ups. 

Some long range recon in Halo Reach... looking good.

Obviously, on top of that, there's just what I feel was a refined 'best of breed' gameplay experience and Bungie's ability to use the controller and make the player feel powerful and have really accurate interactions with what's happening in the game world, but I still think all of that stems from inherently building a universe and a world that's compelling and interesting to people and has a lot of different avenues to explore. That's given the team a lot of flexibility to take our games into different directions, everything from the Halo 2 side-story with the arbiter to focusing on a squad of ODSTs, and now with Reach we're also going back to the prequel, but it's also spawned best selling novels and graphic novels. And I just think the universe as a whole has proven to be a really interesting, rich creative bed for us, more so than anybody even initially imagined.

IG: In terms of the Halo IP, which Microsoft controls, do you wish that was not the case? Do you wish that you still had rights to the IP? I know there's always that tension between the developer and the publisher and who ultimately manages those rights.

BJ: It's hard to say, because back in the day when Microsoft acquired money, and that's a little bit before my time at the studio, but the whole deal with Microsoft getting Bungie hinged on Halo and I think if Bungie had somehow... I don't think that acquisition would have gone through if Bungie had demanded that they maintain ownership of the IP. Who knows if the game would have been able to be as successful as it is or if it would have had as much put into it. Certainly, there's friction as you mentioned but that ship already sailed back in 1999 when Microsoft took control of the IP. Up until when we divested in Microsoft, we definitely had more close interactions with co-shaping where the franchise was headed. Recently now, we're less involved in those types of endeavors that MGS and 343 Industries are engaged with. We just want to concentrate on making great games and fortunately they do have great people working on their side and they do share a common goal of not over-saturating, not going too far and they've been really true to the underlying canon and story as well. So who knows? In a hypothetical world, I'm sure Bungie would have loved to have had more control over that. Is it our expertise to know how to really manage an IP of the magnitude? Going back in time that wouldn't have been a core competency of our studio and might have detracted from our ability to make great games, but it's certainly food for thought going forward as we look towards our next big chapter in the history of Bungie, and our next big project.

IG: You probably don't have a real answer to this question because it's not under your control, but do you think we'll ever see the Halo movie?

BJ: Yeah, I can speculate. Are there more stories to be told in the Halo universe? Absolutely. Do I think Reach will be the biggest game ever and probably attract an even larger audience to the fan community?**  Yes, I actually do. I would think that the marketplace for a movie would be more ripe post Reach than it even was after Halo 3, so I'm willing to bet that it's not a matter of if, just when. I'm just speculating here since it's Microsoft's decision, but looking at how Halo Legends went and the release of that animated feature, definitely there's demand for it, and I do applaud them for not rushing into it and waiting until they find the right people and the right creative ideas and the right time frame. I think all of us at Bungie would love to see the right movie still get made with the right people; we're just going to have to wait and see, just like all of our fans!

**Clarification: Jarrard followed up with us today to say that he meant to say biggest Halo game ever, not literally biggest game ever.

IG: A lot of people have said over the years that Halo was one of the original first-person shooters that really brought that genre to consoles. I think some people might also point to Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64, but do you feel that you guys are at least in large part responsible for the FPS genre really taking off on consoles?

BJ: Yeah, I do. That was never an inherent goal; like I told you, Halo was just born out of some great ideas that the team had for what they they thought would be a fun game that nobody else had made, so they had to make it themselves. It wasn't a goal that, 'let's prove that we can do a first-person shooter on a console' because the game was originally a PC and Mac title. And there were guys on the team that back then weren't even sure they could pull it off on a console controller. I do think that, yes, Halo proved that it could be done. I think it's a testament now where you look at most other first person shooters, which offer some form of Halo control scheme available, and it's sort of become the industry standard – not that we're the only ones doing it, but I definitely think that we set the ground work and it also had to do with being a really prominent, high-visibility title for a brand-new platform launch. You just brought this sort of game on this console to this whole new audience, and I think with each successive title we've added new features and we've continued to innovate and push the bar further like basically defining the Xbox Live experience for Halo 2 and creating the whole notion of matchmaking and parties and all of our community and content creation systems in Halo 3. We definitely look with each title to try and set new bars in innovative ways that people haven't done so far on consoles.

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.