Making Halo 4: A Hero Awakens

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Halo 4: A Hero Awakens is a video documentary by 343 Industries, about the development of Halo 4's storyline and character performances. It was released on YouTube on 1st September, 2012.

Transcript

• Armando Troisi: "I'm giving you the tools, right? I'm giving you the sandbox — I'm setting the table for you. But it's up to you to decide what you want to eat."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "Master Chief is human, he's not a machine, he's not a set of armor with a big weapon. He's a human with resilience and courage."

• Steve Downes: "You know, I was so looking forward to this moment because for Master Chief, you know, the stoic soldier, the man of few words - all that. But there was this progression in terms of his emotional side, even through the first three game. But this was going to be the great leap."

• Armando Troisi: "What happens when that soldier starts to discover his humanity?"

• Christopher Schlerf: "We had to create a situation that was gonna knock him out of his comfort zone; the Master Chief has settled into this comfort zone of being "the hero". It's interesting early on how we discussed about the heroes' journey. How do you have a heroes' journey when he's already a hero?"

• Kiki Wolfkill: "What are the sacrifices that you have to make in order to preserve something as precious as humanity?"

• Christopher Schlerf: "The journey is the important part, the growth is the important part, and so really where does he still need to go as a human? That became the key not just the story of Halo 4 but the entire trilogy.

• Lindsay Lockhart: "We're really examining what sorts of burdens a guardian carries."

• Josh Holmes: "In a lot of ways, the story that we're telling in Halo 4 is about putting Chief in circumstances where he's forced to change, he's forced to take stock of himself."

• Lindsay Lockhart: "In a way, Chief is a guardian, Cortana is Chief's guardian, the Forerunners were the guardians of their own universe. And they might have to make a decision not everyone is going to agree with, and that some people might condemn."

• Bruce Thomas: It's almost like you're a little kid, and you're just playing make-belief again - so you imagine everything. The table's here. The plinth for Cortana is here. There's a window here. Ready? Go."

MAKING HALO 4
A HERO AWAKENS
PART 1

• Kiki Wolfkill: "How can we immerse the player even more into this world we've built around them?"

• Josh Holmes: "How do we have Chief have to deal with his own humanity?"

• Christopher Schlerf: "Everything had to be predicated by what the character's needs were, what direction the characters needed to go in."

• Kenneth Scott: "The art direction, specifically for Halo 4, isn't about creating an emotional tone for Halo 4. It's about creating an emotional tone for every single thing the player needs to understand."

• Brien Goodrich: "Similar to creating a movie set, we build what we need to see. We can't look too far this way, or else it begins to fall apart. But back in here...things are looking good."

• Armando Troisi: "Film, it's like - I'm going to create something, and it's going to be awesome, and I'm going to polish it, and I'm going to own it, but I'm going to share it with you. Which is very different from game storytelling, which is - I'm going give you all of the tools, I'm going to give you all of the possibilities, and it's up to you to discover it."

• Frank O'Connor: Answering questions and answering directions that the narrative had already taken to find the path forward for us as we started to tell the story."

• Brian Reed: "We're always telling these huge big stories. We've got Infinity, it's the biggest that's ever been launched; we've got Requiem, which is the biggest Forerunner artifact that has ever been found; but in the middle of all of that we've got this personal story between Master Chief and Cortana."

• Lindsay Lockhart: "You tell a story with every detail that you put into the game. Immersion is what really allows people to believe your universe, and also become emotionally caught up in your universe."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "How do we make sure the sights, and the sounds, and the things that we're feeling as a player inhabiting that suit really come through more clearly. You know, technology has really allowed us to do that with much higher fidelity than back in the CE days."

• Armando Troisi: "As we design these things, we put together the best plan, and without the actors, it lacks humanity."

• Bryce Cochrane: "Having the ability to work with the actors on stage, capturing their face, body, and voice at the same time, really gives us the opportunity to create an immersive experience for the actors."

• Brien Goodrich: "Working in Giant, we can have at least eight actors at the same time."

• Frank O'Connor: "And so the objects they are acting around, the people they are acting with, against, through, and toward are there in the scene with them. It makes a huge difference."

• Clive Burdon: "We sent out a break down for characters and how they want to feel, we end up getting eight or ninety submissions back."

• Josh Holmes: "Casting for the Master Chief is tough. You need a performer that has a really raw ... in him, and yet he has to, within confinement in his suit, be able to relate and relay emotion."

• Bruce Thomas: "I like to express myself. I freely do it. I wholly do it. I enjoy it. And so, pulling back on all of those instincts is what required to play him."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "Imagine that translating to a 3D model with huge armor, and making sure that personality of Chief's movement come through that armor, which is really critical. And that really came down to Bruce's acting, his physical stature, and really his physicality as he went though all the performance."

• Josh Holmes: "You will never see his face, or hear his voice, but all of the other actors that are playing off of him face received so much from him in their performances, and I think they'd all agree with that."

• Matt Aldrige: "This is the low-res axis of Chief, we afforded a little bit more budget since he's our hero."

• Kenneth Scott: "From the art process, storytelling is just about engaging the player. You dont have to answer any question, you dont have to take them through a lot of looks and feelings. If the player's engaged, I think you've got the start."

• Matt Aldrige: "So Master Chief is a difficult one, because he's a dude in a helmet."

• Kenneth Scott: "It's such peculiar in science-fiction, such a fantastic history about people completely realized as people, without having their face as a tool."

• Matt Aldrige: "For us, it's making him feel like a real person. We have a new male sculpt, and then from there we sculpt it on physically attach suit."

• Gabriel Garza: "And on top of this guy is when we spend time just doing all the details, and trying add some of that functionality. Giving him little bits here and there, like, Braille, this just reads "117".

• Nicolas Bouvier: "I think it's connected to having more visual flow, when it comes to design, the way you follow the outline of Master Chief."

• Matt Aldrige: "Trying to put it into an area where it feels realistic, feels kind of tank-ish."

• Nicolas Bouvier: "What do you think when of a tank? You think square, you think metal. There's some like wear-and-tear on the edges. So those things we want to grab, put them on the Chief."