G4: What was your reaction to the reviews of the game? What was the fairest criticism, and what did reviewers miss or misinterpret?
LB: Well, it's hard for me to judge. I'm too close to the project to really know if they were fair reviews or not. I was really impressed with what we pulled off in 14 months, but I'm also biased because I worked on the game. That said, it still seemed like most reviewers were quite fair with it, although I think the price tended to overshadow what was in the package in some reviewer's eyes, which is a shame.
JS: We got criticized, fairly, for doing a poor job communicating what ODST was, an expansion pack or a full-fledged, AAA release. It definitely turned out to be the latter. But, unfortunately, we didn’t know how much great work we were going to pull-off when we first announced the game. It’s impossible to know, but my gut says that if we’d never said the words “expansion pack” we would have seen an appreciable increase in the review scores. Alas, hindsight is 20/20. But foresight is pretty hard too.
G4: Even today, some fans are still bitter about the price point. If you could have introduced this game to the public all over again, what would you have done differently?
LB: I'm no PR expert, but it's pretty obvious the game had a series of stumbles; from the naming, to the initial E3 2008 countdown reveal failure, and finally pricing. It would definitely be nice to have a do-over for the game introduction.
G4: As both a Seattle developer and based on Halo 3: ODST's turnaround time, did you sympathize with the fan backlash to Valve's decision to produce Left 4 Dead 2 in a single year? How soon is "too soon" for a follow-up…does the audience need time to breathe with the current game?
LB: Yeah, of course we sympathize. It's great to have fans, no doubt, but when they turn on you...whew, it's not pretty. Honestly, I don't know how soon "too soon" is. I mean, if you look at sales numbers you can argue both ways. Some games come out with a yearly offering and sell huge amounts, and others not so much. I think you do have to be careful with burnout though. I've seen many a franchise eventually get stale and completely tank after doing yearly offerings for too long.
G4: Was there ever any consideration made for releasing the game as a cheaper downloadable expansion for fans who had already purchased all the map packs?
CC: No, we never discussed that as an option. Though ODST was built from the Halo 3 engine, there were enough changes made to the engine that we could not have released it as an expansion in the way that you might equate with a PC game expansion pack. The ODST executable is not compatible with Halo 3.
G4: Have any plans changed to produce any downloadable content? Could we see any single-player expansion? New missions in New Mombasa?
LB: There are no current plans for any ODST DLC. The Bungie team is full steam ahead on Reach with a lot of work between now and the multiplayer beta and then final release next fall.
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Thoughts?
