Marty O'Donnell No Longer With Bungie

I didn't have much interest in Destiny. This just made any interest drop to absolute zero.

They fired the man who was half of the reasons Halo: Combat Evolved was more than just pretty good. I never bought a game soundtrack before buying Halo's (and I went on to buy 2's, 3's, ODST's, and Reach's).

Plus, he wasn't just a great composer, but he was Bungie's audio lead for years, doing most of the audio work for the early Halos and overseeing the audio of Bungie's later releases. I don't get it...

Yeah man, Halo's always had fantastic music. ODST is still my favorite Halo game, and the music was absolutely a big part of that. He did fantastic work, I wonder what kind of shit went down. Hopefully they didn't decide he was too expensive, because every dime they spend on him is worth it. To me, anyway.

It may be just me, but O'Donnell was the only face I had on the company.

Man, why did that happen? Surely he'll crop back up on something cool?

Wow this is pretty shocking. His music in Halo was amazing up until Reach. I don't know maybe he was losing his touch. Did people actually like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-ZOuVcIU8Q

Man this guy can compose. I'm sure that he'll land in a good place, and hopefully that place will be at another developer.

marty, jack tretton, amy hennig, ken levine meet in a hotel, OUYA FOREVER

Terminated without a cause he's going platinum

I wonder if it has anything to do with Paul McCartney not wanting to work with him for some reason. I imagine if push came to shove, McCartney would get his way.

There are definitely details from this story missing.....

Agreed on all fronts. Walking around that lonely city felt so evocative mostly due to his awesome score.

This is often overlooked, the guy did more than just write music. Idle Thumbs recently talked about Halo, and how the thing that separates it from the CODs and Battlefields is he audio. Halo multiplayer sounds almost peaceful until you fire off a shot, and it really gives each encounter a weight and tension when it isn't underscored by a backing track of constant gunfire and explosion. I'm sure Marty had a hand in this outcome too.

Yeah uh... I heard from a guy on the inside that the music Paul McCartney contributed wasn't very good so... maybe it won't end up in the final game.

Did he compose this thing? Because I always thought this was a way awesome intro credits thing. Sad to see how this went down but who knows the details?

Just... hm. That's two high profile people getting the boot from their studios in as many months... Weird times. I hope it's a trend that stops.

(not counting Jack Tretton since he left amicably)

@geraltitude: @slaps2: Well Marty is also the lead sound designer at Bungie, not just the composer. He is arguably the best sound designer in the business. So while I could imagine Bungie wanting to go with a different composer either for financial or sylistic reasons, Marty still was doing all the sound work for the game and it's not like great sound designers are a dime a dozen. Sound designers are some of the most secure workers in the industry. If you look at a company like EA which consistently lays off employees as projects come to a close, you'll find that the sound designers stay onboard. When a distributor closes an internal studio and they mention that small percentage of employees they are offering positions to at other internal studios, you can bet if the sound designers were any good they are among the people being retained.

It's the same for movies. I spent a semester as a film studies student, and on the first day of school we had a department wide meeting. This was a college with a massive film department with well over 500 students in every discipline from writing, to editing, to directing, to animation, to camera work. The head of the department got up in front of everyone and had students raise their hands to show how many people were entering each discipline. The very last job he called was sound designer. One person raised their hand. And the head of the department said, "You are going to have a job. Look everyone at this man. He will have a job. If any of you would like to be guaranteed work after college I suggest you join this man here."

In colleges that teach game design a fair amount don't even teach sound design. And in those that do you'll see a similar split with two or three sound designers against dozens of level designers, artists, animators, programmers, and gameplay designers. Being one of the, if not the very, best sound designer in the industry makes you all but untouchable. There is simply no one in the industry that will be able to replace a sound designer as good as Marty. If this was an issue of cost they should have sucked it up and paid him what he wanted. Programmers and artists can be replaced. There are a dozen people who will do any given job in those positions for half of the going rate. There likely aren't a dozen unemployed game sound designers in the entire world.

Unless Marty did something straight up illegal I simply can't imagine any scenario where Bungie would think firing him was a smart idea.

And Don Mattrick completes the five-fecta.

I just want to know why he was fired.

Can't agree there at all. I know the Halo theme is iconic, but the music in Halo 4 was very good and Neil Davidge fit in perfectly (although there was another musician who did a great job on some of the tracks including the title screen music, his name escapes me at the moment). The initial soundtrack that released for it was missing some things, but they got it right on the digital-only volume 2 release.

Having said that, I wouldn't mind seeing Marty back for Halo 6, since I'm assuming a lot of the work on 5 is already done.

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A great example of why I enjoy this site: plenty of people pondering the idea that the reason he was let go was due to bring exposed as a shit bandit at Bungie.

He made orchestral music cool.

Ugh it rt to hear this. His work has had such a massive impact on my life.

Mmmm, deep dish...

Stupid. There's no excuse for firing him, he's arguably one of the biggest contributors to their games and his music is responsible for a lot of the nostalgia about the games they make.

I never cared for the Halo games much, but the music was spectacular and I could always count on that delivering a great experience.

Well, for all we know, Bungie might have had a very good reason to fire him. All we have are O'Donnell's side of the story (in which he sounds bitter) and Bungie's (in which they sound like parting was fairly amicable). Neither side is responding with what I would assume to be an unusual reaction to the situation. The employer is taking it better than the formerly employed. As others have said, Bungie could have had cause to fire him and chose to officially refer to the reasoning as "without cause" for legal and insurance reasons. Certainly, given his stature within the company and as a figure whose face is known widely to fans of Halo, they had to be aware that news of his termination would become widespread within short order.

The bottom line is, we don't know what the hell happened. To presume what went down and judge as right or wrong without evidence is foolhardy. O'Donnell could have gotten a raw deal, or he might have done something that anyone would consider a firing offense. No one outside the company will know unless the facts as a whole are presented and corroborated.

My guess is that McCarthy is a Diva

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and assume that he outgrew Bungie (meaning he was worth more than they were willing to pay for top-tier audio). All I know is I'd hate to be the one to follow that act.

343 hire this damm guy now.

i really wonder why he left, loved what was coming out of destiny so far.

This guy made some of the most memorable music in video game history, big mistake.

Marty will be fine. He's probably received dozens of offers since that tweet.

Dat PlayStation exclusive dealio.

Dat PlayStation exclusive dealio.

5iveever

Can't a company just fire a composer when they want a new composer for their new franchises?

One of the best composers of videogame soundtracks ever!!! I would sometimes just put on the start up screen to Halo 3 multiplayer and just sit there taking in the incredible audio :)

Definitely Bungies loss. Marty has such talent he'll get a new gig with a new studio in no time.

Dare I say Marty's music was good enough to score movie soundtracks? Lets see what his future holds. Thankyou Marty as a gamer and I wish you the very best for your working future :)

Damn mother fucking right. Fuck Reach.

+1 They don't want to risk not getting a free copy of Destiny. :P #TeamScoops

Definitely this for me. My mother's a music teacher and I always hated going to orchestra concerts with her because I just never felt any connection to them and they were always soooo boring.

The Halo theme was why I ended up choosing the cello when I did high school orchestra.

This pretty much confirms the identity of the poo bandit.

Do you still play the Cello? If you have a bandcamp/youtube we could check it out.

Every now and again (read: once a year or less) I'll pick it up for a community orchestra performance like Handel's Messiah, but it hasn't been something I've continuously played outside of high school, which was back in '07.

I've been getting back to playing guitar again after about a year away from it due to living in a college area with high theft rates and me being paranoid about mine getting stolen.

Ha - yeah, thieves be thieving. Still cool to hear that you play music occasionally. I'm just a listener myself, but I find the dedication musicians have to their craft inspiring.

Man, just hearing that song makes me experience the feeling of walking through that dark, desolate city again.

Shame...

Halo 2 is probably my favorite soundtrack.

Still, I do hope that the bulk of the music for Destiny is finished, if not then the new guy is going to have some BIG shoes to fill.

Hopefully the music was finished before he had to leave.

Halo is one of the franchises i love the most and Marty is a huge part of that. I can only hope that this will lead to him getting to work with 343 Industries on Halo 5. It could hopefully, with combination with Joseph Staten, bring back the quality of Halo. It's still really fucking strange. Marty was an old timer at Bungie and everything he did up to Destiny seemed pretty loved or at least not critiqued. And, as someone mentioned earlier, Marty was also responsible for the sound design in their earlier titles.

ODST was fantastic, and the music is a huge, huge part of the why.

@mysour said:

For me, the face of Bungie was always Frankie O'Connor. Marty was a close second, though.

You know, I stopped being a huge Halo fan when the original trilogy ended, and I have no real interest in Bungie anymore, but seeing this headline on the front page really pissed me off. "Terminated without cause"? That makes me mad. I hope Marty finds work soon, with someone who can appreciate his talent.

Year of the goat/completely unwarranted firing.

Exactly.