In the wake of the recent news I've seen a lot of people saying Bungie isn't Bungie anymore because all the Grizzled guys are leaving/getting fired. Although I am also very sad that Marty isn't at Bungie anymore :-( this couldn't be further from the truth.
A few months ago I (as an exemplary Bungie fanboy) sifted through the credits of all Halo games and looked up who worked on which game, if he is still at Bungie and continually updated the list (yes I'm good at stalking).
What follows is a list of the 50 most important people for the Halo series based on the titles they worked on and wether they had a leading role at their job. People that worked on previous Bungie titles got a little bonus, too. The people whose names are written in bold font are still with Bungie.
[quote]Martin O'Donnell
Joseph Staten
[b]Harold Ryan
Charlie Gough
David Dunn
Jay Weinland
Jason Jones
Christopher Barrett
Paul Vosper(/Clift)
Ben Wallace[/b]
Paul Bertone
[b]Zach Russell
Curtis Creamer
Shi Kai Wang
Chris Butcher[/b]
Michael Wu
Marcus R. Lehto
[b]David Candland
Lorraine McLees
Mat Noguchi
Eamon McKenzie
Luke Timmins
Roger Wolfson[/b]
Robert McLees
Paul Russel
Jaime Griesemer
Adrian Perez
[b]Tom Gioconda
Jamie Evans
Chris Carney[/b]
Brian Jarrard
[b]Tyson Green
CJ Cowan
Steven Scott[/b]
Max Hoberman
[b]Justin Hayward[/b]
Alexander Seropian
Matt Soell
[b]Hao Chen
Pete Parsons
Tom Doyle
Aaron Lieberman[/b]
Michael Evans
[b]Bill/William O'Brien[/b]
Stefan Sinclair
[b]Travis Brady[/b]
Vic DeLeon
[b]C Paul Johnson
Luis Villegas[/b]
Ryan Hylland[/quote]
As you can see two-thirds of them are still at Bungie working hard to make the games they want to play hoping we'll want to play them, too.
-
Of course Bungie is still Bungie but the big issue that I see is that, like some have already said, the "mystical" feeling or aura that surrounds Bungie which served to separate it from the feeling of other companies was very much damaged by what happened with Marty. I personally have always viewed Bungie as this top tier mythical entity that could do no wrong and this, well, hurt the way that I view them.