Didn't see that coming: Bungie fires Marty O'Donnell "without cause" - Polidicks

343 better hire his ass, even if halo 5 sucks it'd be worth it just for the kickass music

I hope he stays as far away from 343 as possible. I'd rather his music been in good games...

This story brought me to this song almost instantly. [video=youtube;MoHCpa4rG7I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoHCpa4rG7I[/video] I hope- what am I saying, he's bound to be hired pretty soon. I hope not by 343i though; they turned Halo into shit, and if Marty went on board I wouldn't know what to feel.

[QUOTE=Skyward;44562321]I hope he stays as far away from 343 as possible. I'd rather his music been in good games...[/QUOTE]I honestly don't think they have the insight to grab him anyway.

[QUOTE=Duck M.;44561486]Probably something along the lines of Activision not wanting to spend so much money on Destinies score. But that wouldn't be without cause, right?[/QUOTE] No, that's considered without cause. "With Cause" is when there are very specific reasons, usually regarding conduct of the employee, for firing them, as I understand it.

[QUOTE=JeanLuc761;44558985]O'Donnell was one of the last employees still working at Bungie from its days prior to Microsoft's purchase of the company in 1999.[/QUOTE] Wait, so the people that made Halo weren't the people that made Marathon and Oni?

I love both Marty and Bungie. I don't want to be mad at either :(

[QUOTE=Higginz511;44560888][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2O9K7E3lDRU[/media] this is my jams.[/QUOTE] fun facT: steve vai did the guitar work for that

I don't suppose it could be that they simply didn't renew his contract, purposefully or not. Or is that considered "let go"?

He will probably go independent, watching Star Citizen dev videos made me realize you can't get the best in the industry without some outsourcing for some things. Mostly because they are too good they don't need to be tied down by a company and such. Marty would do pretty well like this since he has lots of credibility and fame.

[QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;44563115]fun facT: steve vai did the guitar work for that[/QUOTE] steve vai is the fucking best

Also, something deep inside me hopes he will join Valve but I am not sure about that. Since Valve already have some top quality audio experts.

[QUOTE=Skyward;44562321]I hope he stays as far away from 343 as possible. I'd rather his music been in good games...[/QUOTE] You have way too big a vendetta against 343. Halo 4 was hardly a bad game, just not a Halo game. You can't honestly be blaming them for having this brand new game series handed to them and not instantly know what changes to make. Obviously they made the wrong ones, but you'd be blind if you didn't see they are getting better with handling Halo, on the story side they are really not just forgetting past story elements, especially with Halo Wars. You can see Grizzly tanks and Wolverines in Spartan Assault, rediscovering the Spirit of Fire, etc. They also saw how big a tool Palmer was, and in Spartan Assault and the comics she plays a much bigger more important role on the battlefield. Gameplay wise, we don't have much to see other than Spartan Assault, which is a really good game as long as you know it was made for Smartphones (Windows Phone) and ported to PC, Xbox, etc. It wasn't designed for PC, so obviously compact, but still is excellent on phones and holds out great for being ported to PC. They are changing as far as I can see, I might be optimistic, but if we have any chance of recovering Halo to its former glory then we can't just hang the only people that can do it out to dry. Of course they won't make good Halo* games if we don't give them the good people needed to make them, like Marty O'Donnell. I think everyone needs to give 343 another chance, we have only seen Halo 4, their first try at a game. People can change, you know. This particularly isn't directed at you (beyond the vendetta part...) but to everyone who thinks you should only get 1 chance. Lets see how the new Halo turns out before we determine they are unfit for Halo.

[QUOTE=Cyanish;44562010]I remember reading an unrelated article about Bungie some time ago and it seemed like there was some tensions between O'Donnell and Jason Jones over the fact that the music was solely one person's large contribution, and that was over a year ago I believe. Link to the specific section of the article: [url]http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/24/3908184/heart-of-bungie-destiny-jason-jones-marty-odonnell-halo#sect-five[/url][/QUOTE] So what the article is saying is that one guy is mad because the music, an artistic medium that has been around since the beginning of humanity -- for a good reason I might add --, has greater impact on the populous than his video game medium that has only been popular the last decade. That critical acclaim, in a field that is historically and globally held to a high standard, is somehow unjust next to the work of something that has laughable standards both publicly and critically? Well the nice thing about the video game industry is you can always quickly determine the tools, given they're always so blatantly full of shit. [QUOTE=Lyokanthrope;44563115]fun facT: steve vai did the guitar work for that[/QUOTE] I thought the style sounded familiar but I never bothered looking it up. Cool to know.

April 11? did someone accidentally add another 1 on the april fools memo

[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;44560900]there's definitely more to this they have more games in the pipeline that will need music, and they can't exactly get anyone better for what they're doing. It's likely he either just doesn't know why he's been fired and it was some executive bullshit, or there was a reason and he'd just rather have some sympathy.[/QUOTE] Well...it's Bungie's loss.

[QUOTE]Honestly the most likely reason is just creative differences. He wanted to go one way with the soundtrack; other people wanted to go another. He has clout and probably tried to put his foot down. Seems like they called his bluff[/QUOTE] some dude on reddit posted this and it seems like the most likely reason because i cant see bungie firing marty for no reason at all

[QUOTE=Cyanish;44562010]I remember reading an unrelated article about Bungie some time ago and it seemed like there was some tensions between O'Donnell and Jason Jones over the fact that the music was solely one person's large contribution, and that was over a year ago I believe. Found the article before I posted: [url]http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/24/3908184/heart-of-bungie-destiny-jason-jones-marty-odonnell-halo[/url] Link to the specific section of the article: [url]http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/1/24/3908184/heart-of-bungie-destiny-jason-jones-marty-odonnell-halo#sect-five[/url][/QUOTE] From these articles: [quote]What I really enjoy about working with Marty" — says Design Director Joe Staten — "it goes back to trust. I know that when the teams that I work with, the cinematic teams and the writing teams, when we are eventually going to hand off our work to Marty and he's going to take it from there ... at some point, the work that I'm intimately involved with becomes Marty's work. I'm not going to play the music. I'm not going to do the final mix. It's up to Marty to take what are good cinematics, hopefully great cinematics, and make them outstanding. The real pleasure, I think, of working with Marty is knowing that at some point in the process I'm going to take all this hard work and I'm going to give it to him and I can trust him to make it better."[/quote] Joseph Staten left Bungie of his own accord late last year and seems like he was pretty chummy with Marty. He's working now at Microsoft on some "unspecified project" but it's possible that Marty could go work with Joe again. Still, this news hurts. I love Bungie and I love the Halo series. At least from the outside looking in, Marty was the heart of Bungie. He'd been there since the beginning and Bungie's way of giving music so much integration into the development process is undoubtedly one of the things that pushed the Halo series from good to great. When people think of Halo, they think of the Chief, Cortana, and the music. I hope we find out sooner or later what happened. Like everyone's already said he's too prolific to be fired "without cause." My faith in Bungie is pretty shaken at this point, now having lost two of their biggest names. All I can do is wish Marty the best and look forward to whatever work he will produce in the future.

I miss the good old Bungie :c [video=youtube;9JNOP9qi1Jo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JNOP9qi1Jo[/video]

Here's another telling excerpt from the Polygon article. I really don't want to paint Jason Jones as a villain, but it does seem likely he may have had a part of this. [quote]Jones is everything. He is easily the heart and soul of this company. One of its founders, the man who co-founded Bungie and whose computer compiled the code for almost every game Bungie ever released. Yet he has almost never given an interview. We had asked, before getting on the plane, to see Jones. We'd been promised it might happen. We took this as a yes, because it always is. And yet, when we arrive and see the schedule ... where's Jason Jones? We're told no one is even sure if he's in the building. We're told that even if he is in the building, there's no guarantee he'll see us. We're told, incredibly, he's shy. Cripplingly shy. And then we're told something we finally believe: Jason Jones doesn't want to be famous. We're standing in the studio that, 22 years ago, Jason Jones coughed into life. We're talking to people Jones helped hire, train and forge into a team capable of turning the world of games on its axis. We're surrounded by artifacts of the genius and artistry of the code Jason Jones wrote. His influence is literally all around us. He even comes up, repeatedly in interviews. And this is what clinches it for us. When Chris Butcher says that, of all the things that get Jones' goat, his rarest, most acute annoyance is reserved for the accolades heaped on Marty O'Donnell, easily the most singularly identifiable member of the team, this is when it clicks into place: Jones is a communist. Not, perhaps, in the McCarthy sense, but Jason Jones is a man who believes in team above all else, and that spirit has infused everything he's touched. And in interviewing the team he has helped build, we've come to know him better than if we'd shared a meal. Jones is not simply the founder of Bungie; he is also its tribal leader.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Skyward;44562321]I hope he stays as far away from 343 as possible. I'd rather his music been in good games...[/QUOTE] They fucked up Halo 4 big time but I'm not losing hope yet that they can pull it together if they listen to the community. They seem genuinely enthusiastic about it so if they have another major Bungie figure working with them it could help pull things together.

What. The. Fuck. There is no reason to fire Marty. Why would they do it? Fuck, the guy's Halo soundtracks are in my top 10 list of best soundtracks...

That's what he gets for making such terrible music.

[QUOTE=JaffaCakez;44565511]That's what he gets for making such terrible music.[/QUOTE] Good one.

[QUOTE=Skyward;44565665]Good one.[/QUOTE] Do you think? personally I thought so too.

Even without Marty, Halo 4 had a fantastic soundtrack, I don't think he "needs" to go to work on Halo 5.

[QUOTE=MiX-A;44567907]Even without Marty, Halo 4 had a fantastic soundtrack, I don't think he "needs" to go to work on Halo 5.[/QUOTE] You barely notice the score in Halo 4. But when playing Reach or 3, The music is just integral to the game, it's part of it, it makes it live and breathe. You can't say the same for most other games, even MW2 which had a (fairly good) score by Hans Zimmer.

[QUOTE=Why485;44565072] Joseph Staten left Bungie of his own accord late last year and seems like he was pretty chummy with Marty. He's working now at Microsoft on some "unspecified project" but it's possible that Marty could go work with Joe again.[/QUOTE] That, and they both handled all the voice actors when recording lines, Marty being the audio director, and Joe giving the motivations.

Watch them scrap all the music he made for Destiny and throw in a bunch of random dubstep.

I doubt they'd scrap his work, considering Paul McCartney worked on it as well.