What if Bungie stayed with Halo?

I mean Jason Jones started conceptualizing Destiny all the way back during Halo ODST. Joseph was burnt out on Halo and wanted to focus on a new game. There were easter egg posters for it in ODST. Sure maybe a lot OG Bungie Employees left post MS separation like Joesph Staten and Marty O'donnell. But a lot of studio members are there and they started that game. Bungie's culture influenced the end product. I agree Bungie has changed from when they were releasing Halo since the studio has evolved and a few hats have changed. I am also sure Activision had influence on the end product as well.

Here is some of the development history that is known about the game as well as why Marty and Joe left:

Development for Destiny officially began at Bungie in 2010 under the code name "Project Tiger", shortly after the release of Halo: Reach. By mid-2013, most of the ground work for Destiny had been completed including lore, game engine, and many environments and missions, tracking for a September 2013 release.[34][45] However, a "supercut" of the game's story and mission structure presented by Joseph Staten's writing team did not test well with Bungie upper management, led by Jason Jones.[34] Jones felt that the story was too dense and linear— a design philosophy he felt was important to Destiny was the ability for the player to choose where to go at any time.[34] As a result, the entire mission progression of the game was rebuilt between mid-2013 and the game's launch in September 2014, shifting away from a structure that quickly introduced the four major environments — Earth, the Moon, Venus, and Mars — to a hub-based structure in which each planet would be visited sequentially with an expanding variety of missions on each.[34] Existing missions were spliced and rearranged to fit this new paradigm, including dialogue and cinematics. Staten decided to leave the company amidst this reboot, though this would not be announced until September 2013.[46] To cement the new framework, Jones developed the director interface that exists in the shipping version of the game, from which planets and missions can be selected.[34] He also established the "Iron Bar", a series of executive meetings which would oversee the massive project restructuring. This also involved rescoping the project to be more focused — areas such as the Hive fortress Dreadnaught, an Earth location called the European Dead Zone, and Osiris' temple on Mercury were cut — all would later return in future installments. The restructuring also required an internal delay of the release date first from September 2013 to March 2014, and again to its actual release of September 9, 2014.[34][45] With Staten's departure, the writing team he had built at Bungie for the Halo series was left leaderless and isolated. As a result, much of this extra time was spent perfecting the gameplay and feel of the shooting while the narrative was only polished to a perfunctory level and "the story was written without writers".[34] On April 11, 2014, Bungie fired its long-time composer and audio director, Martin O'Donnell.[47] For Destiny, O'Donnell collaborated with Paul McCartney on an eight-movement symphonic suite called Music of the Spheres which was completed in 2013.[48] The dispute which led to his termination originated from O'Donnell's belief that the Activision deal had begun to erode the collegial culture at Bungie. Activision was reluctant to release the symphony as a standalone work and went over O'Donnell's head to replace it with their own music in a prominent E3 2013 trailer.[48] In the ensuing disagreement, O'Donnell came into conflict with both Activision and Bungie leadership and was accused of "unacceptable conduct" in his performance review, leading to his termination.[48] Fans were concerned that the absence of Martin O'Donnell would affect the in-game music of Destiny; however, Pete Parsons of Bungie confirmed that Destiny's music was already complete by this point.[49]O'Donnell prevailed in a civil suit against Bungie over the improper dismissal in September 2015, winning unpaid wages, profit sharing, and lost stock.[48] As a side-effect of this ruling, forty minutes out of the forty-eight-minute-long Music of the Spheres currently exist in the public domain.[50]

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