Halo: Reach Legendary Developer Commentary

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The Halo: Reach Legendary Developer Commentary is a 2 hour video commentary of Halo: Reach by the Bungie employees Steve Scott, Lee Wilson, Marcus Lehto and Martin O'Donnell. It is only available and viewable on Halo Waypoint to those who bought the Legendary Edition of Reach.

Transcript

Opening

  • Martin O'Donnell: Here it goes. 2010 Microsoft Corporation. Here we go. Watching Reach, and the four of us are all here, and we all worked on this game, and ee've been here for so many years... And who's the first one to introduce himself?
  • Steve Scott: Uh, I am Steve Scott. I'm the, uh, FX lead here at Bungie.
  • O'Donnell: All the cool explosions, Steve.
  • Scott: My department.
  • Scott: There are, uh, four of us, uh, making effects for this game.
  • Marcus Lehto: It used to just be Steve.
  • O'Donnell: I know.
  • Lehto: Now, Steve has... (imitating wind blowing)
  • Lehto: ...a glorified department. And Lee?
  • Lee Wilson: I am Lee Wilson, and I was, er, story and cinematic lead on Reach.
  • O'Donnell: Nice job, Lee.

Noble Actual

  • O'Donnell: Just a small team.
  • Lehto: I'm Marcus Lehto, the creative director for Reach, and errr... Yeah. We are here together with all four of us. Marty, you get to introduce yourself.
  • O'Donnell: I'm Marty O'Donnell, I'm the audio director and composer for Bungie and Reach.
  • Lehto: Reach. Half of the Covenant has dumped on it.
  • Wilson: There were, uh, a little goats, we imagine.
  • Lehto: From the beginning, you know the end.
  • O'Donnell: You know...
  • Lehto: ...that it is glassed.
  • O'Donnell: It's glassed, and they're horrible.
  • Lehto: The sad, sad, helmet.
  • O'Donnell: Steve, I love that effect.
  • Lehto: The hue effect. It's one of the best effect in the game.
  • O'Donnell: The heat effect.
  • Wilson: So clean, so simple.
  • Lehto: A little boring.
  • Scott: I think it's pretty cool that we actually made that helmet dynamically change...
  • Lehto: Yes.
  • Scott: ...depending on what your selection is.
  • O'Donnell: Really?
  • Wilson: It was surprisingly simple as well. Didn't cause many problems.
  • Lehto: Come on, Marty, I thought you played this.
  • O'Donnell: Well, I thought, I thought they burned out all of them, it was always like (gestures nothing).
  • Lehto & Scott: What?
  • Lehto: Did you know how much labor in it?
  • Scott: There's a destroyed version of every helmet.
  • Lehto: Scott Shepherd came up with that.
  • O'Donnell: Wow, that's wonderful.
  • Wilson: What I like about this 'Hog is that we actually captured CJ driving it across the map. So he's skipping it right now.
  • O'Donnell: Oh really?
  • Wilson: Yeah, it wasn't so, like, custom animated or anything like that.
  • O'Donnell: Now, you notice, guys, that this music is different from what we did in the original trailer. Because the original trailer is for audience, this is...
  • Lehto &O'Donnell: ...the game.
  • Lehto: The player experience.
  • Wilson: And Jun has his helmet off.
  • Lehto: Do you like his tattoo?
  • Wilson: Oh, I love his tattoo.
  • Lehto: Alright.
  • Wilson: What is that tattoo?
  • Scott: It's a fist, holding...
  • Lehto: It's, er, spears.
  • Wilson: Okay, 'Tip of the Spears'.
  • O'Donnell: Think that was Scott Shepherd. Wasn't it?
  • Wilson: I think so, yeah. I let him sole sculpture that-
  • Lehto: No, wait no, it was, uh, Chris Alderson.
  • Wilson: Okay.
  • Lehto: I know Scott Shepherd said he was going to tattoo that on his head after this game is done.
  • Wilson: And he probably will.
  • Lehto: He is an open canvas.
  • O'Donnell: We should introduce our actors here.
  • Lehto: You go right ahead.
  • O'Donnell: Now, we're listening to male Six.
  • Lehto: Mhmm.
  • Scott: Now, what is his name?
  • O'Donnell: Yes. Philip Anthony-Rodriguez. That's his name.
  • O'Donnell: That's a great shot. Jun's is, err, Sunil.
  • Lehto: Sunil.
  • Wilson: Yes.
  • O'Donnell: Great name.
  • Lehto: She'd kick your butt.
  • O'Donnell: She would, too. She was Israeli military. She's great. And who do we miss?
  • O'Donnell: Hakeem.
  • Wilson: And we are complete fanboys around him.
  • O'Donnell: Totally. It was... He was so much fun to work with.

Winter Contingency

  • O'Donnell: Oh.
  • Scott: This was, uh, this was a ... Halo game had a couple first. One, you could play as a male or female Spartan. And, for the first time, you see the Spartans' face.
  • Lehto: Finally.
  • Scott: Finally.
  • Lehto: Get underneath that armor. It was one of the big mandates when we started this project. Understand a little about these characters were, make them a little bit more iconic than Master Chief ever could be.
  • Scott: Mhmm.
  • Lehto: It's cool. I think we pulled that off pretty good.
  • O'Donnell: Totally.
  • O'Donnell: So here's a little of the, uh, trailer music just in case you're wondering.
  • Lehto: Yeah.
  • O'Donnell: Just a little sneak in, but in a different space.
  • O'Donnell: So how much, what is the drawed distance?
  • Lehto: Way, way further.
  • O'Donnell: Yeah? How did you worked that up? I mean, this is solely amazing in this.
  • Lehto: Yeah, we set out to increase the drawed distances, open up the battlefield, and pack them full of, like, four times more things we had ever been able to do in the past.
  • O'Donnell: So when we are flying in here, we are actually looking at the map we are playing around.
  • Lehto: Everything we wanted to do is what our engine could do. Coming out of Halo 3.
  • Lehto: So they had to rebuild nearly everything. As far as the engine is concerned.
  • O'Donnell: Is that why so many materials has changed a little bit?
  • Lehto: Everything changed.
  • O'Donnell: I know.
  • Lehto: Yes.
  • O'Donnell: Okay. I accepted it.
  • O'Donnell: I want to hear myself crunching on the cabbages. They're when I...
  • Lehto: Oh God, Marty.
  • Wilson: No one wants to test what they do. I went up and, uh, I meleed a cabbage.
  • O'Donnell: Did you hear a cabbage sound?
  • Wilson: Um, I think one of the early test was a whip sound.
  • O'Donnell: A whip sound. Probably. There was wood just at every place for a while. Yeah.
  • Wilson: But there's a cabbage sound now?
  • O'Donnell: No. That has to do with the material effects to be a little more...
  • Wilson: Oh, okay.
  • O'Donnell: ...global.
  • Wilson: Okay. So, when I go to supermarket to get a cabbage, if I melee it...
  • O'Donnell: Oh hey, look at that.
  • Wilson & O'Donnell: Here we are.
  • O'Donnell: Here's the first vignette.
  • Scott: Huh, look at that.
  • O'Donnell: What is this called? The Thespians system?
  • Lehto: Yes.
  • O'Donnell: What does that do, except for giving us headaches?
  • Lehto: Oh gosh, Marty, jeez. It allows us to bring, y'know, some of that thousand page script into the game.
  • O'Donnell: Melee that thing!
  • O'Donnell: It makes a fun noise when you melee it.
  • Scott: Isn't there an achievement for knocking down a bunch of those?
  • O'Donnell: Walk through that yellow bush.
  • O'Donnell: Aww, he didn't hear it. Yellow bushes make noise.
  • Lehto: Yes.
  • Wilson & Lehto: You're welcome.
  • Wilson: What are those ostriches called?
  • Lehto & O'Donnell: Moas.
  • Wilson: And can we ride them?
  • Lehto: We used to be able to.
  • Wilson & O'Donnell: Awww...
  • Lehto: Sad days, I know.
  • O'Donnell: We should tell the fans that there was a joust game that was gonna happen.
  • Lehto: There was.
  • O'Donnell: You could ride the Moas and play joust.
  • Lehto: And it was actually working! For quite a while.
  • Scott: Sure was.
  • Scott: Another first for Halo game: civilians.
  • O'Donnell: Civilians. Don't shoot the civilians.
  • Lehto: Reach is lousy with civilians. Awesome...
  • Wilson: ... that Jorge is speaking Hungarian here.
  • O'Donnell: And he understands Hungarian.
  • Lehto: Yes.
  • Scott: Wait. Are we revealing he's Hungarian?
  • O'Donnell: Apparently.
  • Lehto: You just did. Did you know what he said?
  • Wilson: Umm...
  • O'Donnell: This is really translated Hungarian. And we had phonetically spoken dialogue to teach the actors.
  • O'Donnell: 'Befelé!', which means 'get back'. That's where he wants to belong.
  • Lehto: Press left button to Sprint! Go, go!
  • Wilson: Wow, look at the rain!
  • Lehto: I love the new rain system.
  • Scott: Look, you go inside and you don't see the rain anymore.
  • O'Donnell: You see the pity-patter pattern from the roof?
  • Lehto: Mhmm. Sage did a good job with that.
  • Scott: A few buzzing flies...
  • Wilson: I like the lighting too. It's creepy.
  • O'Donnell: It's messy. It's spooky.
  • O'Donnell: The Jackals are not there.
  • Lehto: Come on.
  • O'Donnell: Sorry. I meant Skirmisher.
  • O'Donnell: Here we go. First battle.
  • O'Donnell: Kat!
  • O'Donnell: Ohh... Killed that one.
  • Scott: Hopefully we will get to see my, uh, my first appearance in a Halo game... as Falcon Pilot Number Two.
  • Lehto: Yes!
  • Scott: Oh wait, that was it! We missed it, awwww...
  • Lehto: This is one of my favorite areas. The exit out of this is, er, pioneer barn, out into the pastor. It's a great Firefight map too. This is so cool, we integrated all the multiplayer and Firefight spaces into the campaign.
  • Lehto: There was a big pain in the butt, I don't know if we do it again, if we do this game over, uh, but I think overall, it served its, uh, purpose well here.
  • Scott: Field's great to me. 'cause you, you see all these spaces and several different kinds of effects. It's just really cool.
  • Lehto: Hey, you get to play through the daytime here when it's raining. And then in Firefight, we can turn the rain off, we can brighten up. We did that a lot for the multiplayer maps. Thank goodness I had help in this project, because we had so many water features in the game.
  • O'Donnell: You did the first waterfall on Halo, in Halo 1.
  • Lehto: That's right.
  • O'Donnell: I remember that. Snoqualmie Falls. As soon as you moved out to Seattle, you started using the Seattle floors.
  • Lehto: Hey, hey, hey. (Marty laughs) You gotta get inspired!
  • Wilson: Oh, pick up those plasmas!
  • Scott: We probably had more waterfalls in this game than all the other Halo games...
  • Lehto & Scott: Combined.
  • Lehto: Yes, we did.
  • Scott: We had, uh, FX artist Jeff Palmer do a lot of the particle side...
  • Lehto: Yeah, the effects are amazing. I loved the stuffs that he did. With the water particles coming down, they look amazing.
  • O'Donnell: Yeah, they look so cool. And if you stand up in the...
  • Lehto: My favorite part about this is that the engineers made some changes to physics, so when they, uh, when all the Spartans run in the water, they all got swept away. Down the river.
  • Scott: There was this point you can't even go against the current.
  • Lehto: Yeah. Just getting...
  • Scott & Lehto: ...sweep away.
  • Lehto: Killed the mission every time.
  • O'Donnell: There's patching fog.
  • Lehto: Man, what a great atmosphere.
  • O'Donnell: This is the first game we had a, you guys probably don't even notice this, but a balance between combat dialogue and mission dialogue and cinematic dialogue. And the way they all flows together. Volume balance is as good as we ever done. Better than we ever done.
  • Scott: He's really angry about it.
  • O'Donnell: Finally learning.
  • Lehto: It's the damn Covenant.
  • O'Donnell: Marcus... I'm scared...
  • Lehto: More Moas...
  • O'Donnell: Ride them! Why don't we hit the Moas? Y'know, most people will melee the Moas as soon as they see them. It's impossible to not to. {Brief Pause} Y'know, for a while, every time you kill a Moa, Kat would laugh, 'cause she had a, uh, little response when killing an alien. So sometimes you hear this bug, that we were...
  • Lehto: Why did you take that out?
  • Wilson: ...that she was kinda cruel.
  • O'Donnell: So we actually had to take that out.
  • Lehto: Aww… Bummer.
  • O'Donnell: As soon as I heard it they did a saved film of her laughing when you kill a Moa, it was so good, I wanted to keep it.
  • Lehto: I like the bug where you can kill Kat and she'd come back as a zombie. She would come back with that (imitates zombie moan, others laugh) voice and just go follow you around with that (imitates zombie moan).
  • Scott: I missed that one.
  • Lehto: The best thing ever.
  • Lehto: What?
  • Wilson & O'Donnell: Yeah.
  • O'Donnell: The guy we just heard.
  • Lehto: Thanks.
  • O'Donnell: But better than Office Space was Band of Brothers.
  • Lehto: For fans, that previous encounter right there is so fun to do with vehicle only, just plow through them. Back and forth. Plow through them, mow them down like a giant harvester.
  • Scott: I never tried it that way.
  • O'Donnell: Yes, he is the famous, irrelevant place. The thing is, Corporal Travis.
  • Scott & Lehto: Yeah.
  • O'Donnell: And we never see Corporal Travis ever again. It's really depressing to me.
  • Scott: I love how we brought back the tuning fork. It was always one of my favorite vehicles.
  • Wilson: Oh yeah, it's so iconic.
  • Lehto: The 'Spirit'.
  • Scott: Oh, I'm sorry. The 'Spirit'.
  • Lehto: I never call that though. I can't. It's really far away from a tuning fork.
  • Wilson: Oh my God. I love the sound of that grenade.
  • Lehto: Although, you know, the thing cost more than, like, half our vehicle combined.
  • O'Donnell: What? The tuning fork?
  • Lehto: 'Cause it had, like, individual seats with little handles, and cushions, and everything. There's, what, 8 seats on the sides…
  • O'Donnell: Yeah, see? That's why we had to cut the music.
  • Lehto: No, we cut it way back. It became affordable.
  • Scott: I like the different designs of the, uh, windmills.
  • Lehto: Yeah, the big, various turbine-like kinda things. I don't know what you call those…
  • Scott: The little circular ones?
  • O'Donnell: Turbines?
  • Lehto: Hmm. They're cool.
  • O'Donnell:
  • O'Donnell: See, there's some example of nice combat dialogue response behavior.
  • Lehto: Falcon. Finally. You get a troop carrier in here.
  • Scott: So this part you're leaving the kiva area, the little residential, farming community. And you're-
  • Lehto: We didn't even bother how much effort we put in to build real, human-scale environment in the kivas. I guess-
  • O'Donnell: We should tell everybody that some of the kivas are built for pottery manufacturing, and some of them are for…
  • O'Donnell: Agriculture.
  • Scott: Aquaculture is, uh, farming fish. Fishery. We thought about all that stuff, we went in to a lot of detail thinking about who are the people who lived there, what they did, how they survived in this rough, scrap of land on top of the mountain.
  • Lehto: We, uh, debated on that for about six to eight months. Drove some of the artists absolutely insane. But, uh, that came together pretty well.
  • Wilson: I seem to remember going through one of those things and, like, breaking every pot in there, and then realizing there are, like, a couple civilians standing there, actually feeling embarrassed that I just went through and break their house.
  • Lehto: They were pretty upset.
  • Lehto: We should have some civilians alive standing around. Complain when you broke their stuff.
  • Scott: You're a jerk!
  • Lehto: Yeah.
  • Scott: That would have been possible.

The player, having exited the Falcon several seconds ago, engages the Jackals and Grunts outside the Visegrád Relay.

  • Lehto: Ah! The outpost! It is a great encounter!
  • O'Donnell: The communication outpost.
  • Lehto: Niles did a great job on this.
  • O'Donnell: I would see how the music ends in this one. 'Cause, this has to expand, but still feel like an actual ending.

The screen fades from the player entering the outpost to the outpost's door closing, skipping the defending section of the level.

  • O'Donnell: Oh, they caught it, one of the places where it's gonna go long. Ah, and it fades in to one of the spooky areas.
  • Wilson: Hm. Alright.
  • O'Donnell: Now here's a question I have about this mission dialogue.
  • O'Donnell: Now, so, Carter says he can't see a thing, and he tells you to turn on your night vision. Does that help him see better?
  • Lehto: He broadcast that to all of Noble Team.
  • Wilson: It would be a good idea to turn on your night vision.
  • Lehto: It was a helpful suggestion. Why didn't you change it?
  • O'Donnell: I should have.
  • Lehto: Man, you're lame.
  • O'Donnell: I know.
  • O'Donnell: Think that's Ron Livingston again.
  • Lehto: Plop!
  • Wilson: I love the way she snatches it.
  • Wilson: Gimme that.
  • Lehto: Oh, Marty…
  • Lehto: I hate to ask you to break that, mixed that back. I don't know how many times.
  • O'Donnell: What?
  • Lehto: The (imitates Sára's Hungarian).
  • O'Donnell: Come on, that's perfect!
  • Wilson: There's some amazing motion capture animation coming up.
  • Lehto: This is…
  • O'Donnell: Itt vannak.
  • Lehto: Crazy!
  • O'Donnell: …and that means 'they are still here'. That's what she's saying.
  • Wilson: Yeah.
  • Lehto: Okay. There it is, and Marty goes off the rail with music.
  • Lehto: What possessed you here?
  • O'Donnell: It's a confusing time!
  • Lehto: I love this!
  • Wilson: And the Elite hits its head on the door there, thump! There we go.
  • O'Donnell: This is, this actually is me playing, which is funny, because you think I wouldn't go on playing that.
  • Lehto: Watch that grab on the door (struggling grunts)
  • O'Donnell: Two, handler her!
  • O'Donnell: I love this door.
  • Wilson: The Jorge door slam is really cool.
  • O'Donnell: Hit the strings.
  • Wilson: Chumm!
  • O'Donnell: Nice… I'm digging in.
  • Speaker: I love the way the Elites kind of draw you in. Enjoy indeed. A little boom. So many men’s duty... kill.
  • Speaker: Oh, this guy’s scary.
  • Speaker: Yeah, we have the option of bringing back the flashlight. It’s nice, like Halo 1.
  • Speaker: This is a nice play. We tried that first, but then it was a little too retro. Like, "Okay, got your two D-cell batteries in your helmet."
  • Speaker: It’s the same click noise though, from Halo 1. We decided never to change that click no matter what.
  • Speaker: Just a little too great. Doesn't mean the first *Halo* had a sort of battery system where you had a certain amount.
  • Speaker: System failing too. In Halo 3, you just turned it on and it was on all the time, right? And then ODST had the night vision device.
  • Speaker: This is actual night vision. We didn't have that in Halo 3. We had visor mode in ODST.
  • Speaker: Well, similar, but yeah, so this was a moment where like Jorge is actually taking his helmet off and showing his face to a civilian, which is kind of like... kind of established as "Spartans don't do that." So he’s kind of trying to establish a connection with the people of Reach.
  • Speaker: Even your date?
  • Speaker: What? He is sometimes.
  • Speaker: Oh, and we have a little tension between Emile and Jorge.
  • Speaker: I like the way that turned out. Initially, it was a little over the top, too many scenes.
  • Speaker: Well, we actually nailed that. Yes.
  • Speaker: Yeah, we’re happy. Worked on it.
  • Speaker: Yeah, we did. The whole thing with Emile is that he doesn't have respect for civilians so much. Like, he’s a little more hardcore, doesn't like weakness.
  • Speaker: See, I’m not for them either, because I mean these Spartan-IIIs were made to quell the rebel uprisings, exactly. So the disconnect would be...
  • Speaker: "Arraigned like cattle." We sort of get Noble, Carter’s touch... .
  • Speaker: Oh my god, the Winter Contingency is like a planet-wide contingency plan for basically the Covenant discovering Reach. It’s a call to evacuate the planet, destroy all the data cores, anything you can—all tech has to be neutralized in order to prevent the Covenant from accessing it and possibly finding other human planets.
  • Speaker: Sword Base. Coming for Sword Base. Sword Base is far up north. Just about every camera move in this entire game feels handheld or like in a location that’s...
  • Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that was the whole plan for the way we shot this. Because it was more or less of a human story, we would see spots and places that we wanted to justify the camera—not have so much sort of flying, romantic camera.
  • Speaker: And then we have a lot of really nice sort of overlay work. I believe Scott had a little to do with that, you know, worked a little bit on those like security cameras.
  • Speaker: Exactly. Yeah, now one of the funny things for people to notice—but they won’t—every time you play this cinematic, the music will be slightly different.
  • Speaker: I didn't know that.
  • Speaker: Yeah, well, things are slightly different times depending on all sorts of conditions.
  • Speaker: Is that a bug or a feature?
  • Speaker: That’s a feature. No, it’s a feature. The forklift!
  • Speaker: Forky! Porky! You know, I gotta say, I don’t know why we changed it, but I really loved the forklift when you could actually raise and lower the load.
  • Speaker: We had to take that out because you could stuff it under a Mule and launch the Mule into outer space.
  • Speaker: There’s a bug against that? There’s a Mule? Okay.
  • Speaker: But the target... I’m sorry, the target locator. You know what I call this thing over here?
  • Speaker: The pickup garage door opener? Target locator. And you pick that up. Great. Make fun of game design, go ahead. And I will make fun of music.
  • Speaker: Okay, I call it the "Oh my god, are we really gonna make this thing?"
  • Speaker: Chris Carney, I could look at the terror on your face at this time.
  • Speaker: What was this, two months prior to the end here?
  • Speaker: This is kind of a later inclusion into the sandbox. The designers came to me and said, "Hey, we want a device that launches artillery from space and just continually pounds an area." And you know, generally one explosion is pretty expensive, but when there are six explosions all happening within a short amount of time, it can be really taxing. So we spent a little bit of time tuning that just to make it right. But you know, it’s so powerful to be able to just launch this barrage of death from the skies. It ended up being a really good choice for the game.
  • Speaker: See, you're actually able to—look at the screen shake!
  • Speaker: Yeah, a little bit. That’s really effective. The exterior architecture of Sword Base. Oh, wasted it on that. Right? Get that little piggy.
  • Speaker: And you should be hearing all of this—the whole base is being bombarded by the giant Covenant Corvette. The Corvette is flying right overhead.
  • Speaker: And they’re awesome looking. Guys are much harder to kill, I swear. Something used to be...
  • Speaker: Oh, you’re just getting slower.
  • Speaker: That’s Joe. Then with a special red spot—it's harder to get those, because you have to time both of them.
  • Speaker: Oh, nice! Actually, that’s pretty good. So those spikes on the back—like making them fly?
  • Speaker: Yeah.
  • Speaker: What’s the point? You blow that off a little bit, right in the worms. It hurts.
  • Speaker: That guy just took off his crusty shell and exposed himself underneath. He's always exposed. New Hunters gotta go commando.
  • Speaker: Caramel center! Delicious.
  • Speaker: No, you guys see the new grenade effects? When they land close to you...
  • Speaker: Yeah, that’s amazing. How did you do that?
  • Speaker: Now we have a global digital signal processing ability, so we can put a filter over all sounds—except music! So keep music out of it. Put it all over everything else, and then add a little looping, and it all happens at the same time.
  • Speaker: Yeah, I can’t believe we pulled this off, Steve. Alright, that was some thick smoke.
  • Speaker: Battle exactly. Going around. Yeah, well, that’s a real Corvette, right? That’s not a bet in this?
  • Speaker: I have a real-scale model sitting up there. We had a couple of new bits of tech that let us fill areas with thicker smoke than before.
  • Speaker: Wow. A drone from some bay area effect? I’m working on that.
  • Speaker: Look, I think this is beautiful. Remember, this used to look like a turkey? The Covenant ship?
  • Speaker: No! Oh, Marcus went through four iterations of that ship before we got her. I was looking in the shutters.
  • Speaker: Jorge! I remember we had the attitude of the female Spartan just a little bit different for that line. Especially as Jorge has a big hand on her shoulder. I never really just have a little attitude.
  • Speaker: Ah, here she comes. Halsey!
  • Speaker: Halsey. So the smoke wasn't always that thick in that spot. The environment artists kept asking for thicker and thicker smoke because the area...
  • Speaker: Hello! It wasn't finished. There we go. And she knows Jorge now, and she’s not his mom. He says "Mom" because—ma’am? Are we gonna talk about the "ma’am"?
  • Speaker: Exactly. Well, he said it in four different ways. You’d say "Mummy."
  • Speaker: And of course, Jen Taylor, the voice of Cortana, also plays Halsey. Because it’s her brain doodads that are inside of Cortana, right?
  • Speaker: Yes, why it makes sense that she made her sound the same voice.
  • Speaker: Of course, she’s got a little... I would say this was probably like our biggest technical challenge, to actually get a believable face acting. I mean, we’re looking right at her for an extended period of time.
  • Speaker: And this is one of the times when we actually used Face-Over, right?
  • Speaker: Yeah, we did the voice first and we cut it in, and then you guys shot an actress.
  • Speaker: Yeah, we shot that lip-sync, basically lip-syncing to Jen's. Did we do Jorge here too?
  • Speaker: Yeah, it was me. That was you!
  • Speaker: That’s why he... [Laughter]. Hakeem Kae-Kazim was Jorge. Sunil did Jun.
  • Speaker: So the blinking in the eyes, that’s all part of that Face-Over?
  • Speaker: Yes. Yes, we used different metrics for that. A brand new system that we implemented for this game. Facial acting, actually getting that right.
  • Speaker: Yeah, it was Tom Isaac. Oh look at her, just... oh that was... there was some very nice animation that we got, and she just held onto it a little bit longer. Because Kat’s a little sassy right there. She’s getting a bit cheeky with Halsey.
  • Speaker: I like the way she looks over at Carter in a moment. Just making...
  • Speaker: What is the total span of time that the game takes place?
  • Speaker: It’s actually just a few days. Seven, maybe two or three days.
  • Speaker: A little longer than that. No, in the middle of the game, we take a pretty hefty break.
  • Speaker: Yeah, how does this fit in with the canon from the original?
  • Speaker: Perfectly. Perfectly. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. It syncs up.
  • Speaker: Yeah, we were really sensitive to that.
  • Speaker: This is our hats off to one of Halo 1's missions: Truth and Reconciliation.
  • Speaker: And here, for this particular camera motion, we used a marked-up 2x4 created where he was actually literally walking live and filming. Like real mo-cap actors.
  • Speaker: He could have fallen to his death there! Actually, when he stepped over the little gap that we put out, and I actually felt like a little queasy.
  • Speaker: Oh, here’s a little child’s voice in... what is that? A child?
  • Speaker: A little pioneer child? Ghost pioneer child?
  • Speaker: Is that really you just singing pitched?
  • Speaker: Do you want to—you don’t want to wreck it for people?
  • Speaker: They ignore any idea.
  • Speaker: Okay, it is... [Laughter]. But it represents the dead children of the planet there.
  • Speaker: It’s kind of creepy. I don’t know. I thought that was creepier.
  • Speaker: Wait, so much of this mission we’re doing with Jun.
  • Speaker: Oh yes, that’s Jun. Who is played by Sunil. Talkative sniper!
  • Speaker: "Talkative" because perfect casting. Well, he’s by himself so much of the time that he can’t help it. He’s going to have to say something.
  • Speaker: Exactly. Yeah, I feel like Sunil lost himself in this. He had some great delight to work with. He had one line that was so sad, we’ll talk about that later.
  • Speaker: Yes, well we’re preparing them in this bit.
  • Speaker: Yes. Yeah, you got the ingredients ready to make it. This is also a multiplayer map.
  • Speaker: Oh, we know that! Yeah. Now since this was our third assassination in a row, this might be a good time to talk about the assassinations.
  • Speaker: Yeah, and how they happened. Initially, it was one of the animators just fooling around with this amazing idea of coming up and then performing a fancy melee. I think they initially called it something like that.
  • Speaker: Don’t get bit! Huh? The "Quetta," as we call it. The wheel-hub. Don’t shoot him right away!
  • Speaker: Yeah, I wanted to see him put ropes around it. By the way, this is the only time we hit somebody. That’s the plan.
  • Speaker: Don’t remind me how many man-months we put into this thing. The Mule was in several other missions, or at least two other missions. It was a really hard character to deal with and it unfortunately kept taking a backseat to more important things, like finishing the game.
  • Speaker: Came out okay though.
  • Speaker: I think it came out hard. One of the things we did is we made sort of the sound that the Guta makes... it's never occluded by anything. Because there was a point when you were far away, if there were too many rocks in front of them, you wouldn't hear it.
  • Speaker: And we all know what you say. I mean, it was still cool.
  • Speaker: The Mule was rideable at one point. We could board it and run up its back and stuff. Shove a grenade into its mouth was good.
  • Speaker: And wasn’t there a point where Elites were gonna ride the Mule?
  • Speaker: Yes! Oh man, we went through so many different iterations on that thing. We had the Elites riding, we had Grunts riding it. They had like shoulder-mounted cannons! It was really goofy at one point. I don’t think people understand how even painful... it even vomited out like hot rocks, really.
  • Speaker: Never saw that one.
  • Speaker: Good. That would kill people from it. It's a bit asset at one time.
  • Speaker: Yes, a lot of ideas for that guy. Hello, frustrating.
  • Speaker: That’s some rupture. Oh yeah, I love that guy. Local Seattle guy. Yes. The magic opening thing... they’ve got remotes!
  • Speaker: Once again, a little tension between the Spartans and the suspected rebels.
  • Speaker: Suspacted rebels, yes. Now you know the deal is you can kill the rebels by accident or on purpose without getting penalized because they’re carrying a gun. They’re armed.
  • Speaker: Yeah, don’t try to do it in the city. No. The civilians, that’s not good.
  • Speaker: Hey there, Stosh! Chad... Jones? Oh no no, lieutenant. What it is?
  • Speaker: Yeah, we got Stosh right here with us. All members of Bungie.
  • Speaker: Who came up with that? Are all people at Bungie represented?
  • Speaker: Actually, no. Are you, sir? Yes, just a huge list of Steve Scott, I believe. I started digital FX.
  • Speaker: The lighting on this whole night mission... oh, another one. No, this was nothing major. A major challenging gameplay, right? Because like you need a TV...
  • Speaker: Oh, you broke a snack! Nicely done.
  • Speaker: The lighting, yeah. It’s a night mission but you need to be able to see. So did you see the moons in the sky? I know, everything, son. But it’s very effective, like how it feels like night but you know... great power. Very cool effects.
  • Speaker: That’s all Chatbox, who’s also on your team right now. Oh look at that. Betsy is so... Jason Jones gets to be a lieutenant? I want to fit on purpose. Oh, take out!
  • Speaker: Very nice use of the loading forklift. That’s the forklift. Explode! It’s powered by propane.
  • Speaker: Absolutely. Oh wow, that was a bummer right? Right to the front. Noble Six, are you sure about that? All right. Oh, ringing! It’s pretty upset.
  • Speaker: Stosh! This is the multiplayer local, I believe. The Dark Corrie? The Cloister? There we go. Hopefully, it’s like he’s preparing ingredients for something... like a great analogy for that. I don’t know what that’d be like what he’s doing now is he’s sort of boring just to say remote back.
  • Speaker: As a peasant army, you know? As a military guy you have some sort of slang for it.
  • Speaker: Yeah. Preparing a souffle or preparing something.
  • Speaker: I’m making something! Yes, ready to go. Now, here’s a vista. Beautiful shot. Now this is kind of meant to be sort of reminiscent of like if you ever see those cowboy movies where they just come up on...
  • Speaker: Yeah, I think this is the first of your butt shots too that you have in the game. You're already absolutely having this a beautiful plot of this Spartan and should be shown as much as possible. I like a lot of Kat's "romantic barbarian."
  • Speaker: Yes, exactly. That would be romantic. I’m going to be innovated as well. Here we are.
  • Speaker: Oh yeah, more vehicles than ever before. This is Auntie Dot. Anti-Dot, which you came up with her name because that’s the way you wanted her to come across, like your Auntie Dot.
  • Speaker: Yeah, it was kind of like a temporary thing and then it just kind of like fit—that she’s not like a mother computer or anything like that. She’s more of a sort of a helpful, friendly computer.
  • Speaker: And here’s the first of the harkening back to the original *Halo* music.
  • Speaker: So this cinematic probably got worked on longer than any other cinematic in the game just because of the sheer technical challenge. Here we go, of having so many vehicles on screen.
  • Speaker: Yes, it’s time to see and come right there. Actually, he should have said he’s going to bake that cake.
  • Speaker: Cringe! And we all sort of fell in love with that line at Bungie, but Marcus was determined to cut it no matter what.
  • Speaker: Marcus, do you realize that it’s still in the English subtitles?
  • Speaker: I realize that’s great. That first person... I wish we could drive like that. That was gonna be scary. What’s this? Come on, what’s the little helmet?
  • Speaker: Oh yeah, the flying Levers! For a long time we had Dave Levers' screams in the head crash.
  • Speaker: That was good. Dave Levers, the cinematics producer. And his scream sounds are in there as a skip-fraction. So if we play it... are we still here?
  • Speaker: He’s convinced they’re not! No, they’re not there right now.
  • Speaker: Oh, good one! We just heard it. Wasn't there but it’s a high skip-fraction so everyone’s allowed to hear the screaming of Dave Levers. We didn't want to subject people to that all the time.
  • Speaker: This is a really good encounter, man. This level really shaped up. I love this opening encounter. I love the way if you disable the turrets, the Grunts jump out, and then when they’re back on, the Grunts jump back in. You think you’ve taken care of it.
  • Speaker: Grenade launcher. Brand new weapon. And the whole thing we established, like the feeling of the big push of multi-vehicle... I mean we continue with—there’s so much going on in the sky. I just saw an explosion!
  • Speaker: Yeah, big battle up there. Hopefully, they will take a little time and pan out over the horizon because definitely one of the big ideas that we wanted to sell in this level is the idea of the big battle from the opening cinematic. All of those vehicles all active at once to, you know, dozens of individual units that you’re fighting.
  • Speaker: And then out on the background, we want to give the sense that you’re part of this large, large war that’s happening all over the planet, not just your local battle right in front of you anymore. Throughout *Reach*, it's always about what you're doing, but there are so many other battles out just beyond the ridge.
  • Speaker: All those battles out in the distance you can do because of—what was the name of the technique? The "imposter system"? Here we got our LEDs. The effigy! Boom, look at those favorites.
  • Speaker: Oh that’s a nice shot. Chatbox did that. The ringleader. Now watch it, it's gonna shoot the thing... oh, there goes the family! Longswords. And watch their twirl—big swirl out there. I made them spin around. So much stuff I don’t see unless... next time I play, I’m gonna watch for that.
  • Speaker: You will. Oh here we go, rail ride! First rail ride. We weren't sure if this was gonna work or not. I enjoy this because you can play a different way every time. You peer on the other side, you get in this side, you can shoot what you want to shoot. Or player co-op. Baddies take a lot of design work. Plus you get to look out at this incredibly gigantic... I love the design of the rocks.
  • Speaker: We’re speechless. We shouldn't be.
  • Speaker: I know, years now. Welcome. I love the skyboxes. Is she really—you blow the stability off them.
  • Speaker: Yeah we spent a lot of time on those. I want to go there and play around. It’s simply that whole area there—it should be some giant multiplayer level.
  • Speaker: Things like Zack freaked out when we asked him to build this area! Like, "What, 3/4 mile of combat from there?" Oh my gosh, just huge.
  • Speaker: Whose crazy idea was the old EMP problem? Now this is a huge invasion map I’m about to enter here. We just met this pilot and then... okay, going down. And do we ever hear from him again?
  • Speaker: So Jorge says "Lock your armor!" on this one because we have lockable armor which saves us from impact. But unfortunately, the pilot... Jorge! Come on, waking up again.
  • Speaker: So just locking the armor somehow involved a gel layer?
  • Speaker: Yes. Does it? Yeah, of course. Like it’s unlocking it there.
  • Speaker: Oh we’ve just got to know them. That’s kind of a reference to Halo 3 where Master Chief’s armor is locked up and that’s how he survives the fall.
  • Speaker: What a circle! Served to the door down because of the 200... cheddar with the jetpacks. I love—have you ever commandeered a Banshee on this level?
  • Speaker: This is a lot of fun. No I haven’t tried that.
  • Speaker: Banshees come down close there on top of the road, you can jump on.
  • Speaker: All right, must be ready to power down. So the notion of the jetpack came in pretty early but I think it was from an environment perspective and an event perspective. It was kind of a scary thing. Where could you go? Everywhere! How can you break the maps in many ways?
  • Speaker: Steve, when we talked about this at the end of this mission, this was slotted as one of the massive "resource bonfires." Which I think we had what, maybe two or three of them in our previous games?
  • Speaker: Yes.
  • Speaker: How many do we have in this game?
  • Speaker: Probably about six or seven. Crazy. One maybe—actually it was probably about 15. They just kept adding them, but we couldn't cut them.
  • Speaker: Well if you had really nice teammates they would have pulled a little closer to the... make a jump. So far... now how did you guys do that mo-cap?
  • Speaker: Okay that was some mo-cap but that was mostly Pat Duke.
  • Speaker: Who’s the voice of the pilot on this? Matt Graham has been... he’s the guy from *Lost*. Ethan from *Lost*. Oh, William Mapother. Yes.
  • Speaker: Oh, good friends with Peter O’Brien. All right and they’re not really well... oh but that’s so much stuff for one area. Chat did a great job on that. The size of the environment! That is solid.
  • Speaker: Oh my god, freaking crazy! Boom! This turned out really nice. The... I love how far the pan saves the whole thing. Incredible. How does that ship sneak up on you like that?
  • Speaker: It came out of cloak, came out just above the clouds. It’s close, no one can feel it.
  • Speaker: So we’re gonna fight Scarabs at some point, right? Get rid of that, we’ll patch the game.
  • Speaker: I think this is my favorite thing in the game. We in the audio department call this the "Scarab Tease." That was Scarab Tease One.
  • Speaker: Once again, a little bit of tension here. Jorge... minutes, minutes. Do not cool tattoo.
  • Speaker: This is Joel on fire this time, because you say we learn a little bit more about surviving as well. That thing’s crushing us and we’re waiting for backup. Game dynamics here going on, exactly. Went down with the ship.
  • Speaker: I still remember when you first described this scene. We’re sitting in the apartment and you had a little storyboard of it. Look in the cave behind them and all things final here. Kat drawing pictures and then it all came exactly together.
  • Speaker: Yeah the picture Steve provided earlier on never made it in the game though. What exactly is she drawing?
  • Speaker: Well that’s gonna have to remain a mystery, but it’s the reason for our amateur game. So we captured the two actors in the booth at the same time on this one, right?
  • Speaker: Yeah, Freddie and Alona in the recording booth at the same time. And that got some really nice chemistry together. "Destroy Covenant connectivity." Now the synchronous orbit above us.
  • Speaker: Now you hear her drawing, because we didn't actually see her drawing. So we had to pretend like we heard it when we cut away.
  • Speaker: Very system. Find out we should be able to learn until it is really what she is—exactly what she just drew it. She draws nice. I love this. Thank you for sharing.
  • Speaker: Very nice for a capable transport. And the single most expensive piece of lighting! Lee, the lighting, the facial animation, the acting is all really top-notch. And it’s kind of a quiet scene compared to the big explosion cinematics that we usually do, but it’s such a nice respite from that action and you get to see a little bit more of the characters. I think it’s really successful.
  • Speaker: Well, I’d love to think of the Spartans actually coming up with a plan, being smart. Not about that one for a while. Did you compare this to *Magnificent Seven* or was it *Seven Samurai*? Or *Band of Brothers* or whatever—it’s or even *Saving Private Ryan*. You need to get more than just all those action scenes; you have to have a little private moments where you get a little sense of who these characters are when they interact with each other. It’s important to keep that in there.
  • Speaker: I think we missed the little transition of the helicopter blades coming in. Wow. I mean we were talking about this little environment—the cave was built in a little shoebox. And this environment underneath the betrayer... there we go.
  • Speaker: This was our E3 demo. It’s one thing I want to note about the Falcon landing is that I was able to finally realize a long-standing dream of mine, which is to have a dynamically generated jet-wash for the vehicles. It’s another thing that came on way late. Mike Baldwin’s the programmer who was working on that and it makes the Falcon feel so much more real.
  • Speaker: But it was beautiful with the beachy encounter. Quite magical about this beach encounter, about this whole environment. I think it’s the music.
  • Speaker: You know when we first played this music in E3, there were several people who were like, "Is this the way all the music’s gonna sound?" And in Reach they’re a little bit terrified.
  • Speaker: Marty, with this music intentional?
  • Speaker: That was... it was completely unintentional. I know where it came from; I don’t know how it happened.
  • Speaker: Now the fun thing about this encounter too is that you can keep coming back out. If you stay outside, it’s just an endless wave.
  • Speaker: Oh no, they just keep coming in, right? It’s a blast. See if you can do it. Oh, in a while it’s going down. Lighting around that one... look a little dirty to me.
  • Speaker: Romantic big reveal. That’s a cool holographic girl. Like that. Who built that?
  • Speaker: Ray built some of it, Ken built some... we had a whole scene in here with all the actors talking and Kat talking and all—so cut all for the better?
  • Speaker: Often! Absolutely. I love how the lights come on revealing the favor. Watch the kick... oh yeah, salute! Get back out of there. Space combat! I love these transitions. This is actually really happening, from planet surface to space, utilizing all the really cool things we can do with our atmospheric systems.
  • Speaker: This was old CJ. It was beautiful. Like the sequence that you came up with for her... . Now you’ll hear—I love the crackle.
  • Speaker: Oh yeah, looking for that. It’s actually in the Space Shuttle. So Mark Goldsworthy's magic out here on this guy. It took I don’t know how many months and about how much artwork with the sky matches. We go through at least five different skybox transitions.
  • Speaker: The 3D guys hated us for all these shots getting so close to home.
  • Speaker: Yeah, but like what a job idea. I love that there’s a camera attached to this. CJ showed me the Space Shuttle launch that actually does have some camera heads to the Africa hearts... very Reach.
  • Speaker: Pretty speed up. Space dust. Beautiful. He’s just a seamless transition from ground to space. Fantastic.
  • Speaker: Frenetic gameplay. No loading! The feeling of the Sabres. The Seraph is crazy too. That’s a vehicle that was one of the very first vehicles ever made for *Halo* back in '98.
  • Speaker: That’s right! It lived all the way through. Originally a tank—I built it! It was a tank and it was based off a horseshoe crab. And it sat there... there was one in the Halo 2 hangar, yes. Jump on with the heretic Elite. Space wafer!
  • Speaker: So at this point, how they built this thing... it is insanely detailed for how huge. At this point the space level has sort of become—I wouldn't say passé, but like part of the Reach experience. But in terms of what it represents in terms of effort and departure from what we’ve done before, it’s pretty extraordinary to have that experience in there.
  • Speaker: Yeah it is crazy. We put so much time into making this a reality for this kind of novel gameplay moment. We planned those early on, we had them up on the board in our little war room when we ever first built the campaign. "Fly to space"—that was one of the big things we just sought out to do.
  • Speaker: Oh there’s Jorge. I think he becomes a pixel and says, "Hey does waiting across right there?" In a little fold... but how small he was in this! I never saw what you guys had to play my boy.
  • Speaker: You’re an old man. I just thought we were looking at the planet. There he comes. These guys are good at just imagining ourselves in space. They just like kick off in a hole. Just for break.
  • Speaker: Now CJ was like... I did watch the kind of giddy schoolgirl when he came up with that shot. It’s such a beautiful... I love it when he can say "in the future." Subtle to have the video images on the screen. We had one too many characters in this game unless we wanted it to feel like somebody’s reporting from the field and on the news you just have the photo up.
  • Speaker: Yeah you don’t need animations like they’re marketing back to some of the space music. Very open. We have this little "target confirmed." And then this—we had to put that same filter, a different filter, but a global filter on everything so all the sound checked out. Sounds different.
  • Speaker: Low gravity. Low ground. How you get that with enemy? You slow it down. Uppercut! I took us a while to come up with that name: Operation Uppercut. See it’s all digression because it’s like low grav... no where apparently just well a little bit. Oh look at him down low! But not much, because we have to activate the ship systems in order to get gravity back online.
  • Speaker: I like those Grunts cups... each other. I believe that was a reentry pack he’s got on his back. You see that for gameplay? No, get back to filming.
  • Speaker: See when you go to outer space you automatically put the reentry pack on? Actually after it attaches to you and say, "Yes sir." See he’s got a reentry pack. It’s amazing what nobody has—Spartans have specific reentry packs that actually hook onto machines, hook onto your back when you get in the seat of the Sabre.
  • Speaker: But the rest of the soldiers we don’t... they’re expendable. I don’t have the... there’s always—gonna fly out. What was the plan again?
  • Speaker: The plan was always to get out of there on the Pelican that they came in on. But the one thing with Pelicans is it's usually a one-trip deal and we're probably more like a half-a-trip deal.
  • Speaker: Oh, erosion! Explosion! Boooo! Savannah... hello Pelicans. Wow. No that was... oh so sad. Do that really well. Whenever it’s sad you hear the monks come in.
  • Speaker: All those poor innocent souls. How many monks did we use, Marty?
  • Speaker: It’s not exactly true. I did have some monks in the study. It’s like the bridge. This one here is just me many times. As many singers as Cat Stevens.
  • Speaker: I like that's what... over him. I get all the troops around the planet always. That what we’re looking for? Replacement? Tell me again. One-hit kill! Hello! We went in camo, it takes good. Yeah, I guess.
  • Speaker: And up in the sky there—why wouldn't they see it? But really good long... saw us getting closer. We’re on approach, we're on a refueling... yet I have to say this is one of the more complex missions we’ve ever done with the wafer. It used to be more complex, probably would have been another 40 minutes of gameplay.
  • Speaker: At least. The Elites are amazingly difficult. We spent so much effort getting the AI for the Elites to be amazing. I looked at Halo 1 and *2* as a good example of how we did it right—simplicity of the design.
  • Speaker: Now you guys probably know this but if you don’t go right back to the loading dock or whatever, can you stay here after we stop talking? You can just talk to the Marines forever. So the Marines will stay with you and you can just keep talking about—so you’ll hear all the fun kind of that with all the Marines. So you can sort of build up a real sort of connection and rapport.
  • Speaker: So that when they don't make it with you... all of those bolts. So it’s great detail. Oh man yeah look at that! Such a good character.
  • Speaker: "Well I’ll go—good news and bad news." And there's some bad... spurted some fire and a thrust in English toast which means "The only way off this slag heap is gravity." That sounds like bad news. This is not gonna talk about good.
  • Speaker: Well that was the good news. Gets worse. Oh I tell you, when you take off your helmet that means some sort of bad news is coming. "I’m gonna have to fire it manually." "No, no what? Wait..."
  • Speaker: "I’ll make you—see you later." What are you doing, Six? The first Spartan who sacrificed himself is Jorge. Reach duty... so long. And he just picks him up and he must shoot him in the right direction just by throwing him so he lands in the right spot. Reach total random location.
  • Speaker: Goodbye. Engage that reentry pack at some point. Slipspace! There it goes. Look at the size of that carrier. Because slipspace ruptured. Beautiful. And he did a really good thing with timing the debris.
  • Speaker: Now technically, mission... look, everything. Where did Jorge go? He was just... you know what? I don’t think Jorge is necessarily dead. We might be in the same place Master Chief’s in. Because those random... oh yeah he’s waiting for them on that mysterious planet hangar, sipping tea.
  • Speaker: So I wonder how many people when seeing this cinematic at home cut to the "signal loss" screen and thought that they actually had a problem with their cable?
  • Speaker: My TV broke! Yeah. Jorge, sad. Let's have a moment of silence here. Oh waking... Rob?
  • Speaker: Easing shot. That’s pretty cool. The only thing he has is a little like a limp and a hurt arm. Now the respect, he just says a sigh off... that’s all these guys. He’s on his arm... so is the reentry pack? Doesn't have jets in it, does it?
  • Speaker: Parish has jets. Has a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some Kool-Aid. I think that was when... you have to find the one. Gosh, where have we seen this scene before? This is a test isn't it? Is it a test to see how dedicated you are?
  • Speaker: Now here’s a shot of the camera to love. Okay I’m walking up the hill. Big reveal... I’m gonna crown another patented butt shot and New Alexandria. See that’s why I think it’s more fun to play as the female. Good point.
  • Speaker: No closer please. Yes the Dodge City is amazing. We’re actually looking out over the entirety of the level there. Wow. No it was funny how many times I played this level and there were no civilians wandering around and then they got in. This is crazy huge.
  • Speaker: This is a player. Pete Stacker’s doing... burn! Kill the birds. Oh but feeding them a teddy bear... oh we had this massive list—I didn't know—the contract items to build: gym bag, more than we could ever stuff into the game. And we broke out in hysterical laughter one day when we found the teddy bear backpack.
  • Speaker: Here we are. Look at all these civilians. One of those women civilians had the funniest hair I’ve ever seen. Remember the hair that looked like an animal that was alive? It was a bug. They got big stick-pins that kind of had a mind of its own, dude.
  • Speaker: Yes. I like the civilian that looks like Bono. Is there a Bono? Oh yeah, fly glasses. Whatever you do, don't shoot the civilians. That’s bad news. It’s pretty much you shoot a civilian in the game is over. Just BAM. This is a great feat and you have to start over.
  • Speaker: This is tough too because you can accidentally kill a civilian because you can’t see what you’re shooting at. Sometimes I’ll shoot at... look at that guy!
  • Speaker: But this is just a fantastic scene that captures the fact that Covenant are everywhere. Yeah they’re attacking the humans and everywhere you go, the Brutes... there’s only so much you can do about it.
  • Speaker: Another one of the big long rail rides that was a production nightmare for the environment guys. Yeah, originally this was not supposed to be a playable zone. Let’s say we pulled it off!
  • Speaker: Wow it was hard to script all this too. Awful lot of scripting. So that’s Coby Bell right now? Coby was in—what's his name—*The Game*? Well I had remembered him from the fire medical... *Third Watch*. Yeah he was a lot of fun to work with.
  • Speaker: Civilian ship! Oh no. Wakeful and astute observers will notice that the ship explodes two frames before the impact of the actual shot. Yeah there’s a targeting laser that’s at the funeral... something something gel layer. Should have looked around.
  • Speaker: The ball! So this is a Firefight space as well coming up. Yes again, I had a lot of flying—nothing in the space racing around in the Hog. So why that whole sequence with the transport exploding? It was something that you had in mind for a long time and were wanting to use. Can you talk a little bit about like what your goal was with that?
  • Speaker: It was a perfect opportunity for us to just showcase the tragedy of human life being lost on the planet. What better way to do that than one of these big ships going down? A couple of different moments throughout the game where we wanted to do that. This turned out to be the perfect location for it though.
  • Speaker: Remember early on talking about wanting to have some civilians some place and making it feel like you have some mission to rescue civilians, to evacuate them, and just see how many... what I like about that particular sequence is that a lot of the emotion, a lot of the story happens almost like a radio play that you listen to.
  • Speaker: Yeah we’re coming up on it. This is another one of those areas where you could do it... you can finish this off in so many different ways. Sandbox really comes through. Notice the green Grunts are not speaking English! Marcus, finally! Thank you so much.
  • Speaker: Do you know what language are speaking? They’re thinking... no come on what is it? No I know they... did some a lot of research. They single-handedly made the alien language work. He had an entire program after he figured out how to make it work that you just typed in English and it came out.
  • Speaker: So basically you press the button?
  • Speaker: No, he actually programmed himself to do this like cool thing. He was the only one who knew how to pronounce the syllables so he had to help us with every actor we had.
  • Speaker: It’s built-in job security right there!
  • Speaker: This is a moment where Kat learns that Jorge is dead. There’s another little music transition that’ll happen. If anyone played this they should notice this, they have to play it again. I always play with the sound way down.
  • Speaker: Transport is away. There’s a little piece of music that was originally thus for the teaser trailer. Back to mama. Just the horns and the cymbal... it’s an own life. Oh look at that! Same food greats.
  • Speaker: That is huge. Now this is like a cinematic that we sort of kept really simple—like there’s no dialogue and totally relying on Marty to carry it with the music. Then there are a few moments like that. Amazing.
  • Speaker: I could have really worked... I walked into Marty’s office a few times like that and I said, "Hey Marty, no pressure, but the entire cinematic rests on your shoulders! You’re gonna make it or break it."
  • Speaker: Yeah, I’m always excited to get those sort of assignments. This mission is another one of those novel gameplay moments akin to space. We’ve never done this kind of thing where we flew from rooftop to rooftop in a vehicle. It took an immense amount of effort to pull this thing off.
  • Speaker: Now here, I know where this is from—this is from our Halo 2 announcement trailer! It looks very much like a shot from... wasn't that the announced trailer? What was that, the reverse shot?
  • Speaker: You know, I appreciate about this too, Lee, that I know that there were probably some people who were saying this cinematic is dead and takes too long. And you kept saying, "No no, music will help the timing on this."
  • Speaker: Absolutely. There’s a nice delivery thing. Freddy is like... really subdued. He’s not supposed to act like... business as usual with Jorge having just died.
  • Speaker: I love the people who—like there’s a lot of fun combat dialogue for them to guess on. In one of the missions, Nathan Fillion—his character, Buck, has his cameo appearance on this level. That is pretty cool.
  • Speaker: There’s several little secret things in this connection. I don’t know if we’re gonna see it. Dan Miller, the designer on this level, he is a human to stick the stuff in there. He’s got more Easter eggs on this level I think than the entire game in total.
  • Speaker: It’s funny too because I was like... probably one of the saddest pieces for music for all the things that happen. We have some love things like this. Good. Oh here we go.
  • Speaker: I mean we should probably rotate our music. We should probably really credit Red Bull for some of Dan Miller’s ideas! Probably so. We had a lot of comedy relief in this level.
  • Speaker: Wait until you get to the nightclub! The lighting in this level and the architecture... some of the best we’ve ever done. And this is a harken back to good old Ivory Tower—good multiplayer map. And if I "destroy," she means push the button! But yes, automatically destroys things.
  • Speaker: I love that. You know why? First, why make it more complex? No bipod. Like if the Spartan used their iPhone hip flexor...
  • Speaker: I know why the Covenant would put a big glowy red button on the front of their very important military asset that blows it up, but we all said, "Forget it."
  • Speaker: Best elevator music no matter what! And what’s funny is you can go in and out of the elevator and it changes from creepy scary music to elevator music, back and forth. It was the one place to like show off our music engine at the end of this whole Halo saga. Break the fourth wall here just a little bit, like you’re proud of it.
  • Speaker: I am! I would love to break that fourth wall.
  • Speaker: Well just so you know, all that elevator music comes from old commercials that I did! And that’s sort of my purging of all my...
  • Speaker: Oh my god, is there a Flintstones one? No. Shut up though. Last one out, turn out the lights. No that refers to flying the Falcon business. If you figure out how to turn the nightclub on you will have such a treat.
  • Speaker: Marty you’ve already said too much!
  • Speaker: Did I? Yeah but this is for legendary. By the time people see this I would have already been done for anything. I'll go to the bar to get into that thing. All right.
  • Speaker: Remember, don’t look at that... you can land on any one of these rooftops. I know, it’s amazing. If you fly too low, too close to the deck, look at all the battle going on beneath you. There’s all kinds of bad stuff happening down on the ground level. Yeah it’s not safe to go down there.
  • Speaker: I haven’t played this co-op yet but apparently it’s amazing with all the air battles you can be having. Can you have four Falcons on this or is it just two?
  • Speaker: Four Falcons, but co-op guys can man the guns. That is correct.
  • Speaker: Music stops right there, right on that line of dialogue. Well it stops. So now you still could fly around for a while but hopefully you’re going to land somewhere.
  • Speaker: This is the scene where like Kat’s attitude towards the player changes a little bit. Yes, the church scene. It’s what we affectionately call him.
  • Speaker: You’re just stunned—she’s getting to know Six here a little more because at first she bristles a little bit because you’re the replacement for the previous Noble Six and she’s not quite ready... softened.
  • Speaker: Humanity! Wow. Emile, he’s cold. Emile masks his emotions with humor inside. I’ve never known anyone to do that.
  • Speaker: Those senior-level communications... point is, why put Spartans on defensive deployment? See that link to SATCOM? Kat chasing it... dispenses. Got more shrapnel in it than...
  • Speaker: That line was one of the audition lines. We heard so many different women do that line. She had a lot of like really sort of original way she said stuff like especially like Colonel Holland.
  • Speaker: Trace it to us! It’s an old jingle singer friend of mine from Chicago.
  • Speaker: Oh really? Yeah where do you say... oh geez, funding? Go hundred beer commercials! He’s one of those breathing... dude, this kind of guy. He was a great singer. We really had a lot of fun with him. He’s a good musician too.
  • Speaker: Good guns. A lot of reasons we at some point will release the outtakes when she goes with "guns" for the first time. Oh nice quick run.
  • Speaker: Now Kat was momentarily blinded because she was the only one with light. So she missed the hazard? Or the cellars button.
  • Speaker: Could you say that more? "There’s the knife." Which is why they want a spark torch and burn off... keep Dr. Halsey’s excavation data from... all excavation!
  • Speaker: Wait, but according to Holland the Covenant are still hunting for something. What does he get off calling a demolition a priority one?
  • Speaker: So he’s not shooting at the vehicle up there, he’s shooting at her! Someone had a beach zealot up the... zealot commander!
  • Speaker: See, here’s these actors after something that they know... there’s that little theme that... . Saddest moment in the game. Awesome Kat. And we were just getting to know her.
  • Speaker: Says tissues right over here. No need... plenty of black. Now this shot reminds me of some of the concept art for *Marathon* way back in the day too. Sort of those big destroyed vistas and incredible uplighting.
  • Speaker: And I’m so glad you guys put Kat in his arms, it's amazing. This is actually from a concept shot that originally there was gonna be a whole mission that came after that filled in this area.
  • Speaker: That’s right! Driving the Scarab around the destroyed glass city. It got cut. It was a little crazy.
  • Speaker: It was crazy! You were gonna be able to drive the Scarab through a glass... we had it working in prototype initially. Hard. And then we came to our senses.
  • Speaker: Here we are! Look at all the ash. Eric, you guys now stood up in order to do this though—you turned on rain without rain, right? Isn't that how it works?
  • Speaker: This is actually one of the weather systems. It already got kind of realized... we kept coming out of this level. Sounds are all—I mean you came in one day and it looked like this!
  • Speaker: If we heard right... no that was an exhibition. Something happening! I saw surprise shot there.
  • Speaker: See Carter’s delivery was very down there. He’s pretty upset. He’s upset about Kat, he was cute. We know there was some relationship between...
  • Speaker: Watch out for the dead bodies in the water rushing against your legs as you go through! Are there? Yes. Looking at you with blank eyes. I haven’t looked for them. I’ve never seen them.
  • Speaker: Alright, there’s Ron Livingston again! Wait, let him get on the... oh you’re not taking them with you.
  • Speaker: So it’s not a *Halo* game without one section where you just get in a Scorpion and blow the shit out of everything else! Has to be. And if you don't like the way the tank drives, it’s only the section... somebody did that change, get improved dramatically initially.
  • Speaker: Now initially we had like totally different tank controls. It was pretty hard. Whoever fixed that, they get wood! During the beta it was really hard to drive. Now you can destroy all these AA guns without ever getting out of the tank. You can blast them with the tank from afar.
  • Speaker: So he could do it the old-fashioned way. They do say "work say"... I’ve always used up old micronites by that time. If you go in there and chew on it, you should be able to walk in and have your shields... think about if you didn't. Halo 1, remember that one? But where do you say "huh"? Just walk into it. I think that was mostly because we ran out of ideas on how to destroy that thing.
  • Speaker: Big review, here we go! Coming up soon. Tram ride. I love this shot. Great lighting. Another good character acting moment. "Looks like they got themselves cornered or more committed to the position."
  • Speaker: I’m going with "cornered."
  • Speaker: There’s nothing here... Jamie actor, sir, was supposed to blow this place. I love this line coming up: "Don’t take your vector from Jamie."
  • Speaker: And Jun—look at what its coordinates are! Eyes see you’re looking well. It’s pointing also click and a half east. Here comes Halsey. Feet underground, right?
  • Speaker: I didn't request a shovel! Quick. He doesn't know he’s being funny. Awesome. Fantastic reactions. All insulated. Yeah, a secret door! Door with mist coming out of... my lovely. There we go.
  • Speaker: Actually, actually that’s another section where the music will change every time. Just subtly change though, yeah.
  • Speaker: Nice! So Lee, why is our animation so much improved on a technical side over past *Halo* games?
  • Speaker: Basically the use of mo-cap—using actors and ourselves walking around in the suits and capturing that. And having been able to do all the layout fully with the mo-cap information and then cleaning up the movement. I think anyone else has done that.
  • Speaker: "What apologies for the unusual security measures, commander, the stakes demanded Dr. Halsey."
  • Speaker: So how many embarrassing photos do we have of people wearing the mo-cap suit? I guess most of you—Mr. Spandex!
  • Speaker: Yes! I mean, I fit perfectly into spandex. I look looks good.
  • Speaker: Clattering those packs around the response ways. "Girl, you are here to ensure the delivery of this vital treatment." There’s more geometry in this shuttle too than in all of Halo 1.
  • Speaker: No John kidding! We’ve been saying... direct command so we could actually physically drive through this thing. A couple miles of tunnel! Oh my goodness. And I think we nailed this shot from the original concept.
  • Speaker: What the heck is that? It’s been buried here for how many years? Hundred-thousand years! Hundred-thousand years... because things are falling a date already.
  • Speaker: "Ma’am, we’re coming to you. The decrypting process is still underway." "I don’t think you understand, we’re out of time!"
  • Speaker: If it isn't portable when we reach you... and she still... all we know is an AI of unknown origin. We don’t know what AI was talking about yet really.
  • Speaker: Finally Halsey says "Please, please, yes! Have a lot of decibels, commander."
  • Speaker: "I’m seeing this cave is not a natural formation." Very nice. That’s a big title, of course. That’s a reference to Halo 1, that is correct. Had one of those stupidest mission dialogue lines ever: "But this cave is not a natural formation."
  • Speaker: Well originally it was designed to be a natural-looking formation but Cortana can tell that it wasn't. And then you made it into a giant metal thing, Marcus! We need to get that level button quick. Yes, some things never change.
  • Speaker: Whoa! I love the way these Elites charge when they have the sword, they are so intimidating.
  • Speaker: This is a great Firefight space. This is officially a piece that’s in 11-8, just in case you were interested. Oh, I love anytime—look at that! It's an engineering 6-5 and 6. Good. Where you get paid the big bucks!
  • Speaker: Yes, so you can do 11-8 times 11-8. It’s my fusion stuff coming in. "Where are they going?" "And deep into the heart." All I’m gonna say is there is a vault down here.
  • Speaker: You’ve said enough! Okay, we can cut that. Quiet. Look at this. Remember when Jamie did that line? And he was in the studio and he put his hands up and you got into everything he did. If he was carrying a gun, he picked up a pen. He always had something to say.
  • Speaker: And here notice... "You are to take her to the UNSC *Pillar of Autumn*." Recognize that, don’t you? Here you’ll find a fuzzy on two last cruisers waiting to get her off planet. It’s the rescue Cortana... too shiny visor and I matched when *Reach* falls, our annihilation is all but certain.
  • Speaker: Actually the truth is, CJ came to visit us. Even do that rescue Cortana music here again? I’m like, "Yeah, can’t act question." This is the... we didn't have Cortana in ODST, so this is the fourth representation of Cortana.
  • Speaker: So now she’s in that little package. The real package was heavy too. I think, you know, some high-tech... she’s gonna give it to Carter. Wait, not Carter! She has made her choice: Six.
  • Speaker: I think you see the jealousy in Carter’s face. Yes. Just the helmet movements. Now this line comes from when you hand someone a very inexpensive lens. There’s only one other person—dollar blends it is a nurse! I haven't anything expensive... if it's heavy, good luck.
  • Speaker: You know a sequel—the story of Jun and Halsey is the seat. Numair offspring? Because Jun doesn't pop amplifier versus Halsey and we don't know exactly what that very smart sniper's...
  • Speaker: There’s another... but now come on! How could we not? Oh, this cinematic is chock-full of butts! Now look how cool my own ears—he just backed on! And he superglued his ass right to the seat. Better adjust myself slightly... he says he didn't feel totally secure.
  • Speaker: Okay watch what’s a little rascals cake watch! Before door FX in there, the geometry looked ridiculous. So see, Paul sound-designed that thing. And we got to the end of the final mix and there was so much low bass in it but it actually kicked in the Xbox compressors and made everything go away and killed it all!
  • Speaker: And so I was like, "Wow, if we had planned on that I would've been happy with it." But because it was an accident we had to fix it. There is like destroyed the Xbox! Carter guts all over the inside... look at any blood coming.
  • Speaker: Well I would say that for one of our camera rules coming up. Why? Oh really! This look is what it’s coming up... it’s when we justify the camera and feel that it’s shot by a cameraman. See what happens when they jump out of the bag.
  • Speaker: Well that’s because it’s a helmet-cam! Oh this one! Oh that’s hanging off the back of the car. Okay we were gonna go the cameraman’s filming them? Okay. I’m watching you go, I’m gonna go check.
  • Speaker: This is a game about the anchor fight and I believe in the credits of the older cameraman... remember the cameraman?
  • Speaker: One thing that you guys tried to sell when we were filming the cinematics is actually make the Spartans behave in the cinematics the way they would in game. So when the Spartans fall out and they impact on the ground, you actually should see their shields take damage.
  • Speaker: Hold—what we just see there? We saw the *Pillar of Autumn*! Oh yeah. I’m gonna do this! What’s the achievement if you run and jump and assassinate right there? Let’s go! Good. There’s a goodie download. This is a really nice environment. Great cave!
  • Speaker: You can’t say it out. Here’s another... now we’re gonna fight this Scarab now, right? We get to get in this go find it! My library... I’m lucky chair! Go Carter! I love the way it looks like an animal. Some very nice animation. All of our scrambles, our eyes stay on the rock face.
  • Speaker: "Goodbye, Carter." You know what that was? "Let’s go down." Little two of them? Is that line? He’s so upset! Oh my god, this is the biggest environment we’ve ever built for any single encounter. It’s a lot different in the beta as well. It’s a multiplayer area for invasion: Boneyard.
  • Speaker: And this is another one of those areas where you can play... you can avoid this entire thing if you feel like it. It’d be hard for us to get through it without encountering someone. There’s more AI in this area than we’ve ever packed in a game!
  • Speaker: Get it off a lot. I wish the right back up at least at some point. I wish those forks still worked—there were so much fun to lift things up. Oh yeah, nice recovery.
  • Speaker: This makes me think—why didn't we do like a Halo 1 style trench run at the end of this? Voice is who? That’s exactly the vibe! Who’s the voice of Chuck? Oh yeah, he’s one of the brains... we have lots of fun memories.
  • Speaker: Here we are! Wow! Right at the end, the platform filler. Big is that *Pillar of Autumn*? Really! And in our game there is that—I mean it’s the scale probably, but it is scale. It’s 1,100 feet long. He’s manning the big gun.
  • Speaker: This is when Emile shines. Oh man just come right up to these guys. Pretty brave way to play this level. Originally Brutes weren't gonna be in anything other than one mission.
  • Speaker: Oh really? Yeah the Brutes on this mission are amazing. We brought them back only because we wanted a different flavor for some encounters but ended up liking how we reached the Brute revision—them as the subservient race.
  • Speaker: I can tell that like they were in Halo 2, you know? These guys... not playing on Heroic 'cause these Brutes... he would have shot, he would have died so easily.
  • Speaker: And this is the original Keyes as well, like the same voice? Oh yeah, Captain Keyes. Good to see you! Spire is Pete Stacker. Plays two parts in every game, not just...
  • Speaker: We did a better job animating them than we did in Halo 1. Kind of had a... where’s his little crazy with that even the Hood Lord bridge? Yes together we had had battle. Jack, alright!
  • Speaker: This is your chance to escape Noble Six. Let's go! Get on the *Pillar of Autumn*! Get on again! Pelican! Pelican versus another Pelican crash. I was a little sad when I worked on this scene because I knew it would be my last Pelican crash.
  • Speaker: Oh Emile... but still he’s able to turn around and think it’s night. That’s it. The choice I have! "Good luck, sir." Now we look to use... yes we talk a lot about how do you give the player the sense of making a choice? Don’t really give the player that choice... feels, I think it feels great to say, "Yeah I’m gonna stay behind and take that gun." Feels very much true to what a Spartan would do.
  • Speaker: Oh gun is pretty fast! Covenant Cruisers approaching. No, how come we haven't had this gun like all the way through? You know, the for four *Halo* games? Because what finally just one shot? Because there’s only one in existence! They got blowed up on a research...
  • Speaker: All animation—I just like that thing spinning around. Path? What is that big door? I will finish them on the red spot. There we go! Effects bonanza, Steve. Look at that! The gantry section that pulls back is amazing.
  • Speaker: Now you realize it’s a place where you can go to the show... I gotta be quiet, I’m gonna ruin it for everyone! It’s legendary. Look at the tugs. Whose idea that we want to put tugs on the bottom of the POA just to get it up?
  • Speaker: Yeah struggling... and then there’s big chunk of metal. The main engines fire because you guys actually worked out the physics on that? Know exactly how much propellant that would need to lift that thing up. And yeah sure we thought that—I think Romic did do that.
  • Speaker: And there it goes! Look at that skybox, Marcus. Come on, that skybox is amazing. Did this have anything to do with the volcano in Iceland? I challenge anyone to say that named volcano!
  • Speaker: Yeah, but jet blast... but no, it’s not allowed. Not the last one.
  • Speaker: So here’s the very opening scene from Halo 1. And the opening—last-minute addition to the game. And we had to go looking for the original recording because of Captain Keyes and Cortana and I dug up all the assets.
  • Speaker: You know we did? That’s the actual Halo 1 recording of both of those things, which was great to get in here. Look at that thing though! Looks so cool. The original!
  • Speaker: We’re back into Reach music. So cool. On the outer rim of the galaxy... and Threshold. Giant moon. And that’s the original ring from Halo 1. The main menu—it was the one that you actually flew around. I did not know that! Untouched, unscathed. Yeah the same one. "Play forged film. We’ll see you starside."
  • Speaker: Oh now we need to talk about each person on the team quick. Alright I’ll take the top... there you go. We loved all these people like they were our children. I like we put them over everybody in alphabetical order. Wow, a lot of people!
  • Speaker: Look at that. This is a long set of credits though. It is! What was the total number of people that were working on Reach at Bungie? I think we had 135, 140 somewhere around there. You mean and then that includes like all the outside help?
  • Speaker: No! Okay, so now that’s just internal and some of our contractors we had on site. I have no idea how many people there... so if you include all of the external—tests, test all our partners, animation partners, and 30 actors, 60-80 musicians and singers, outside engineers? It’s a lot of people! It’s a huge effort.
  • Speaker: And all those individual monks got a separate track. Every... I think it’s every 13 weeks ago. Yeah like Mike Salvatori, Stan LePard. Thank you guys! I wonder why they had the credit for Nile Rodgers? So sort of club music, wonder what that would have been.
  • Speaker: Again, you’ve said too much! Crediting they’re doing that and he’s spoiled it for everyone. Stosh... Bungie’s a real place. Look up real departments for the winter studio. What’s the rest of my girl? Oh my aunt, no kidding! Those are guys who were working on something else. We’re not a grush-shop anymore, Steve.
  • Speaker: I’m a little... okay was that you maybe? I was really creepy. I will never ever listen to this the same way. Well no nightmares about that crap! It’s really freaky to think... there’s also as you’re doing it falsetto?
  • Speaker: No! Actually it’s as a whole just pitched up. It’s more than pitched up but I’ll show it to you sometime. What did you do? There’s a little device that’s called "throat" and you can actually change the size of your throat. I don’t want to hear any sound like a little boy!
  • Speaker: But I also had a soprano sing along with it so she’s looking in the reverb far away. So Marcy? No, no it wasn't Marcy actually, but she was there that day.
  • Speaker: It’s a lot of testers. Testing is unbelievably important to our process. Way the whole mezzanine packed full of testers just for localization who are there for at least six months. Yeah, what was it? I think it’s a nine language... Portuguese got added on right?
  • Speaker: There’s our actors. Nice job beep-bop! Yes great, Greg Grunberg! Yes Gavin... Bob O’Donnell! Voice of the terminals! Wait, terminals with triangles? We never saw the... analyses? No terminal! I guess we’ll have to go back and play again, dig a little deeper.
  • Speaker: Bungie auxiliary players, that includes Steve Scott as Falcon Pilot Number Two. Yeah this falls... Steve Scott as Falcon Pilot Number Two. And were these people some of our friends at Microsoft? Oh friends of course, what are you talking about? Yes that’s why I had this big music for them!
  • Speaker: Joe Waters, graphics engineer and sweet haircut. Oh yeah changed color every week. Joe did the loading screen. Auntie Dot’s a lot of work! It really is, because it has to use no data at all in order to work. Super quick load.
  • Speaker: Localization... contract test... nobody count. Wow. So I always write one really big giant long piece that doesn't necessarily get used in the game because I know I’m going to need something for the end credits because their credits are so long.
  • Speaker: Seven minutes! What do we clock in around there? Longest credits I’ve ever seen. Now some of these music pieces—ambitious, but never the full piece. So was this anywhere else in the game? Because parts of it... not this full piece and not the ending of it. This is the only time you’ll hear this ending.
  • Speaker: And this is a harkening back here goes... see they’ll hit the "duh"... yep. Oh nice! The ending still be working. We saw a little seven in there. Without you guys that was amazing! We’re not done. Little treat for people who actually sat through the whole credit.
  • Speaker: Exactly right! It’s not over. God bless them for one more butt-shot! Kinda not really. I like the camera jiggle. Now how did this whole end sequence idea come about?
  • Speaker: And we kicked that around 20 different ways at least. We spent I don’t know how many weeks hashing out this idea that: what if you came back into the game and actually played the last living moments of your character’s life?
  • Speaker: Yeah survive! Super controversial—like half the studio loved it, half of it totally hated it. The idea that you could... you would actually die. Because we’ve never ever died in a *Halo* game for real.
  • Speaker: Well this is what I think is gonna be interesting because you play the game and how many times do you die but you always respawn. But now look at the crash! There’s a crack in your helmet and we die. This is the only time you actually really died.
  • Speaker: And we know we die in this location because of that... probably the most insane mo-cap effort ever. Some guy’s going up to... yeah there’s a lot of end tweaking to this at smaller and absolutely muffled all the sound. Like the helmet is no longer able to record sound very well so it gets more and more muffled.
  • Speaker: I didn't want to make it heavy at work and only breathe. I’m not dead yet though! Probably... now he is. Sad helmet. Goodbye Noble Six. Just need a little more time here.
  • Speaker: Thank you Lee. And here we come back. Yes happy helmet! We didn't take that... 50 years in the future. 50 years later as ruthless efficient. There’s that moment. Did we ever get the eagle that was gonna come down and land on the helmet?
  • Speaker: I was only on Legendary! What was gonna happen on that? You’re actually gonna have a bird land on the helmet. So this is actually 50 years later. This is the furthest forward in time any *Halo* ever goes.
  • Speaker: Yeah because we wrapped up the entire... see we’re saying that we won. We won! And even a glass planet like Reach can come back to life. That’s right, which is cool.
  • Speaker: To us the ship touching down, colony ship bringing life back. And then one of the very few major triads that I use because I tend to have open fifths and minors and stuff.
  • Speaker: Guys this is totally bittersweet now. Ten years doing this together. This is the best one we’ve done yet as well and I’m glad this is the final send-off to our fans. And you’re right, it’s really been an honor to work on this project for the lovely 12 years we’ve had it. I mean who would have ever thought we could keep going this long? And the talent we’ve had in the studio this whole time is just gotten better and better.
  • Speaker: It’s a great thing to do. If Marty didn't have a stinking cold right now I’d suggest a group hug.
  • Speaker: Hug? Yeah but now forget about it. Okay. All right let’s go. Thanks for watching!
  • Speaker: Alright thanks for watching whoever stayed with us.
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