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I Don’t Think Bungie Will Ever Be Good Again
This whole Marathon art debacle is so embarrassing
Each new game from the once-celebrated development studio Bungie used to feel like an event. They did so much to advance design and play mechanics and graphics over so many different titles that any time they shipped a new release, I would run out to buy it and binge through it in a single weekend.
Today, they’re in the center of what might be the industry’s biggest-ever art plagiarism situation. Core aspects of the visual identity of their upcoming game Marathon were lifted whole-cloth from an indie artist that several people on the development team follow online. It’s wild that this level of gross theft and callous disregard for a small creator got through even one review meeting, and if I hadn’t already fallen off as a fan of the company over the last ten years, I’d swear a public oath to never buy their games again.
This is an extinction level event for the studio, and I’m not sure if their corporate parents at Sony have the management bandwidth or agility to properly handle it. The hole Bungie is in now might be too deep.
The first game of theirs I was enchanted by wasn’t the original Marathon or the iconic launch Xbox title Halo, but rather the PC strategy game Myth 2: Soulblighter. This intense gothic…
