The Bungie Story Part Two

and find out the answer, but still thrilling. Yeah. Bungee itself was in a little bit of a financial pickle that they had taken a break from FPS first person shooter games, that is, in order to develop this this tactics series called Myth And they had a tiny little bug, yeah, a little bug and Myth two that that could have deleted people's entire computers. Well, I mean, I guess not deleted their entire computers. That's terrible, Yeah, no, big yeah,

I mean who needs an operating system? And and fixing this manually by replacing all of the discs and all of the boxes basically cost them what they made on the game. So they were in some issues. Uh, they began to work on a project that in it internally was being called Blam uh and it was another tactical game that was like Myth, but it had a science

fiction setting rather than Myths dark fantasy setting. Uh. As they were developing it, they decided that the tactical base where you were controlling multiple units was probably less interesting. They wanted to go with a third person approach, so you're controlling a single character, but from the third person perspective, and then it would eventually develop into a first person shooter. Yeah, but that game by then would end up with a

different name. But that's we're getting ahead of ourselves, just barely, not too much ahead of ourselves. Because in at the Macworld conference and ex about a Bungee would show off a demo of this game for the Mac that they had in development called Halo. Yes, so Halo was originally a title for the Mac. It was going to be a Mac exclusive and perhaps eventually poured over to the PC if it were successful enough. If you remember, Marathon Too had ported over to the PC eventually. Um so

this was a really big opportunity for Bungee. In fact, a pretty notable persona in the field of technology was the one to introduce Jason Jones to come out on the mac World stage and talk about Halo. Yeah, just Steve Jobs. Yeah. So this is a video, by the way, that is available online. You can go to YouTube and watch this mac World presentation where Steve Jobs introduces Jason Jones and he talks about the game Halo for the

first time. And if you watch the video, you've got to see a lot of stuff that was in fact included in the games. Oh yeah, yeah, the demo is was rich with it. It was you get that that trademark Halo soundtrack that uh and and master Chief and a few vehicles that we that we all know and love or yes, all of us, even those of you who have never played the series, Lauren and I, no one loved them. Yeah, the the ward Hog. I think there's a phantom in their ghosts and guests. Yeah, some

of the some of the alien elites yep, yep. So these were characters or creatures or vehicles or whatever that would end up actually being featured in the the final game. And as a result of this, Steve Jobs actually he comes out and confidently says, you know, there was a time when it was hard to find good games for the Mac and that time is over because of companies like Bungee, which was unfortunate as it turned out eventually.

But anyway, at that same time, around that same time in Bungee would partner with another company called Take two. Video gamers have I'm sure recognized that name as well. So in exchange for nineteen point nine percent of Bungee, so Take two to just under ownership of Bungee, Take two would distribute Ony and Halo. Now, the reason for that partnership was partly due to this kind of financial difficulty Bungee had found itself in in the wake of

the myth To disaster. Uh So Bungee West was working on on, which we mentioned at the end of the last podcast. Ony was that third person anime inspired sci fi adventure um and then they also had to figure out how to recover from this this bug we had talked about so so so partnering with Take two made

perfect sense. Yeah, it was not quite enough. Bungee was still sort of in this this bleak well maybe bleak is the wrong word, but dangerous situation, and so they continued to look for opportunities, actually looking at possibly getting acquired by another company. Well, they had supposedly been been approached many times over the years by many different companies. On I'm becoming absorbed, I think Activision was one that they said had pursued them particularly a lot. They would

really great English guys. They would have to have a deep relationship with Activision later on as well. Um. But then on on June nineteenth of the year two thousand, Microsoft announced that it was going to acquire Bungee. This, as you can imagine, was a huge shake up in the video game world. I mean, you had this, this developer known for creating games for the Macintosh platform, a

platform that really did the lag behind PCs. I mean, if you look at the market share of Max, if you had a runaway hit on a Macintosh platform, you might be talking two thousand copies of the game, because they're just weren't as many Max out there at the time as there were PCs. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean

by a huge margin. Um. For for a little bit of perspective here, that the release of Windows and nine eight in those years respectively, had catapulted PC sales from PC sales went from being a relatively near eight times the number of MAX sales to being about thirty two times the number of MAX sales in three years, and they were in the midst of a second jump when when Bungee was acquired by Microsoft that they had climbed up to about fifty six times the number of MAX

sales by two thousand four. Now these days, Apple has had another renaissance, but in the mid in the early to mid two thousand's, that was just not the case. And so while Steve Jobs was really doing his best to turn Apple around, uh PC was really dominating in the home market. So as part of this deal of Bungee going over to Microsoft, some things had to change because not all the development stuff could go the way

they had originally planned. One of those was that Bungee transferred the rights to one and to the Myth franchise to Take two Interactive Software. So when I mentioned at the end of the last episode that there was a Myth three game but not published under Bungee, it was

published Undertake two. H on E was still pretty much considered a Bungee game because it was it was more or less complete when it went to Take two to be published on under their label, So Bungee would become essentially an independent game studio under the Microsoft corporate umbrella. They had their own culture that was very different from Microsoft. Oh yeah, yeah, even though they did relocate from Chicago to Redwood, Washington. Yeah. They they went into the offices

and this is on that that. Uh. In the last episode I mentioned the twentieth anniversary documentary for the Bungee twenty anniversary. They they went into the offices, and the offices at Microsoft are laid out very much the way you would imagine the stereotypical office with cubicles. They took one look at and said, uh no, this isn't us. They tore out all the cubicles to create a big, open floor planned space that that was what they were

used to. And they said that eventually get to the point where the people at Microsoft didn't even have a key to get into the Bungee Studios area because it was it was like a different world, so very interesting that the culture was there. So and uh. And also part of the deal, Take two sold their nineteen point whatever it was percent shares in in Bungee too Microsoft's and also Microsoft would gain exclusive rights to produce and distribute Halo, mostly intending it to be part of their

upcoming Xbox console. That's right. They were getting to a point where they were getting ready to release this console, but they also needed to have developers to create content for the console. They were real knew it this right. This was before Microsoft had any entry into the console gaming world at all, and they were going to take on Sony and the PlayStation and Nintendo as well. But Sony was really the big one that they raiming. Oh yeah, yeah.

The PS two, I believe, was also released in March of the year two thou over in Japan. I I don't have in front of me the day that I released in the US, But you know, the stuff that Sony had been doing with the PlayStation, that the PSX, the PlayStation one, and also the PS two and and Sega with the Dreamcast as well, was just blowing the

minds of everyone in the gaming industry. And so, you know, even I mean, you know, I I understand that a lot of Mac users felt very betrayed by this decision of Bungee and felt like they had sold out, But honestly, y'all, it was so savvy of them to get into the console market at that point. You know, exactly. Yeah, I mean it was it was a move that preserved Bungee, because otherwise it may not have been able to stay

a unit. It would have would have broken apart from all the problems that they had faced in the wake of of Myth two and the other issues, and and beyond that, it allowed them to get in on the ground floor of this round of amazing consoles, right, and so it was a beneficial relationship for both parties, both for Microsoft really for Microsoft considering the phenomenal eventually certainly, um, but you know, it's I'm not sure if it was

such an assured success for them at that point. They said specifically, it was interesting in that documentary they said, you know, there was nothing preordained about Halo becoming a big, big success. In fact, originally when the Microsoft Xbox console was coming out, it wasn't going to be uh heralded as the main attraction. It was only there wasn't the

flagship at first. Yeah, it was that people began to react to it, and particularly once they got to play the multiplayer part, which we'll talk about in a second, they reacted to it so enthusiastically that they quickly said, oh, well, this is this is our our console killer. This is what is going to sell units. But they didn't know that at the beginning. So two thousand one would take two releases only, right. Meanwhile, that would come out for

for Windows, Mac and the PlayStation two. And it was originally supposed to come out, but there were so many development problems that slowed things. Oh and the complication of the Microsoft acquisition. Yeah. Absolutely, So here's the unfortunate thing about this one. Take two had banked on only being a huge hits. This is kind of like the opposite side of the whole Halo thing where Microsoft was hedging its beds. Take two said no, only because Bungee has

got this name and game, it's going to explode. And then it didn't really at all. I mean, I mean, there was certainly a hardcore group of of Bungee fans that picked up on it very much, and and some and some new converts as well. I remember a few

of my friends were very fond of the game. I had never really looked into it until we started researching this podcast, and when I watched the gameplay, I saw that this game was ahead of its time, ahead of its time, and and in terms of the gameplay, you could you could do these combo moves that that were very beautiful. Yeah, there was something like a thousand different animations for hand to hand combat, which is crazy. Also, you saw some Bungee favorites showing up things like learning

more about the world through terminals. So yeah, there's certain certain tropes, like like you were saying Lauren at the beginning of the last episode, that Bungee had established that they continued to really rely upon. Another big change happened for Bungee in two thousand and one. They had already moved over to Microsoft, Only had come out, and then

they experienced a pretty significant change in their structure. Yeah, after only had published, their founder or co founder depending on who you ask, Alex Syropian would leave the company to found a new Chicago based game developing company called Wideload Games. Yeah, so Seropian, of course, it was his brain child. He and Jones together had really created Bungee. Seropian was ready to leave by the time and had

moved over to Microsoft. He felt that I suppose that it was really you know, this Bungee had transformed, had evolved into something new, and he was interested in moving on Whitelad Games would eventually get acquired by a little company called Disney and become part of Disney Interactive. Seropian would actually become a pretty important executive at Disney Interactive, but then would leave in to found another company called

Industrial Toys. Yep, they're creating games for mobile devices like iOS. So also in two thousand one, if that's not enough, we've got Seropean leaving. Something else happened. Uh. Yeah, around the same time, after Tony had published Bungee West, being the subset of Bungee which had which had really developed the game, would fold. Yeah. They just didn't make sense to have two different office presences, especially now that they had been folded into Microsoft officially. Soh so Bungee West

goes away. Uh. And in November two thousand one, this is a big year for Bungee, they actually would release Halo Combat Evault for the Xbox So it was a launch title for the console system, huge deal for Microsoft,

and it was an enormous hit. Uh. It didn't feature online multiplayer because Xbox five wasn't yet ready, so right, this was one of those instances where Microsoft had been trumpeting the fact, you know that they included an Ethernet port in the Xbox at launch, but the live component of it that the software was not prepared, so there was no platform to support it. However, what you could do, right was it was land your xboxes together and the it was a lot less complicated than the process of

landing computer systems together. It's a plug in play type thing, right right, And that was I remember the first time that I saw this and it was so revolutionary to the idea that you wouldn't have to go into all of your settings and mess around with everything and go through that frustration level. Uh that that yeah, that you you really would just tuck them up together and they

would basically do it for you. Yeah. So uh, for those of you who have never participated in the joy of a land party, land is local area network, if we have not mentioned that yet in this particular episode, Yeah,

it's um. So. The way Halo multiplayer would work is that you would get multiple people on a single console and that would create a split screen environment and that would depend upon how many people were playing, right, Yeah, cooperatively you could play a two player game and in a versus kind of universe, he could you could play for four on a single console, but you could you could network multiple consoles together for a maximum of sixteen players.

So imagine that you've got these multiple television side by side, all of them in split screen view, all of you are playing a specific one. Uh there was This was a time where multiplayer meant that you could engage in some underhanded tactics. I'm talking screen lookers. I know you're out there. Okay, it's part of the game. It is not part of the game. It's not a legitimate strategy. You should be looking at your own screen. Don't look at my screen. It's like checking your rear view mirror.

There's nothing at all if you can't avoid it. Look, you know it's it's a common thing on in in games of war for you to be able to look through the eyes of your enemy and see exactly where they are. Look. This is why we always wound up having having two rooms of of xboxes with Red team on one side and Blue team on which the fantastic because you only saw your fellow players screens, and you could cooperate and you wouldn't get people shouting at you

about screen looking only about everything else. Camping. Yeah, now that's a legitimate strategy that is not a legitimate strategy. Hey, I'm sorry Red versus Blue taught it to me. But yeah, so it was interesting because the whole first person shooter. If you've never played Halo, if you don't know anything about Halo, we can tell you everything about Halo. Well

we'll give you We'll give you the high level look. Um. It was revisiting a lot of the ideas that Bungee had explored in the Marathon series, but the two games are not set in the same universe. The general plot is that it's in the future where humanity has expanded and colonized far distant worlds, and through this colonization process,

several things have happened. Some of this gets explored in expanded universe material like novels or mini series, but the games, as they unfold, you learned things like there were periods of civil unrest where people on far reaching planets were upset at Earth's kind of totalitarian approach to colonization other humans, not alien exactly. Yeah, so this is there were there were the civil wars, and at any rate, also during colonization, we happen to come into contact, we humans with some

aliens um called the Covenant. Yeah, called the Covenant specifically because it's a confederacy of different alien species who all share the same religion, and part of that religion involves this idea of a great journey where the entire alien confederation will move on to an enlightened level of existence. But they're also heretics, and humans are heretics because we take advantage of ancient technologies that we come across that we're not supposed to touch because they're very important to

the alien religion. All of that is the backstory, like the background of what's going on in the game. The game, you have a very very much more immediate problem than this complex religious and political kind of turmoil is going on. Although yeah, like like I don't think that the game would have taken off the way that it did if it hadn't had this background. Yeah. So, but you know,

it's it's it's important, but not critical to the right. Again, just like just like the earlier games, you could play this just running guns straight through, or just play the multiplayer and never even touched the single player and still find it a very satisfying experience. But it was the story that got a lot of people interested in saying, wow, this is this is really complex. Yeah, there's there's like a whole mythology. There's there's stuff going on besides what

your character is doing. A lot of computer games and video games, I think give you the impression that whatever you are doing is the only thing that's really of consequence that's happening within that game world, and that's not the case with the Halo games necessarily. So the game opens where you are playing a character called the Master Chief. Master Chief is is his rank uh in A. He's a space marine essentially wearing superpowered armor. He's genetically enhanced. Um,

he's kind of the elite of the elite. And there's a whole backstory to them that we're not going to go into because that could be like a series of podcasts at any rate. You're on a ship that gets attacked by Covenant horses, and in the process you're trying to kind of escape the Covenant. You're you're really your goal is to make sure the Covenant don't figure out where Earth is because they want to kill us. That

would be bad. So you try your your ship tries to escape and slip space, which is kind of a hyperspace sort of thing, and you just happened to come out right at a gigantic ring shaped planet size space station. Planet size in the sense that if you look at the square footage of the surface area, it's like a planet, although it is a it is an artificial construct built by a mysterious race of aliens called the Forerunners, who are no longer around. Huh. And but this thing is

called a halo. Yeah, Halo installation. I think it's installation. Oh, for in the lore of the game. Um so in the game, you the Covenant show up to they follow right behind you, and they they see this thing and they think, oh wow, this is interesting. We want to check this out too, So it becomes of a race to try and find out what's the purpose of this installation? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But along the way you run into these aliens called the Flood, which are these parasitic things that turn both

humans and aliens alike into sort of zombie things. Yeah, And you find out eventually that the purpose of the installation was twofold one, to contain the Flood for study and to to act as defense mechanism if the Flood were ever released into the galaxy. Because the flood can essentially infect any sentient life form. So eventually what you learn is that this installation, if turned on, will wipe out all sentient life within a huge radius, like a

significant portion of the galaxy and um. And so you come to the conclusion that that would be a bad thing. Whereas the Covenant think this is the key to the great journey, this is worthwhile. Yeah, if we push this button, then we will totally move on to an enlightened form of existence. So that's where the whole whole um conflict comes in. By the end of it, you spoiler alert, successfully destroy the installation and then, uh, you know, Cortana, this AI, which again very important in the in the

lore of Bungee, is the artificial intelligence. Cortana, the AI who's been looking after you and helping you along the way, says, uh, it's over, and of course it's just getting started. That's a that's a good master Chief repression. It wasn't. I was being kind. I don't have a deep I don't have a basso profundo type voice. Uh so. Also, I've been coughing a lot, so this is this is as gruff as I can get. But yeah, it was. It was pretty It was it was for for a console

based first person shooter. It was really complex and rich and had satisfying gameplay for a lot of players, so sure well. And and also the combat evolved part of the title meant that the the AI in the game, and I'm not talking about the articial intelligence characters. I'm talking about in the game itself. The the enemies and friendlies would we're really very smart and could react to you in very interesting ways and and and form their own kind of strategies as you moved through the gameplay,

and so and so it was. It was a very fun experience, especially for anyone who you know, had had dealt with very dumb AI in in previous right, right, I And I hear that there are a lot of people who um like like PC players first person shooter players who who kind of look down on the Halo series because the control scheme is it had to be made specifically for the controller, not for a mouse and keyboard, which means you have to give up a lot of

precision that you But I think that dismissing one type of first person shooter based upon the platform is short sighted as a as a person who likes both computer games and console games. I love the game play in Halo. It's very satisfying to me. It's it probably feels very different for someone who's more attuned to first person shooters

on computers, and I understand that. I think. I do think it's also a little bit easier on the entry level to need to get into it, and I think that once once you are into it, there's a pretty there's a pretty good depth of of range of of uh skill level, skill level that you can achieve. Certainly, Yeah, I mean, based upon my online experiences with the most of the Halo series, it's an easy game to pick up and a difficult one for for me at any

rate to master. Moving on, though, so Halo huge success both for Bungee and Microsoft, which are one and the same thing right now. Yeah, and as of two thousand two, they would announce that they were developing a sequel Halo too. Yeah. Now, this development process was not a smooth one. Uh. It

actually ended up causing a lot of issues. The there's a large section of that documentary I mentioned that's dedicated specifically to the development of Halo two, where they came up with these big ideas for different level designs, plot elements, weapons, vehicles, enemies, all this kind of stuff. But as they were developing the game, they realized that they couldn't really achieve the things they had originally planned. It just wasn't going to

work out. Specifically, it wasn' going to work out as the first person shooter type of game. Uh and so they started to really uh worry about the integrity of the single player campaign. Meanwhile, there was a new focus on multiplayer because now Xbox Live was going to be ready by the time Halo two came out, so they wanted to really nail multiplayer. Ah yeah, Yeah. It was a huge Microsoft imperative to to get this flagship game

of theirs on their new shiny multiplayer network. Yeah, because you still couldn't play the first Halo on Xbox Live. It just wasn't going to work. So because it hadn't been built into that first Halo. So Halo two was going to be the first one where you had that opportunity they really wanted to get right. They had to pull a lot of resources onto multiplayer, which meant that the single player campaign began to lag behind. Uh and so yeah, it was really getting kind of grim for

Halo two. In fact, if you listen to the documentary, they start talking like in really depressing language about it, saying that it was just a grueling process. Um, including a lack of leadership. You know, we had talked about Serapian having left the company. Jason Jones, meanwhile, wasn't working on Halo two. He was working on a project that was code named the Phoenix Project, also called Breach or T T F K A M two, also known as

the team formerly known as Myth two. Yeah, so its the Myth two development team working on a new game, which was never like, there's never been any public announcement about what that game would have been. It never came out. It never came out. They yeah, they scrapped it. But the leading theory is that it was a fantasy based strategy game, kind of some alert to Myth two. That would be why fans called it T T F K

M two. Um, we will will never know. They ended up saying, look, Halo two is the most important project right now, and it's it's kind of floundering. So Jones would end up moving over to Halo two, uh and trying to to add some more leadership to this development team. Um. Moving on to two thousand three. Yeah, in two thousand three, they would release a port of Halo one, Halo Combat Evolved for the PC and Mac platforms. Uh it. It did allow for online multiplayer play, but it did not

allow for cooperative gameplay through the storyline. Yeah, the single player campaign. Yeah, so yeah, that was that was a downside, although they did have other maps that the console players didn't have access to, so that was one of those things that got console players a little jealous. Um at any rate. At E three two three, Bunche would show off some footage from Halo two and fan boys lose their ever love and minds. That is an accurate trail

of the events. And if you can again, you can find videos of the Halo to reveal at E three, two thousand three. And it's it's insane to hear the reaction. It's funny too, because I think out of all the Halo reveals that I've either been present for or watched online, I think this was the biggest reaction out of all of them, partly because you started seeing things in the in the reveal, including the ability to wield two weapons at once, which drove everyone bunkers. Yeah, you mean, I

can use my left hand to to needle Aera. So apparently that was a real eye opening experience. Also in two thousand three, this doesn't have to do with Bungee directly at this point, but a group of Bungee fans, or Halo fans specifically, would put out a small series known as Red Versus Blue. That's right. First episode goes live April first, two thousand which, if you've ever listened to any podcasts that the company has done, are gone

to any panels. They talk about how they regret that simply because whenever they make an announcement on an anniversary, people expected to be an April fool's joke. Um, it end up being a huge success. If you go back

and search the Tech Stuff archives. We actually did an interview with Bernie Burns, the the founder of Rooster Teeth, the company that makes Red Versus Blue, and it starts off with some playful references to stuff that's within the Halo universe, like Master Chief and the Covenant Armada, and then very very quickly forges its own path into madness and comedy drama too. Oh sure, sure, but this this was all footage taken our footage in in game footage

taken from the Halo series. Yeah, essentially using the characters like digital puppets, right, And it was they were able to to make these little digital puppets kind of talk by by utilizing a glitch in the game that that would be erased from Halo two. There there's a little bit of a concern right around now about whether or not they would even be able to continue making this series once Halo two would come out and they possibly

fixed the bug. Yeah, it was. It was one of those things where Bungee was saying, oh, we should really fix this, and wait, that's what loves us make their movies. Eventually Bungee would code in. They did fix the bug, but they allowed for they allowed for you to do it basically on purpose. It was essentially head bobbing, so that that way it would because you know, the Master Chief outfit includes a full faced helmet that hides the person's head. You can't see the person, so you can't

tell who's talking unless you have some sort of movetion. Right. So two thousand and four, in July, theatrical preview for Halo two ends with a quick flash of the u r L I Love Bees dot Com, an alternate reality game or a r G with with ties to really far reaching concept in the Halo universe that had never really been explicitly stated before. Yeah, it's mostly AI and rampancy. That was the big one, which of course had been

introduced in the Marathon series. The rampancy wasn't really addressed in the first Halo well three for three Guilty Spark, Well, that's true, that's true. I was specifically thinking of human design AI, but three four three Guilty Spark uh definitely falls into that realm of if AI is left alone long enough, it goes crazy. Yeah yeah, oh yeah, and and and so so this this I Love Bees game would was was a huge Internet sensation. I had so

many friends who were playing it. I didn't catch up with it until much later, but I was playing to the point where I was strongly UH leaning towards going to one of the public telephones that you could go to and wait and there would be a call that would come in at certain telephone UH telephones during certain times of the day in certain cities, and if you responded with the right code phrase, you could actually participate

in this game. They actually recorded those phone conversations and UH ended up packaging them together for people who had been playing the game the whole time, so that you could go to a physical event with a real live people there. That was all about celebrating this alternate reality game that was at that point tangentially related to Halo two,

and you could get a copy of all them. And it was great because it would have things like the AI on the other phone would ask you questions like what's your favorite song, and you would answer and just sing it for me. So you had all these people singing into a phone, including and it brought tears to my eyes. I'll never forget. There was one female player of the r G who said that her favorite song was Stormy Weather, so she started singing it, and the

AI ended up singing harmony. So it's fantastic. It's all online. Oh yeah no. And and alternate reality games, if you guys haven't heard of them very much before, are this kind of interactive experience where it fyers players to to to go out into the world and answer phone calls at phone booths, you know, back when those things still existed, or find clues and and enter them up into the game world and and collectively figure out what's going on in order to proceed in the game as a community,

and it can be a very powerful marketing tool. I think that this is probably the most successful one that I have seen the Beast right AI. Although I should also add in both cases you had people who were obsessed with the alternate reality game who never really cared about the Halo party or or AI for that matter, the same sort of thing. But anyway, right, right, So, so in November Halo two would actually release. Uh it

did some some fair business, right. Yeah, It's sold more than two point four million copies in the first twenty four hours, hundred thousand copies an hour. That's not bad considering that again, back in their Macintosh day, they would consider a blowout success to be two d copies. That's pretty phenomenal. And uh and in the plot of these games, along with some of the backstory that was revealed through I Love Bees, what would make this entire universe even

more complicated. So uh, the important thing to remember here from a kind of a meta perspective, is that the third act of Halo two had been truncated. They essentially in order to get the game out before it was no longer relevant. They had to make some serious cutbacks on the development side, and that involved removing an entire plot point that would happen uh after what ends up being the end of Halo two. So it was essentially a third shorter than what it was planned to be.

Um again, it was such an arduous process. Team morale it Bungee was really low. It was just one of those things where people felt kind of like they had failed in their attempt. And part of that was just them saying, you know, if you don't if you don't aim for something that's scar Harry, it's not really worth doing. And sometimes you might fail in that, but that's what makes it worth doing. But they but they did achieve

a really rich online multiplayer gaming. Oh yeah, no. Halo two online multiplayer is one of those things that that the lovers of the consoles still cite as being a favorite, and in fact, I know a lot of people who are eagerly anticipating the Xbox One release of the Master Chief Collection, which collects Halo's one through four and allows you to have that online multiplayer with all of them over Xbox Live on Xbox One and uh, and people are really eager to play Halo to multiplayer again because

otherwise you can't really do it. So yeah, no, no, no, no, absolutely, I'm still very nostalgic personally for some of those maps. I I get a little bit misty eyed. I love Ascension, and I do I do still really tear up about Bees. It's so two thousand and six, Bungee would show off a trailer for Hay three at E three, This once for the Xbox three sixties. So moving on to the

next generation of game consoles, all right. Halo three would come out the next year, in September of two thousand seven, and uh, you know, immediately go gold and sell more than three hundred million dollars worth of this game within

the first week. Yeah, phenomenally successful. And at that point Bungee actually shortly before the actual release of the game, had announced that it would separate from Microsoft later on the year, So by October two thou seven, Bungee would leave Microsoft and become its own independent game studio once again. Although it's part of the deal, they agreed to make two more Halo games and then hand over the Halo franchise to Microsoft to do with it what they would. Yep.

So they said that, you know, if it came down to going out and and forming their own identity once more, giving up their baby was a tough thing to do, but it was the right thing to do, according to the folks who stayed with Bungee. Everybody did. Now, it's I think that overall, the the feel of Bungee was pretty positive. They they set on Bungee deton dot Net on its own once again, with a horizon full of

opportunities for the studio. What's next for Bungee? Hush, if you're quiet enough, you can hear it on the lips of unborn babes. Yeah. So, as it turns out, the folks that Bungee have a bit of a sense of humor. Uh So, Halo three picks up, We're Halo. Yeah, really I think they I think they do have anyway, Yeah, they're they're pretty well known for it. Halo three picked up We're Halo two left off, So no big surprise there. Essentially, by the end of the Halo three I'm not gonna

go through the whole plot again. It's very complicated, but Master Chief and Quartan at the end of Halo three are kind of set adrift light years from Earth in half of a starship. Uh. Master Chief goes into stasis. Cortana is kind of on standby, and that's the end of the Halo trilogy is kind of they talked about as being a three act tragedy, and so this is

sort of the tragic end. Master Chief is alive, but he has completely separated from humanity, and no one on Earth is aware of whether or not he's they they assume he's dead, and so that that was kind of their way of saying, this is a fitting end. Master Chief saves the day, but he himself has cut off

off from everybody else. Um. The game did, though, also feature a Forge mode um in which you could go in and create your own maps and game types with all kinds of physics and weapons that you wanted to put in there. If you remember from U from Marathon three Infinity way back in six, this is a very familiar feature. Ye. And what was also cool is you could record footage as you're playing, so you could actually make your own little machinima if you wanted to. That's

that's what the kind of animation that read versus Bleu is. Yeah, I don't think said that. Yeah, I totally forgot to mention it. But you could do your own if you wanted to, and a lot of people did. Or you could be one of those people who you know, you're playing the game and you suddenly get sniped out of nowhere, and you after the after the matches over, you were view it to say, where the heck was that person? How, how did where did they get to? What was their

vantage point? How do I get there? So I can try can do things? So it actually made people better players too, because they could really examine and scrutinize what was going on at any given time, and they could change camera angles. It's not like you were limited to you know, a camera angle in a virtual world is able to go anywhere, so you could completely take a scene and do a three sixty degree sweep around. It's

really awesome. So UH Moving on. In two thousand eight, Harold Ryan, who had served as the test manager and producer for Halo two, becomes the president of Bungee UH and in two thousand nine, Bungee would release the first of those two games they had promised Microsoft in the Halo series, Halo three O, D S T. Which stood for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, which was a class of of marines some somewhat below the Spartans. The Spartans a k a. That the Master Chief character is a Spark

in terms of technological and physical ability. Yep. It was kind of set in the film noir type genre, like they wanted to have a very dark, kind of gritty, uh, desperate feel for the game. It was. It was pretty spooky, it was. It was very desolate and also featured one of the spookiest actors in the world, Nathan Nathan. Yeah. Yeah, wasn't that one too, Yeah? Um, and involved it involved a lot again of of back story told through these

found recordings. Yeah. And it was kind of set between Halo two and Halo three, like the events that that lead from Halo two to Halo three. And it didn't feature Master Chief at all. You played as these other characters. Uh. Bungee also would announce in two thousand nine Halo Reach, which would be the final Bungee backed game in the Halo universe. Uh. And meanwhile, Microsoft, not resting on its laurels, formed three four three industries, So Guilty Spark three forty three.

That's where that name comes from Um I have I have a little bit of a thing to say about that. Okay, I find it very strange that they chose three four three as as the name of this in house company, because I mean, we we we mentioned it earlier. But but three four three Guilty Spark was this floating AI who was really integral to the events of the series. He showed up first in Halo one. He I mean it,

I suppose probably had a dude voice. Yeah. Um, while it wasn't necessarily evil, is definitely at odds with you through most of the series and is more than a little bit completely bonkers in that very charmingly murderous way that the video game AI characters tend to get. Um. So, I just think that it's really interesting that they were like, that's our name, right, There's not like Cortana or something, right, right, I would say that I would say that three four

three is at least a moral if not. He has very specific parameters that he follows very very literally and sort of the less Kersey el swhere engine of the Halo series. You go, uh and the the lead over at three four three is Frank O'Connor, who was formerly Bungee's content managers. So some of the Bungee employees moved on over to three four three stayed with that and Microsoft. Others went with the rest of the company to become their own independent h entity. Uh The next year in

Bungee would release Halo Reach. It's a prequel to the first Halo game, so Halo Combat Evolved prequel. It takes place on the planet that you know I talked about in in Halo. You're on a ship that's being attacked

by the Covenant. The ship is in orbit around this planet Reach, and uh so this is the story of the Fall of Reach, when Reach was invaded by the Covenant and this group of uh Spartans who are charged with getting very important package to the Pillar of Autumn, which is the ship you're on in the beginning of Halo right right, And this the storyline is. I mean, anyone who is very familiar with the Halo series would know that it ends in terrible magity. Um So, going

into this game, I was a little bit upset. I mean, I mean, the the story of the Fall of Reach is why I cried so much during I Love Bees. So I was, but I had a lot of friends who had never played the games that deeply had never paid that much attention to the backstory, so so they were all very surprised and end upset in real time, which I kind of shot and freudly enjoyed. Spoiler alert for those who who may have not played this game but planned to U So, yeah, it doesn't end well,

but you know that from the beginning of Halo. I mean, it's it's clear what's happening. Um, but uh, at least one member of Noble six does live. Well, there you go. So there, It's probably not you, but one of them does. Everybody dies. It was also the year two thousand eleven of Bungee's twentieth anniversary. That's where the documentary came out.

They also hinted at Bungee's next project, which at the time was codenamed Project Tiger, that would end up becoming the game that we now know as Destiny, which as of the recording of this podcast still has to come out, but they have done an alpha a beta on it. In two thousand and twelve, a lawsuit between Activision and some former Infinity Ward employees included a publishing contract between

Activision and Bungee as evidence. The judge of the case unsealed this contract, and that revealed that the agreement covered four games under the Destiny franchise developed by Bungee distributed by Activision, so kind of laying the cattle of the bag through a completely unrelated lawsuit, the company Bungee began to release information about the game in the wake of

various leaks that plagued the project. The budget for the game was reported to be five hundred million dollars half a billion bucks, although that might be for the entire series and include stuff like like server costs and all of that, so we don't know what that budget entails. I would imagine it has to be the entire series. I can't five million dollars for a single game would be such a huge investment that I don't know how you would earn your money back. Um So moving on.

In two thousand thirteen, Joseph Staton, who had worked for Bungee since n and co created Destiny, leaves the company and joins Microsoft and in two thousand and fourteen, the release of Destiny is scheduled for September two thousand fourteen,

and they we are recording this. By the way, on August, so it's still not out yet, so we haven't had a chance to to really play with it, but the alpha and beta programs both allowed prospective players to give it a world and was widely shown as to be a success, at least as far as beta programs are going. It's a fully online first person shooter game with some role playing game elements, persistent world that's supposed to change over time as as players join and complete different missions.

So in theory, you'll be able to start playing this game and then eventually get brand new missions that unwrapped as the world itself evaults, So some missions may come online, some old missions may no longer be relevant. Um, I've heard rumors of an app that would alert you when new stuff pops up, so you would be able to you know, it's it's supposed to be an alert that would come to your character in the game, which your

character is called a guardian. The storyline of this is just basically that you are one of humanity's last protectors. It's a sci fi world. We don't have a whole lot about the story right now. Uh So we're not going to go into that too much because it's first of all, it's a brand new game, and I think a lot of people want to have the chance to explore it themselves. Sure, but yeah, a few details here and there. Um there's there's another robotic ai yep, voiced

by nonetheless than Peter Danklige. Who who doesn't need a little more dink Ledge in their lives? That's we all, we all, we all need. Yeah, so dink Ledge which I hear a lot of people referring to the Ghost, which is the little robotic cube that floats around and has Peter Dankledge's voice. A lot of people are just referring to as the Dinklage. I have no idea how Mr Dinkledge feels about this. Um. I I hope he finds it amusing and charming, because I'm sure that's the

way most people intended. Uh. There was actually an Easter egg about Destiny hidden in Halo O dst. There was a poster, or or rather there was some writing on a wall. It was it was a Destiny and it showed Earth with a little glowing orb next to it. So yeah, it's funny that all the way back then they had the little little easter egg there, which meant nothing unless until you know, like kindsight, it means something. Just some other breaking news as we are finishing up

this episode. Uh, there was a story about Marty O'Donnell, who's the composer who created all that really uh iconic Halo music, who was fired by the board of directors of Bungee back in April of two thousand fourteen Oddonal would end up suing the company, and an arbiter decided that O'Donnell should be granted his share in the company, which was a mounting to three hundred thirty six thousand three shares a Bungee and forty thousand shares of common stock.

But Bungee has the option to appeal this decision, which has not yet happened as of the recording. Then, also, Destiny writer Joshua Rubin has quit his job at Bungee to go and join tell Tale Games to be a writer on their Game of Thrones episodic video game series

that's coming out soon. So, uh, considering the Destiny is a persistent world that's going to continue evolving, I imagine that's a pretty big deal over at Bungee right now that they're going to have to make sure that they can continue and make it feel like it's a continuous of evolution of the story and not feel jagged or stop and starts. That's that's a tough blow for them,

but that brings us up to speed. Bungee pretty amazing company, huge history in video games, oh yeah, and and so important to I mean the first person shooter genre definitely, but but also also a lot of a lot of other stuff and in their history, very interesting and great, great themes, great human people. It's funny because, uh, you know, there were certain games like the Marathon series that I had heard about but never really looked into until we

did this episode. It's just interesting to see what elements Bungee considers really really important because you can tell which ones they are. They're the ones that keep coming back all the right, the super deep, complex stories that reward the players who go through the trouble of exploration and experiencing these things. Um and then you don't want to that's okay, yeah, yeah, you know, it is very easy in any of these games to to just run a gun if that's what you if you have a short

attention span and that's what you want to do. But they can be very much deeper than that, and I have a feeling as I was doing the research, I'm gonna go back and replace some of these games. Actually, I'm thinking that I'll have to invest and get an Xbox One and the Master Chief collection because I want to play through them all again. And I did, in fact, because I had not yet played it. I played Halo Reach but never played O DST so I BT today, so it'll be waiting on my Xbox when I get home.

I enjoyed O d s T. I want I find Nathan Philly and to be dreamy, so I'll absolutely love playing uh that game and listening to his melodious voice and and and the character also is modeled very much like him, so if you enjoy his rugged jawline as well, then you will get to enjoy that in the game. Well, that wraps up our story about Bungee. Lauren, do you wanna Do you want to talk about what's coming next

for you? Uh? Yeah? So, So, as I mentioned at the top of our first episode about Bungee, this this is my last episode of tech Stuff, and and I have so very many emotions about it because I'm really excited about moving on to other projects. That how stuff works, and and getting to really pursue some of my my interests because because honestly, y'all, tech has never really been my my strong suit. So so I'm excited about getting into more of the science and the gross stuff that

our bodies do, hopefully very soon. But you know, I I just wanted to to take a moment to thank all of you guys for I mean, you know, I had never done podcasting before when I started on Tech Stuff, and I had never really been a performer before, and so the opportunity to do this, like you guys put up with my learning curve, and I have so much gratitude for you for that, because I would not be

the person that I am. It's only been a year and a half, but I would not be the person who I am right now if it were not for this show. And I'm totally choking up. I feel like such a nerd um and and so you know, just just thank you so much to all of you guys for for tuning in and sticking with me and and being so supportive, and and a special thanks to well well, first of all, to h to our wonderful editor Knoll for making me sound so good on this show all

the time. And also to our original editor for the show, Tyler, who uh extra put up with my learning curve. That guy was a saint. And and also also just too Jonathan, so much for for showing me all of the ropes here. Well, now you're going to end up flourishing on other other shows and we will see, but we I am. I encourage my listeners to go and subscribe to Forward Thinking because Lauren will still be an active co host on that show, and of course we will keep you posted

when Lauren has other projects. Make sure you tune into brain Stuff, the video series that both of us occasionally appear on. Yeah, yeah you can. You can find a bunch of goofy videos with the two of us over at brain Stuff show dot com or on the YouTube's um and uh and same thing with Forward Thinking that's fw thinking dot com or the YouTube's and uh and and so so, Jonathan, where where are you taking tech stuff? It's exciting, uh and scary and terrifying and fun and

all these things all the same time. So here's the thing, guys, Uh, the emotions I'm having, we don't I don't have a replacement co host um planned right now, but we're going to be doing a series of guest co hosts, including a lot of people from How Stuff Works, the Stuff You Should Know, guys stuff, Mom never told you stuff, they don't want you to know, car stuff. All these folks are at some time or another going to be sitting in with me and doing special episodes of tech Stuff,

and also people from outside of How Stuff Works. I've got some plans to chat with some notable personalities in the field of technology podcasting, including people like Tom Merritt and Veronica Belmont and Scott Johnson and Shannon Morse, So we'll be doing some special episodes with them and also maybe some experiments with format. We might try some stuff

that Tech Stuff has never done before. But one thing I can assure you, Tech Stuff will continue and we will continue to publish twice a week, so don't worry about that. It's going to keep going and it won't just be the Jonathan Show. So if you're worried about that, I want to set your mind at ease. I don't want that either. So if you really want the job, and show right in, because my ego could really take

the boost. But otherwise, don't worry about it. So if you want to suggest a topic for future episodes of tech Stuff, or you just send a comment. Maybe you have a lovely farewell message for Lauren that you would like to share. To do so, send us an email. Our address is tex Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumbler, or handle is tech stuff hs W and we I mean I We'll talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.

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