I tried to hint them in the right direction that everything would be okay. Look where being calm and positive gets you in that hell hole of a subreddit.

Yeah, I read that and it definitely seemed like you were hinting at an official release. So many Redditors though just expect the worst out of Bungie (or any company for that matter).

Oh god. Ohhhhh oh god. Reddit pissed me off that night and after I begged Cozmo to tell them about MOTS so they'd stop harassing me and Bungie devs, this finally happened. I am still waiting for a formal apology for all those downvotes god damn it. I tried to hint them in the right direction that everything would be okay. Look where being calm and positive gets you in that hell hole of a subreddit.

[Maybe I really should just start coming here instead? Am I welcome here?]

Yeah. Classic Reddit I suppose. DBO is the coolest place in town, and is open to anyone who wants to come through the door!

[Maybe I really should just start coming here instead? Am I welcome here?]

Effort like mine gets you places, it turns out.

If Bungie doesn't I will personally have a fit about it. Not only have I read Malcolm's MOTS poetry but I have read the extras he wrote for general Destiny. It's all the most amazing poetry I've ever read with allusions to ancient concepts like "Quicksilver Messenger", Apollo, etc. The imagery is amazing. Byf and Moonvald did a wonderful job reading it for my now shut down project too. You've never heard Byf reading like he did for Mars in particular.

Basically the poetry is split into 14 poems- 2 for each of the 7 Spheres. One heavenly day, one hellish night. The heavenly spheres are about victory and hope, the hellish spheres speak of death and sorrow. This concept of pairs, I believe, is heavily carried into the core of the music as well. Let's just say Marty is brilliant.

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that no matter what, if Bungie releases MOTS, the poetry WILL COME OUT! The bad news is that if not by Bungie, it will be a 730 day wait for Malcolm's contract to allow him to release it. Basically, as a poet who publishes anthologies of poetry as paid books, he wanted to be able to include MOTS poetry in collections. The deal was that 2 years after the release of MOTS, he can do that. That means that once MOTS comes out, the clock starts ticking for us to release it and use it for the community to enjoy.

I really want people to try to pressure Bungie into doing this so we can release the Byf/Moon recordings sooner. It's important to my soul and my heart, which are both very passionate about all of Music of the Spheres as I am sure you all know by now.

A:

Upshot is that I’d love to stop being snarky about Bungie, but they just can’t seem to stop insulting me.

https://kotaku.com/bungie-says-it-will-release-destinys-music-of-the-spher-1825691821

If you were halfway through 8th grade when I finished recording and mixing Music of the Spheres, you’re now almost finished with your Freshman year in college.#TempusFugit

— Marty O'Donnell (@MartyTheElder) April 30, 2018

(This post has been my excuse to try out the new tweet function. Pretty neat. I regret nothing.)

If you were halfway through the fifth grade when Bungie promised that patch for Marathon 2, you'd be 33 years old now. :-p

But who's counting.

Cody is.

The main goal of a behind-the-scenes book is to chronicle how a creative idea was developed and refined into the final product that we know and love today. Most of that involves an exploration of how the key creative minds who worked on the project think so that we may better understand how they came up with the final product, as well as how they worked (or didn't work) with each other and how the important creative decisions were made. The outstanding "Making of Star Wars" books by J. W. Rinzler are a good example of what I'm talking about here.

The benefit of writing such a book without interference from Bungie, or more accurately without an attempt from Bungie to control the narrative, is that Cody can record that chronicle more accurately. It's more work for him, of course, but he should be able to develop a more objective narrative by piecing it together on his own. Anything Bungie could give him in an official capacity would be inevitably biased. That's not a knock against Bungie; it's just the way these things work. When Rinzler was writing his Making of Star Wars books, he had access to the man himself, the one and only George Lucas, but he did not rely upon Lucas's accounting of events and was not afraid to contradict it if he felt that he was... shall we say... misremembering the way things really happened.

That re-writing of history is a natural phenomenon and it doesn't have to be malicious. Many times, creators simply forget what really happened, or their memories of the creative process become twisted over time. They aren't necessarily lying. This is why historians interview as many witnesses as possible when chronicling an event.

By giving you their blessing to write whatever you want and staying out of your way, they are making no effort to "smooth over" the truth. They may not be helping you out, but at the same time, they're also not trying to misrepresent anything that happened.

I don't know why they would misrepresent the stuff I want to as them about… most of that has to do with how this awesome thing in their awesome game came to be, or fun stories and the like.

I don't want to speak for Cody, but I got the impression that this was a book that was more about celebrating Bungie and telling their story, and not a "gotcha" of their dirty secrets.

Yes exactly! It's a celebration. Maybe too much. Someone told me that the detailed analysis of the Halo animation system vs Oni's was "not that exciting" :-p

But I have decided to cover Destiny, partially because Bungie themselves appear to be "smoothing over" the truth and rewriting history, and partly because a lot of what's been reported is 'almost' right. Close enough, but lacking some important context.

It's also a hugely important point for Bungie as a company.

By giving you their blessing to write whatever you want and staying out of your way, they are making no effort to "smooth over" the truth. They may not be helping you out, but at the same time, they're also not trying to misrepresent anything that happened.

Maybe he's changed the scope of the book, but the last I heard it was the history of Bungie up until Destiny. It wouldn't cover any of the fallout or stuff surrounding the release of the first Destiny.

I don't want to speak for Cody, but I got the impression that this was a book that was more about celebrating Bungie and telling their story, and not a "gotcha" of their dirty secrets.

Even then, there was probably still "massaging" done since we all know companies love to throw things down memory holes and control their Brand™.

Which makes it surprising to me. They basically told me "write whatever you want". They have zero interest in helping to shape the narrative.

And so I have to piece it together.

You mean it's not going to be in your Bungie retrospective book?

(That book will be an instant purchase from me when it comes out, by the way. This company is absolutely fascinating.)

It is. It's a shame that they don't really want to help me tell their story. If they did, the process would be… much easier.

Preaching to the conductor of the choir here, but Bungie's a different company now than the one that let Hamish Sinclair write the Marathon Scrapbook. Even then, there was probably still "massaging" done since we all know companies love to throw things down memory holes and control their Brand™.

It'd be a shame for them to half-ass it at this point, so I hope so.

Owen Spence seemed to hint as much. I think they will.