A New Dawn
From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
Transcript[edit]
- Slate: Chris Matthews take one, mark.
- Slate: This is Casey Wu take one, mark.
- Casey Wu: I was told that I can just be my authentic self, Chris.
- Pierre Hintze: For six years I don't want to be in front of a camera.
- John Junyszek: There's so much to do and so much fun to be had when you play Halo that I feel like I never run out of things to do.
- Melissa Boone: I love intricate stories that take place across lots of different worlds, have lots of different meaningful characters.
- Elizabeth Van Wyck: What made Halo successful at the beginning? What is the legacy of Halo and what's the soul that we want to bring forward? And what's the craft of making Halo games, and how do we set our studio up best to go deliver on that?
- Casey Wu: We knew we had to make a change in order to take us into the future.
- Lenny Simon: When I first heard about Halo moving to Unreal Engine, my first thought was, "This is going to be a really hard secret to keep."
- Marcellis Wentz: I think fans are going to be excited about the future of Halo because of the possibilities that are afforded us by using Unreal.
- Elizabeth Van Wyck: Before, we really had to split our focus in thinking about building an engine, supporting it, being really kind of a tech company and a studio at the same time. Since we've made the change to shift to UE, we can bring Halo forward in ways that people have never seen before, while still being true to what Halo is.
- Daniel Henley: The Foundry Project was an effort to show ourselves how far we can push things using Unreal 5.
- Marcellis Wentz: Our new studio art director, Chris, came to me and said, "Hey, I have this crazy idea."
- Casey Wu: He said, "Hey, there's this thing called Project Foundry that I want to do. Let's make it happen."
- Chris Matthews: Foundry, specifically, is based around the same concept of the Foundry in Halo lore. It’s the place where Halo rings are born. It's not a game; it’s a research project for our studio so we can prepare ourselves for the next steps of making Halo games.
- Daniel Henley: The original Halo franchise was a graphics showcase. It was best in class. That's what Halo was when it first was released, and that's what Halo needs to be again.
A NEW DAWN
- Chris Matthews: So once Project Foundry had been approved, we took the entire creative team and we ideated on three locations: something old, something new, and something really alien.
- Daniel Henley: We had the Pacific Northwest, which is sort of a traditional Halo biome.
- Andrea Gausmann: We were trying to shove as much foliage in there as humanly possible to make it really feel like you're on a hike in the Cascades.
- Chris Matthews: The Coldlands, which was the second biome that we took on, it was more of a technical showcase where we could play with shaders, we could play with deformable landscapes and terrains. Unreal affords us more opportunity than we've ever had in the past.
- Andrea Gausmann: You know, on the surface it might just look all like snow, but how many layers of things combine to really give that winter look?
- Daniel Henley: And then our third biome was The Blightlands, which is any land that's been completely taken over by the Flood.
- Chris Matthews: I wanted to give our team the opportunity to really express an alien world—a really alien world—taking something way further than they may have actually done in previous Halo games.
- Lenny Simon: What's impressed me about watching the Halo team work in Unreal is how beautiful everything looks, how incredible the environments look. I don't think we've seen anything quite like it in Unreal Engine before.
- Max Szlagor: Fortunately, we have a studio that's really passionate about Halo, about the look and feel, and you know, I think there's a lot of hunger to really collaborate, to move forward together.
- Chris Matthews: Foundry was an initiative that touched on every part of the creative process—everything from concept art, VFX, characters, vehicles, and weapons to make the future games of Halo.
- Bryan Repka: Creating an asset, taking this design—now we can really dig into the material foundations. What is it actually made of? How is it physically accurate to the world? Now we get to take all the wonderful legacy assets that we have, bring them to life, and bring them to today's standards.
- Elizabeth Van Wyck: We are really excited to be not just working on multiple projects, but also expanding our studio.
- John Junyszek: As a lifelong Halo player, I think the game is only going to get better when we get those new, unique perspectives and people bring in their expertise and passion for the Halo franchise.
- Michael Fahrny: We are looking for new talent as the projects that we're working on kind of get further and further into their development cycles.
- Dan Gniady: It is great to be part of a team that's growing because you can kind of see that force multiplied as people come in and take on challenges and you can do more.
- Pierre Hintze: Imagine a place where you have the commitment that this is what we want to do: Halo games and create those experiences. And you can express your talent, your creativity, and your professional ambitions in that place.
- Melissa Boone: Looking for designers. We're looking for artists. We're looking for engineers.
- Dan Gniady: It feels like a new beginning for the studio in a lot of ways, and I think that's pretty rare.
- Pierre Hintze: And I think we arrived now at a point where you see the beginnings of people starting to believe in the process.
- Elizabeth Van Wyck: There's so much momentum that we have right now and focus and clarity on not just what we're building, but why we're building, and kind of this next phase of Halo.
- Elizabeth Van Wyck: The worlds that we're building, the stories that we're going after...
- Chris Matthews: The potential at Halo right now is huge.
- Pierre Hintze: Halo Infinite was the last remnants of how we made Halo games in the past. That was our recipe. And what we are doing right now... we are changing that recipe.
A NEW DAWN
HALO STUDIOS
External links[edit]
- Halo Waypoint - A New Dawn
- Xbox Wire - Halo Studios: New Name, New Engine, New Games, New Philosophy
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