Marathon designer shuts down claims that nobody who worked on Halo was involved in Bungie’s latest FPS: “Damn i’ll have to tell this to Chris Butcher, and Jason Jones, and Tom Gioconda, and…”

A Marathon designer has addressed claims that nobody at Bungie who worked on the title was involved in the development of Halo.

Over the weekend, a post went viral on Twitter that aired grievances about companies using ‘From the makers of’ when pitching new games created by the same studio, but not by the actual people who brought those legacy titles to life. One example cited was Bungie’s latest release, Marathon, because “I doubt anyone who worked on Halo is still there.” Needless to say, that caught the attention of someone at Bungie, who disagrees.

Elliott Gray – who has been at Bungie since 2013 and is the UI designer on Marathon – responded over the course of three tweets, saying, “Damn i’ll have to tell this to Chris Butcher, and Jason Jones, and Tom Gioconda, and Dave Gasca, and Mat Noguchi, and Bob Glessner, and Lars Bakken, and Tyson Green, and Dan Miller, and Shi Kai Wang, and Eric Elton, and Steve Cotton, and Sam Jones, and Mark Uyeda, and James Haywood, and David Allen, and Eamon Mckenizie, and Ben Wommack, and Andrew Davis, and Tom Burlington, and Mark Flieg, and Dorje Bellbrook, and Justin Truman, and Stosh Steward, and Matt Richenburg, and Paul Lewellen, and Mark Goldsworthy, and Javier Burgos, and Blake Low, and Derek Carroll, and David Aldridge, and Sam Arguez, and Brad Fish, and Mike Hoffman, and Matt Kelly, and Brian Frank, and Jason Sussman, and Drew Shy, and Dan Callan, and Matt Kelly, and look man, this is just the people I know off the top of my head who worked on a Halo title who are STILL at Bungie.”

Are you out of breath? I’m out of breath.

Gray’s comments – aside from being a good way for me to hit my minimum word count (thanks!) – are a safe way to say that yes, the description of “from the makers of Halo” is perhaps an appropriate description for Marathon.

That being said, former Destiny VP and Halo Reach producer Mark Noseworthy added valuable context to the descriptor, saying that “there’s a lack of appreciation in the OP’s post for cultural and technology legacies. People pass those down, piece by piece, as new people join and others leave a company.” He continues, “It’s one of the reasons the feel of Bungie games has remained strong for 25 years (even while the gameplay team members have changed multiple times).”

Of course, that’s not to say “from the makers of” hasn’t been oddly used in the past. One that immediately comes to mind is the Sony-led Spider-Man spinoffs namedropping the MCU entries – and while it’s technically true – it clearly is being used to its advantage because “from the studio that brought you Morbius and Madame Web” isn’t exactly going to sell tickets. But in this case, Marathon’s development team does have a ton of Halo influence.

Bungie doesn’t want Marathon to repeat Destiny 2’s vaulting controversy: “It doesn’t matter when you join, you’ll still be able to play through the established questlines.”