User:BaconShelf/Sandbox: Difference between revisions

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki
(→‎Halo CE development: more WIP, added a lot of art stuff from Art of Halo)
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===Microsoft acquisition===
===Microsoft acquisition===
[[File:PreXbox_Ring.jpg|right|thumb|200px|In the 1999 builds, the ring had the appearance of being broken or unfinished, a concept later reused for [[Installation 08]] in ''[[Halo 3]]''.]]
Despite the hype surrounding ''Halo'' and Bungie's success in announcing it, the company was undergoing financial struggles due to the less-than-successful launch of ''Myth II''<ref name="seropian">[http://halo.bungie.org/misc/interviews/img.seropian.061900/ ''halo.bungie.org: Interview: Bungie's Alexander Seropian'']</ref> - the game had an installer bug that forced Bungie to recall copies of the game so it could be fixed. A month following the Macworld unveiling of ''Halo'', on August 13, Bungie announced they were entering into a publishing partnership with Take Two Interactive, and would begin to see their games published on consoles - where before Bungie had primarily been a PC game developer. Bungie would handle publishing in North America through Take Two's framework, while the two would co-publish games in Europe and Asia.<ref name="mac">[https://www.macobserver.com/news/99/august/990813/bungietaketwo.html ''The Mac Observer: Bungie Software Brings In Distribution Partner, May Head Into Console Market'']</ref> Around this time, Microsoft had begun work on the [[Xbox]], and then-Microsoft Game Studios head Ed Fries was tasked with building up a portfolio of games for the console's launch in fall [[2001]]. When he received a call from Peter Tamte about Bungie's financial situation, he was extremely interested. Take Two invited two of their leading studios - Bungie and Rockstar Games - to meet with Microsoft in January [[2000]].<ref name="untold"/><ref name="seropian"/> Alex Seropian and Tamte later agreed that joining Microsoft would be good<ref name="untold"/>, particularly as Seropian believed that if Bungie was going to lose their independence - as was the case with Take Two - they may as well fully merge so they can try and have as much a say as possible.<ref name="seropian"/>  
Despite the hype surrounding ''Halo'' and Bungie's success in announcing it, the company was undergoing financial struggles due to the less-than-successful launch of ''Myth II''<ref name="seropian">[http://halo.bungie.org/misc/interviews/img.seropian.061900/ ''halo.bungie.org: Interview: Bungie's Alexander Seropian'']</ref> - the game had an installer bug that forced Bungie to recall copies of the game so it could be fixed. A month following the Macworld unveiling of ''Halo'', on August 13, Bungie announced they were entering into a publishing partnership with Take Two Interactive, and would begin to see their games published on consoles - where before Bungie had primarily been a PC game developer. Bungie would handle publishing in North America through Take Two's framework, while the two would co-publish games in Europe and Asia.<ref name="mac">[https://www.macobserver.com/news/99/august/990813/bungietaketwo.html ''The Mac Observer: Bungie Software Brings In Distribution Partner, May Head Into Console Market'']</ref> Around this time, Microsoft had begun work on the [[Xbox]], and then-Microsoft Game Studios head Ed Fries was tasked with building up a portfolio of games for the console's launch in fall [[2001]]. When he received a call from Peter Tamte about Bungie's financial situation, he was extremely interested. Take Two invited two of their leading studios - Bungie and Rockstar Games - to meet with Microsoft in January [[2000]].<ref name="untold"/><ref name="seropian"/> Alex Seropian and Tamte later agreed that joining Microsoft would be good<ref name="untold"/>, particularly as Seropian believed that if Bungie was going to lose their independence - as was the case with Take Two - they may as well fully merge so they can try and have as much a say as possible.<ref name="seropian"/>  


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===Early story and setting drafts===
===Early story and setting drafts===
[[File:HCE EarliestFlood Concept.jpg|thumb|right|The earliest known concept art of the Flood, by Robert McLees. The full resolution was lost during the shuffle of years at Bungie, and the colour resmebles human skin more due to McLees' colour-blindness.<ref name="feast"/>]]
[[File:HCE EarliestFlood Concept.jpg|thumb|right|The earliest known concept art of the Flood, by Robert McLees in roughly 1997 during the RTS days of the game's development.<ref name="AOH52">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 52''</ref> The full resolution was lost during the shuffle of years at Bungie, and the colour resembles human skin more due to McLees' colour-blindness.<ref name="feast"/>]]
When developing games prior to ''Halo'', Bungie's method of development was to develop their engine, then make their multiplayer gameplay feel good. This was only followed then by campaign as the final element to take place.<ref>[http://halo.bungie.org/pressscans/display.html?scan=cgw1199 ''halo.bungie.org: Computer Gaming World 1999 scan'']</ref> The development of ''Halo'' was no exception, as the rough story for the game didn't even begin to take shape until mid-199, following the Macworld trailer premiere. The first seeds of the franchise were sown following [[Robert McLees]]' creation of the then-"future soldier" (the predecessor to the Master Chief) and the Warthog vehicle, at which point he began to place himself in the year 2500, with the player at war with alien factions.<ref name="untold"/> In the early stages of the game's development, the game was to be set on a hollowed-out planet, though this soon evolved into a [[dyson sphere]] and later the titular ringworld.<ref name="AOH73"/> This planet was to have been named "Solipsis", one of the names suggested as the game's title during development.<ref name="IGNhistory"/> The evolution of the setting to the ringworld, however, inspired Paul Russel to come up with the name ''Halo'', which was then applied to the ring itself.{{Citation needed}}  
When developing games prior to ''Halo'', Bungie's method of development was to develop their engine, then make their multiplayer gameplay feel good. This was only followed then by campaign as the final element to take place.<ref>[http://halo.bungie.org/pressscans/display.html?scan=cgw1199 ''halo.bungie.org: Computer Gaming World 1999 scan'']</ref> The development of ''Halo'' was no exception, as the rough story for the game didn't even begin to take shape until mid-199, following the Macworld trailer premiere. The first seeds of the franchise were sown following [[Robert McLees]]' creation of the then-"future soldier" (the predecessor to the Master Chief) and the Warthog vehicle, at which point he began to place himself in the year 2500, with the player at war with alien factions.<ref name="untold"/> In the early stages of the game's development, the game was to be set on a hollowed-out planet, though this soon evolved into a [[dyson sphere]] and later the titular ringworld.<ref name="AOH73"/> This planet was to have been named "Solipsis", one of the names suggested as the game's title during development.<ref name="IGNhistory"/> The evolution of the setting to the ringworld, however, inspired Paul Russel to come up with the name ''Halo'', which was then applied to the ring itself.{{Citation needed}}  


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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 name="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 name="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 name="untold"/>
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 name="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 name="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 name="untold"/>


Sergeant Major [[Avery Johnson]] was another character in the game who emerged early on, as an "caricature unashamedly lifted from ''[[List of references to Aliens in the Halo series|Aliens]]''". Johnson was originally designed to just be a random Marine, but voice actor [[David Scully]]'s improvisation and line delivery impressed people so much he eventually became a larger character in the later games. One suggestion from Marty O'Donnel would involve Johnson ending up on the ship at the end of the game with the player shouting "good to see you, Chief!", though this idea was shot down by Staten as he didn't believe anyone would care about the Marine NPCs.<ref name="untold"/>
Sergeant Major [[Avery Johnson]] was another character in the game who emerged early on, as an "caricature unashamedly lifted from ''[[List of references to Aliens in the Halo series|Aliens]]''". Johnson was originally designed to just be a random Marine, but voice actor [[David Scully]]'s improvisation and line delivery impressed people so much he eventually became a larger character in the later games. One suggestion from Marty O'Donnel would involve Johnson ending up on the ship at the end of the game with the player shouting "good to see you, Chief!", though this idea was shot down by Staten as he didn't believe anyone would care about the Marine NPCs.<ref name="untold"/> Marcus Lehto wanted the marines to look as realistic as possible, and thus watched war movies for reference, but ultimately had to be videotaped by his wife running around with a two-by-four pretending to be a soldier so he could gain more animation reference.<ref name="AOH12">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 12''</ref>


The main character of the game, [[John-117]] - The Master Chief - emerged as the "future soldier" in the RTS days of the game's development. During this time, the future soldier was just one of several types of unit available to the player. As development evolved, production became more and more centered on the player and the character they control. The name of "John" was conceived by ''[[Halo: The Fall of Reach]]'' writer [[Eric Nylund]]<ref name="untold"/>, while the "117" was created by [[Eric Trautmann]] as a [[List of references to religion in the Halo series|reference]] to 1:17, Revelation of St. John the Divide - ''"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."''<ref name="trautmann117">[https://twitter.com/mercuryeric/status/883832744936996864 ''Twitter: Eric Trautmann Twitter thread on the origins of John-117 and Halsey'']</ref> These names recieved pushback from Bungie, who didn't want to call their main character "John" in the game. A meeting with Griesemer, Jones, McLees and Staten turned out the suggestion from McLees to name him after a military rank, with Griesemer suggesting Sergeant. McLees pointed out John would be in the [[UNSC Navy|Navy]], so a Naval rank would be appropriate.  Griesemer instead suggested Commander, similar to ''[[Wikipedia:James Bond|James Bond]]'', though McLees also countered that Commander would be too high a rank for someone being sent into battle like the player does. The team then looked at real world military rank structures, and found "Master Chief Petty Officer" as the highest non-commissioned officer rank in the Navy, and gave that name to the Master Chief. Many people in the team didn't like the name, but it stuck.<ref name="untold"/> At one point, Microsoft urged the team to change the name from Master Chief to "The Commando" to better reflect the tone of the game.<ref>[http://halo.xbox.com/Content/assets/en-us/Podcast/343Sparkast_006.mp3 ''343 Sparkast #6''] (Archived copy available [https://web.archive.org/web/20120201111637/http://halo.xbox.com/Content/assets/en-us/Podcast/343Sparkast_006.mp3 here]</ref>
The main character of the game, [[John-117]] - The Master Chief - emerged as the "future soldier" in the RTS days of the game's development. During this time, the future soldier was just one of several types of unit available to the player. As development evolved, production became more and more centered on the player and the character they control. The name of "John" was conceived by ''[[Halo: The Fall of Reach]]'' writer [[Eric Nylund]]<ref name="untold"/>, while the "117" was created by [[Eric Trautmann]] as a [[List of references to religion in the Halo series|reference]] to 1:17, Revelation of St. John the Divide - ''"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."''<ref name="trautmann117">[https://twitter.com/mercuryeric/status/883832744936996864 ''Twitter: Eric Trautmann Twitter thread on the origins of John-117 and Halsey'']</ref> These names recieved pushback from Bungie, who didn't want to call their main character "John" in the game. A meeting with Griesemer, Jones, McLees and Staten turned out the suggestion from McLees to name him after a military rank, with Griesemer suggesting Sergeant. McLees pointed out John would be in the [[UNSC Navy|Navy]], so a Naval rank would be appropriate.  Griesemer instead suggested Commander, similar to ''[[Wikipedia:James Bond|James Bond]]'', though McLees also countered that Commander would be too high a rank for someone being sent into battle like the player does. The team then looked at real world military rank structures, and found "Master Chief Petty Officer" as the highest non-commissioned officer rank in the Navy, and gave that name to the Master Chief. Many people in the team didn't like the name, but it stuck.<ref name="untold"/> At one point, Microsoft urged the team to change the name from Master Chief to "The Commando" to better reflect the tone of the game.<ref>[http://halo.xbox.com/Content/assets/en-us/Podcast/343Sparkast_006.mp3 ''343 Sparkast #6''] (Archived copy available [https://web.archive.org/web/20120201111637/http://halo.xbox.com/Content/assets/en-us/Podcast/343Sparkast_006.mp3 here]</ref>
[[File:Halo chief 1099.jpg|thumb|250px|left|The "future soldier" wielding a gatling gun.]]
[[File:Early Render Of Engineers.jpg|200px|right|thumb|A later build of a near-final Master Chief with a Covenant Engineer.]]
The Master Chief's look similarly evolved throughout the game's production, with an early version in 1999 looking radically different to the now-iconic MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor featured in the final game. This iteration had magazine pouches and miniature missile launchers on the shoulders. This initial design of the Master Chief was concepted by Shi Kai Wang, with one of his sketches showcasing a heavily manga-influenced soldier with ammo bandoliers on the chest and a [[machete|bladed weapon]] on the back. This art caught the attention of the development team, but that version in model form looked too sleek and effeminate, so Marcus Lehto began to work on the model to turn it more into a tank-like character.<ref name="AOH5">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 5''</ref> By the time of the switch to third-person shooter in 2000, the Master Chief design had more radically evolved to something closer to the final product. This iteration of the Chief had a robotic voice and an antenna on the shoulder.


===Campaign===
===Campaign===
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===Art===
===Art===
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 name="untold"/>
[[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>]]
[[File:PreXbox_Ring.jpg|right|thumb|200px|In the 1999 builds, the ring had the appearance of being broken or unfinished, a concept later reused for [[Installation 08]] in ''[[Halo 3]]''.]]
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 name="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>
 
To develop the characteristic feel of the Forerunners, Marcus Lehto treated the setting of [[Installation 04]] as a character or entity unto itself - the team started with an idea of the ring's scale and function, and from there began to develop the Forerunner visual language. The ring's external surface and internal landmasses were created by concept painter [[Craig Mullins]], who created a series of images showing the ring in various tages of dissamebly with one pristine and new, one damaged and one on fire and coming apart. The ring's surface texture was gleaned from these paintings and later applied to the in-game 3D model.<ref name="AOH77">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 77''</ref> Lehto felt that the structures on the surface of the ring were simply the tip of the iceberg, with each structure unique and filled with increasingly complex machinery beneath the surface. The Forerunner architecture was created through a process of trial and error, with the original style concepted in the old Chicago office a mix of Aztec and Louis B. Sullivan. The style was broken through with roughly five months before the game reached "content complete" status due to concept art created by Eddie Smith, who would produce several pieces of art depicting Forerunner structures.<ref name="AOH79">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 79''</ref> Smith had little mandate or direction when he first started doing sketches of the Forerunner environments, but wanted to give the environment art team a starting point to begin their work on the levels. There was a vague notion of how things ''could'' look but nothing concrete, so Smith began to sketch based on the story synopsis, trying to differentiate from the existing Human and Covenant environments in a style he referred to as "streamlined industrial".<ref name="AOH80">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 80''</ref>
 
For Russel, the Forerunner visual language solidified during the production of the level "[[The Silent Cartographer]]", during building the segments in which Master Chief descends into the interior of the map room. During development, Russel found the architecture beginning to evolve the deeper he went, and he kept improving and refining the formula as he continued on the level until he reached the bottom.<ref name="AOH80"/> The swamps of Installation 04 found in the later level "[[343 Guilty Spark (level)|343 Guilty Spark]]" were designed with lots of fog in the level for both mood and atmosphere reasons, but also to hide level geometry and save performance.<ref>[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/126782/343_Industries_OConnor_Speaks_Out_On_Halo_Anniversarys_New_Visuals.php#comments ''Gamasutra: 343 Industries' O'Connor Speaks Out On Halo: Anniversary's New Visuals'']</ref> During the production of the level, artist [[Michael Wu]] spent a lot of time working on one of the signature mangrove trees in the level's start, characteristically referred to as the "evil tree".<ref name="AOH82">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 82''</ref>


The human aesthetic - primarily that of the interiors of the {{UNSCShip|Pillar of Autumn}} - was driven by Paul Russel's inspiration from the works of the artist Ron Cobb, who had done a number of instrumental work on developing the look of the ''Nostromo'' in ''[[Wikipedia:Alien|Alien]]'' and the colony in ''[[Wikipedia:Aliens|Aliens]]''. The interior of the vessel was designed to look believable and interesting, with drink vending machines, [[bulletin board]]s, and signed denoting various areas of the ship for the crew and the player. Paul tried to take the industrial look developed by Cobb for ''Alien'' and riff on that without turning into a blatant copy, wanting to show things in a functional way that looked like it fit together. The final result was a design direction which looked like it had been built by human hands.<ref name="AOH75">''The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World'' - ''p. 75''</ref> Smith also provided concept artwork for the interior of the ''Autumn'', with [[Lorraine McLees]] developing some of the exterior look.
===Audio===
===Audio===


Revision as of 17:17, November 6, 2019

Halo Wars Community Site Archive

As of March 30th, 2018, halowars.com will no long exist. F.

  • Galleries

Note, the links to all the images/ renders stored in these pages still work so you can still access the lovely concept art.

Link dumps

Just a bunch of links to various bits of concept art and whatnot I don't want to lose.

https://www.neoseeker.com/halo-2/concept_art/ https://www.neoseeker.com/halo-3/concept_art/

Project Warthog

Because I'm really creative with names. Project Warthog is my own personal project to revamp and redo the current set of Warthog pages on the wiki, to make the information within more easily digestible and less bloated. For full details of my proposal, see this thread on the forums.

Stats for REQ vehicle health can be found here (backup of the pastebin incase the tweet goes down here).

Steps

  1. Create a page for the M12B Warthog. The idea of this page is to split Warthog information roughly in half, allowing the M12 Warthog page to focus primarily on the Warthog version found in Halo CE through Reach (and also CEA by extent but you get the idea) while the M12B page focuses on the version found in Halo 4 onwards.. DONE!
  2. Create the following page(s) DONE!
  1. Create an overall Warthog page as part of the wiki's wider "hub pages" project (see: Wraith, Lich, Spirit for examples). A disambiguation page will be needed too.
  2. Rework the Warthog navbox to better reflect the nature of Warthog variants. Likely divide M12 and M12B warthogs into different rows. DONE!

v • d • e
 
Warthog FAV variants
Mainline configurations
M12 Warthog variants
M12B Warthog variants
Civilian Warthog variants
Unique and individual vehicles
Prototypes and Proposals
  1. Perhaps the trickiest, figure out a way to better divide the Warthog pages for the LRV, Gauss and Rocket designs (ongoing).
  2. Listed at the end but really something to do as the project goes along, use this rework as an opportunity to bring Warthog information over from Halo Nation as part of the two wikis' ongoing merger project. Links left below for future reference.

Project ODST armour

Because my naming creativeness knows no bounds. Project to revamp the ODST armours part of the site to resemble the MJOLNIR armor pages more, because why do Spartans deserve cool pages alone?

Steps

Creation of the following pages;

Halo CE development

Early development

In 1997, Bungie had just finished Myth: The Fallen Lords and was beginning the development of Myth II. During this time, Bungie only had 12-15 employees in a small office in South Halsted, Chicago, when Marcus Lehto was brought on board to work with Jason Jones on a small "side project" then-known as "Armor".[1] This project was at least in progress by the time the "Armor" trademark was filed on September 24, 1997.[2] This side project was the origins of Halo: Combat Evolved, originating as an RTS due to thinking Myth would be better if it were science-fiction and Starcraft would be better without resource management. Due to Bungie's interest in physics to provide gameplay, they wanted the vehicles to feel like vehicles and move on 3D terrain. This integration would be based in the Myth engine[3], and was later referred to as "basically Myth in a sci-fi universe."[4] This prototype would change name from "Armor" due to the need to avoid the game actually shipping with that title, and would be referred to internally as "Monkey Nuts" as to ensure the game would not actually ship with that title. "Monkey Nuts" was quickly changed to "Blam!" as Jones didn't want to tell his mother he was working on a game called "Monkey Nuts".[3] The trademarks for "Blam.net" and "Blam.org" were filed in March 1998.[5]

The initial RTS prototype was built with an isometric camera view, though experimentation with certain features allowed a third-person camera to be attached to units for control including the soon-to-be Warthog and Marines. The fun of using the Warthog vehicle led to the camera getting closer and closer. The initial revisions of what would become the Master Chief at this time were simple ~400-polygon models nicknamed something along the lines of the "future soldier", designed to be a supersoldier much like the final Master Chief, but deployable en-masse on the battlefield.[3] These RTS versions of the game had no story and were purely designed for multiplayer[3], though by late 1998/ early 1999, the game had fully morphed into a third person shooter.[6] Jaime Griesemer was hired in mid-1998 at which point the Halo team was 8-9 people mostly working on the game engine. By this point, the game had one assault rifle that could fire grenades and a small boat called a "Doozy", though Griesemer soon began creation of the shotgun and sniper rifle. The multiplayer mode had a 4v4 deathmatch mode, and the staff would often stop development at 4pm every day and play for the evening.[3][7] As development progressed, Bungie would eventually move offices to the north side of Chicago to be in a nicer area and nearer to Marty O'Donnel's studio.[7]

Macworld and official unveiling

On July 21, 1999, during the Macworld Conference & Expo, Steve Jobs announced that Halo would be released for Mac OS and Windows simultaneously.[8] Before this public announcement, game industry journalists under a non-disclosure agreement had previewed the game in a private showing during E3 1999 - mid-May of that year - and were reportedly amazed.[3][9] However, the game was still nameless and thus Bungie hired a branding company to help them name the game. The company and Bungie generated hundreds of names[3] including "The Santa Machine", "The Crystal Palace", "Solipsis"[Note 1], "Hard Vacuum", "Starshield", "Star Maker", "Age of Aquarius"[6] and "Red Shift".[10] However, the name the team ultimately settled on was "Covenant", and this name was given several logo treatments.[3] However, one artist - Paul Russel - thought the name was "stupid" and came up with five or six other names[3], including "Project: Halo"[10]. Few people at the studio liked the name at first, as some thought it was too-religious and that it didn't particularly sound like an action game.[3][10] However, when Russel wrote down the name on the whiteboard in the studio, the name "clicked" in a way that was simple, and described the intent of the universe while maintaining a sense of mystery.[3] Bungie also teased fans with a Blam! mention on their webcam[11], and on May 20th a Myth II fan site was suddenly updated with what would become the Blam! project's final name - Halo.[12] The trademark for Halo was filed in February 1999.[13]

Prior to the 1999 Macworld conference, however, then-executive vice president of Bungie Peter Tamte joined the company due to a wish to help an entreprenueurial company grow following Bungie's setbacks in 1998 and the disastrous release of Myth II. Tamte was a former-Apple employee, and one of his first actions was calling his old boss - Steve Jobs - to ask him to introduce Halo to the world. Joseph Staten, Jason Jones and Tamte went to the Apple HQ to pitch the demo to Jobs - with Jones presenting and Staten there in case the demo didn't work.[3] The OpenGL technology used on the soon-to-be Mac didn't work yet, and the demo was shown to Jobs on a PC just twelve days before the game was set to be announced for a Mac release at Macworld conference.[14] By the Friday before the Macworld showing, it became clear that the studio wouldn't be able to get sound working on the Mac, and thus Martin O'Donnell was tasked with creating a soundtrack that could be played from a CD. The instructions given to him by Staten on the Saturday before the conference were the words "Ancient. Epic. Mysterious.", and Marty began brainstorming melodies, settling on the now-famous gregorian chant. The piece was recorded on the following Monday and burned onto a CD for presentation in New York the following day[15][16], before someone promptly stepped on and broke the CD in New York. Luckily, Marty had a backup.[17]

The Macworld demo was still being created on the hour-and-a-half flight from Chicago to New York, completely in-engine.[17] On Tuesday, July 21, Jason Jones went on stage with Steve Jobs to show off the long-awaited Halo demo to the world, visibly nervous due to a fatal bug that could appear and crash the game on startup.[16] Luckily, the demo went off as planned and Halo was unveiled to the world as intended.[18] The creation of this trailer would ultimately sow the seeds of what would become the Halo universe, bringing the Master Chief character to life and giving the Covenant a reason for existing.[3] The same day, Bungie officially announced the game with the following synopsis;[19]

“ The player is a military recon unit of the human race's fledgling planetary empire. Pursued by alien warships to a massive and ancient ring construct deep in the void, the player must single-handedly improvise a guerilla war over land, sea and air, using the arsenals and vehicles of three distinct cultures. Using everything from composite swords to orbital bombardment, driving everything from giant tanks to agile combat aircraft, players wage intense warfare over and under the surface of this world. ”

Despite this, the primary issue remained that the gameplay footage seen at the Macworld conference was almost everything the studio had working at the time.[7] At the time, the game promised a seamless world without levels or loading screens, open terrain, fauna, flora, weather, celestial events and more.[19] Ultimately, many of these features would be cut for various reasons, but the large expansive levels and seamless transitions from indoor to outdoor environments - considered revolutionary at the time[7] - would remain in the final release.

Microsoft acquisition

Despite the hype surrounding Halo and Bungie's success in announcing it, the company was undergoing financial struggles due to the less-than-successful launch of Myth II[20] - the game had an installer bug that forced Bungie to recall copies of the game so it could be fixed. A month following the Macworld unveiling of Halo, on August 13, Bungie announced they were entering into a publishing partnership with Take Two Interactive, and would begin to see their games published on consoles - where before Bungie had primarily been a PC game developer. Bungie would handle publishing in North America through Take Two's framework, while the two would co-publish games in Europe and Asia.[21] Around this time, Microsoft had begun work on the Xbox, and then-Microsoft Game Studios head Ed Fries was tasked with building up a portfolio of games for the console's launch in fall 2001. When he received a call from Peter Tamte about Bungie's financial situation, he was extremely interested. Take Two invited two of their leading studios - Bungie and Rockstar Games - to meet with Microsoft in January 2000.[3][20] Alex Seropian and Tamte later agreed that joining Microsoft would be good[3], particularly as Seropian believed that if Bungie was going to lose their independence - as was the case with Take Two - they may as well fully merge so they can try and have as much a say as possible.[20]

However, Bungie was still in a deal with Take Two, and thus Microsoft and Bungie negotiated that Take Two would retain the rights to Bungie's previous properties and the other game being developed by Bungie, Oni, while Microsoft would keep Bungie itself and Halo.[3] Microsoft announced their Xbox console at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in March 2000, to which Bungie later stated their interest in working on the platform.[22][23] At this time, the Microsoft acquisition was still not complete, and speculation remained that Halo would be ported to other consoles such as the Playstation 2.[24], though Bungie later said "We never got it running on PS2 anyway".[4] The buyout was announced on June 19, 2000; Microsoft had acquired Bungie for around $30 million and Halo would become an exclusive for the upcoming Xbox console - much to the dismay of PC and Mac fans. Bungie began a restructuring, moving their officers to Redmond and designer Joseph Staten joining the cinematics team.[25]

Continued development

Even amidst the negotiations to move to Xbox, Bungie once more showed off Halo at E3 in May 2000, showing off a new trailer showcasing a deployment of Marines on the titular ringworld. Like the Macworld conference, the demo was finished at the 11th hour, with Marty O'Donnell finishing the music and burning the DVD just two hours before departing for the conference.[26] This trailer would mark the appearance of several new vehicles and equipment; the Elites, Pelican dropship, a sniper rifle, the energy sword and the first appearance of the Master Chief. Previous builds of the game had featured multiple SPARTAN supersoldiers as merely one type of infantry, but now the Master Chief was a singular character. The Master Chief shown in the E3 2000 build would also bear armour much closer to resembling the MJOLNIR Mark V found in the final game, albeit with a small antenna and other slight differences. The trailer would also mark the first appearances of the Covenant Wraith tank and the "Spectre", the latter of which would later be cut from the final game. The Warthog additionally featured a mounted rocket launcher later reminiscent in design of the Gauss Warthog featured in Halo 2 and the Rocket Warthog later featured in the Halo: Combat Evolved PC port.[27] A press kit handed out at E3 2000 estimated the game was "60% complete"[28], while a later article claimed that the only components now missing were mission design and AI.[23]

The game organically evolved to become about the man behind the gun, though the team didn't know precisely who that was yet. As the game currently stood, the third-person camera felt too removed from the player, and thus the decision was made to bring the game into first-person. Jaime Greisemer began properly delving into how to build a first-person control set for console controllers, and ultimately implemented aim assist and the ability to only carry two weapons but switch between them with one button - features standard in shooters now but revolutionary in 2000. This was easier on both the controller, due to having fewer buttons, and on the console, as not as many models and textures would need to be loaded in.[3] By May 26, 2000, the team was investigating first-person though hadn't committed to it yet.[29] Jason Jones had previously opposed the switch to first-person when engineer Charlie Gough attached a camera to the tank's turret in the RTS days of the game's development, after his experience with creating first person games six years prior. Luckily, graphics technology had advanced enough that he was sold on the idea, and Halo's format switched once again from third to first person shooter.[30]

Over the month following the Microsoft acquisition, Bungie moved campus to Redmond. To make sure they left Chicago with a bang, Seropian and Jones went back to the first Bungie office, an old basement apartment, and offered the now-current tenant $1000 to let them have a farewell party there.[4] With the switch to working on Xbox, Bungie now had an arduous task of bringing the game they'd developed so far for PC and Mac to work on the Xbox. This was a blessing and a curse, as it meant the team only had one hardware platform to worry about making the game for, but the Xbox devkits had not been given to Bungie yet and the timescale for the game's development had been rushed, with a little under a year to make the game. The switch to first-person and the Xbox platform would force a radical crunch period on the studio, with "90% of the game" being made in just nine months prior to ship.[31][3] By September of 2000, Bungie still hadn't started work on the campaign of Halo.[32]

Combat Evolved

Over the summer following E3, little info was released about Halo, though some tidbits of information emerged such as a screenshot of the Hunter enemy, the then-unnamed (and later cut) Engineer and repeated assurance by Microsoft and Bungie that Halo would come to Mac and PC.[33][34] Eventually, Matt Soell began posting weekly community updates to keep track of progress on the game. revealing that campaign brainstorming began in December.[35] The Redmond studio in which Bungie was now located was designed by Microsoft to be programmer-centric, with closed offices and such that the Bungie team hated, preferring a more open and collaborative working environment, leading to the Redmond studio having the walls and dividers ripped out. This led to tensions between Bungie and some of the other Microsoft teams working there.[3][15] Eventually, Bungie mandated that regular Microsoft keycards in the building wouldn't grant access to the studio to ensure the development could move smoothly.[3]

During this time, Microsoft hired a marketing company to talk to the senior Bungie staff, with a trailer cut together featuring fast cuts, action and heavy metal. The takeaway the company and Microsoft executives wanted was for Bungie to change the name "Halo", listing a variety of reasons why that Bungie heavily disagreed with. This back-and-forth lasted for several months until eventually the Microsoft team told Bungie they were giving the game a subtitle - "Combat Evolved". Bungie didn't like the name, but were able to ignore it, leading to the final shipping name of Halo - Halo: Combat Evolved.[3]

[36]

Early story and setting drafts

""He’s referring to one of the oldest Flood illustrations we have on record. It’s literally the size of a postage stamp, the full resolution original lost in the shuffle and whirl of thirteen years gone by. “That might be have been drawn in ‘97 or ‘98. We were still in the Halsted office, down in Pilsen, sort of our first real office in Chicago.” “I did some pencil sketches prior to this,” McLees notes, referring to the thumbnail sized image, “but that’s probably the first digital one. It’s actually pretty close to what the Carrier forms ended up looking like.” Well, the color tones are a bit different, I note. Instead of the muted tones that form the pockmarked surface of the slithering menace we’ve come to know, this image of the Flood Carrier features colorations more akin to healthy human skin, strokes of pink and red and ivory. “That’s because I’m color blind.”""
The earliest known concept art of the Flood, by Robert McLees in roughly 1997 during the RTS days of the game's development.[37] The full resolution was lost during the shuffle of years at Bungie, and the colour resembles human skin more due to McLees' colour-blindness.[38]

When developing games prior to Halo, Bungie's method of development was to develop their engine, then make their multiplayer gameplay feel good. This was only followed then by campaign as the final element to take place.[39] The development of Halo was no exception, as the rough story for the game didn't even begin to take shape until mid-199, following the Macworld trailer premiere. The first seeds of the franchise were sown following Robert McLees' creation of the then-"future soldier" (the predecessor to the Master Chief) and the Warthog vehicle, at which point he began to place himself in the year 2500, with the player at war with alien factions.[3] In the early stages of the game's development, the game was to be set on a hollowed-out planet, though this soon evolved into a dyson sphere and later the titular ringworld.[10] This planet was to have been named "Solipsis", one of the names suggested as the game's title during development.[30] The evolution of the setting to the ringworld, however, inspired Paul Russel to come up with the name Halo, which was then applied to the ring itself.[citation needed]

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 ocmbat the natives in the early levels, and the Covenant later on.[38]

An early model of Cortana featuring green eyes and face symbols.

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.[38][Note 2] Another idea to emerge in the pre-Microsoft era of Halo'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.[3] Character artist Chris Hughes modeled Cortana's face based off the Egyptian queen Nefertiti[40], 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.[3]

Sergeant Major Avery Johnson was another character in the game who emerged early on, as an "caricature unashamedly lifted from Aliens". Johnson was originally designed to just be a random Marine, but voice actor David Scully's improvisation and line delivery impressed people so much he eventually became a larger character in the later games. One suggestion from Marty O'Donnel would involve Johnson ending up on the ship at the end of the game with the player shouting "good to see you, Chief!", though this idea was shot down by Staten as he didn't believe anyone would care about the Marine NPCs.[3] Marcus Lehto wanted the marines to look as realistic as possible, and thus watched war movies for reference, but ultimately had to be videotaped by his wife running around with a two-by-four pretending to be a soldier so he could gain more animation reference.[41]

The main character of the game, John-117 - The Master Chief - emerged as the "future soldier" in the RTS days of the game's development. During this time, the future soldier was just one of several types of unit available to the player. As development evolved, production became more and more centered on the player and the character they control. The name of "John" was conceived by Halo: The Fall of Reach writer Eric Nylund[3], while the "117" was created by Eric Trautmann as a reference to 1:17, Revelation of St. John the Divide - "And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead."[42] These names recieved pushback from Bungie, who didn't want to call their main character "John" in the game. A meeting with Griesemer, Jones, McLees and Staten turned out the suggestion from McLees to name him after a military rank, with Griesemer suggesting Sergeant. McLees pointed out John would be in the Navy, so a Naval rank would be appropriate. Griesemer instead suggested Commander, similar to James Bond, though McLees also countered that Commander would be too high a rank for someone being sent into battle like the player does. The team then looked at real world military rank structures, and found "Master Chief Petty Officer" as the highest non-commissioned officer rank in the Navy, and gave that name to the Master Chief. Many people in the team didn't like the name, but it stuck.[3] At one point, Microsoft urged the team to change the name from Master Chief to "The Commando" to better reflect the tone of the game.[43]

File:Halo chief 1099.jpg
The "future soldier" wielding a gatling gun.
File:Early Render Of Engineers.jpg
A later build of a near-final Master Chief with a Covenant Engineer.

The Master Chief's look similarly evolved throughout the game's production, with an early version in 1999 looking radically different to the now-iconic MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor featured in the final game. This iteration had magazine pouches and miniature missile launchers on the shoulders. This initial design of the Master Chief was concepted by Shi Kai Wang, with one of his sketches showcasing a heavily manga-influenced soldier with ammo bandoliers on the chest and a bladed weapon on the back. This art caught the attention of the development team, but that version in model form looked too sleek and effeminate, so Marcus Lehto began to work on the model to turn it more into a tank-like character.[44] By the time of the switch to third-person shooter in 2000, the Master Chief design had more radically evolved to something closer to the final product. This iteration of the Chief had a robotic voice and an antenna on the shoulder.

Campaign

One campaign level would involve volcanoes[35] Twenty five missions were plannned in total, but only ten made the final cut - with heavy asset and layout reuse included.[45]


saving link for later - https://medium.com/@Oozer3993/the-making-of-halo-how-combat-evolved-from-blam-part-2-6bfeabde0f90

Multiplayer

The studio played a lot of multiplayer in development, but for a long time the terrain seen in the Macworld demo was the multiplayer map.[7]

At some point in the game's development following the transition to FPS, Chris Butcher had working jetpacks implemented into the game, and the map Boarding Action was designed with the use of these jetpacks in mind. However, the jetpacks were later cut from the single-player mode of the game, and the map had to be redesigned to have teleporters instead.[46]

Art

"Sketch before building the first #Halo ring. Was my math way off for a 1.5hr rotation to provide Earth-like gravity?"
An early sketch of the ring's mechanics prior to the in-game model being created.[47]
Cool looking cyborgs, broken Halos, dodgy graphics. Is this 1998 or 2022 Halo?
In the 1999 builds, the ring had the appearance of being broken or unfinished, a concept later reused for Installation 08 in Halo 3.

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 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.[3] 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.[48] 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 [49]

To develop the characteristic feel of the Forerunners, Marcus Lehto treated the setting of Installation 04 as a character or entity unto itself - the team started with an idea of the ring's scale and function, and from there began to develop the Forerunner visual language. The ring's external surface and internal landmasses were created by concept painter Craig Mullins, who created a series of images showing the ring in various tages of dissamebly with one pristine and new, one damaged and one on fire and coming apart. The ring's surface texture was gleaned from these paintings and later applied to the in-game 3D model.[50] Lehto felt that the structures on the surface of the ring were simply the tip of the iceberg, with each structure unique and filled with increasingly complex machinery beneath the surface. The Forerunner architecture was created through a process of trial and error, with the original style concepted in the old Chicago office a mix of Aztec and Louis B. Sullivan. The style was broken through with roughly five months before the game reached "content complete" status due to concept art created by Eddie Smith, who would produce several pieces of art depicting Forerunner structures.[51] Smith had little mandate or direction when he first started doing sketches of the Forerunner environments, but wanted to give the environment art team a starting point to begin their work on the levels. There was a vague notion of how things could look but nothing concrete, so Smith began to sketch based on the story synopsis, trying to differentiate from the existing Human and Covenant environments in a style he referred to as "streamlined industrial".[52]

For Russel, the Forerunner visual language solidified during the production of the level "The Silent Cartographer", during building the segments in which Master Chief descends into the interior of the map room. During development, Russel found the architecture beginning to evolve the deeper he went, and he kept improving and refining the formula as he continued on the level until he reached the bottom.[52] The swamps of Installation 04 found in the later level "343 Guilty Spark" were designed with lots of fog in the level for both mood and atmosphere reasons, but also to hide level geometry and save performance.[53] During the production of the level, artist Michael Wu spent a lot of time working on one of the signature mangrove trees in the level's start, characteristically referred to as the "evil tree".[54]

The human aesthetic - primarily that of the interiors of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn - was driven by Paul Russel's inspiration from the works of the artist Ron Cobb, who had done a number of instrumental work on developing the look of the Nostromo in Alien and the colony in Aliens. The interior of the vessel was designed to look believable and interesting, with drink vending machines, bulletin boards, and signed denoting various areas of the ship for the crew and the player. Paul tried to take the industrial look developed by Cobb for Alien and riff on that without turning into a blatant copy, wanting to show things in a functional way that looked like it fit together. The final result was a design direction which looked like it had been built by human hands.[55] Smith also provided concept artwork for the interior of the Autumn, with Lorraine McLees developing some of the exterior look.

Audio

Gallery

  • An early cover art draft from roughly 5-6 months prior to the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved.[56]

    An early cover art draft from roughly 5-6 months prior to the launch of Halo: Combat Evolved.[56]

  • Another early thumbnail cover art that surfaced on a Canadian retailer's website.[57]

    Another early thumbnail cover art that surfaced on a Canadian retailer's website.[57]

Notes

  1. ^ Solipsis was the original name for the planet the ring orbited, now known in canon as Threshold.
  2. ^ This origin is remarkably similar to the origins of the Flood and its effects on Pheru later described in Halo: Cryptum and its sequels.

Sources

  1. ^ halo.bungie.org - RE: Armor
  2. ^ Armor trademark
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab VICE - The Complete, Untold History of Halo
  4. ^ a b c Bungie.net: Inside Bungie: History (Archived copy here)
  5. ^ Blam.net and Blam.org trademarks
  6. ^ a b Bungie.net: The Origin of Halo
  7. ^ a b c d e Youtube: GI Show: The Halo Spectacular (Feat. 343i, Jaime Griesemer, Marty O'Donnell) - (56:04)
  8. ^ IGN: Heavenly "Halo"
  9. ^ PC Gamer: Your first look at... "Halo"
  10. ^ a b c d The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 73
  11. ^ halo.bungie.org - E3 Shenanigans
  12. ^ marathon.bungie.org - Blam!
  13. ^ Halo trademark
  14. ^ marathon.bungie.org: Transcript of Miguel Chavez's "The Jason Jones Macworld Expo NY Interview movie".
  15. ^ a b YouTube: O Brave New World
  16. ^ a b Youtube: Remaking the Legend - Halo 2: Anniversary - 3:10
  17. ^ a b halo.bungie.org: The Nathan Bitner Interview
  18. ^ Youtube: Halo - Macworld Unveiling
  19. ^ a b Rampancy.net: Halo Brings Action Gamers A World Without End
  20. ^ a b c halo.bungie.org: Interview: Bungie's Alexander Seropian
  21. ^ The Mac Observer: Bungie Software Brings In Distribution Partner, May Head Into Console Market
  22. ^ halo.bungie.org: "X-Box is a prime example of a console entering the market at the leading edge of technology, which is where we want our games to be"
  23. ^ a b Rampancy.net: Translation of the GameStar May 2000 Halo Preview
  24. ^ IGN: Halo - Bungie's ambitious first-person shooter is coming...
  25. ^ halo.bungie.org: Joseph Staten to head fourth development team at Bungie
  26. ^ halo.bungie.org: Marty O'Donnell discusses Halo's sound
  27. ^ Youtube: Halo: Combat Evolved E3 2000 trailer
  28. ^ halo.bungie.org: Press kit says Halo 60% done
  29. ^ halo.bungie.org: Halo 1st person view mode undecided as yet
  30. ^ a b IGN: The History of Halo
  31. ^ Paul Russel on Twitter: It's always going to be CE. We made 90% of the game in 9 months. I worked, that entire time, from January until early October 2001, 16-20 hours a day 6 days a week and from home on Sunday. It wrecked me for months after ship. Halo 2 had more studio strife, though.
  32. ^ halo.bungie.org: Re: That reminds me...
  33. ^ halo.bungie.org: Halo WILL ship for the Mac
  34. ^ halo.bungie.org: Microsoft says Mac and PC... of course!
  35. ^ a b Rampancy.net: 1/12/2000 Bungie update
  36. ^ Medium: The Making of Halo: How Combat Evolved from Blam!— Part 1
  37. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 52
  38. ^ a b c Bungie.net: Feast of Bones
  39. ^ halo.bungie.org: Computer Gaming World 1999 scan
  40. ^ halo.bungie.org: Cortana's face was modeled after an Egyptian queen
  41. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 12
  42. ^ Twitter: Eric Trautmann Twitter thread on the origins of John-117 and Halsey
  43. ^ 343 Sparkast #6 (Archived copy available here
  44. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 5
  45. ^ Eurogamer: Better Than Halo: The Making of Halo 2 - Page 4
  46. ^ YouTube: Question Session - Level Design - Hardy LeBel discusses the cut jetpacks.
  47. ^ 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?
  48. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 71
  49. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 85
  50. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 77
  51. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 79
  52. ^ a b The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 80
  53. ^ Gamasutra: 343 Industries' O'Connor Speaks Out On Halo: Anniversary's New Visuals
  54. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 82
  55. ^ The Art of Halo: Creating a Virtual World - p. 75
  56. ^ Albert Penello on Twitter: I want to say about 6-7 months before launch. These would have been early drafts.
  57. ^ halo.bungie.org: Bizarre Thumbnail at Futureshop.ca

Transparent images

As part of the concept art revamp I'm restoring the original artist-uploaded images to the wiki rather than cropped pngs. The crops are stored here for archival purposes should they be needed then.

  • Halo3-MarineConcept.png
  • ODSTs big compilation.png
  • ODSTs small compilation.png
  • H3 - Chieftain Concept.png
  • H3 - Stalker Concept.png
  • H3 - Jumppack Concept.png
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