Why MS pulled Bungie announcement, & confirms a Bungie Halo – But what are they?

by TWODOGSz:

©2008 Aaron Bertinetti

But it’s also confirmed that Bungie are working on a new Halo that’s not Halo: Wars or Halo: Chronicles!

Speaking with X3F, GM of Microsoft Game Studios, Phil Spencer has noted “I don’t think the relationship has changed” with Bungie. He then went on to explain why they had pulled the Bungie announcement by stating:

“We focused the E3 event on games that are coming this holiday, from a first-party perspective. If you look at the games we talked about in the briefing, the games that you will see – Banjo, Viva Pinata, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Lips, Scene It – these are all games that you’re going to see this fall. That was the decision we made – we did the same thing last year, if you’ll remember – to try and really introduce people to the games as they come towards completion, we’ll show them what we have and what is coming. The relationship to Bungie and the projects that we’re working on together – we don’t have anything to announce today – but it’s in our plans.”

This would suggest that Microsoft felt that having seen the Sony and Nintendo conferences, they had done enough to “win” E3 with their current lineup, their reinvention of the 360 Live experience, and that gob smacking FFXIII announcement.

Better yet, it indicates Microsoft feels that Bungie’s announcement was big enough to distract the media from their other announcements. Given FFXIII and the massive Live overhaul, this is extremely exciting!

But what is Superintendent?

Well given the Bungie codename of “Superintendent” and the Bungie launch site’s constant reminders to “Keep it clean” with lots of things about “dust”, along with sources suggesting it’s not a Halo game we think it might be a reimaginging of an old Bungie franchise.

Titles would include critical darlings Marathon and Myth, along with Oni. But given Marathon has already turned up on XBLA, and the loss of Myth rights to Take 2 (I’d love a sequel btw!), I’ll hedge my bets on a re-imaging of Oni.

Oni was a third-person action game developed by Bungie West in 2001. It pioneered a mix of third person shooting with hand to hand combat, with a striking manga art design not dissimilar to the Ghost in the Shell series. It would also make sense for Bungie to revisit as it wouldn’t stray too far from their more recent FPS background; they could implement multiplayer which was sadly missing in the original due to network constraints; and given Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter creative director Christian Allen is the lead of Bungie’s next project it makes a lot of sense.

The only spanner in the works is the placement of the Superintendent figure over the area of Kenya in the Halo 3 multiplayer lobby. Given its very close links to the Halo universe, this naturally leads us to the next big news release…

Microsoft Confirms Bungie is Developing a new Halo!

As reported by MTV Multiplayer, Microsoft’s SVP of Interactive Entertainment, Don Mattrick, confirmed that Bungie is indeed working on a new Halo game for Microsoft. More interesting is that they held back the announcement, because they believe it would have drawn attention away from their bounty of announcements during their conference.

He also confirmed that Microsoft will be making announcements on Halo Wars and Bungie’s Halo project sometime in the future, but that Halo Wars, Halo Chronicles and Bungie’s Halo project were entirely separate titles!

So was Gamespot right about a tactical squad shooter. According to their source, the new Halo game will resemble “a cross between Ghost Recon and Gears of War.” It will reportedly be much grittier than the Halo series of current and involve squad based online co-op! Given Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter creative director Christian Allen is the lead of Bungie’s next project; the strange Superintendent figure over Kenya; the much grittier direction already evident in Halo Wars new trailer; and the suprising move of Microsoft to pull a major announcement in fear it would overwhelm this year’s lineup, has us chomping at the bit for more info and/or leaks!

One things for sure, come next year the Halo universe is going to become a hell of a lot bigger!

©2008 Aaron Bertinetti