It’s been an interesting few years for the Halo franchise, and now the person at the top of the series’ behind-the-scenes food chain has admitted that they “made some mistakes” along the way.
343 Industries has been handling the Halo series since 2007, when Bungie split from Microsoft and Bonnie Ross founded this new company to lead the franchise forward. In the years since, 343 has put out such games as Halo 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Halo Wars 2 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (the latter of which received a flurry of negative feedback for its marred-by-technical-issues online elements).
“Honestly, we have made mistakes along the way”, Ross has now said in an impressively candid interview with Venture Beat. “The community has helped us in creating good learning experiences for us,” she added, piling praise on the fans of the franchise.
Ross went on to state that “the universe is the most important character” in Halo and reflected that, “if we’re going to keep the universe alive and healthy, I think that we have to ensure that we are doing right by Halo.”
“I do look at it as a very humbling experience”, she added, before once again referring to the fans’ part in proceedings. “The whole team looks at this as not just our universe. It’s the fans’ universe. How are we doing right by the fans? How are we doing right by the franchise? It is a part of our culture, this precious, precious world, and we’re responsible for taking care of it. And we want to do it right.”
Ross, elsewhere in the interview, enthused that she is “super excited about Halo: Infinite and about the Showtime [TV] series. There’s a lot more Halo stories to tell. It’s such an amazing universe.”
Here’s hoping that there are less mistakes and more fan-pleasing slamdunks as this universe continues to expand. Certainly, Ross seems to be saying all the right things.
We’ll keep you updated as we hear more.