Truthfully, IMO, Bungie struggled with how to balance cinematic presentation with gameplay, often times losing sight of the story while working only towards the gameplay. Of course gameplay comes first, but it always felt like they lost sight of how the story works and how to convey it while making the game. I really hope Halo 4 can tell a more cinematic and cohesive story.
Yeah, there is some truth to that too.
Every time I see a post like this, I imagine Marcus Lehto reading it and I feel bad.
In my opinion, Reach got its fair share of love from Bungie. Hardcore fans (me included) might be disappointed by some of the design decisions made, but I think it's unfair to assume the game was "left for the dogs". Bungie has grown considerably since the Halo 2 and 3 days - it isn't practical to have 100% of the studio working on every single game. Still, I'm sure the large portion of Bungie that did work on Reach gave it 100% of their effort. I have no doubt that Marcus gave 110%.
It's just feel to me that they saw Reach as a sort of experiment. Which, as a last game made by them, just isn't what they should have done. It stripped a lot of what made the last games great, introduced aspects in gameplay which just baffels me and felt a lot of "we gotta finish this and be done with it".
If Reach was any other game, without bearing the Halo fiction, would have been an ok game. There is decent enough stuff introduced, even feels fresh but as a Halo game? Just feels sloppy and a bad way to send off your last game in the franchise.
Again though, that is how I feel. I respect Marcus and Bungie as a whole a lot, but as a fan I also have to be critical of the people I have respect for. I hope that anybody from Bungie reading that feels that way, I'm not here to troll or to downplay Bungies enormous significance to the Halo franchise.
