For about the past decade, Bungie Studios has focused all of their efforts on one of the greatest video game series ever. Crafting a story that literally spans 100,000 years and trillions of miles. But after ther release of the expansion pack, titled “Halo 3: Recon” Bungie will no longer be focusing on the Halo trilogy.
In an interview with Gameindustry.biz Brian Jarrad said this:
And when asked if that meant Halo 3 Recon would be a “final statement” from Bungie as far as the Halo trilogy was concerned, Jarrard agreed.
“I think so,” he said – but did point out that the company has always supported its community, and has no plans to change that in the near future. “We’ve stood by this game, and we’re going to keep standing by it.
We can kind of read into this a few different ways. First, Microsoft owns the rights to Halo now so for Bungie to do any more Halo games they would need to work out a deal with them first. Bungie has also made statements that seem to insinuate that the story of the Master Chief is not the quintessential Halo story arc, but is rather one thread in a much larger story, with Recon providing the first instance of that philosophy being put into practice.
The new protagonist is a member of the elite ODST corps.
I think that with Bungie now an independent company they’ll be looking at creating a new IP or reviving one of their older franchises such as Marathon (which may be an odd decision seeing as how Halo seems to be the spiritual successor to that series), the fantasy series Myth, or a sequel to ONI. Time will tell what the company will do but we know that they have at least one other project in the works that isn’t Halo related, with rumors of a third.
Recon promises to be a darker and more tactical take on the Halo series while still maintaining the feel of the previous trilogy.
It’s also safe to assume that Microsoft will now become the main source of Halo projects. Halo Wars, the first original Halo game being produced outside of Bungie by the now defunct Ensemble Studios, is coming out soon and there is still the Peter Jackson project which has been pretty much incognito since X05. On top of that, Microsoft seems to be assembling an all-star production team that consists of Frankie O’Connor who was Bungie’s first true community manager and one of the writers of the game’s story, Corrinne Yu who was the former director of technology at Gearbox studios which produced the Halo 1 PC version, and Ryan Payton who was the assistant producer for Metal Gear Solid 4.
So while Bungie may be done with the story of the Master Chief, the Halo series will most assuredly continue in some form or another from Microsoft.
