Development of Halo: Combat Evolved: Difference between revisions

By 1997/1998, the [[Flood]] were already being concepted, and story ideas circulating about their role alongside the Covenant. The Flood had been designed by Jason Jones purely for gameplay, and McLees was the first to truly think about what the Flood was in the fiction. His first idea was to have the Flood be a bioweapon engineered by the Covenant, designed as a "living minefield" with which the Covenant would seed planets on their borders, in case anyone tried to make landfall. At the time the game was to be set on a planet, the concept of the [[UNSC]] did not exist yet, simply named the "Empire", later reflected in some of the earliest marketing materials published about the game's story. The story beats of what would become ''Halo: Combat Evolved'' were in place, though still undefined. In this early draft, the player and their ship would crash on a planet populated by humans not part of the Empire, with the player's technology from 2552 and the native technology from the 1950s. The player's goal would be to train the indigenous population for when the Covenant arrived. They would combat the natives in the early levels, and the Covenant later on.<ref name="feast">[http://halo.bungie.net/news/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=Feast_of_Bones ''Bungie.net: Feast of Bones'']</ref>

Another Flood origin, written by Griesemer, would have the Flood as a meningitis-like disease that made a life form more aggressive and more intelligent. The natives would use the Flood as a rite of passage, throwing males of-age into a mass grave in which they'd climb back out smarter and looking for a fight.{{Ref/Reuse|feast}}<ref group="Note">This origin is remarkably similar to the origins of the Flood and its effects on [[Pheru]] later described in ''[[Halo: Cryptum]]'' and its sequels.</ref> Another idea to emerge in the pre-Microsoft era of ''Halo''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s development was [[Cortana]]. The idea for Cortana came about based on Durandal, an AI companion in Bungie's previous game ''[[Marathon]]'' named after a famous literary French sword. Three words stood out as a "three-pack" - Durandal, Cortana and Joyeuse. Durandal was taken and Joyeuse sounded "lame", so Cortana was chosen to be the AI companion for the Master Chief.{{Ref/Reuse|untold}} Character artist Chris Hughes modeled Cortana's face based off the Egyptian queen [[Wikipedia:Nefertiti|Nefertiti]],<ref>[http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive9.pl?read=241110 ''halo.bungie.org: Cortana's face was modeled after an Egyptian queen'']</ref> with an early version of the Cortana character model having symbols on the character's face and featuring green eyes, later removed from the final in-game model. Actress [[Jen Taylor]] was hired to be the voice of Cortana as she and Joseph Staten had been in college together. Cortana was originally slated to have a British accent, but Taylor's previous role in ''No One Lives Forever'' sounded too similar, and Cortana was changed to be American - though some lines such as ''"sod off!"'' and "''toady about"'' remained in the final script.{{Ref/Reuse|untold}} One early story draft involved the Master Chief returning to the Control Room of Halo, only to find Cortana had gone mad with power and now wanted to take over the universe - a storyline notably similar to the later premise of ''[[Halo 5: Guardians]]''.{{Ref/Reuse|commentary}}

==Art==

[[File:MarcusLehto PreCE Halo sketch.jpg|thumb|200px|An early sketch of the ring's mechanics prior to the in-game model being created.<ref>[https://twitter.com/game_fabricator/status/707762473122680834 ''Marcus Lehto on Twitter:''] ''Sketch before building the first #Halo ring. Was my math way off for a 1.5hr rotation to provide Earth-like gravity?''</ref>]]

One of the early distinctions made about ''Halo'' in development was for there to be a clear distinction between The UNSC and Covenant design aesthetic, with the UNSC employing traditional ammuninition-based weaponry to differentiate from the aliens' high-tech [[plasma weaponry|plasma weapons]]. Artist [[Shi Kai Wang]] was employed to define the look of the Covenant, taking curvilinear forms from sea creatures, shells and iridescent textures from a horseshoe crab carapace, eventually defining the Covenant with a blue, purple and green colour scheme.{{Ref/Reuse|untold}} This direction took the form of the three "design schools" of ''Halo''; the aforementioned human and Covenant, and the Forerunners with large cavernous and mysterious structures. This idea was spearheaded by Paul Russel.<ref name="AOH71">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 71''</ref> The Covenant environments were primarily showcased in the level "[[The Truth and Reconciliation]]", with the original plan for the level involving a ramp the player would walk up to access the ship, intended to be low to the ground. However, the art team didn't want to have the player be able to inspect the ship up-close due to the low resolution of the in-game asset, so the [[gravity lift]] technology was conceived to to help provide the player with a way of entering the ship while keeping the vessel airborne. This idea proved to be more visually interesting that the level was structured around the gravity <ref name="AOH85">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 85''</ref>