What an amazing talent!

She cuts against the grain of people being categorized into good guys and bad guys. What a sweet personality. Between her and Salvatori, it gives me pause about how quick the narratives have formed.

I started watching this earlier tonight but haven't yet finished. Your comment doesn't surprise me. She's always been one of my favorites, and I am heartbroken by what's happened.

None of this means that she and Salvatori haven't been done wrong. I wish I could turn the other cheek with such grace. I admire it.

Between her and Salvatori, it gives me pause about how quick the narratives have formed.

While I will admit readily that this woman has more class and grace than I would ever be able to muster in her situation, it’s not like the narratives have been formed in a vacuum. We’ve seen very negative comments from ex-employees on Twitter. We have a total lack of outward accountability or communication from management. We are still faced with the fundamental truth that Bungie’s workforce took the hit for the miscalculations of the company’s management — just before the holidays and one single day prior to stock vesting. Even Lorraine herself corroborated certain details from the original reports which gave me pause; in particular, the manner in which the layoffs were announced and handled internally.

The SPNKR was supposed to be freaking green?! Man, that just seems weird.

I grabbed my copy of the Halo Graphic Novel after Lorraine said she thought her forward was mean. She seems too nice. I get what she means, she was pretty blunt about the bad pitch from the franchise development group. But it didn't strike me as particularly mean, just kinda straight forward. I guess we could have the discussion about the necessity of putting down a bad pitch instead of focusing on how cool this book in my hands is.

And man, is it ever cool. I spent some time flipping through the pages, and I read a few of the stories for first time since I bought it new 17 (!!!) years ago. It's a cool project, and I'm so happy to have it, even if I've only looked at it like three times in nearly twenty years.

It also makes me nostalgic and a little sad. I have no doubt that Bungie is filled with passionate people overflowing with cool ideas they might never get to see realized, but where is that passion as a company? What happened to the Bungie that put together a freaking graphic novel and then pitched it to publishers? Where's the Destiny graphic novel or anime? I don't want to just shit on modern Bungie, lord knows I do that enough. And I know the market conditions have changed from the Halo days (Hell, why put in the effort as a company to put together a graphic novel when you can just keep pumping out $20 skins for so much less effort? That's not a criticism, either, but a genuine rhetorical question from a business standpoint.) I think Bungie made something pretty cool with Destiny, even if I don't really like it anymore, but listening to Lorraine talk about her history and flipping through this graphic novel really drove home how special the Halo era was.

I'm sure there are plenty of folks that had these exact same thoughts about the Marathon era, just as there will be plenty more folks that will look wistfully back at Destiny-era Bungie in ten years.

I'm sorry I'm missing something here.

I'm currently wearing the purple oversized destiny hoodie and I'm wondering what you're talking about. Bungie has published 5 volumes of a grimoire that has provided deep deep lore while providing interesting, practically, in universe merch.

As a fan from the minotaur, marathon, myth days, I have no idea what you are talking about. My kids play with a damn hive worm casually. This is something the bungie of Halo's heyday never achieved. They haven't lost their verve. They've lost some absolute god damn giants. I'll never give any leader (like Parsons) any slack, but I stand by the crew Lorraine still obviously is rooting for.

You know what's funny?

The Halo Graphic Novel was literally the exact moment in time that I first began to doubt Bungie.

https://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive25.pl?read=735437

but I wish he knew Bungie lore halfway as well as he knows Destiny lore

I thought the oddball being Captain Keyes was common lore, and who the hell doesn't know Ling-Ling?! But, again, that's sort of a sign of the change both in Bungie and the community. How would anyone who jumped on board with Destiny know Ling-Ling? Do they even know the Webmaster? That stuff just doesn't happen any more. Maybe there are new in-jokes I'm not aware of, because, even for as long as I played Destiny, I wasn't connected to Bungie the same way I was during Halo.

Regardless of his Bungie lore knowledge, and as much as I enjoyed listening to Lorraine, I didn't find this to be a super compelling interview. I'll give him a bit of a break on interview prep, because I think it really was supposed to be a more casual chat than a proper interview, but even so, it feels like someone a little more skillful at doing that could have extracted a lot more here. And I'm not talking about juicy details of current Bungie; I just mean more of the stories Lorraine seemed willing and eager to tell. It seems like every time it started to get really interesting, he pulled her in a different direction instead of just letting her continue or asking compelling questions to dig deeper.

It really bugged me that he was so ignorant of the previous context for Lorraine. When I said, "great interview," I meant it was great to let her digest her new situation in a long informal manner. I've never heard her talk outside of soundbites and it was refreshing to have that perspective.

As an interviewer, he's a nice enough guy, but he just was not informed on the subject matter. I think that can be forgiven because he runs a destiny-focused channel, they knew each other, and it was more informal in nature as a way to engage the community. In other words, this wasn't set up to be serious journalism.

Beyond that, we're all getting older and it may not be fair to expect everyone to "get it." I definitely have some knowledge gaps about things I came to be a fan of after they had already had a storied history. For instance, I love D&D and Heather and I have been running a game for friends for the last 6-7 years. However, I know nothing beyond some stories of the earlier versions of the game and its relation with the public. I wasn't around when people were ostracized for their passion for instance. I would have enjoyed an interview of this type for a grizzled ancient in D&D while an older fan would probably have found it more flat. Fathers and Sons, the Circle of Life, etc. It makes me wonder how many things I've come to later in their lifespan and enjoyed it just that little bit less because I was missing context. On the other hand, I wonder how much I enjoyed them just a little bit more because I was missing context.