Bungie considers the challenges of a Halo MMO

by Kyle Horner on Oct 14th 2008 5:00PM

Bungie community and PR director Brian Jarrard recently told gamesindustry.biz that a Halo MMO has been the subject of "heated discussions" at the house that built Master Chief. Jarrard opines on the topic for a while, concluding that a lot of new lore and characters on top of the already-extensive universe that is Halo for a workable MMO.

That point of view rings quite true with us here at Massively. Typically, any time a non-MMO property is tapped for entry into the genre there are mountains of conceptual alterations that need to be made -- not to mention the catch 22 Jedi concession. You can't have a compelling Star Wars MMO without Jedi, however there needs to be some serious lore considerations if a developer is to allow hundreds of players run around their game world as laser-sword swinging, neo-space faring, monk/samurai. The same rule applies to the rare and elite Spartan warriors of the Halo universe.

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Tags: brian-jarrard, bungie, ensemble-studios, gamesindustry.biz, halo, halo-mmo, jedi, master-chief, spartan, star-wars

Reader Comments (2)

I think it would be interesting to see how a Halo MMO would pan out, but in my opinion, if they were to make one, Spartans should either be in the game only as NPCs with whom you can interact, or you should have to go through some hardcore, brutal, and slightly randomized (to prevent everyone from passing around "here's how to become a Spartan," guides) trials. Spartans should be as rare as Jedi should have been.

Maybe some kind of squad system where the Spartan is only one member of a squad that you have available, and you rotate him in and out of duty depending on what role you want to fulfill in your battalion? Everyone can create and fill out a Spartan, but not everyone would want to play the role that the Spartan would fill, depending on what skillset they're interested in playing themselves. If you make the alternate roles interesting enough, they'd be more attractive.