14 DAY TRIAL // Jason Jones, one of the co-founders of Bungie, says that his studio always used to have a number of side projects going on while working on the Halo series, in order to give themselves some perspective and explore interesting new gameplay mechanics.
The developer tells IGN that one of the most interesting ones was called Project Phoenix and had a number of features that would later make Minecraft a success.
He tells IGN that, “It was a project we were working on at the same time we were working on Halo 1. There was a lot that was really interesting about it, even back in Chicago, before the acquisition.”
It’s unclear how far in the development process the game progressed and whether the company ever thought about returning to it and Jones himself does not know whether a viable build of the game is still available at Bungie.
He adds, “You could build castles out of blocks, for example, and then knock them down. Ultimately the reason the game never saw the light of day was because of Halo. The team got scavenged a number of times, both on Halo 1 and Halo 2, to finish Halo.”
It seems that, at one point, Bungie also worked on a pretty classic role-playing game experience but that project also failed to compete with Halo.
At the moment, the company is working on Destiny, a shooter set in the far future that aims to also introduce a lot of role-playing experiences.
The story is linked to the last human city on Earth, protected by a mysterious alien.
Players will have to travel across the universe and battle enemies in order to solve quests and get the resources that the Earth requires.
The game is expected to arrive on current-gen consoles, the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 in 2014.