Paul Bertone joined Highwire Games (Destiny)

by Pyromancy , discovering fire every week, Thursday, July 16, 2020, 10:45 (1595 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by Pyromancy, Thursday, July 16, 2020, 10:55

It was exciting to learn during this interview that Paul Bertone has joined Highwire Games!? I hope that doesn't fall through or fizzle out.
I think if I remember correctly, amongst other things Bert was one of the many key folks that helped make ODST into a really unique and memorable foray into the Halo universe.

I just noticed that as well. In addition to his work on ODST, I believe he was one of the lead designers on Halo 3.

I double checked the Halo 3 Credits and found he was titled 'Campaign Design Lead' along with Rob Stokes.

Paul worked on every Halo game including Halo 1, in some varying degree.
I specifically called out ODST because I remember that team did something really special on that project, working within many constraints while purposefully pushing "outside the box" to craft something new/interesting/unique. They absolutely took ownership of that expansion/game.

After my post the other day, I found myself re-reading this old article from a few years back on:
Vice
(wayback)
I was pleasantly reminded just how much diligence and devotion they (Paul specifically) invested into ODST.
I had also forgotten over the years Paul was often getting pulled from other projects like "Phoenix", "Gypsum", or the Peter Jackson video game (that never truly materialized), in order to help primary projects.

“Gypsum” was my second-favorite time at Bungie. It was a small team, we all sat with each other. We were doing something that I absolutely wanted to do, and I still want to do in my career.

I only went down there one time [New Zealand*], right on the heels of Halo 3 shipping. But as design lead I pretty much had free reign to do what I wanted. And we knew for this (WingNut) game [infer:Halo 4*] you weren’t going to be the Chief, you were just going to be a marine. We did a lot of work on prototyping what that would feel like, during that timeframe. And Joe was hashing story stuff back and forth with Peter’s [Peter Jackson's*] writing team, because they didn’t know how to do anything with games. [*added my notes for context]

Microsoft wanted Halo 3 campaign DLC. And Joe and I were interested in doing that, but less so in taking existing Halo 3 campaign content and reusing that in any way, shape or form. It’d have felt cheap to us, and we’d have gotten killed in the press. We wouldn’t have been happy working on it.

I’m not going to look at ODST and say everything about it was perfect. There were a lot of hardships and passionate debates on how things should’ve been, a lot of starts and a lot of stops. But to see the amount we did, with fewer than 20 people full-time on the project, with help at the end to push it over the line, I’m super proud. ODST is definitely my top project at Bungie. It’s the one I’m most proud of.