A LEGENDARY Interview With Marty O' Donnell (Composer From Bungie, Halo, Destiny)

what's up everybody this is the quarantine man here and today during this period of isolation I've got a special treat for you ladies and gentlemen Marty O'Donnell is on the line yes the legendary composer from Bungie [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello ACK man how you doing oh not bad you know it's it's certainly looking up with all this quarantine getting to talk to you well that's good I'm glad to hear about that I I'm a little bit bored here myself although I do have work to do and we are sort of the studio's thing together online but this is a nice diversion thanks for doing this oh you got it my man I just got to say you know I don't often get to like fanboy over over meeting people you know sometimes I'm like on the receiving end of that you know at events and stuff but I know that you are too and so I just want to tell you straight off the bat just how much like the halo soundtracks mean to me and how much I really enjoy them and just the games overall and and really appreciate your work in the industry as a whole well I appreciate that you know it's funny I there was a point where believe it or not I'm not gonna well maybe I will drop a bunch of names but anyway Bill Gates was actually at a launch party he was at the launch party for Halo 3 and I was sort of showing him around because it was my job to meet him at the door and show him around the studio and introduce him to everybody and then the place was packed we had everybody who worked on the game plus all the significant others and family and friends and just tons of people and the they just sort of kept coming up to him and everybody was fanboying with Bill and at one point I took him aside and I said look you know I'm really sorry he's like you know this is this is probably too much you know I can I can tell people to back off and he goes oh are you kidding I usually spend all my time with programmers this is great so uh you know I spend my time with guys who don't necessarily fanboy about me at all so this is fine right I got a big question for you right off the bat you know we're doing this this interview and I wanted to start hard and fast all right okay I don't I don't have Co vid 19 just so you know alright alright confirmed alright will the Master Chief have covered 19 in Halo infinite fan theories are still speculating yes but a lot of a lot of Halo fans out there myself included I've always liked speculated and wanted to know if you've ever considered returning to work on Halo soundtrack as either like a collaborator with 343 or the main composer maybe you'd bring back Michael Salvatori as well team up together it certainly has crossed my mind I still love Halo I love the halo music I love what could happen in the future I think I've sort of said this before but it the subject other than just something I've thought about basically has never come up so it's basically you know nobody's asked me so I can consider it all I want but it doesn't seem to doesn't seem to make any difference so that goes that was kind of a follow up was like have you ever gotten an offer an email from 343 or considered reaching out I mean I don't know how things work on that side of the business if you have to be like reached out to or you know if you could reach out and say hey I'm interested well let me just say this I have I still have friends over at 343 I know a lot of the people over there I'm friends with Bonnie and Kiki and Frank and Brian I have spoken to them casually about it and that's as far as it's gone so I have I would say I've reached out in a casual way basically just to say you know I'd be interested in anything you guys are interested in whatever that might be but you know potentially but I just don't think that's in the cards yeah it's unfortunate but hey you never know let's let's all make a big ruckus let's hashtag bring back Marty and then let's get that trending hear something well I mean I I think as far as I can tell in terms of the schedule and the work I'm doing at my own with my own studio high-wire I kind of think that ship has sailed so that's not going to happen yeah or at least not anytime in the near future right we'll always cling on to help and just kind of like maybe it'll happen there you go I had a kind of a follow-up question is there a game series in particular that you would love to work on huh that's interesting yeah you know I I would have loved to have gotten my hands on a couple of products of titles though the team that did Shadow of the Colossus and eco especially I just when I when I played Eco way back I just loved what their aesthetic was and I would have loved to have worked on that but they you know the guy who did the music for them did a spectacularly good job so I have no complaints there but that was I just like their the way they approached games and the other one is is my friend Austin wintery who I just had a conversation with he did journey and before that he did flow and then he's done a bunch of other things but that I just loved some of the thoughts that they had on that game so you know as a contrast of the halo and destiny big time kind of thing those were smaller thoughtful titles that I really appreciated their approach okay and of course you know I would I'd love to work on Zelda you know I had that thought in my head when I was like asking that question I was about to list an example my first one was like Zelda I love Zelda I played all the zones I almost like it was sort of like when I worked on Riven which was the sequel to mist I enjoyed missed so much actually playing mist that when I got to do but the first game I ever I got to work on was Riven which was the sequel to mist and I was actually just a little bit depressed because I knew I would never be able to play Riven as if I had never seen it before because and and that's how much I enjoyed that kind of game and actually you know thinking of it that way too it would have been interesting to have played halo and had no idea what halo was if I would love to just approach halo and seen it for the first time along with everybody else and yeah it'd be interesting to see how I would react it's watching some of your videos on that because it's been so long it actually makes me feel like oh yeah you know I think I might have I'd forgotten some of the details of it which is MIT you're yet you and other people are actually making me go back into my archives looking for stuff because you've sort of inspired me again to think about you know the process of making the halo series so that's often I appreciate that and you know I have like so many questions to ask but I wanted to ask you about your YouTube channel cuz you have been yeah posting there and like some more behind-the-scenes stuff as well as like a couple jokey videos I really thought your deserted Drive to Seattle I thought that was pretty funny that was a little you know the only reason I did that because I I actually left a high-wire on March 2nd and said guys I'm not coming back I'm like I'm smack dab in the middle of the you know the danger of you-know-who demographic so I'll see you guys in a few months so I wasn't making light of it when I did that drive into Seattle what happened was I started hearing on the news that Seattle was a ghost town and it was deserted and all this stuff so I just got into the car and I you know I drove down into Seattle and drove back and I'm like yeah it's deserted yet so that's the way I did that I just put a you know the sound of wind behind it the whole way to make it seem creepier yeah I don't know I don't think that many people got the joke I'm glad you got the joke well I also live in the area so you know I've been yeah haven't been down to Seattle in a bit but yeah I got it but you posted a lot of like behind the scenes music sessions like with Steve Vai and you know some unreleased or maybe like alpha tracks for some of the Halo games why should people subscribe to the Mario Donald Channel uh well basically the main reason I want people to subscribe is because I can't understand how guys like you have like a blue checkmark or whatever you are you're you're Chet you have a check because you got over a hundred thousand people yeah so it's like people don't believe it's actually me so I figure if everybody just subscribes then I'll get the check and I don't have to worry anymore uh I'm not I'm not charging I'm not doing advertising I'm not trying to make money at it and I I'll leave that to you you guys I just like having a channel that when I feel so inspired to share something that I find in my archives I can throw it up there and see what people think obviously people can just go and watch they don't have to subscribe I want them to subscribe so I can get the little check I got a check on my Twitter account but I don't have a check on my YouTube account yeah well we'll push you up there you know you keep up okay yeah yeah actually that's the problem it's like it I have to work too hard on content and I'm never gonna do that so right it's gonna be probably few and far between but I mean you know every little bit counts you know even stuff that maybe you've never talked about before you know people are always interested in like the development of old games where their taillow or or you know even Oni or just like old titles like people are always into that so even if you just like set up a camera and just start talking about what it was like you know doing this or that you know you never know how how far simple stuff like that can take you to add on to that I wanted to ask about like the old Bungie Vioxx and sort of the way you guys filmed your journey like starting with halo 2 I don't think there were many like combat Evolved by dogs but right there were none basically yeah I felt like those were pretty unique in the world of gaming because there weren't a whole lot of companies doing that sort of thing and like putting in those edited videos into you know collector's editions and whatnot and I felt like as a young kid or like a teenager watching those it's like I really got connected to this company Bungie and like the individuals inside of it and got to know them and I feel like there wasn't a whole lot of that with other video game companies and I was kind of curious like what was the reasoning behind creating those videos well it's funny I've gone back into my own video archives and that's I think I have a video that's up on my site that starts in early 2001 like January 2011 when we first moved into Redmond and of course it's just me with a you know a little handheld video camera and it's very informal and funny and stupid and and what do you think Jason okay I shared that but that's as much as we were doing at the time it was like we weren't none of us at Bungie were thinking about marketing or promotional use of these kinds of behind-the-scenes things right but what happened was there was a guy in Los Angeles named Jim McQuillan if you might have heard of his name but Jim had a company down there and he did work for the Discovery Channel and they were doing a documentary on the Xbox and he got really interested in at the time the most successful launch title for the Xbox one which was Halo so he figured out how to sort of start filming us after we shipped halo and there was a some interviews with some of the halo guys anyway he got really interested in how we made halo he was super interested in that and then he made a deal with us to he I think it might have even been his idea I'm not sure but he wanted a document the work on halo 2 and then that turned into all the extra stuff that came on halo twos extra bonus disc and oh yeah behind the scenes Vidak sand he he just started doing everything and that you know he invented the term fie doc right at that point I stopped bringing in my you know home video camera the only thing I did was I had J Wineland my audio director of audio lead actually he filmed the Steve Vai session and we had a new camera that we had gotten and he sort of we didn't know how to work it so it's kind of dark and grainy and funny and so I just kept it to myself at that little session oh yeah until last year and that's when I shared it with everybody else and I thought I really honestly thought maybe a couple hundred people would be interested in seeing this sort of long grainy dark you know behind-the-scenes thing because I got so used to the high quality vide acts that Jim McCullen was making I was really embarrassed by how cruddy the stuff that I did was looking but I kind of forget that people but then you did the music you know so did he do music he used my music a lot so that's that was always the struggle with me and Jim was always like he was always looking for more music Marty give me some more music so I can do these school you know score these videos and I'm like Jim I gotta use this music in the game I can't just let you have it all the time so right and we had a good time i stiii love jim he's a great guy he worked on he came up and started working full-time for bungie during the halo 3 time period and then kept all the way through destiny and destiny too and I think he's independent again know how it got you but you're right very few people were doing the kind of in-depth stuff and and the reason for that and I'm glad he did it was because we didn't want to just be a nameless faceless studio that was part of Microsoft we we had our own personality we had people inside the studio that had personalities and I think people who appreciate the game's appreciate knowing who the creative people are behind the game and so he did a real service to me and a whole bunch of the guys over at Bungie and made us look good oh you know and that's that's the whole thing like it's just it's one thing to be like you know I'm I'm a super big fan of I don't know Paper Mario the thousand-year door Star Wars nights The Old Republic or banjo tooie or you know those are just some of my favorite games off the top of my head but none of those have like those type of video documentaries in it and it really just builds like a sort of identity and you know now I get to connect with you know people like Marty O'Donnell or Joe Staton is it stayed in there statin it's state Staton okay yeah yeah it's I think it's spelled like statin like Staten Island but he always so stateand so but even Edie fries calls him statin so a lot of people get that wrong but I'm pretty sure he's Dayton unless he's never corrected me what's it like working with Marty that's a good question Joe oh well I mean it's the best working with Marty is an effort in patience and restraint hilarious he's funny he's sharp he gets to [ __ ] like nobody's business about how much work he has now a little time there is or Jason Jones or all those guys I just yeah wanted to bring that up because it was such a big part of like bungees identity to me and sort of that next level exactly what you said like not just being a faceless nameless brand sort of yeah yeah no I mean you know I I think in the film business you know you you know who George Lucas is you know who Steven Spielberg are you know you know who all the actors are you know who the people behind this you know these some of these big blockbuster films are it that just has not been the habit in the game business everybody's sort of anonymous and I think that's a shame because I don't think this is my opinion of course but I just don't think we're all interchangeable I think things change when you change the people that's why my motto is always be nice to the goose is because I think the goose that lays the golden egg it's not the egg that you need to care about it's the goose and the goose is the team and the the team that made you know the halo games was a pretty unique team and they'll some of those people are not interchangeable and you can you know you take some of those people out of the mix and I think the games change yeah you know you can just like see all the passion like one of the things that really sticks out to me is just like Joe's passion for the story and and just like how invested he isn't it especially with like halo too you know and so that really jumps out at you and then now I associate the stories with him and you know it wouldn't be the same if he wasn't a part of that documentary or anyone else for that matter right a couple of us probably got more face time than we should have because there were a lot of people on the team that did spectacular work but Joe and myself and even Jason Jones up to a little bit he was always good on camera but he hated being on camera Joe and you know Joe and I never had trouble being on camera so we we probably got more airtime than we deserved but that's just the way it is you know how it is oh you know I know if if you're sort of fun to watch then you end up getting filmed a bunch so exactly and and of course it was I I love the behind-the-scenes stuff I'm so glad that Jim had professional videographers at some of the voice sessions with some of the actors that I was able to cast and hire and work with kill me or release me parasite but do not waste my time with talk it's amazing to me how many amazing actors we had and I my memory of some of those sessions is starting to recede and then I watch the videos and I'm like oh yeah that was a that was a great session Nathan Fillion and Keith David and Ron Perlman and everybody it was just Katee Sackhoff I mean come on I got the work with Katee Sackhoff that was a blast yeah everyone in there even through you know ODST and that was actually one of my one of my questions I had written is like who are some of the most incredible and extraordinary people that you have worked with behind the scenes I mean you kind of listed some but well yeah in terms of the actors you know I also like alan tudyk and adam baldwin and Tricia Helfer was great I loved the cast and ODST it was so much fun but of course musicians like you know Steve Vai of course was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me and then of course come on Sir Paul McCartney like that was that even a thing how can I was that a thing oh holy crap yeah that was a thing what can I say I wonder if that even actually happened but you know I still have his I still got his sessions with me here my on my computer I still have a ton believe it or not and I have a ton of video that I've never shared mMmmm of me and of me and Paul at some point when the edge of limitations whatever it is yeah yeah I'm gonna have to go back into that and oh yeah I was gonna ask legal obligations and that sort of thing with those videos you know I really don't care about legal obligations I mean I've been through the mill on with lawyers the legal stuff I yeah yeah I'm just I don't care like to me is sort of like look come after me but I you know I haven't talked to Paul about sharing that stuff and I think I would rather you know get his okay on it if he said okay then I would just I would share it I just haven't talked to him about it alright let's let's all saw spam Paul McCartney on Twitter yeah I loved working with him that was over a two-year period and we we worked together in several different studios and it was a it was really a an amazing experience it's just insane I also had a friend wanted to ask a question he's also a youtuber Chris or a gun and it kind of ties into this you know behind-the-scenes music and everything he wants to know yeah what did you think of having contemporary bands like Breaking Benjamin and Incubus involved with Halo 2 soundtrack was it a highly collaborative environment or was it more of a remote integration process you know I got to meet everybody who worked on Halo 2 I it wasn't really super collaborative Incubus for example was they had a portable halo multiple halo Box system or Xbox system that they toured with and they were huge Halo fans and I think they came to Nile Rodgers who was the producer in New York who and he said yeah why don't you guys do some stuff and I'll you know send it to Marty and then Nile was he called me up and said that they were performing at the Key Arena and so I went down there while they were rehearsing and when I walked in they were rehearsing and I was listening to what they were doing and then somebody told them that I was standing out there and they all stopped what they were doing they're like oh gosh it's Marty you know we want to talk to you about halo we love your music so that was just really fun and so they wrote you know some stuff and that was not very collaborative but I was able to take their stuff and I'm like I'll I'll take what you've given me I think the song that I used inside the game was follow I think it was called yeah and and it actually has more lyrics to it more singing in the original version but I was able to take the stems and then cut them up and make it adaptive and have it fit into that one area and then breaking benjin Benjamin I forget his name Benjamin whatever his name is Benjamin something yeah but he wanted to do with a song and so he did blow me away and I got to hear that he came into the studio and showed me what he was doing and I'm like yeah I I said if you give me the stems you know you can release the song with their singing on it and I'll use the instrumental part I almost wished that that song had played more throughout halo 2 cuz I think it plays only in like one section one spot yeah but it's back when yeah that was back when you know it just I felt like everything I had to have lots of music for like it had always had to you know I never wanted it to repeat I might repeat one piece that was in level one and it would come back back in level five or something but I rarely did anything more than twice and I was a little nervous about the style change from what people were expecting the halo music to be to Incubus and Breaking Benjamin and even the Steve Vai stuff I was getting some pushback inside Bungie really some of the oh yeah some of the artists were like this this is horrible you shouldn't be doing this whoa whoa time out time out see that's what it's like when you have to work with a bunch of other guys you have to like collaborate and hear what they you know they complained about everything Marty what's all that guitar wanking stuff you got to stop that that doesn't has no place in halo so I had to sort of put my foot down and say you know trust me on this I think I think this could work I just looked at no it turns out yeah there you go I'm sure some of those guys still don't like it well they have to now there is even a decent amount of guitar and combat Evolved you know maybe not so uh blaring but there is you know like a couple pieces where if it was really like okay that's pretty freakin awesome and then it's almost like the Steve Vai guitar is is like an evolution what is that it's like gun pointed at the head of the world no it's rock band rocks rock anthem' for saving the universe right yeah and rock anthem' for saving the world yeah think so I can't my bro saving the universe whatever yeah that was my that was my guitar player from from Chicago Harry Miura who he played on every halo that I did except for Halo 2 because we got suddenly we got all these other guitar players that came flowing in wanting to play so I didn't hire Harry again for Halo 2 but then he came back for Halo 3 he came back for ODST did just some beautiful stuff on ODST and he played on reach and did some great stuff on that so yeah I've had you know nice electric guitar on every single halo that music track that ever was done by Bungie at least yeah I mean those soundtracks are just incredible and a lot of times I just like listen to them as I was in college and like working and you know just like I never thought I would actually like get to meet you in person which we did it packs or even like talked to you yeah yeah even conduct an interview that I would later post on my channel you know well yeah I mean uh you know you guys apparently all grew up with this stuff I just got older that's all that happened for me so I'm glad to be able to talk to you yeah I met you at the PAX and I I don't think and by the way I I'm sure there's gonna be some people who are like why are you talking to the act man he's he's only one of many people that do halo content and I haven't followed everybody else I don't know I don't know the community that well in terms of people who are doing things I met that other guy the British guy like an experience what's his name yes yes yeah he's great I like his stuff he's he was fun I've watched some of his things but I think it's because I met you and then I watched yeah I think the first thing I watched was something you did on ODST and then I saw you had a whole series of why is something so good and wired something so bad that's how you found my channel yeah I don't know it's it came up with ODST I think when I was doing something some retrospect I know DST anyway came up so I'm watching it I'm like yeah I think I met this guy but I'll tell you the the main reason I'm intrigued by some of your thoughts is that I I feel like you saw what I've always seen which was there was something somewhat magical about halo combat Evolved the very first one yes there and when you when you described it I'm like yeah that's what I think too it's certainly yeah it's more primitive in terms of technology and graphics and blah blah blah blah blah but there's something magical about that game the way a lot of different ideas came together and and the you know the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and I still when I look back on all the games there's still something I don't know if it's just because it's the first one I worked on or or if it's something else but I still think there's something unique about halo combat Evolved and I feel like you sort of tapped into that I listened to some of the thoughts you had about it and I thought yeah this guy's right associated I'm happy to talk to you yeah I I don't very few people in the game business actually think that there'll be fans out there that study what we do to the depth that guys like you do so when we see fans who seem to appreciate some of these details that we never thought anybody was gonna pay attention to it's actually really encouraging and it's it's a little daunting because that means yeah whatever I do next or whatever any of us do next there's gonna be people out there that really take it apart yeah but that's exciting and I kind of I really appreciate that because you I would replay some of those campaigns you know just notice all these little details here and there and in fact one thing I kind of touched on in my halo 3 review if you ever watched that one I think that one might be I did I did did you like the intro yeah that was excellent I mean I you you know a lot of people just think yeah because technically we got better and better on each game that doesn't necessarily mean that we you know connected all the dots as well and if you if you're able to understand that there was some technical limitations that of course it didn't seem like there was at the time when we were doing halo combat Evolved but somehow with the constraints we had and then the you know we we somehow did connect a lot of dots for halo combat Evolved that I sometimes feel like we walked we got away from on some of the other things and I know your and it's a sort of a joke amongst all of us but I know you're one of the ones who likes to complain about jackals offers every chance you get oh yeah that's actually that's actually one of those things where even at the time I was like guys you were violating one of our fundamental precepts you never have you never get you're never supposed to get killed without giving the player a chance yes it's it's it's ridiculous that you can get killed just walking around a corner and Institute of death and then you have to say okay now I have to figure out when I respawn where that guy is and it's just like that's horrible game design and we knew it I think it was just something we ended up shipping and having to do for one reason or another but now halo 2 and 3 still despite whatever troubles and the sniper Jekyll's they're still incredible fantastic games one thing I noticed in my time kind of replaying the games and listening to the soundtracks is you guys were able to remix old song say you know a walk in the woods from combat Evolved that was remixed for Halo two three and reach and there's a part in my video where like with a little bit of editing you know you can seamlessly transition one piece into the next unlike the same beat and you know but it's different and I just thought that was so cool but I also wanted to know like what was the thought process behind that was it one of those like details or things that you wanted maybe subconscious familiarity with the older games in the new or yeah so that's that's called desperation so yes it's it's you know I especially I was alone at the beginning of working on halo 1 for the most part I had left Mike Salvatori back in Chicago and then I would I would make a bunch of stuff that was just just some ideas and some beginnings of stuff and snippets of tunes and songs and I would send him a big pile of stuff in Chicago and I say Mike do something with this and then if you come up with anything you come up you make some stuff and send it to me and I'll start working with it you know for example walk in the woods is primarily Mike's tune he would send it to me and then I do something to it add a little something to it or sing over or whatever I would do under cover of darkness and I would be thinking well this would be the kind of thing Mike might do and I would send it to him and so these things have went back and forth but anyway when we we knew that we were still working on halo so it's like everything we did on halo 1 was fair game to be rearranged and used in a new way repurposed rearranged extended remade elaborated on remade so it was no reason there was no reason why we should couldn't take any theme that we had and build on it and so there are tunes like that like I I forget it's I'm going back through some of my early stuff I was looking at so my really halo stuff and I realized wow this piece that I sort of redid this way and then I took that melody and redid a new thing over here you know like for perilous journey ends up being in halo two I thought I'm gonna do something like perilous journey but I'll start and make it go a different way and call it paraffin that's why the names are the same basically so that we did that with walk in the woods we did that with just about everything you can think of because we just needed so much content and we knew that that would be it would be sort of a friendly comfortable place yeah for people who were fans of Halo they start playing Halo 2 and they'd hear a lot of new things but then they'd hear something somewhat familiar it's almost kind of like combat Evolved was as popular and as revolutionary as it was for a reason and so like having those familiar beats from that game like and hearing those again you know just kind of like is like you know I'm experiencing the next iteration of this and it really feels like it feels like it's made by the same people and they've got the same goals in mind and the music just has such a big part of that well it's what's funny to me is how easy it is to do it that way because why should you walk away from a theme or a melody or a feel or something that you know is already successful it has what I like to call emotional equity that's a great it's like okay I need another action piece well I'm gonna make an action piece based on some other piece that people already have emotional equity with and that'll make it seem like it's all of a hole and I play a lot of games and this is one of the great things about Zelda and some of the other Nintendo games is that they do bring back melodies that you are familiar with Final Fantasy all of those you know those composers understand the power of melody and theme and feel and all these other things that you bring it back do it again why just to do something just to do something new all the time it's sort of you start to lose connection with the audience with your fans of the players so yeah that's why I do that I think it's I think it's a it's much easier to do which is why starting on destiny was such a pain because suddenly I was like oh this is a whole new universe I can't I can't rely on any of those melodies or I have to throw everything out and start over yeah that's why music of the spheres started yeah which is actually interesting because I do have a couple questions from my patrons and one of the things some of them were interested in is what do you think about the soundtracks for Halo games that you weren't involved with have you ever checked them out listen to them and what are your thoughts yes so thoughts and stuff I didn't work on that I could get myself into trouble for anything oh gosh I was gonna say Kojima goodness sakes Kazuma and then Neil Davidge are spectacular and I thought they did some just beautiful music for Halo 4 and then Kozma did some great stuff for Halo 5 and I I didn't spend time playing the games so I can't really judge on how the emotional impact of the music integrating games cuz I just didn't play it yeah but I mean they're they're wonderful composers they're really good I I would say that I think to some degree they fell into the trap that some of these big companies get into where there are too many other voices in the mix meaning there's too many other creative people that are poking at people's creativity I was able to you know fend that off as much as possible if you know people said Marty what's with that piano in Halo 3 why is that thank again gong-gong that's stupid I could say yeah no no I'm Howard believe it or not the the marketing people at Microsoft actually laughed when they heard it so what I had yeah no haven't you heard that story I swear I've told that before no I yeah well now the problem is of course they're how like I get more and more stubborn I start to believe in my own you know I start to believe my own press I start to believe that my instincts are you know flawless which is not true but I didn't have to listen to too many voices coming out of Bungie or Microsoft because I think everybody was just too busy and and they just trusted me to do what I did and I was able to you know lead up a team like you know with Mike and then later on with with C Paul Johnson and Stan Lepard and other guys who helped write stuff with me and I could just say here's a bunch of themes have fun with it I'll decide later on how I want to use it or if I want to add to it and it was all up to me because I'm the audio director so if you know Marcus the art director came to me and said you know I don't like something I would say well yeah so what you're the art director I'm the audio director so that's not always the way it happened he and I would would talk and we collaborated really well but I never had anybody who was over me saying you can't do that music or I want you to do something that sounds like you know Holst yeah and I never had that but I feel my sense is that after Bungie left Microsoft there was nobody really over there who I would consider to have the same position within the studio that I had as audio director I could I would take the blame for anything people didn't like about the audio or the music right but I was leading a team that I would want to give credit to for the whole thing but like I never had to like just do what the publisher wanted or do what anybody wanted and luckily the creative directors on all the Halo games Jason Jones and Paul Burt own and and you know even working with Joe Staton or Markus Leto they never dictated terms to me about music they would the most they would do is say this doesn't seem like it's the right feeling it makes me feel goofy instead of scared and I'm like okay that's more so Express like a concern yeah give me the emotions that you want to feel give me the emotions that you think you're not feeling and I'll take another stab at it but my sense is that you know that was pretty unique for me I got to do that and a lot of other composers in both the Halo series and other games might not have gotten quite as much freedom awesome there was a couple of fans who wanted to know what you thought your best work was either like individual song or overall soundtrack either with the halo games or destiny or anything else that you've worked on what would you say boy that's a tough one you always tend to feel like the latest thing you did like echos of the first dreamer I think I've got some really amazing things that are pretty unique on there but then I'll go back and I'll hear something I did ten years ago and I'll go wow that was really good I forgot how nice that was it's really hard for me yeah and of course music of the spheres you know I think is stands alone in a lot of ways it's there's some really amazing things in there but like I said I mean I can go back into the archives and and pick something out and go wow that actually that is worth listening to I'm glad I did that or I'm glad Mike and I worked on that or I'm glad see Paul and Stan and Mike and I worked out or whatever it's just like sometimes it's just what's the last thing I heard and that's my favorite I kind of swapped between you know that with my videos to a degree where I'll go back and maybe watch one and say hey you know that one might be one of my favorites or if not my favorite and then yeah I kind of get that process but at the same token there are things that I thought were great at the time and then I listened to them like yeah fast forward that that's kind of aim but I won't tell you what those are we'll just have to speculate yes I got a couple other viewer questions I've been kind of getting her losing track of time because just it's such a blast talking to you so Aaron kind of asked this question about something I feel like we talked about where what was your experience working with Bungie on the first game and how did that compare as the series grew to enormous success we kind of touched on that a bit but is there anything you would want to elaborate on what it was like working on combat Evolved well the combat Evolved was the only game we worked on where the expectations were way lower than what ended up happening after that but the team itself had already worked on myth the Fallen Lords and myth too and Oni so we were already a team that that knew how to work together and we had done this you know like the Macworld Steve Jobs presentation of Halo so I personally felt like Halo had huge potential but while we were working on it there was a lot of people who didn't believe it was gonna be all that good and and we just wanted to not be embarrassed we wanted to do our best but once it took off that really changed the work environment I wouldn't say it changed drastically but it's like we suddenly knew that like wow this is you know we have to we have to outdo what we already did and there was almost no pressure on us the first time that's not exactly true there was pressure cuz you know Microsoft bought Bungie specifically to make Halo into a launch title for the Xbox but we weren't the only thing coming out and it's like it became so much more successful than anybody's expectations were at the time that by the time we started working on Halo 2 it was like okay well now this is getting serious we got a really I just feel like things got a little bit more tense but not too bad but that's probably one of the reasons why the the Halo 2 crunch is legendary cuz pun intended a lot of pressure on ourselves yes it's true Scott Castle wanted to know what are some underrated game soundtracks that you would recommend or games you talked about eco and journey are there any underrated game soundtracks that you would recommend well - well I mean Ori and the blind forest is a beautiful game with an absolutely great soundtrack but I don't get I guess that's not underrated but I remember when I first heard it first start playing it I immediately called called the guy I emailed the guy at cameras name now anyway I emailed him right away and just said hey nice job that that's just beautiful it's really well done and then Jessica what's her name everyone's gone to the rapture what does that buy oh no no no no no it's it's it's a British company it people like to call it a walking simulator but it's just go dead stranding though no no no no really death standing is a walking simulator by the way I saw your video on that and I didn't want I don't think I watched the whole thing but I that whole bit where you're walking in the in the in the field with a backpack on it's hilarious yeah yeah everybody everybody's gone to the rapture I think anyway someone will in the comments below say what it is and the I can't remember her last name either but I've talked to her it's it's got some of the most beautiful music yeah I've ever heard in a game and that is definitely underrated cuz the game maybe wasn't as big a hit as it could have been but the the music in that game is amazing and of course I'm missing tons of games that I love the soundtracks - so Mauricio wanted to know what's a stressful day that comes to mind when working on music maybe not a hard working day but a day that just had a lot going on the absolutely worst time and there was some bad times on just about every game where there's crunch but I think that the one that I sticks in my head the most is on Halo 1 because we got down to the wire and there was no pushing this we we had to be launch time right so we hadn't worked out technically how we were gonna do all the cinematics in Halo one I hadn't scored music for any of the cinematics Jay hadn't done the sound design for the cinematics because the cinematics weren't working yet in engine so we couldn't capture them and you know score them and do sound design so they finally started coming in and we had 33 to do and we on the calendar we had three days to do all 33 Wow so I said Jay you go into your studio I'll go into my studio we'll see where we are at the end of the day and on the first day I got done with 11 and I thought that's good I need to get done with 11 there's three days 33 titles right right the second day was nine eleven thousand one oh my god are you serious yeah and talked about it's sort of like this you know coronavirus thing it just changed everything so up to that point it was like the most important thing in the world was finishing halo and making halo and everything that was halo halo had to do these you know cinematics and I woke up you know my wife got me off we got done on the TV you know one of my daughter's was there I mean we just watched that and then I called at some point I called Jay and he was at the office working I'm like what are you doing so I lit I lived very close so I was about five minutes away so I went in and sure enough all the boys were having a meeting in the conference room talking about what they needed to get done because of the deadline and I said everybody go home there's you should be spending this day with your family let's all get back tomorrow we won't let the you know terrorists win but this is a day you should spend with your family so I turn around and left and sure enough we had we still I still ended up doing everything in three days I just got one extra day That Bird for that was very very intense yeah super intense so I can't help but watch the cinematics in Halo and not think about that which also ties into something I had written down which was I didn't interview with Hardy LaBelle back a couple years party on this channel and it does kind of said something about yes go ahead I won't say what he said right I'll be surprised if he says something about me I just wanted to know your side of the story because for those of you that watch that that interview great interview by the way he told this story about how it was either the last day before combat Evolved went gold and he needed multiplayer sounds and he came up to you and was like Marty we need multiplayer sounds and then you were just like I'm too busy and and he snatched some of your headphones and went and did it himself that's close to trial I give you my side of it I had told them from the beginning like hardy none of us are gonna have time to to help you on this we are so last minute on everything else if you can't find something we've already done then you just gonna have to make it yourself because that's impossible that's impossible I swear the win he came to me and said I need you to do this I was like yeah talk to the hand I'm pretty sure I said talk to the hand and then I said here's some headphones he didn't snatch them but I got some headphones nice I gave him a pile of sound effects libraries and I said have fun see you later whatever you do is gonna be great and you know what he you did a great job yes now remember that the the sound design for all the levels were done at you know I can't even remember all the stuff all the weapons sounds and all the movement sounds and all this stuff like that wasn't from the campaign anyway so that was all done right what wasn't done were the unique sounds for multiplayer like the hill moving and I didn't remember all the other sounds that were in there but there was a whole bunch of stuff that I'm just like yeah dude like you have a good time oh yeah so he likes that he likes to say that he was multiplayer designed lead and multiplayer audio design lead yo he says you can say they don't want says he was uncredited in the credits for fame that's true because there was for me there was just too much others it would be confusing to think that all the sounds you hearing in multiplayer work that came out of heart its head but it wasn't it was these unique sounds for multiplayer but I mean we had already done you know Jeff's tight sir who was the announcer voice killed Aguilera but you know we had done all that stuff and so multiplayer was working pretty well we just didn't have some of the unique sounds that that went for different ways of playing multiplayer gotcha so he had to come up with those yeah you and then I approved I approved them so there that's something right yeah yeah you couldn't have done it without you yeah exactly right so let us consider this matter ended its ended yes yeah you've got to work with some incredible people and Studios over the years Marty and you've really made a name for yourself amongst gamers and you know kind of established this you know your own personal legacy my final question is what do you have left to do like what what does Mario Donal still want to do or accomplish when it comes to you know video game soundtracks or even above and beyond that or you know out completely outside of that that is a great question because I have never spent much mental energy trying to plan ahead like what is my next move going to be I've been very lucky other than the fact that like as soon as I played mist in 1993 I played a beta version of it immediately I was thinking the game audio business has gotten to the point where I'd love to jump in and start working in that area so every once in a while something will catch my attention and I'll say I want to do that I want to do something like that so you know I did I did movie score as I did commercials and maybe I've done a bunch of radio and big games and I what I like about games is I want to see if we can take the interactive medium to another level of people taking it seriously so they even have a hard time calling it a game it will probably always be called video game because that's just just can't get away from that but I would love to work on something and I think we might be working on something now that that could be seen as something that that really takes the industry seriously and is is something that is but I know this sounds very pretentious but it could be more than a game and I would love to see that happen I think it's time for the industry to sort of mature yeah so that's what I want to work on perfect Marty well you know I really appreciate all the time you've given me today it's been an honor talking to you and I know all my fans are gonna just eat this video up you know you guys got to go subscribe to Marty O'Donnell's Channel let's get him that chat mark to get a check to check mark at the very least all right Ethel yeah yeah and check out his videos you know got a bunch of great behind-the-scenes stuff you know and Marty's always got hidden archives so there you go I'm gonna get more what what would happen if you do does a hundred case special video like bring something amazing out of the back gate who knows could happen yeah could it happen all right very good act man it was a pleasure pleasure having you on Marty all right see you later see everybody that's all we got for today this is the act man and Marty signing out peace

Channel: The Act Man

Views: 385,233

Rating: 4.9838057 out of 5

Keywords: Marty O Donnell, Halo Composer, destiny composer, bungie composer, halo ost, destiny ost, music of the spheres, marty o donnel, halo reach ost, halo 3 ost, marty o donnell interview, marty o donnell steve vai, steve vai halo 2, halo behind the scenes, bungie vidoc, Halo Infinite, marty odonnell halo, marty o donnell destiny music, interview, golem vr, golem marty o donnell, marty odonnell halo 3, halo 2 behind the scenes, the act man, act man, act man halo, halo ce

Id: Mkn7DmM6xYY

Length: 54min 16sec (3256 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/-343-Guilty-Spark-]

This is a list of links to comments made by 343 Industries employees in this thread:

• Comment by ske7ch343:

  That was fun to watch, thanks! And oof that picture of me... I vividly remember that. Spike Game Awards. Red carpet. Pretty cringey but we just said hell with it and went all in. Then we heard about an after party at an LA club but naturally we weren't invited. Marty made plays and we had a limo pic...

• Comment by ske7ch343:

  We do have some various groups we tap into officially and unofficially. Sometimes they come to the studio, sometimes we reach out to them. We have flighting programs, we also have all sorts of surveys and marketing studies and user research programs. And our community team (and much of the studio) ...

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[u/SwiftPenguin126]

Loved the video! Was listening to it while playing the ODST campaign.

[u/Critical_Stiban]

Go check out and subscribe to Marty’s Youtube Channel so he can get his checkmark on Youtube!

[u/amaninablackcloak]

I like how Marty is cool about having fanboys.

[u/NateTheMate2k3]

Are you the real act man

[u/ske7ch343]

That was fun to watch, thanks! And oof that picture of me... I vividly remember that. Spike Game Awards. Red carpet. Pretty cringey but we just said hell with it and went all in. Then we heard about an after party at an LA club but naturally we weren't invited. Marty made plays and we had a limo pick us up from the Spike venue and just drive right up to the VIP/limo drop off line at this party and just got out and walked up like we owned the place (well, Marty did as I recall, I just followed his lead). We got inside and I remember Marty being pretty disappointed - it wasn't his scene. I was loving it ;) the whole upstairs of this club was blocked off with large bouncers and then I saw a who's who of rappers up there. Snoop, Ludacris, Little John, and others evidently got the whole upstairs blocked off so they could smoke blunts. A huge heavy smoke hung over the whole club. This was like many years before 'legalization' was remotely a thing. Things got.. fuzzy after that, but it's one of those rare moments I actually remember pretty clearly from those days. :)

[u/Fahzgoolin]

Bad ass

[u/FabrizzioMarc]

I've already said... Bonnie Ross needs to go or HEAR out our opinions. As a community, over the past years, we are always asking the return of Marty O' Donnell for the future Halo games. 343 needs to LISTEN...

BRING MARTY BACK!!!!!!!!!!

[u/flamesfan201]

Two legends in one video..sweet