Frank O'Connor talks about Ryan Paytons departure from Halo 4

[Spectral Jester]

343 Industries' Franchise Director, Frank O'Connor, talked about why Creative Director, Ryan Payton decided to depart 343 as the studio looks to push boundaries and innovate.

 

“Ryan hasn't been the Creative Director on Halo for more than 15 months and he was doing something different on the game when he left. He was working on the narrative design of the game, and I absolutely get that – in some ways he was making the game with cinematics – and for want of a better term, conventional storytelling," Payton's "good friend" O'Connor explained. "Ryan comes from a Japanese gaming background, and he worked on Metal Gear Solid obviously, which has a pretty surreal blend of storytelling and action. And I think he wanted to do something much more... I don't want to speak for him. That's so unfair."

 

O'Connor continued, offering a little more insight as to why he thinks Payton might have chosen to move on "more than 15 months ago": "But definitely coming from his Japanese narrative background, the narrative design stuff he was doing on Halo was definitely that very European, American style of conventional narrative storytelling. You can see why he wouldn't find that challenging or innovative, but I wish him well in his endeavours and I think you're going to see much more Japanese flavour from him.”

 

Payton has since founded a new studio called Camoflaj, and is currently working on two new titles. "We valued Ryan's input, but he hasn't been leading the project for over 15 months," O'Connor concluded. "Ryan had been gone for quite some time before the story showed up [online]... The noise from the story was a little unexpected..."

[ODST]

only people with a passion for halo should be working there no complaints here that guy left