After the shooter Halo: reach on Xbox 360 one of the key creators of the franchise, Marcus Lehto, for many years disappeared from the radar. About why he decided to leave the eminent studio Bungie, the developer told in an interview GameMAG.ru.
According to Lehto, who has worked at Bungie for over 16 years, after the studio decided to disconnect from Microsoft and focus on the development of the Destiny franchise, he wanted to “return to the basics” and start a new project with a small team of developers.
This resulted in his departure from the studio.
“I worked at Bungie for a little over 16 years, joined them almost at the very beginning of their journey, when the team was very small. Then I, along with Jason Jones, the then president of Bungie, started working on the original Halo, gradually turning it into an impressive franchise that you are so familiar with today.
Over time, our team has grown in size, and when working on Halo Reach, the last game of the series that I led the development, we had about 250 specialists in our ranks. The team was really large, but I was not afraid of such proportions. And then all these developers were combined with a team that, by then, had been manufacturing Destiny for about two years. At the same time, Bungie is leaving Microsoft and becoming an independent company. Everything was constantly changing, the time was interesting, but far from simple.
Integration with a team of authors Destiny, consisting of hundreds of people, questions around senior positions, it was necessary to make many decisions. I did not lead the creation of Destiny and, frankly, it did not upset me much. But after spending so much time with Bungie, I really wanted to return to where it all began: to create something new, to work together with a small team. At that moment, I decided that I would leave the company“, – he told our site.
Soon after, however, Lehto was persuaded to return. At Bungie he was given a small group of developers and allowed to start a new project – not Destiny.
But Destiny began to demand maximum studio attention. In this regard, the Lehto group with its project began to simply interfere with the production of Destiny – management could not afford to spend resources on something else.
As a result, Lehto finally left Bungie and after a while opened his own studio – V1 Interactive.
“I was persuaded to return, and for about six months I, together with a small group of developers, created a prototype of a new project. But the situation was such that the development of Destiny required maximum attention and resources, and our group simply interfered with its production cycle. And the moment came when I finally said goodbye to my former colleagues and friends. The next year and a half I spent in a creative search, thinking about fresh game concepts, coming up with interesting universes, looking for something that could captivate other people. I was in no hurry, and this period of my life has greatly influenced me, the way I relate to many things, the way I deal with stress. Thanks to this, the next steps, the creation of V1 Interactive, the development of the first prototype, all this was given to me without much difficulty. And I’m glad that everything turned out the way it turned out. I am proud of our team and the game we are creating, ”Lehto said.
Today, Marcus Lehto’s studio is completing the development of its first project – a unique shooter Disintegration. It should launch this year on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.
Read also: Raccoons vs. Robots: Everything we’ve learned about Disintegration from the creator of Halo on a closed stream with developers.
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