Bungie explains 'series of stumbles' in ODST marketing

From the initial talk of a lower price to a renaming, Bungie's ever-changing plans for Halo 3: ODST left a lot of people confused as to what the final product would be. "I'm no PR expert, but it's pretty obvious the game had a series of stumbles; from the naming, to the initial E3 2008 countdown reveal failure, and finally pricing ... it would definitely be nice to have a do-over for the game introduction," senior designer Lars Bakken told G4TV in a recent interview. "The big takeaway for us is just to never comment on matters that are outside of our control," added community manager Brian Jarrard.

The subject of ODST becoming an "expansion pack," however, was never an arguable point to executive producer Curtis Creamer. "Though ODST was built from the Halo 3 engine, there were enough changes made to the engine that we could not have released it as an expansion in the way that you might equate with a PC game expansion pack ... the ODST executable is not compatible with Halo 3."

The crew of Bungie devs also reconfirmed that "there are currently no plans for any ODST DLC," with all of the studio's resources tied up with Halo: Reach. Hopefully, our thirst for more Firefight maps will be quenched by the inclusion of the mode in future Halo games -- a prospect to which the developers responded, "Only time will tell." Do it for us, Bungie! Please?

Halo 3: ODST Campaign

Reader Comments (80)

But the teasing is a Bungie hallmark. They've always done it.

Think of how long they've been teasing the Bungie.net forums and members with 'What will Bungie Santa bring this year? (the Reach trailer).

It's just they way they do things.

"treating their fans like adults"

Most of their fans are not adults. Just check out their forum.

I need an xbox that doesn't RROD so I can play ODST, or ANYTHING.

Gee, you'd think possessing a broken 360 would have led you here:

http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/registerdevice.aspx?step=repair

Otherwise: D- for the effort, F for the hackneyed motive.

That's where is my broken xbox is, dumbass. for the 4 time. maybe they can FIX it but I'll put money of it RROD before the end of next year. Hopefully it last more than the 5 days the last "repaired" one did.

ODST is a great game if you play co-op on the hardest settings. I would argue H3's campaign is similar. It's brilliant when jacked up in difficulty and played with others. Lots of people that criticize both games are people that play alone on normal. And that's flatout boring.

Firefight is awesome and should be in future editions but they HAVE to make it matchmaking enabled. It's too hard to get friends and others in games. I'd play it a lot more if I could get groups together easily without having to go through the bungie.net forums. (Though I will say you can get games nearly instantly that way.)

There were some definite pre-release miscommunications and gaffes. It was almost as if they were working against Microsoft. If I'm not mistaken, they were upset about not being shown publically at E3 back in 2007 (?) and made a point of letting people know, which I'm not sure does anyone any good.

I realize Bungie wants to be independant, and they now are, but at the same time they need to coordinate their publicity a little bit better.

I think Microsoft had a lot to do with the mishandling. They continuously treated it as a system seller, and it was never intended to be. It was intended to tell a story bridging the gap between Halo 2 and Halo 3, along with putting all the maps on one disc (remember the Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack disc for the Xbox?). Personally, I liked the story.

Not integrating Firefight into Matchmaking was a disappointment. My personal theory is that ODST was a way to 'field test', if you will, many of the upgrades that will eventually make it into Reach. I won't be surprised if VISR mode makes it into Reach, along with the silenced weapons, fully-matchmade Firefight, etc.

They also (and this makes a lot of people happy) have said that Reach will use mo-cap for the characters. No more preprogrammed commands.

#1 Stumble: Releasing a budget game at full price.

" series of stumbles "

is a great way to describe playing the new single player 'flashback' game....

hopefully halo reach will not follow this crap path.....................

(halo3:ODST one of the biggest waste of $ 60.00 gaming dollars since HAZE !!!!)

lol, you bought Haze?

no just played the demo, just talking for the community.
but i did buy ODST ;(

Speaking of firefight...I need people to play it with. I never see people on and playing when I go on. If you play firefight, add me...StanfordSol21

Yes, you've shown me the light. I suppose I'll have to start worshiping the convoluted story from MGS.

Thanks much. =]

Agreed. Especially the last part.

Actually, I was just trying to make a low-blow, since that's what you were obviously trying to do. However, it seems as though I'm going to have to get used to at least some of MGS's style of storytelling as MGS4's cinematic director and now it's chief sound designer have joined Microsoft's Halo studio, 343 Industries.

I do find it somewhat ironic that you constantly bash a game series in which some of the creators of your (apparently) favorite series are now going to be working for. Fancy that, right?

I'll say I totally blew the game off. It looked like it would just be the same Halo gameplay with differently skinned characters...Been there done that 3 times Bungie. No new online play? Same old shield gameplay? I was hoping it would be more of a one shot one kill type of game like COD can be yet set in the Halo universe with vehicles. How wrong I was. Glad I didn't buy it.

You're a fucking idiot, aren't you? There were no shields in ODST.

1 shot 1 kill gameplay just doesnt work in a halo game. Theres plenty of CoDish games out there for you, go play those if thats what you want.

Sorry if you really think that super advanced alien races with energy shield technology should die with a few pistol rounds.

Sorry had to get my password.

Next Expansion Pack: "HALO: FUBAR"

No problems with Halo ODST except with price. It's a great game.

The game failed more than the marketing. They made an expansion pack and sold it as a game. If they want to call that a failure in marketing, fine. But to me it's a failure in the game to live up to what MS sold it as.

I cannot explain why MS did what they did, other than that they figured the players would pay for it (and they largely did). But why not wait a bit longer and make the game right? I can only think it was because they wanted to beat CoD6 out the door.

Was a fun game, spent like 8 hours on the campaign and have burned at least 4 more in firefight, with plans to burn more over the winter break.

Cheaper would have been nice but I dont regret buying it.

And who paid $60 for ODST? It was $40-45 everywhere with deals like giftcards, even the first week.

I LOVE Halo, More Than Gears and COD, But Damn ODST Sucked Ass. This Game IMO, Should've Never Been Released... -____-

Mind blowing that no one realized "hey, let's make a game that is basically Halo 3, but with a less interesting character than Master Chief who has less power" wasn't a good idea.

as soon as I figured out there is no matchmaking for firefight, it went back into it's case and sat on my shelf.

LOL you kids crack me up. ODST had more content than most $60 titles.

Not compared to other high-line titles, unless you count the Halo 3 disc that came with it as more content.

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Bungie explains 'series of stumbles' in ODST marketing

Halo 3: ODST Campaign

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