You have to remember, though, it wasn't just "a" console, it was MICROSOFT'S CONSOLE (insert scary noise). There was a lot of hardcore Macintosh people in the Hardcore Bungie people and a lot of them carries wounds that scared them emotionally. Microsoft was the evil empire.

I'm well aware. I remember when IBM was the big baddie. You're underscoring my point. If you even considered giving in the battle was lost. For me, Halo felt like photo-realistic Marathon. That was a selling point for me. Maybe the story wasn't as hardcore, but damn, those visuals, that gameplay.

Thankfully that pointless tribalism has basically gone away.

To be replaced by different, more destructive tribalisms.

Thankfully that pointless tribalism has basically gone away.

However, nothing at Bungie seems very rad anymore. You're free to have a different opinion about that. But I look at Des2ny and Marathon 2026 and just don't see it. That's why it's different this time.

Fine. But my point is that only makes it different to you. For other people who said just the same thing at various points decades ago it was true for them then and no different now. Which is why my point is that claiming this isn't *really* Bungie at the moment it's no longer cool for them is something people say to make themselves feel better.

Or, most smartphone mobile games.

Comes with a lifetime warranty.

Does itttttt?

Aside from the abominable sin that was moving from mac to xbox-first, was there any push-back from the community on Halo when it was released, from a purely gameplay/story/presentation perspective? Any sentiment that it was somehow a lesser game than Myth or Marathon?

I don't recall too many Codys--that is, hardcore detractors who hung around for some reason. They simply didn't play it because they refused to buy an Xbox. I held out a month. And, as a Mac Bungie fan, if you've talked yourself into buying a console for Halo, you're kind of already sold. And although the story might not have been as sophisticated in-game as, say, Marathon, we had the Fall of Reach. A universe was established. In most ways, it was a leap forward.

We saw it in Halo 3 with the Terminals a bit and Reach with Data Pads, but I wonder if some of those fans would have been happier if they had added something like that in the first Halo. Halo brought us forward with a story told with actual dialogue and cutscenes, but obviously couldn't be as complex as basically just writing a book and putting it in terminals in the game. Lots of games do that now (Hell, even Destiny does), but I think it ends up where the text parts get ignored as extraneous.

I'm sure some people expressed disappointment at the lack of text, but I just don't remember it, because the glow of the first Halo game was pretty blinding. Halo did have a great example of environmental story telling, although it wasn't text--Jenkins' helmet footage. I certainly appreciated the environmental story telling in later games--especially the text, and was unhappy when 343 went in a different direction. Had a pretty strong opinion about it.

Aside from the abominable sin that was moving from mac to xbox-first, was there any push-back from the community on Halo when it was released, from a purely gameplay/story/presentation perspective? Any sentiment that it was somehow a lesser game than Myth or Marathon?

I don't recall too many Codys--that is, hardcore detractors who hung around for some reason. They simply didn't play it because they refused to buy an Xbox. I held out a month. And, as a Mac Bungie fan, if you've talked yourself into buying a console for Halo, you're kind of already sold. And although the story might not have been as sophisticated in-game as, say, Marathon, we had the Fall of Reach. A universe was established. In most ways, it was a leap forward.

We saw it in Halo 3 with the Terminals a bit and Reach with Data Pads, but I wonder if some of those fans would have been happier if they had added something like that in the first Halo. Halo brought us forward with a story told with actual dialogue and cutscenes, but obviously couldn't be as complex as basically just writing a book and putting it in terminals in the game. Lots of games do that now (Hell, even Destiny does), but I think it ends up where the text parts get ignored as extraneous.

Aside from the abominable sin that was moving from mac to xbox-first, was there any push-back from the community on Halo when it was released, from a purely gameplay/story/presentation perspective? Any sentiment that it was somehow a lesser game than Myth or Marathon?

I don't recall too many Codys--that is, hardcore detractors who hung around for some reason. They simply didn't play it because they refused to buy an Xbox. I held out a month. And, as a Mac Bungie fan, if you've talked yourself into buying a console for Halo, you're kind of already sold. And although the story might not have been as sophisticated in-game as, say, Marathon, we had the Fall of Reach. A universe was established. In most ways, it was a leap forward.

Aside from the abominable sin that was moving from mac to xbox-first, was there any push-back from the community on Halo when it was released, from a purely gameplay/story/presentation perspective? Any sentiment that it was somehow a lesser game than Myth or Marathon?

Yes.

Particularly the story. I recall numerous complaints that it was simplified and not as deep as that of Marathon. Sure there was some great discussion, but overall the sentiment from many was that the narrative was simplified.

I ask because at no point has Destiny ever felt like it even began to fill the Halo-shaped hole in my heart. I miss the Bungie that made those games, because I *really* liked those games, and Destiny decidedly less so- It's such a huge project, and yet felt so shallow to me in the ways that actually mattered.

I think that's the thing that makes me ambivalent towards whatever happens to Bungie as a result of this merger, I don't see them as having any kind of alignment with my personal tastes for what makes games fun anymore, and I've felt that way for a long, long time now.

and I think it leads to the sort of adversarial relationship they seem to have with their community.

The biggest driving factor here is adversarial game design in my opinion.

Say more.

I’m sure that’s a factor, but I don’t know how much. Warframe is arguably much worse in a lot of ways. It requires much more of a grind in a lot of ways, and has far more ways to spend money than Destiny, but it also feels much more generous at the same time, somehow. The fact that it’s actually fully free undoubtedly helps it in that regard though. That might just come down to a weird self selection thing, though. Destiny gets a lot of shit for all its systems and how difficult to is to start, but Warframe takes that to a whole new level, so the players that manage to get through it might just be more likely to put up with more bullshit.

and I think it leads to the sort of adversarial relationship they seem to have with their community.

The biggest driving factor here is adversarial game design in my opinion.

I do think the expectation shifts for live service games, though. Maybe that's not true in all cases--are the Fortnite devs streaming and engaging with their community? I don't know. I'm not sure many developers are as active and open as Digital Extremes. I think it's really cool that it's like that, but maybe it is more unique than I thought.

However, I don't think developers can do it in half measures, but that's what Bungie does. They put out vidocs that seem like they want to highlight the people making the game to some extent, but it feels so corporate PR that it doesn't work. It doesn't feel anywhere near genuine anymore. Remember the guy that sort of became a meme for making noises for all the abilities? That felt genuine, like a dude who was truly excited about what he was doing. Well, he's done that same thing in just about every vidoc since, and it's felt fake as hell. Like someone saw the reaction to the first time it happened and said, "Keep doing that, they love it!" Only now it's forced and seems like they're trying to hard too garner good will.

Compare that to DE. They do trailers, of course, but they don't put out highly edited marketing vidocs. They just stream for an hour or two and actually interact with chat, show cool things they're working on, even at very early concept art stages. I'm sure it's actually all pretty curated, but they're not shy about letting people into the process, and the Warframe community has come to understand that we are seeing in progress stuff, and it'll probable change by the time it's actually in the game. Bungie seems scared to do that, and maybe justifiably so. But I think that's partly on them--they've curated their community to some extent. If they actually engaged in a cool, fun way, I think the community would be less bitter in general.

I recognize that some of this is bias--at the end of the day, if I thought the game was better, I probably wouldn't care as much. Maybe that's the only thing that matters. I like Warframe a whole lot more than Destiny, so maybe that's just where all the positive feelings for the Warframe community comes from, but I don't think so. I think it makes a huge difference to see the developers actually having fun playing their game, and playing it in the way their weird community does. One of their developers (or maybe she's just a community manager) often just does streams showing off her fashion choices and how she decorated her player ship and stuff, and it's just cool to see that she's actually engaging with the game on that level--it shows that they understand how and why people play the game. They're not afraid to just hop on stream or in chats or whatever and just fuck around with the fans. Everything Bungie does feels like they're trying to sell me insurance or something.

And look, this isn't criticizing the developers at Bungie--I'm sure tons of people there are super passionate about the game and love playing it and engaging with it. But Bungie the company kinda sucks at actually showing that off. I guess we can argue about whether they should or not, but when they treat making the game as some sort of secret black box that we can't see, it sort allows people to just make the worst possible assumptions about everything and I think it leads to the sort of adversarial relationship they seem to have with their community.

Maybe it's different and there are different expectations regarding live service games. However, I personally never cared THAT much about Bungie's updates and direct fan communication. I was just here for the games and the community. And sure, it was always fun to see someone from Bungie drop in, or leave a hint that bungie.org could speculate over, but that was never the main draw for me.

There are plenty of game studios I continue to follow and buy games from even though I have never paid any attention to their community outreach. In a way, I think that kind of defeats the point. Game communities are best when they are self organized and run by the fans themselves. The developers can pop into those spaces as a welcome guest, but I think they are ultimately best when it's a place made from fan passion and fun.

The increasing stakes and general reluctance to be 'real' when it comes to fan interaction is all the more reason I think to simply not even try to do this. Let the games speak for themselves, and enjoy the communities your fans form on their own.

I just look at the way they interact with their community over the years, and it sucks. It's a change I understand, because spending time interacting with people on the internet sucks now in a way it never really did before. But they spend all this money on a streaming studio, only to basically never use it. Weekly Updates went from fun deep dives into water physics in Halo 3 to paragraphs upon paragraphs of saying absolutely nothing. I couldn't even name a single person who actually develops games at Bungie now (and maybe that's for the better for them). But I constantly look at Digital Extremes and Warframe in comparison, and they stream all the damn time. Rebecca Ford (the now creative lead on Warframe) is on stream interacting with fans all the time, generally making a fool of herself and loving it, and the community reacts positively to actual developers engaging with their own game, cracking jokes, becoming memes and just kinda actually buying into what their game is. Maybe it's all for show and they're really good at faking it, but I look at the people making Warframe, and it genuinely looks like they're having fun making their game and interacting with their fans. When was the last time you saw anyone from Bungie on camera and it didn't look like they had their families locked in a basement somewhere to force them to do it?

And I get it, maybe it's just a difference in the communities. I'd also interact with Destiny players as little as possible, but Warframe has its fair share of shitheads, but they somehow find a way to manage it and not let that become the lead story all the time.

Maybe it's not a fair comparison to make, but Warframe has had all the same turmoil Destiny has for the most part, but they still managed to come out the other side feeling fun and engaged, whereas Bungie came out the other side feeling like a beaten dog. It's just frustrating, because it feels like a pretty easy problem to solve in terms of player sentiment stuff.

It's not like I have any actual insight into how they run things (or even game development in general), but it truly feels like Bungie, the entity, lost their passion along the way, and that's ultimately where I lost interest. If they don't seem to give a fuck, why should I?

Maybe Sony taking tighter control will make things better from a product standpoint, but I'm not sure it'll do anything for the studio culture or fan interactions, or the things that make it even feel like a community instead of just another video game made by a faceless corporation.

The legacy of Bungie belongs to all of us. It’s part of the common heritage of all gamers. Mr. Sony can’t take that away from us!

"The Legacy LAN" would be a great title for the next killer bungie.org get together.

I'm seeing so many people saying it is meaningless because Bungie is not the Same Bungie as it was during Halo and I'm over here remembering when people said it was no longer Bungie because they were not going to make Mac games anymore, or Seropian left, or 343 splintered, or whatever else. I'm not trying to flex about being old, I'm just saying it's easier, but not always better to cauterize the wound in your mind and move on. Either it's good or it's bad, but it is still Bungie.

I mean, they are right too.

The pre-Halo Bungie WAS different. It's just that that Bungie was a pretty cool Bungie. So when they changed into the Halo Bungie, that was okay because the games were still rad, just in a different way.

However, nothing at Bungie seems very rad anymore. You're free to have a different opinion about that. But I look at Des2ny and Marathon 2026 and just don't see it. That's why it's different this time.