Halo 3 ViDoc: Et Tu, Brute?

ViDoc: Et Tu Brute a 7 min documentry about the Brutes 73WHyolxD9Y ViDoc: Et Tu Brute is a behind the scenese look at Halo 3, specifically the Brutes in Halo 3. This 7:04 min clip interviews various Bungie employees about the Brutes and their development.

Transcript
Shi Kai Wang - 0:25 - Halo 3 is all about the things we wanted in Halo 1 and Halo 2. The Brutes were ... they were added in a little too late I think. We didn't really have a chance to flesh them out and so that's what we're doing for Halo 3!

Jaime Griesemer - 0:43 - Nailing the flavor for the character is often very difficult. You sorta have to feel it out as you go. The Brutes in Halo 2 were meant to be more like the barbarians in Rome. We wanted the Brutes to typify that abusive, evil, invader...

Chris Butcher - 1:06 - Right from the start the design of the Brutes was not consistent about reinforcing the theorem of them being worthy adversaries for the player

Jaime Griesemer - 1:16 - Now that the Elites have left the Covenant it gave us a problem for Halo 3

Shi Kai Wang - 1:23 - The Brutes would behave kinda of similar to the Elites they had to be totally redone, cause ... just not interesting to fight.

Paul Bertone - 1:32 - It was just a damaged sponge. There were no interesting reactions. There wasn't any interesting death.

Chris Butcher - 1:38 - The only time the choice the player has is to pump them full of lead until they fall down

Shi Kai Wang - 1:45 - It just doesn't turn to be really a good game play.

Curtis Creamer - 1:47 - Going back and trying to recreate a character is like this is one part art and one part science, and the art part is very difficult to understand just exactly how long it's going to take.

Isaac Hannaford - 2:00 - The concept artist tries to communicate the composition, and what the idea is trying to get across. A lot of times the direction just gets narrowed down to, 'can you just make it look cool'. The Brutes originally were a lot like Chewbacca. They were just big hairy guys with a Bandolier. I looked at a lot of animal reference, rhinoceros, some gorilla. Their natural body plating, is Brutish! This was our way of kinda of pulling them into the fold of the Covenant. They've got kinda ancient looking buckles and gauntlets, and leather straps holding all that stuff together. Making them a little more serious bad guy ... I hope.


 * Camera opens on a table with four Bungie staff being Interviewed from left to right are Nathan Walpole, John, Bill O'Brien, Jermey

Nathan Walpole - 2:42 - Everything the character does, whenever the character moves, we've made an animation for it.

Bill O'Brien - 2:52 - Initially how that character moves that kind of makes him unique

John - 3:00 - These days now we have our animation reference area upstairs. We just take it upon ourselves to go film us doing each individual motion and work that into our animation.

Nathan Walpole - 3:14 - If a Brute is punching the face of a Marine, we're going to embellish that. We're going make him punch the jaw of the Marine. We're going to make him just punch straight through that Marine.

Shi Kai Wang - 3:25 - God Damn I love how that shit looks like real life. That is just bleep bleep that was awesome.

Bill O'Brien - 3:32 - When I look over and see Jeremy doing something and think wow that's really cool how can I work something like that into his move set.

Nathan Walpole - 3:36 - It's exciting to see what Jeremy does tomorrow, and what Bill does the next day. It's all the ...

John : Not John?

Nathan Walpole : Not John no so much.

John : No not so much me.

Nathan Walpole : Nobody likes John

Jaime Griesemer - 3:53 - Players who are familiar with the Brutes from Halo 2 will notice that these Brutes are fully armed and fully equipped and they're not going to be pushovers.

Shi Kai Wang - 4:20 - The game will be interesting when guys you've been playing against after we've already played. Does the profile of the character create an interesting look from afar? Is it fun to shoot at him? When he runs around do you see his limbs moving up and down because there are things are jutting out from his sides?

Chris Butcher - 4:40 - Rather than making them look like stupid apes, we want to make them very brutal and pragmatic warriors, and that's really informed a lot of the visual design.

Paul Bertone - 5:02 - Visually through the art we defined the different classes. The standard Brute has just it's normal armor and a very standard helmet. The Brute Captain has a much bigger headdress, and then the Brute Chieftains have very elaborate head dresses and very elaborate shoulder pads and armor on them. The interesting thing is some of the ideas that we came up with is a, not only do we need to figure out how the Brutes interact with the other Covenant, but also how Brutes interact with Brutes, and we developed the idea of Brute Pack.

Damian Isla - 5:39 - What makes you feel like two characters are aware of each other? They're starting to do the same thing at the same time.

Curtis Creamer - 5:44 - Maybe you're going to come around the corner and see them doing some sort of activity that has nothing to do with fighting. That will give you more insight into what a Brute Pack mentality is like.

Damian Isla - 5:56 - We have this real brutal behaviors now where the Chieftain saying 'everyone throw a grenade!', and as a result a second later you having grenades flying at your face.

Chris Butcher - 6:06 - That's always going to give the player a little bit of adrenaline rush. 'Oh my God now this guy is right up in my face! Now I've got to back up and hit him hard!'

Paul Bertone - 6:18 - Players kill him and there like, 'Oh man I had to kill that guy!' and then they go around the corner, and there's like four standing there, and there like, 'shit!'

Jaime Griesemer - 6:30 - I think that the Brutes bring out sort of the indignant self righteous aspect of a lot of players. So I'm hoping to hear a lot of, 'take that!' and 'I can't believe, that you have invaded my planet and I'm going to throw you off!' and we hope to bring people really into character and the drama of the situation by putting them up against really brutal characters.