Quick Look: Anchor 9

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Go Zero-G with gameplay and commentary covering Anchor 9, one of three new maps in the Noble Map Pack.

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Quick Look: Anchor 9 is a promotional video for Halo: Reach showcasing a multiplayer match on Anchor 9, one of the maps on the Noble Map Pack. Unlike the pre-release Quick Look videos, this video features commentary from Bungie staff members Frank Capezzuto, Steve Cotton, Kentarou Taya, and Michael Milota. It was released on November 20, 2010.

Transcript

HALO: REACH

BUNGIE QUICK LOOK

NOBLE MAP PACK
ANCHOR 9

• Frank Capezzuto: My name is Frank, I'm a polygon pimp. No, I build levels and I draw levels. I do the concepts and then I fabricate them.

• Steve Cotton: Hi, I'm Steve Cotton. I'm an environment artist on Reach.

• Kentarou Taya: Hi, my name is Ken Taya, and I always go for the Rockets. I'm an environment artist.

• Michael Milota: This is Milota. They put my name as Mike, but most call me Milota, and I work...

• Frank Capezzuto: Terrible!

• Steve Cotton: Wait, did I even get my name out? Can I—

• Frank Capezzuto: Can you talk any slower?

• Michael Milota: My name is Mike Milota and this is my level.

• Kentarou Taya: You can't do an impersonation of yourself.

• Michael Milota: I'm Mike Milota, environment artist, architect, gameplay modifier, destroyer. This is Anchor 9, the best map ever.

• Steve Cotton: Yeah, this is Anchor 9, right?

• Frank Capezzuto: So we named it Anchor 9, and then after that, I put a nine up there. Bam.

• Michael Milota: Yeah, that's...

• Steve Cotton: One of nine anchors.

• Michael Milota: 18 actually.

• Steve Cotton: You know, from day one, this was actually a pretty favorite map among the guys that were just sort of playtesting. And so it hasn't changed layout-wise really all that much. A lot of times our maps will go through a lot of iteration and... we rip a side off or we'll double the width of a gap or something like that 'cause it's not working, and this one really has kind of stayed pretty consistent.

• Frank Capezzuto: Yeah, as far as the gameplay, the thing that's really nice about this map is it has the right balance between, "Okay, I'm not too far away from the action," but at the same time, when I spawn in, I don't have 50 grenades in my face. Like, it has just the right amount of pacing for a Slayer game.

• Steve Cotton: You can always get back into combat pretty quickly in this map, which is nice, or in my case, you can always die really quick.

• Michael Milota: Your playing is bad.

• Steve Cotton: Did you find a bug?

• Kentarou Taya: Your face is bad.

• Frank Capezzuto: Hey, I'm on your team, Nimrod!

• Kentarou Taya: Oh, that's right.

• Steve Cotton: Oh, so The Pit was pretty fun, and we wanted to make a map in this DLC that actually captured a lot of what The Pit captured, which we felt like was symmetrical, team-based combat, lots of strategy out in the middle between the bases, multi-level. The engagement distances are very similar, so this map actually kind of fills that niche for this DLC. And then Mike came on to start architecting this one out.

• Kentarou Taya: We have a term for it, it's called "de-Cotton-ization".

• Michael Milota: Yeah, I think people will either love this map or be totally enraged.

• Steve Cotton: Why would they be enraged?

• Michael Milota: Because there's so many ways to escape death. Even though it's a really tight map, I always wanted to make sure that there was an escape route, because I'm often being chased, so to give myself a few more seconds to live, I'd make sure there's a little drop down or a window to run through or maybe something to hop up on.

• Kentarou Taya: So Milota, you uses the bevel tone wave I see?

• Michael Milota: Uh, yeah, heavily. Bevel everywhere. Primary art direction.

• Kentarou Taya: Oh, look at this cheater. Take that grenade!

• Steve Cotton: I know when we sat down to think about the DLC maps, I know this one particularly had a lot of potential, because of the low grav outside.

• Michael Milota: Well, yeah. You know, it's funny 'cause recently we got the Microsoft testing and they came back, gave us a bug that it was kind of too easy to die out here. I don't know, it just—it seems perfect to me... the amount of danger out there.

• Frank Capezzuto: Well, it's a ninja ledge, right? I mean, you're finding a shortcut, but there's like a payoff and there's also a danger. So it's risk and reward, right? If you stay inside, it's safe—I mean, well, with the exception of getting shot, but the level's not going to fight you. But when you're on the outside, you have a shortcut, but the level could be actual danger.

• Michael Milota: And it sounds awesome out there. Originally I was hoping that this space station could be kind of a crippled, half-destroyed space station during the war of Reach. And maybe there'd be like all these crazy spaceships flying by that were like...

• Frank Capezzuto: Killing framerate?

• Michael Milota: ...under attack and, yeah.

• Steve Cotton: Visually—

• Michael Milota: I really like the way it turned out. Just feels really clean and easy to navigate. Probably if there was all this damage and smoke and crazy movie stuff going on, I would be getting killed even more than I do now. Wouldn't know where I was.

• Frank Capezzuto: Well, you made this map, right? So that means you have to be the best at it, right?

• Michael Milota: If that was only the case...

• Frank Capezzuto: I guess on... it's pretty interesting as far as the art side of things when we were building the map out. Memory is always a concern with bitmaps and, uh, doing one-to-one unwraps for the objects takes a lot of memory. So Milton, he did the missile carts here and he also did the engine service module. He did it in such a way where it looks like it has a one-to-one custom unwrap, but it's mostly tile textures. So he developed some really cool techniques of fabricating those objects. I mean, I've been in the game industry since 1996 and I've seen such huge changes for how we build environments or vehicles, and we are literally getting to the point right now where we could model whatever we want. So Ken-tai, if you have a second, could you please tell me what these are for?

• Michael Milota: Don't tell them.

• Kentarou Taya: That's... this is why it's an adult game. These are airlocks in case something goes wrong, all these doors shut and these stabilize the pressure in this room.

• Frank Capezzuto: I think a good term to describe what we do a lot of times is implied function. It looks like it does something, but there's only to a point where we could really hyper-analyze how it works.

• Kentarou Taya: So even on top of this Saber, see how we place this catwalk here? It has to really feel flat and easy to walk and navigate around. Doesn't really make sense, but gameplay design trumps visuals in some aspects. We just have to make it look good. You just got to look right and feel right. That's what she said.

• Steve Cotton: But I hope you guys enjoyed watching. That was Anchor 9, and it comes out on November 30th.

• Michael Milota: I'll see you in space, and watch your back.