I wasn't totally sure so I did some research, and it seems it was maybe less than 10 actually:
Seems like it was in fact 4 employees, if you include Frank O'Connor, as Shishka left for 343, as well as Vic Delon and Seth Gibson. Maybe what is blurring the lines is that many 343 employees joined Bungie during Halo Reach so they could help produce the game and learn how to do a Halo game, then they came back to 343.
Sorry the picture is in French, it's from a book called "Halo: Bungie's space opera", which I'm not sure has been translated in english yet. It's by Third Editions and it's a really great book about Halo whole history, focusing more on the design and production aspect of the game, since its inception at Bungie and to the day it left for 343 Industries:
https://www.thirdeditions.com/sagas/212-halo-le-space-opera-selon-bungie-9782377840700.html
True, you're definitely right here and I didn't really see things under that light. 343's changes for Halo 4 may have been a consequence of Reach being less popular than Halo 3, thinking the formula wasn't what players wanted anymore and tho, the need to modernize it.
It's an interesting take, one I can totally understand, and I agree. Thanks for sharing!
I am. As a designer with an almost blind father, I'm all for accessibility and that's why I think outlines is actually a good idea, it's just the actual implementation which seems to hurt the game design and needed some tweak to favor both disable and not disable players.
Main complains I had with the current outline implementation were:
- Being active all the time and from all distances, it creates way too much noise on screen, making it difficult for the player to focus on what's happening in from of them without being distracted by other point of interest on their screen
- It hurts the ability for player to sneak around the map like we could do in other games, as even being bushes, the outlines will be visible and you can be spotted from anywhere on the map, from close to long to long rang.
- On a purely aesthetic PoV, it prevented me from fully immerse myself into the game and enjoy the overall art and visual tone of the game (but this one is purely personal ofc)
The new implementation seems to be a good balance between allowing players needing outlines to still have them and get a sense of needed help, while not hurting the game design (at least not too much). Sure, you could still get spotted from far, but the player will at least need to search around and aim at you to see where you are, rather than seeing you in their peripheral vision and knowing exactly where you are without doing any effort.
Also, I just love the ease of use of Red vs Blue haha.
Tho, we're not really sure if it will be a default implementation for the outlines or a setting available in the game modes directly. You could have full outlines in BTB and have this setting enable for Infection only for example.
So far, it seems to be the later, but finger crossed it will be the default implementation with the ability to go back to the full outlines settings in the game mode rather than the opposite.
