Halo Dev Tracker

Saturday is definitely the busiest day and the lines for most things are certainly longer than Friday or Sunday. The Herschend team has done a good job working on efficiencies but it still takes time to move so many people through - especially the VR experience.

Lol

The frustration is understandable. But you’re also right - anyone can opt out of the Halo Insider program at any time and stop reading the updates and hitting F5 for new info. When it lands I’m certain we’ll still have plenty of players excited to jump in and test. All anyone on the team wants is to release the best possible version of Halo: Reach for MCC that does justice to the original and meets the expectations of PC gamers and Halo fans. Thus far, that’s proving to be more challenging and time consuming than anyone expected.

Every time we “estimate” then everyone gets amped and starts countdown timers and then... the goal posts move again. We’ve tried estimating with the information we have but it’s never quite worked out thus far. All we can do now is stop estimating and send up the flare once we have a solid go/no-go decision from the team just prior to email invitations going out. The Firefight flight has been on the verge of release for a while, with blocking issues creeping up at the 11th hour each time a new build is evaluated. Waiting sucks, but the team has to take the time to ensure it’s right and that Reach lives up to expectations.

Ready when it’s ready. We won’t try and predict timing anymore as it’s clearly not been working out for all of us.

Because the go/no-go decision was just made. Blocking bugs were being worked on up until the last day. Going forward I think we will stop predicting or hinting at any upcoming flight targets as obviously the project is proving to be more unpredictable and challenging than many of us thought and we admittedly keep resetting expectations every time we make a forecast. It’s frustrating on the inside, too. The team just wants to get this into players’ hands.

So many great memories and long nights in this building. Halo 3 media visits, Peter Jackson, playtests with Nathan Fillion, the Bungie podcast, and of course the ske7ch/Frankie studio tour. :) I remember when we took a bus ride there to walk around when it was still an empty hardware store operating as a make shift batting cage place. We were so eager to leave our generic office building. It was an awesome work space - custom designed for maximum creative juice and energy (tho the open floor plan did sometimes lead to mass spreading of colds and some unpleasant aromas). Once the team started to outgrow the space it got tough but for many years it was awesome. RIP 434 Bunker.

The old “millennium” business park is indeed still there right by the rock quarry. Not sure if MSFT still operates there but the old Bungie workspace is still standing. (nowhere near as cool and iconic as the 434 Bunker)

Thanks for signing up! Development has been moving slower than anticipated but the team is working towards the next flight (flight #2) which should focus on firefight matchmaking with a much larger audience than flight #1.. Catch up on the MCC monthly dev blogs at Halo Waypoint.

I'm starting to get frustrated. If it's not ready then fine. But more open communication about it's progress etc is not an unreasonable thing to want at this point.

Hey /u/ArcAngel071 – I totally understand that you're excited and eager to play, I'm right there with you, but I am curious to hear what you'd like us to improve with our communications?

We've got our big monthly Developement Updates from Postums which take time to source, compile, and prepare for release (...

Lol. As everyone else has said, Halo Outpost has absolutely no impact on any game development happening in the studio. The event is run by an entirely separate company - Herschend Live - in close partnership with a handful of folks across the studio (namely the consumer products team, franchise team, and community team).

The only overlap with Reach is the fact that the Reach PC build from the first flight is playable at Outpost in the game area.

We know everyone is eager and anxious for the next flight - trust me, we are just as, if not more, eager to get flight #2 out and get closer to actual release. It's definitely moving a bit slower and taking longer than we would like - hang in there - it'll be worth the wait.

It's definitely a fine line but the team's first priority is staying true to the original experiences - even with little quirks and bugs (some of which have become endearing over time). Duck actually has a little write-up in this month's MCC blog addressing this very topic and an example of a small bug they DID change from the original (after careful consideration).

Awesome to see this finally uncovered! I was pretty surprised it took so long.

This is so cool.

Lol this is awesome, congrats!

Lolol nah, I helped them move a chair once so we were all good.

Was great to meet you, man! Stoked to hear you enjoyed the museum, so much cool stuff in there :)

Also congrats on the internship, hope it leads to even more awesome adventures!

I'm glad to hear you had a good time! The museum is truly an awesome place :)