EA Opens Seattle-Based Studio Headed by Halo Co-Creator

While the name EA might send people running for the hills, this might be a situation that will bring a smile to gamers’ faces around the world. Marcus Lehto, aka the co-creator of the legendary Halo series is heading up a studio in Seattle opened by EA. Not only that, but it seems they are already working on first-person games. Seems like some good news to have one of the godfathers of the genre behind a potentially big-time new IP.

In case you’re keeping score, EA is behind the Titanfall series and it is very possible that they have brought one of the titans of the first-person genre to revive that incredibly underrated series. This is all speculation though as currently, it is unclear whether these will be new series or just continuations of old ones. Titanfall has been technically said to have at least approached confirmed state, but nothing more has been said about the game in a year, so whatever was in progress is likely not even worth noting at this point.

In terms of Lehto’s accolades, they are as good as it gets. He was the creative art director at Bungie and is responsible for the creation of one of the most iconic game characters ever, Master Chief. He then worked on all of Bungie’s Halo games. Now, he is not impeccable as his recent track record includes the massive critical and financial flop that was Disintegration, and the studio he headed there, V1 Interactive was shut down from it.

It’s always a tricky thing when a big-time developer goes off on their own to create games. One of the recent examples is Hideo Kojima with his Death Stranding release. While the game was acclaimed in some places it was incredibly polarizing and far from the gargantuan successes he previously had in the Metal Gear Series. This should be a word of warning to Lehto that even though he’s likely free to see his own vision through this time, to make sure that vision actually creates a good game as well.

With EA behind him though, there is a good chance he will be provided with more resources than ever before, and hopefully, the new games he has in store for us will create another generation of legendary games just like Halo did almost 2 decades ago. It’s tough to rely on EA sometimes, but every so often, they make a great move and pull off some amazing games like Star Wars: Fallen Order. It’s possible, and now they have the right guy to make it happen.