Marcus Lehto on The 1099 (Interview Podcast) (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, November 15, 2017, 09:01 (2367 days ago) @ Cody Miller

The biggest tidbit was that he returned to Bungie after he left the first time and worked on a secret project for like 6 months. He said it was something completely new, they had a working prototype, and then Bungie decided that they needed all focus to be on Destiny (can't remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of wanting no distractions and wanting everyone to be focused on shipping Destiny and not thinking about whatever might be next).

Yeah he was posting vaguely about that on Twitter at the time... no details, obviously. Just that he and a small team were working on a separate project from the rest of the studio.

As far as I can remember, and I'm doing this from memory and not from notes, is that after Reach he was allegedly expecting to work on Destiny, but Chris Barrett was already doing it as art lead. He was offered a technical art position, but preferred to be lead on a project and so went on to the new game.

I actually ran into Marcus just outside the Bungie studios once... this would have been during PAX, in 2012, I believe. If I recall correctly, he had just recently rejoined Bungie to work on a new project. I know he left Bungie for a chunk of time after Reach, then rejoined the company for another 8-9 months or so. Your breakdown of events is certainly plausible, if nothing else. Bungie definitely had small core team working on Destiny while Reach was still in active development, and given Marcus' role as creative director on Reach, many of Destiny's lead roles may have been filled by the time Marcus was done with Reach.

At any rate, I can't wait to see what Marcus' new studio is up to. I'm a huge fan of his work :)