Bungie didn’t want to let anyone else touch Halo while Ensemble wanted to make their own original IP instead, but Microsoft forced the branding upon them. I think the most interesting chapter of all is the one about Halo Wars, a game that neither Bungie nor developer Ensemble Studios wanted made. For Dragon Age, it was dealing with its horrific game engine, for Uncharted, it was management squabbles, for Shovel Knight, it was overpromising features on Kickstarter. Smaller games are stories of individuals or small teams forsaking nearly everything else in their lives, risking everything to make it work, and even once they succeed, the toll the process has taken is clear, and many are so shell-shocked they can barely even comprehend their own success.Įach chapter deals with a different aspect of what can go wrong during production. Bungie craved independence from Microsoft until they got it, and then they realized they were in over their heads when they had to make Destiny a reality and nothing was going as planned. Uncharted 4 looks so great because a massive team put in 100 hour work weeks until everything was as perfect as it could be, even as the core leadership was sparring for most of development.

It’s brutal, but necessary to read, as too often it seems like fans (and journalists) don’t truly understand everything that goes into making a game.

Blood sweat and pixels review