Martin O’Donnell is the name of the composer of the iconic soundtrack for the original Halo series. His music and vision was one that created scenes unlike any other in the epic shooter. His soundtrack to the immense covenant war created a overture fitting of every moment in the game, but it’s been a long time since Marty has worked at Bungie and since has founded his own company, Highwire Games.
Highwire Games is O’Donnell’s new start and was founded along with a few other important names in the video game industry, such as Jaime Griesemer, one of Bungie’s former Halo designers. O’Donnell is focused on and committed to seeing the new studio rise and grow from the small team they currently have into something potentially just as successful as say Bungie, but states that there’s still the question of what exactly is it they want to do.
O’Donnell was in an interview with IGN at E3 this year and shared some of his insights on the state of the company and their goals moving forward.
“We hope that you feel like you care about who you are in the game. You care about the characters in the game in a really intimate way, as much as you care about any really powerful story that you’ve ever read or played or played a game. At the end of playing this game or while you were playing this game, you’re actually going to care about the characters that we’re presenting and the story of what’s going on. It’s an emotional connection we really feel is the most powerful thing a game can do. We want to make sure that we can do that. Maybe it has to be on a smaller level than saving the universe.” — Martin O’Donnell for IGN
O’Donnell states that he is most excited about being a part of the lead team this time around and being involved in all parts of the actual making of the video game they are currently working on as opposed to just focusing on the music as he did for Bungie. As such his mission at Highwire is to allow for very immersive character driven stories that aims to really make waves and stand out as a franchise against other games in the genre.
O’Donnell didn’t talk much about the actual state of the game that Highwire is currently working on or even give any details as to what to expect in terms of genre even. Instead the interview was mostly focused on what Highwire is. However, Highwire is working diligently on the project and planes to bring a demo to Pax Prime.
Gamespresso will be sure to bring you more on Highwire as they put themselves out there.