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The complete untold story of Halo - Holy shit you have to read this

DosBuster

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https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/art...-untold-history-of-halo-an-oral-history#ulf-1

Before anyone here complains about it being vice there are no vice journaists giving opinions here this is just a collection of the top developers from both Bungie and 343 revealing some of the craziest shit about the studio and how these games were made. Even if you don't care about Halo you should still read this because it's just crazy through and through.
 

almondblight

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Aug 10, 2004
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Interesting, though I'm not sure how much of this is new. They left out some stuff Cortana (which, IIRC, was revealed before the game was) didn't just share a naming convention with Durandal, but was originally going to be an insane AI like Durandal as well. The Myth II bug was one of the big reasons behind Bungie going broke, but the screwed up development of Oni was another.

It's also disappointing that, like most articles talking about early Halo, they gloss over how it was going to play before the MS acquisition. There's almost not actual gameplay footage showing how it was going to play as a third person shooter. Supposedly it was going to be at least somewhat open world, where, say, the Covenant might attack two places at once and the player would have to choose which to respond to.
 

boot

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here you go faggot

Ed Fries - I'm probably the only one who would tell you this, but after launch everyone embraced Halo to such an extent it was actually a problem. Once the whole success of a platform rests on one game, that game has to be there.

I remember I was in a meeting about Halo 2, and the reality was that we needed to move it back a year to deliver the game that we wanted. (Former chief Xbox officer) Robbie Bach turned it into a vote. The choices were to force Bungie to ship Halo 2 a year before it's ready, or give them the extra year to get it done right.

All the senior people who worked for Robbie voted to force the team to ship it. I walked out of the meeting, saying: “I'm going to quit right now if that's what we’re going to do.” So they went back on it and gave Bungie extra time, but I still quit six months later. That vote had showed the attitude of what was going on there.


Marty O’Donnell- I was still confused when they came out of the clubhouse and presented it to the team. Joe said, “Okay, here’s how the ending’s going to go. We’re going to do this and this and this and…” And I’m like, “Wait, Joe, are you saying that the last person you play in Halo 2 is the Dervish? And when you get to the end it shows a cutscene with Master Chief going back to Earth saying, ‘I want to finish this fight,’ and we run end credits?”

He said, “Don’t worry, it’ll work!” I said no, it wouldn’t. People will be throwing their controllers at their TVs. We’re going to make it look like you’re about to be Master Chief going to Earth to finish this fight. And then you want me to climax the music, go to black and run credits? I couldn’t imagine a more horrifying ending.

If you search for “worst endings in the history of video games,” you’ll see Halo 2 right up there. It was like, this is worse than the ending to Back to the Future Part II. I could not believe what we were doing. But we had gotten ourselves into this bind, and there was no way to change it.

Joe Staten- We had all thought, and hoped, this is going to be like The Empire Strikes Back. That was a cliffhanger, and nobody freaked out when Luke was just on a hospital ship and nothing got resolved at the end. It'll be just like that. Well, no. Empire did a whole bunch of other little cool things that made that okay, which we didn’t do.

Lot of cools stuff

1495822546762-paul-bertone.png

Paul Bertone Up until post-production, about six weeks before we finished, there were no enemies in the city. Marty really wanted a dynamic music system, so that if you weren’t in combat it would always be playing the somber stuff. Then, when combat started, the music would change. I tried a couple times to do that in Halo script, and got pretty close, but a lot of times the music would kick in when it was supposed to, only to then stick. So you’d run away from combat but have this crazy, bombastic piece still going.

1495743462146-marty-odonnell.png

Marty O’Donnell I said that every time you come back to the city from a mission, I want you to feel completely alone, and I need some time to set that mood again. I can do that lonely noir saxophone with a new piece every time.

1495822546762-paul-bertone.png

Paul Bertone It was always the plan to have enemies in the city. It felt really bad without them. You always need that resistance. The intention was that they were the remnants of the Covenant, sort of stragglers.

1495743462146-marty-odonnell.png

Marty O’Donnell I had gone back into the city, and this really nice piece of music starts playing but suddenly, out of the sky, all these aliens are attacking me. It didn't fit at all. I said, “Paul, what are you doing?”

He said, “Oh, yeah, there was just too much time when you're alone in the city, where you're not fighting and I think people are going to get bored.” I’m like, no, no, no, please, you’ve got to let me have a little time! The player just got out of a level—you don't have to keep the intensity up. Let it breathe a little bit and let them come across hunters and aliens as they explore.

1495822546762-paul-bertone.png

Paul Bertone I’m not going to look at ODST and say everything about it was perfect. There were a lot of hardships and passionate debates on how things should’ve been, a lot of starts and a lot of stops. But to see the amount we did, with fewer than 20 people full-time on the project, with help at the end to push it over the line, I’m super proud. ODST is definitely my top project at Bungie. It’s the one I’m most proud of.

1495743462311-joe-staten.png

Joe Staten We were revitalized by ODST. At least, I know Paul and I were.

The TLDR story of Bungie and Halo seems to be that they got burnt out on it, too much pressure, not enough time and money.
 
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Fedora Master

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That isn't remotely interesting or crazy though.
 

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