I didn't think much of it when I saw the news that Bungie had signed a deal with Activision to be their new publisher for the next 10 years. Over the years Halo has begun to grow a little stale on me, and I couldn't even get into Halo 3: ODST due to franchise fatigue. That is to say, my "fanhood" of Bungie was on the decline for the past year or so. It wasn't until I listened to Garnett Lee and his crew on the latest episode of Weekend Confirmed that a giant flashing light-bulb appeared in my head. All of a sudden I remembered what I felt when I played through each of the campaigns in the Halo Trilogy. I don't know how many others felt this, but I felt it so strongly whenever I played the Halo campaigns that it was hard to focus on the action:
Every time I played Halo, I thought about Starcraft.
I don't know if any of the designers at Bungie ever admitted to being inspired by Starcraft during an interview, but I am absolutely positive that they had. Every time I encountered an Elite, I thought about Protoss Zealots. Every time I shotgunned a swarm of Flood, I thought about Zerg. I still have trouble remembering that he's called the Gravemind and not the Overmind. And all throughout Halo 3 when I was trying to rescue Cortanna from the over.. Gravemind, the only thing I could think about was Kerrigan.Let's think about Starcraft: Ghost for a little bit. Back when it was up on the Blizzard website and listed under active development, it sparked imagination. I fantasized for years about being able to sneak through the interiors of Battlecruisers and Carriers. I wanted to engage Protoss Zealots in combat using the ghost's unique arsenal of stealth, psionic powers, and guns. And can you imagine encountering a Zerg Ultralisk in a boss fight?
Blizzard wanted to put Ghost on the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox but did not want to develop internally because their programmers' experience on consoles and shooters were limited to none. So first Blizzard went and enlisted the help of Nihilistic Software to make their game. It didn't go so well so Blizzard fired them and gave the project to Swingin' Ape Studios. The result still did not live up to Blizzard's quality standards and by that time the current console generation was pretty much over. When I went to E3 in 2006, I went and asked a Blizzard employee directly about the status of Starcraft: Ghost and he told me that it was delayed indefinitely. After reading about the development history of Ghost, it's hard not to be convinced that Blizzard just could not find a good console developer to work with to get their vision out.
Enter Bungie. They've got a proven track record: they know shooters and they know sci-fi, they even know how to do Active Camo (and presumably they know Starcraft as well). These guys are the cream of the crop when it comes to developing console-based sci-fi shooters with beam swords (psi blades) and swarms of Flood (Zerg). Best of all, Bungie and Blizzard are now on the same team! I understand that they're itching to come out with a brand new IP all their own, but come on..!!! The stars have aligned - this is a match made in heaven. So please, Activision, I don't care if you have to threaten to fire someone for insubordination (okay, that was a joke), please have Bungie make Starcraft: Ghost.
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