What is Bungie Really Working On?
The big news at E3 for Microsoft this year was that there wasn't any news: bolstered by what they saw as a strong performance, the company decided at the last minute to shelve a megaton announcement from Bungie. While fans were bummed, almost everyone was in agreement that the missing game was none other than Halo 4, and somewhat surprisingly, most people were content to wait for it to be announced.
Now, there is increasing doubt that Halo 4 was actually the game announcement that Bungie was planning to make. During a recent video created to accept an Edge award for interactive innovation, the company hinted that they are not actually working on a new Halo title. Rather, signs seem to suggest that they are working on an expansion to Halo 3. That would seem to make sense, considering that the millions of fans who already own the game would be likely to rush out to buy new downloadable content for it. Furthermore, the company points out that Microsoft owns the rights to create future games in the Halo series.
A posting on Bungie’s blog a few weeks ago also suggested that we definitely have more Halo 3 content to look forward to:
“While a lot of the changes done this month were backend things that players will never notice, you would be right to think that August’s changes feel very minimal. The reason for this is that we’ve been focused on preparing a larger series of changes to Matchmaking for September. Much larger. Much, much larger.”
But is a Halo 3 expansion pack the only thing the company has in the works? Unlikely. Last year’s split from Microsoft gave the developers greater freedom to develop new IPs, and that is probably what they are doing. Furthermore, there have been clear indications that the new game will not be Halo 4. One unnamed source close to the company stated after the cancelled E3 press announcement that the new IP is actually a Halo spin-off with a more tactical focus. Citing evidence from inside the company, the source told Gamespot on June 13th that the new project is “like a cross between Ghost Recon and Gears of War”.
Other possibilities include an update of one of their PC games from the 1990s. Perhaps a next-gen sequel to Oni, or a totally new Marathon game? The latter seems even more probable, since Bungie have continued to support that series on Xbox Live Arcade, having released an updated port of Marathon 2 on the service in 2007.
