Editing Remaking the Legend (section)

==Transcript==
===Opening===
'''[[343 Industries|343 INDUSTRIES]] PRESENT'''<br/>
*'''[[Dan Ayoub]]:'''  They created something spectacular.

*'''Tina Summerford:''' You got so emotional about it.

*'''William "Chip" Beaman:''' Oh my god, this is the holy grail.

*'''Larry Hryb:''' It was a watershed moment for the industry. It all of a sudden just took everything you knew and mixed it all up.

'''A DOCUMENTARY FILM'''<br/>
*'''News clip (archival):''' Video gamers across the country are anxiously awaiting the midnight release of a game called ''[[Halo 2]]''.

*'''Dan Ayoub (archival):''' November marks the 10-year anniversary of ''Halo 2''. And I am excited to tell you that ''Halo 2'' is getting the full anniversary treatment.

*'''Lennie Moore:''' The puzzle becomes: how do you honor the material? How do you keep it fresh and interesting for a new generation?

*'''Larry Hryb:''' ''Halo'' is about this incredibly powerful hero, [[John-117|Master Chief]], and his [[Artificial intelligence|AI]] sidekick [[Cortana]], and their journey to save the [[Earth]].

*'''Greg Hermann:''' We've always been very, very concerned with maintaining that gameplay to just feel authentic.

*'''Kevin Pereira:''' Duh-duh-duh-duuh. Duh-duh-duh-duuh. The moment that kicks in, you're like, "Yes, let's go!"

*'''Brian Fieser:''' We decided to go out and capture new source material this time around.

*'''[[Keith David]] (as [[Thel 'Vadam|the Arbiter]]):''' My friend's trust is not the issue today, [[Jameson Locke|Spartan Locke]].

*'''David Mertz:''' It's just an absolute home run. It's probably some of the best fun I've ever had in ''Halo'', and that's a pretty major statement.

*'''Dan Ayoub:''' At the end of the day, everybody has one thing in common, and that is a love for what we're doing and a passion to make this the best it can be.

'''REMAKING THE LEGEND'''<br/>
<sub>'''[[Halo 2: Anniversary|HALO 2: ANNIVERSARY]]'''</sub>

===Ancient, Epic, & Mysterious===
'''ANCIENT, EPIC, & MYSTERIOUS'''<br/>
<sub>'''[[Halo: Combat Evolved|HALO COMBAT EVOLVED]] & [[Halo 2|HALO 2]]'''</sub>
*'''[[Joseph Staten]]:''' So when I joined [[Bungie]] in [[1998]], I got hired to work on the ''[[Wikipedia:Myth II: Soulblighter|Myth II]]'' team. As I was working on ''Myth II'' in one room. there was this other room with a smaller number of guys in it working on something else—which at the time was called "[[Blam!|Blam]]," this totally top-secret codename game. But at first, it was a lot like ''Myth''; it was an [[Real-time strategy|RTS]]. But it slowly evolved over time into a third-person game that was on the [[Wikipedia:Macintosh|Mac]] and [[PC]], and then it became a first-person game that all of a sudden—bam—was on the console when we got bought by [[Microsoft]]. But ''Halo'' went through [[Development of Halo: Combat Evolved|lots of different permutations along the road]] before the first version came out.

*'''[[Max Hoberman]]:''' When we were working on ''Halo'', it was actually the first time that we were developing a game first on [[Windows]]. And people don't know that because [[Wikipedia:Steve Jobs|Steve Jobs]] got up at MacWorld and [[Halo announcement trailer|showed off ''Halo'' for the first time]] and said, "And it's being developed first for the Mac." It actually wasn't true. We had to scramble to do a Mac port of the game at the last minute before that MacWorld conference.

*'''Steve Jobs (archival):''' And this is the first time anybody has ever seen it; it's the first time they've debuted it.

*'''[[Martin O'Donnell]]:''' I remember Joe Staten, our writer, came to me and said, "Yeah Marty, we need something. We're doing it on Tuesday." This is Friday, so I'm like, "Oh my gosh." So I said, "Okay, so it's just gonna be music. I'm gonna give you a CD. Somebody hits play on the CD. [[Jason Jones|Jason]] is gonna go up on stage and hit the space bar on the scripted demo, and we're just gonna cross our fingers and hope that all this stuff comes together." I asked Joe, "Alright, what's the emotional tone? What's the story we're trying to tell?" He goes, "I don't know, but it needs to be ancient, epic, and mysterious." I'm like, "Okay, okay. Ancient, epic, mysterious." So I called up my partner [[Michael Salvatori|Mike]], and I said, "Mike, I'm going to come over. We need to figure out a way to do music. We're going to record on Monday with an orchestra and some singers, but I don't know what we're recording yet." So this is, I believe, a Saturday, and we're recording on Monday. So on the way to his house and driving over, I'm like, "Okay, ancient, epic, mysterious. Well, ancient... Gregorian chant. Monks singing." So I made up a melody while I was in the car. [Hums the [[Halo Theme|''Halo'' theme]]]. No... Yeah! I came up with a whole melody in about the half hour it took me to drive to Mike's house. I walk in and I said, "Mike, okay, we're going to do like a big epic orchestra, but we're going to start with monks singing and we're gonna end with monks singing. And that'll give us this nice epic, ancient feel." And Mike's like, "Yeah, cool."

*'''Michael Salvatori:''' He's like, "Mike, I got this idea and we got to be done with it by Tuesday." And I was like... It was just another thing to me. It was just another thing to do. And I'm like, "Yeah, okay. We'll do it. Okay. And what is this thing about monks? Really? Okay, cool."

*'''Joseph Staten:''' Jason got up and pressed the button to start it. If you watch the video very closely, you can watch Jason take a massive inhale of breath right before he hits "Okay," because there was one bug that would have just really been bad if it happened at that moment. So it was a heart-wrenching, exciting time for everybody. But literally, that was the first time we'd shown it to anybody. It was on stage at the Javits in New York, this huge public forum.

*'''Joseph Staten:''' This was a time where big, expansive environments weren't seen too often, certainly in the shooter space, which had been very corridor-focused for a long time. If you remember the demo, it started off indoors—pretty typical—but right in the middle of the demo, we took you outside. In that moment of transition, the camera panned up to show you the sun and the vista, and I think at that point everybody who was watching and afterwards realized, "Wait, this is a step-change in what we expect from a typical shooter." And in short order, we were out in Redmond getting it up and running on what was to become the [[Xbox]].

*'''Bill Gates (archival):''' Let me now unveil... Xbox.

*'''Phil Spencer:''' If you thought about gaming on consoles back then, there had been some big hits in the first-person shooter space with things like ''[[Wikipedia:GoldenEye 007|GoldenEye]]'' and ''[[Wikipedia:Perfect Dark|Perfect Dark]]'', but there wasn't a long track record of shooters being a healthy genre and a big genre on console. 

*'''Ted Price:''' ''Halo'' got it right. ''Halo'' figured out how to make the controls, how to make the balance work for first-person shooters. And I specifically remember back then people saying, "This will never work. You cannot put a decent first-person shooter on a console."

*'''Phil Spencer:''' So when we're looking at forecasts, and how the marketing team and the sales team thought games would sell, ''Halo'' was somewhere down on the list. It was pretty bleak, and people weren't sure it was going to make it. Frame rate was bad. "Shooters—are they really going to work on console?" But it definitely became the hallmark of the original Xbox. 

*'''[[Bonnie Ross]]:''' Not only did it bring the FPS to the console, it brought story in an FPS, which I think is a huge, important part of ''Halo''.

*'''Larry Hryb:''' ''Halo'' is about this incredibly powerful hero, Master Chief, and his AI sidekick Cortana, and their journey to save the Earth. I mean, that's it. I mean certainly, there's a lot of battles along the way and there's a lot of drama with the [[Covenant]], but that story takes twists and turns, but your goal is to save the Earth.

*'''Kevin Pereira:''' Being the standout launch title for the Xbox, ''Halo'' single-handedly put that piece of hardware into millions and millions of homes.

*'''Isaac Christian:''' When the Xbox first released, it went to my neighbor's house. I didn't get one; my neighbor got one for Christmas. And then he got ''Halo'', and I spent the next six days, I think, just at his house the entire time. We just kept playing ''Halo'', and that's all we were doing. And then eventually, I ended up buying an Xbox just so we could play ''Halo''.

*'''Eric "Ghost" Heweitt:''' I played ''Halo'' at my friend's house and instantly loved it. I mean, we were throwing [[Anskum-pattern plasma grenade|plasma grenades]] at each other for probably three hours. And after that, I immediately went home to my twin brother and said, "Alright, we got to pool our money and get an Xbox." 

*'''Ted Price:''' Everybody back then knew what ''Halo'' was, and as a result, a lot more people who probably weren't hardcore gamers at the time began to dive in and made the decision to buy an Xbox.

*'''Commercial (archival):''' When it seems like all is lost... when it feels as if you have no hope...

*'''Phil Spencer:''' I don't think Xbox survives if ''Halo'' wasn't there. If you looked at the other launch games that we had—''[[Wikipedia:Project Gotham Racing (video game)|Project Gotham]]'' was a nice game—there were a lot of games that proved that we could actually ship games on a gaming console, and Microsoft kind of had no business in doing that. It was our first time trying to do that. But ''Halo'' was the thing that I think made people look, and that gave us credibility in creating a console. We didn't sell a lot of the original Xbox if you go back to the sales figures, but we sold a lot of ''Halo''.

*'''Joseph Staten:''' When we shipped ''Halo 1'', we had doubt about whether the game was going to be successful, but we also didn't know if the Xbox was going to be successful, frankly. But we really didn't spend too much time thinking about what we would do next, because the odds were stacked against us. Of course, when it hit and hit big, well, that's [[Development of Halo 2|when we had to scramble]]. Our early plans for ''Halo 2'', to be completely honest, were pretty disorganized. But what everybody felt very intensely was: we have a hit. We can't just ship another game like that; it has to be bigger and better. It has to have more features, more weapons. We knew that our ambition had to be greater, but frankly, we had no idea how to fill those shoes. So we struggled for a long time. Once we figured out in general—great, we're really going to go after the "virtual couch," we're really going to go after matchmaking and a party system—that team went heads down and ran. "Okay, we're going to try to tell a more complicated, hopefully intriguing narrative where the Covenant is a playable character. Okay, story team go." And for a while, each team was off in the wilderness figuring out, "Well, how the hell are we going to do all this stuff?"

*'''Jason Jones (archival):''' I think it's really important to be ambitious. I think it's important to have more balls in the air than you can catch. At the end, when it all comes down to it, you have to ship a game, but certainly, you can go too far.

*'''Joseph Staten (archival):''' The year is [[2552]]. After [[Human-Covenant War|a long fight]], our colonial defense has failed and the Covenant [[Battle for Earth|have made their way to Earth]].

*'''Max Hoberman:''' Even though I was on the project and sitting in the trenches with the other guys, I kind of had blinders on. You know, what I knew about the [[campaign]] was... they probably cut at least a third of the total game, maybe as much as half, I don't honestly know. And that's why ''Halo 2'' ended up with [[H2:The Great Journey|such a jarring ending]].

*'''Joseph Staten:''' One of the things I thought about really early on was, imagine that there was [[Thel 'Vadam|a Covenant commander]] who was in charge of [[Battle of Installation 04|events in the first ''Halo'' game]]. How would he have felt when he fell flat on his face, when he completely failed? What if you were that guy who got your ass handed to you by the Master Chief? What would [[Hierarchs|your bosses]] think of you? And that's really the genesis of the Arbiter. I had the—well, either good or bad idea, depending on how you look at it—to suggest: What if you actually played as this guy? Would that be pretty cool if you could put yourself in his horseshoe boots and walk around with his mandible jaws and talk to other Covenant and really get the other side of the story?

*'''Larry Hryb:''' When they switch the story around and you're playing as the Arbiter, you're like, "Whoa." It all of a sudden just took everything you knew and mixed it all up. It was an interesting way to innovate on interactive storytelling. 

*'''Joseph Staten:''' Ultimately, that turned out to be a lot more work and made us make some hard choices at the end. We were going to go to Earth, go into the [[Prophet of Truth]]'s [[Anodyne Spirit|ship]], [[H3:Cortana|rescue Cortana]], do battle with the [[Gravemind]], and button everything up. It was extremely challenging to wrap all those different ambitious angles into one nice, smooth, polished product. And especially at the end for the campaign, it just... there wasn't enough runway to land what we really wanted to land.

*'''Martin O'Donnell:''' So it was not until [[2002]], a good probably six months after we had finished [[Music of Halo 2|the music]], I finally was called into a meeting room at Microsoft. And sitting around the table with all these guys, there was one guy in the room who had dreadlocks and a white beret and a white suit. His name is [[wikipedia:Nile Rodgers|Nile Rodgers]]. I think he was working with [[wikipedia:Maroon 5|Maroon 5]] in New York, and they wouldn't stay in the studio with him. They kept taking breaks, and he found out they were taking breaks and wasting time playing ''Halo'', this new game. And they said, "Yeah, Nile, you got to see this game, it's so cool." And Nile looks at them playing and he goes, "Yeah, but what's [[Music of Halo: Combat Evolved|that music]]?" He was the first guy who said, "I want to have a company that releases game soundtracks," and he wanted ''Halo'' to be the first one.

*'''Kevin Pereira:''' I remember loving that soundtrack so much that I bought [[Halo: Original Soundtrack|the soundtrack to a video game]]. Who does that? Nobody does that. Nobody goes like, "Oh, I want to hear the MIDI music from old PC games." No! But ''Halo'' was so iconic that you could release a soundtrack and I would buy it, and I would listen to it in my car... while not getting laid, ever. I love that song. Duh-duh-duh-duuh. Duh-duh-duh-duuh. The moment that kicks in, you're like, "Yes, let's go!" 

*'''Graeme Boyd:''' You know, that score is just—you hear that and just immediately you're there. You're in Master Chief's helmet and you're living it. 

*'''Tommy Tallarico:''' It immersed you, and you felt like you were put in this world, and that's why there's such an emotional connection. That music became your music.

*'''Eric "Ghost" Heweitt:''' I believe it's something like... [Singing the theme] 

*'''[[Wikipedia:Malukah|Malukah de los Santos]]:''' [Singing the theme] 

*'''Kevin Pereira:''' [Singing the theme] No, that's not it. 

*'''Burnie Burns:''' [Singing the theme] Oh, but then [[Halo Theme MJOLNIR Mix|the ''Halo 2'' one's got the rock at the end]] like... [imitates guitar]. Yeah, that's... I was dating a girl at the time and whenever she heard the ''Halo'' theme, I could hear every door in my house slam, because she knew I was gonna be playing ''Halo'' for four hours.

*'''Martin O'Donnell:''' As good as I liked ''Halo 1''{{'}}s soundtrack, he came back after the success of ''Halo 1'' and he said, "Marty, for ''Halo 2'', I can get you anybody you want. I'll get you [[Steve Vai]], [[Wikipedia:Jeff Beck|Jeff Beck]], I can get you [[Wikipedia:Pink (singer)|P!NK]]." P!NK? What? Well, I hadn't really thought about guitar per se and yet.... but Steve Vai or Jeff Beck? Sure! Are you kidding? There's one other guitar player who was a huge fan of ''Halo'' and went outside of his agent, he went outside of everybody else. We didn't even bring it through Microsoft; I never got a contractual written permission to work with him. And that's [[Wikipedia:John May|John Mayer]]. John Mayer plays guitar on [[Epilogue (Halo 2)#Beholden|two very distinct pieces]] in ''Halo'', and you hear it on [[Halo 2: Original Soundtrack|the soundtrack]], but I never revealed that it was him because he didn't want his agent to yell at him. He just wanted to be able to tell his friends, "Yeah, that's me playing on ''Halo 2''."

*'''[[Frank O'Connor]]:''' ''Halo'' is one of the few games where we still have people playing the 10-year-old game. And ''Halo'' was, I think, really special, especially in the United States, as far as how it introduced a lot of people to multiplayer gaming. With the first ''Halo'', it was a very social experience—physically carrying your Xbox to someone's house, carrying TVs—heavy CRT TVs back in the day.

*'''Kevin Pereira:''' Pre-''Halo'' and ''Halo 2'', you had to make do with what you had. It was like, "Okay, we've got these modems which are tin cans and strings, now we need to connect them to somehow communicate with each other and then play this game against each other. Now we need a way to talk to each other to set up the playdate, so that we can murder each other." And it was all these disparate technologies and forums and modems and drivers and operating systems. It was a delicate nerd dance. You would have to do a 25-minute geek ballet just to get a game synced up to be able to play with someone else. Then when ''Halo 2'' came along, it was really as easy as pushing a button, seeing your friends, and saying, "Okay, I'm going to shoot you now."

*'''Frank O'Connor:''' With ''Halo 2'', it changed radically, because we were able to put people together without having them in the same room. We used [[Xbox LIVE]], obviously.

*'''Commercial (archival):''' Introducing the next arena. Butt-kicking just went global. Xbox LIVE is here.

*'''Frank O'Connor:''' Max Hoberman, who designed a lot of those systems, had a really simple philosophy, which was to try and recreate the fun aspects of being together in that basement with those TVs, but do it online. And I think that's one of the reasons why it was so successful, because it kept the social, cultural aspect of that connection, and didn't really make it all about technology. It made it all about fun and connecting, and just sort of being around your friends.

*'''Larry Hryb:''' I was in a meeting and they were explaining it to me and I was like, "Wait a minute, what? You're gonna do what? You're gonna have people on a virtual couch, where we don't need to be with each other? Wow." I said, "That sounds cool." And then, of course, it came out and it was cool. 

*'''Tina Summerford:''' It just felt great to kill people around the world in a video game. Kegitimately. I mean, you were used to doing it on your couch. Now we saay, "When I played games, if I can't kill something, I don't really have a desire to play it." That's just the way I am, I just love FPSs. It comes down to the last kill and you get [[Jeff Steitzer|this voice]] like "[[Double Kill]]!" "[[Killing Spree]]!" You got so emotional about it. You strove to get those small moments of awesomeness.

*'''[[Andy Dudynsky|Andy "Bravo" Dudynsky]]:''' Not only was it a way to kind of hang out with your friends, whether in person or online, but it was also a legitimate form of competition. If you're in school, there's a question of "What [[Rank (Halo 2)|level]] is that guy in ''Halo 2''? How good is he?" 

*'''Tina Summerford:''' It was fun. At the end of the day, it was entertaining. It was just so fun.

*'''Phil Spencer:''' The history is between ''Halo'' and Xbox LIVE. I don't think you can really separate the two. Even today in terms of the stuff that we're trying to do with ''[[Halo 5: Guardians|Halo 5]]'' and innovating on Xbox LIVE, there's a long history there. But we all knew that when ''Halo'' finally came to Xbox LIVE, that would be the time that would define the success or failure of Xbox LIVE.

*'''Frank O'Connor:'''  think if you're a game player who hasn't tried ''Halo'' and you're playing things like ''[[Wikipedia:Battlefield (video game series)|Battlefield]]'' and ''[[Wikipedia:Call of Duty|Call of Duty]]'', there are a lot of things that you take for granted. When you start up a game, you'll go on a matchmaking playlist. You'll be matched with players of the same skill and the same interests—obviously, they want to play the same game mode as you do. There's an even number of players that are evenly matched, so that each game is fun, each game is close, and each game is exciting. So when you finish a game, you either won or you lost, but not by a huge margin, which made it fun, made it challenging. I got to give credit to Max for that; that was his baby, and that's probably his biggest impact on the industry today—he's kind of changed the way that we play console games online.

*'''News clip (archival):''' In a few hours, one of the most eagerly awaited video games finally goes on sale. 
*'''News clip (archival):''' It is preparing to rewrite retail history. 
*'''News clip (archival):''' The video game is expected to have bigger first-day revenues than any movie has ever had an opening day at the box office. 
*'''News clip (archival):''' Biggest retail launch in entertainment history. 
*'''[[Wikipedia:Jimmy Kimmel|Jimmy Kimmel]] (archival):''' Dozens of grown men—and probably about three women—have crawled out of their parents' basements tonight to be first in line to buy the new video game ''Halo 2''. 
*'''[[Wikipedia:Marc Brown (journalist)|Marc Brown]] (archival):''' Video gamers across the country are anxiously awaiting the midnight release of a game called ''Halo 2''. 
*'''News clip (archival):''' Thirty-five minutes and counting for ''Halo 2'' to go on sale. 
*'''News clip (archival):''' The line right now is probably about 100 yards long. 
*'''News clip (archival):''' It is the most anticipated game in entertainment history.
*'''News clip (archival):''' Well, if you're an Xbox gamer, there's a good chance you're pretty tired right now.
*'''News clip (archival):''' ''Halo 2'' sold 2.4 million units in 24 hours. 
*'''[[Wikipedia:Jon Stewart|Jon Stewart]] (archival):''' Now, I understand there's a few more states to put in the red and blue columns; we're going to go back to the map and [[Wikipedia:Rob Corddry|Rob Corddry]]. Rob, looking at the...
*'''Rob Corddry (archival):''' Yeah, yeah? Suck it! Where's your alien [[Okarda'phaa-pattern plasma rifle|plasma rifle]] now, bitch? 
*'''Jon Stewart (archival):''' Rob! Rob! Are you playing ''Halo''? 
*'''Rob Corddry (archival):''' ...No!

*'''Phil Spencer:''' The anticipation around that... ''Halo 2'' is gonna land. That was just a kind of magical moment.

*'''Dan Ayoub:''' Bungie created something spectacular, right? And I mean, I think that the game Bungie created is why [[343 Industries|343]] exists today and why many of the fans are here. So 343 was created to kind of take that universe and carry it forward.

*'''[[Kiki Wolfkill]]:''' There was never any question as to whether we should do a ''Halo 2: Anniversary'' in terms of—I think we all kind of had that very romantic notion of going back to ''Halo 2''. 

*'''Frank O'Connor:''' ''Halo 2'' for a lot of people is that sort of perfect snapshot in time, the perfect moment. So there was always a really rousing demand for it. This is the tenth anniversary; this is the right time to do it.

*'''Bonnie Ross (archival):''' This is about Master Chief's journey, his past and his future, questioning authority and searching for the truth.

*'''Phil Spencer (archival):''' The ''Halo'' franchise is the reason Xbox is here today. 

*'''Dan Ayoub (archival):''' Now as many of you know, November marks the 10-year anniversary of ''Halo 2''. And I am excited to tell you that ''Halo 2'' is getting the full anniversary treatment.

*'''Dan Ayoub (archival):''' ''Halo 2''{{'}}s multiplayer was special for a lot of reasons, and ''Halo 2: Anniversary'' will contain the original ''Halo 2'' multiplayer exactly as it shipped 10 years ago.

*'''Bonnie Ross:''' When we were thinking about anything for the anniversary, the game has to be exactly the same. Some of the things that people loved about ''Halo 2'' were the glitches, and those were all in. So for us, it's: "How do you keep the gameplay the same but raise the graphical fidelity?" And then: "How do you just have new ways to play the whole game?" It's the same game, but new ways to play that game. So I think kind of mixing that new with that old is hopefully something that will be refreshing to new and old fans.

===Keeping Nostalgia Alive===
'''KEEPING NOSTALGIA ALIVE'''<br/>
<sub>'''CAMPAIGN'''</sub>

*'''Dennis Ries:''' So for ''Halo 2: Anniversary'', [[Saber Interactive|Saber]] is really focusing on the campaign, on remastering all the graphics and making everything look wonderful on the [[Xbox One]]. They're also—because they're so tech-savvy—really helping to push the resolution as high as possible and hit that 60 frames per second mark that we're stretching to hit.

*'''Andrey Iones:''' Doing an HD remake to those older ''Halo 1'' and ''Halo 2'' games makes a lot of sense, because those games stand the test of time. The storytelling component of those games is great, the gameplay experience is great, so it makes a lot of sense to bring it to the new hardware.

*'''Matt Karch:''' People remember ''Halo 2'' as a beautiful-looking game, and so our objective really is to let people feel that the game they're playing now is the exact experience that they played 10 years ago. Only when they switch back will they realize the tricks their mind was playing on them, because of the lapse of 10 years of time.

*'''Greg Hermann:''' There's something that's just so instinctual about how that game feels and plays to you that I don't think it's something that you can identify directly. So we've always been v