Halo 5: Guardians ViDoc: Warzone

Halo 5: Guardians ViDoc: Warzone is a video documentary by 343 Industries, about the development of the Halo 5: Guardians gametype Warzone.

Transcript

 * Josh Holmes: “The idea for Warzone kinda evolved over time but it started way back on Halo 4.”


 * Lawrence Metten: “So when I joined the team, Warzone was just a pitch. It was something floating out there that we wanted to jump on.”


 * Tim Longo: “It was a ‘what if we were able to combine all of the best parts of Halo into one multiplayer mode’, it would be awesome.”


 * Kevin Franklin: “You go online, and there'd be people talking, ‘You guys need to build the most epic multiplayer experience’, but we knew the challenge of it is gonna be on us to build a game like this.”


 * Josh Holmes: “We knew we wanted to focus on competitive, but we also wanted to create something new.”


 * Kevin Franklin: “So when Halo 5 came around, we said. ‘Let’s go after those’. Let’s make the ultimate Halo toy box, and we really pulled it together into this all new, massive mode called Warzone.”


 * Chris Lee: “Warzone is everything in one package.”


 * Josh Holmes: “You have two teams of twelve Spartans meeting in battle on epic scale maps.”


 * Chris Lee: “You have the enemy AI, you have vehicles, you have bosses that will enter the battlefield at key points, and the entire time you are trying to capture the most victory points for your team.”


 * Josh Holmes: “The guiding principle for Warzone was the blend of PVE and PVP. So there’s all these different way you can contribute as a player depending on what your own individual play style is, and all of it is contributing to your team score and your team success.“


 * Kevin Franklin: “Your goal as a team is to get a thousand points, or destroy the enemy team score.”


 * Josh Holmes: “The maps in Warzone are huge.”


 * Tim Longo: “We have maps that four times as big as any maps we’ve ever built for Halo.”


 * Josh Holmes: “It’s really making a careful balance making sure we have a large spaces for incredibly epic combat, but at the same time not have it feel sparse.”


 * Chris Lee: “When you start a match in Warzone, your base is overrun by enemy AI. You have to clear your home base out.”


 * Josh Holmes: “And when you go out into the Warzone, you have all these choices at your disposal. It’s like, do I want to go and capture a base, or do I want to go do combat with a boss?”


 * Chris Lee: “Each team on their side of the map has an armory, and then we’ve got a garage right at the center. The main advantage of the garage is that it is a place that’s further ahead in the battlefield where you can spawn vehicles.”


 * Josh Holmes: “If you can manage to capture the three objective bases that are on the map, that allows you then to access their base and destroy the power core that’s at the center. It’s a way for the team that might be out of the battle to come back from near defeat, and score that last second victory.”


 * Tim Longo: “One of the coolest new aspect of Warzone is having these bosses on the battlefield.”


 * Chris Lee: “You will be playing a match and you will get a notification that a boss is coming in, and for the really good Warzone teams, they want to focus on those bosses right away.”


 * Josh Holmes: “We want to bring personality into the bosses and fit them into the universe.”


 * Lani Blazier: “Giving them names and giving them a backstory gives the players a sense of accomplishment. These are characters who are big deal within their own factions.”


 * Josh Holmes: “You got Baron 'Sraom, who is patrolling over the battlefield in his Banshee, and when he comes out, that’s a moment.”


 * Tim Longo: “When he spawns everyone’s like ‘Baron’s out, Barons’ out!’, and everyone is like running over, right, and trying to get the Baron first.”


 * Chris Lee: “You are then going to have to decide in that boss fight, do I focus on killing the boss, or do I focus on trying to fight the other team off of the boss.”


 * Kevin Franklin: “There’s a certain point in the match where that next big legendary boss kill is gonna determine who wins the game.”


 * Tim Longo: “We wanted there to be a sense of balance in there for what power items are able to brought in at what times.”


 * Kevin Franklin: “Everyone goes into Warzone and they want three sniper rifles, y’know, four Scorpions. How do we handle that? How do you balance that?”


 * Josh Holmes: “The requisition system is a brand new reward system.”


 * William Archbell: “It lets you become more powerful as the game progresses.”


 * Josh Holmes: “Everything that you’re doing, all the kills that you are scoring, capturing bases, all those things are helping you gain additional REQ levels, so within your home base, and each one of the three objective bases on every Warzone map, you have requisition stations.”


 * Chris Lee: “If the player has REQ cards in their inventory, then they can go to the terminal and use those cards to get the best items from the Halo sandbox.”


 * William Archbell: “The REQ cards you earn through any type of multiplayer experience, so if you’re playing Arena or you’re playing Warzone, we’ll be giving you REQ packs as you go up the ranks.”


 * Tim Longo: “You’ll get a requisition pack, and there’ll be random things in there. Everything from weapons and vehicles to be used in Warzone, to cosmetic items you can use both in Warzone and Arena.”


 * Josh Holmes: “So as I level up within the match, I get access to the higher level cards that are in my inventory, and I can use that Scorpion card, or that Banshee, or that rocket launcher.”


 * Chris Lee: “No more like, fighting for that one spot on the map where the Scorpion tank spawns. No, I bring my Scorpion tank in with me in my REQ collection.”


 * Tim Longo: “But you don’t just get to start the match, and call it in and wreck house. You gotta actually take bases, get points, and as the battle gets crazier, and everyone’s levelling up together, the choices get bigger as well.”


 * Josh Holmes: “In some ways Warzone is a Halo player’s dream because it’s bringing together all the best parts of Halo in one multiplayer experience.”


 * Tim Longo: “We want to make sure Warzone has something for everyone in there.”


 * Kevin Franklin: “If you want to defend the base, you can do that. If you want to go after the biggest and baddest bosses, and work with your teammates, you can do it. If you want to protect your teammates from fire with your sniper rifle, or if you want to fly a vehicle around, you can do that in Warzone.”


 * Chris Lee: “It’s a crazy mode where anything is possible.”


 * Lani Blazier: “You really just feel like you have just jumped into a hot zone.”


 * Josh Holmes: “Dudes running in, there’s rockets flying everywhere and just total chaos!”


 * Kevin Franklin: “We see the Banshees, the Scorpions, the Mantises, it’s all out in the battlefield and everything is going bananas, that is my favorite part of Warzone. I can’t even tell you how exciting it is.”