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David Lynch 16:21, Monday 3rd August 2009

We sit down to talk Spartan’s with Ryan Gosby, product manager at Microsoft Studios…

How important was it for you to change up the Halo formula for ODST?
The Halo universe is so big and so vast that it’s an opportunity to take a step away from Master Chief and tell the story from the more human perspective. I think it was a really interesting opportunity and I think with the way the game came out, turned out to be a lot of fun, even from a gameplay standpoint.

Have you made any actual changes to the Halo 3 engine?
This is an extension of the Halo story certainly, it’s not the size or the scope of an expansion. In our minds, we don’t look at this as an expansion more a full other story told from a different point of view. I think that the key to that being the ODST, less super-soldier and more human.

Was it always Bungie’s plan to design the ODSTs to be different from the Spartans?
I think it’s intentional; it’s okay that it’s a little bit more difficult to kill the enemies as an ODST as opposed to a Spartan. So, I think that part of that is intentional; you’ll use different tactics in the way that you approach battles.

Do you think some players will have difficulty adjusting to playing as an ODST?
It’s actually a lot of fun, it doesn’t change the Halo gameplay, it still feels very much like Halo but it’s those subtle changes that add up to tweak the way you approach the game. And that’s true to the fiction, these ODSTs are special ops and that’s kind of the way they would approach a fight.

“We don’t look at this as an expansion more a full other story told from a different point of view”

I think they’re different types of innovation. There can be innovation in terms of gameplay, storytelling; I think that ODST does both of those things at least for the Halo universe and I think that there’s plenty of ways to innovate with the universe as it is. There are tons of untold stories, there are lots of different ways to go and we’ve announced Halo Reach, which will be a different approach as well – there are lots of opportunities.

It’s nice for Microsoft working with the guys at Bungie, because they are the fans. If they take it away and it doesn’t play well and they don’t like it then we know that it’s not going to work. You do what’s fun and you do what feels right.