Ryuu96 said:
Yeah, but he also had significant roles on Halo 1 - 3 and Reach. I'm not ready to hold one bad game against someone with such an amazing career, he knows Halo better than most, he almost certainly knows Halo better than a lot of people at 343 and that isn't a dig but a simple fact, he is after-all one of the creators of its universe and has been there from the very start. Creating your own studio is hard, trying to come up with a successful game is very hard, especially with little financial backing, I know Disintegration was bad, I felt it looked like a weird mashup of certain trends, looked a bit like Titanfall x Destiny, shit happens. Still, I stand by that he would be a great leader of a Halo team in 343's publishing department, he fully understands the Halo universe better than most, he would work well with Joe, he knows what folk like and dislike about Halo, he has experience managing teams (was Creative Director on Halo Reach) but one of his main roles was Art Director and sadly we lost the Halo Wars 2 Art Director (part of the publishing team) so I'd like to replace that dude with someone equally as good. Return to Halo may be good for him too, from a developer standpoint, it removes most those worries of keeping a studio alive, securing funding, he doesn't have to chase some weird trends or do a weird mash up, he can just focus on making a good Halo game. And a lot of these titles are not developed by 343 anyway, just managed by them/overseen, such as Halo Wars 2 where 343's only input was Writing and Art, the core gameplay was all Creative Assembly. That would likely remain true for future spinoffs but I hope it doesn't for FPS, I hope FPS spinoffs are done in-house and I trust Marcus still with that. Like Joseph Staten, he's currently Head of Creative, basically co-managing the studio with Bonnie Ross, he has never had a role like this before, like Marcus he was only Creative Director once, and Joe's not exactly done much lately either but folk are hyped as fuck about him being back at Halo and for good reason, cause of his history with the series, cause whenever he speaks Halo you can see the passion, you can see he just understands it, he's well liked in the developer scene, etc. My main issue with Cliffy is his personality. Once Joe leaves, I do worry, 343 has been poorly managed now for almost its entire life. |
Can't really look at Joe and Marcus the same way. Joe might not exactly have been doing big things of late, but that seems to be a clear choice on his part. He was simply content working in smaller roles, on various projects.
Marcus might know Halo, but what fresh new ideas can he bring to the table? The game he made with his failed studio wasn't simply a failure of overambition, underfunding, lack of polish, or a matter of it being rough around the edges. It was pretty much just bad from top to bottom. No part of it was well executed. I'm not taking anything away from his past work, or saying he can't ever do great work again. But coming off THAT kind of flat out terrible project, which falls more or less entirely on your shoulders...I'm not putting you in charge of any kind of AAA production.
He's gonna have to take a smaller role, and work his way back up, or go and ship a couple indie games that don't suck ass.
