00:00www.hailo1.com
00:30Story. Cortana. I've spent the last 12 hours cooped up. The combination really established sort of a new genre, if
00:37you will, of FPS, console, story, expectation. Halo did a lot of really conventional storytelling through cinematics and cool voice
00:45acting and great music, obviously, but I think some of the storytelling that happens in Halo that's most inspiring to
00:50me is the storytelling that happens through the environment and the sandbox.
00:54While you were hit with all this great fiction that you could really kind of delve into and try to
00:58understand more about, at the same time, you could just pick it up and play.
01:01All of that kind of came together to make a game that had not necessarily was completely different than what
01:07previous shooters had done, but got all of its individual formulas so excellently perfect.
01:12You had this incredible first-person shooter experience that I don't think anyone had ever even come close to before
01:18it.
01:18Halo was the beginning of me playing console games with my friends, and that's still how I always think about
01:22it.
01:28I think people have been asking for a remake of Halo 1 since Halo 2 was announced.
01:32I like to go all the way back to the day that Xbox Live came out, and the demand for
01:36Halo 1 and the ability to play, say, co-op over Xbox Live kind of started, and it built up
01:42over the years and over the years.
01:43It was the perfect timing since the 10-year anniversary was coming up.
01:46It occurred to us that there was this entire generation of people who never played the original game.
01:50If you're an 18-year-old gamer today, you were 8 when Halo came out.
01:54We did due diligence on a number of partners.
01:57The number one requirement was that it didn't impact gameplay at all.
02:00You have a classic. You have something that's just magical, right? If you go and tinker with it, you're going
02:05to lose that magic.
02:05What we really needed was someone who could work with our existing physics and gameplay engine.
02:10Saber popped up really quickly, and they were like, yeah, we can do this.
02:13We can make the game look like a current generation game, and we can do it by using the original
02:18Halo 1 engine.
02:19The gameplay in Halo 1 is what's called deterministic.
02:22In other words, if you feed the engine the same input, the game will behave in the same way.
02:26And if you can apply this principle across an app, you can have two game worlds completely in sync.
02:30So rather than simulate Halo's original gameplay or Halo's original physics, we're able to actually use them completely.
02:37So the car is nice and shiny, but the engine is fairly old, so we have to make sure that
02:41it all kind of fits together.
02:43And then we have to speed up the engine to make sure it works in today's world.
02:48We've done some deliberate things. The library is easier to navigate.
02:51Now we use lighting and textures to make it a little bit simpler.
02:53The pillars are covered in holograms on one side, or they're more decorated on the other side.
02:58From what we've noticed, it actually seems to help people that aren't familiar with the library figure out where they're
03:02going.
03:03Truth and Reconciliation is one of the best examples I can give.
03:05If you come to that first interaction, and then you make your way towards a cliff, you can look up
03:10and see this unbelievable skybox.
03:12And so having all these updated graphics has really made the game, to me, just more immersive.
03:16I still remember the first time I saw someone switch to graphics.
03:18I didn't know that was actually going to be a feature, so I saw someone do it.
03:21In a lot of ways, it was a very, very fine balancing act.
03:24Because, again, we're running all the original Halo 1 animations, so it's the original Halo 1 skeletons for those characters.
03:29Needed to be rebound into the updated meshes that we had brought over from Halo Reach and from Halo 3.
03:35For example, the Elite actually has an elongated neck, so they're a little bit more squat and compact.
03:41Cracking the case in 30 seconds.
03:43Welcome back, sir. We'll have you battle-ready stacked.
03:46Master Chief's iconic.
03:47And he has to look like a hero, and he has to look just right.
03:49Chief's armor was, that was a tough process. We went back and forth from that for a long time.
03:54Originally, we were using a Mark V armor that's built in the multiplayer component of Reach.
03:58We just kept coming back, and it just didn't look like Master Chief.
04:01The first stuff we put out around E3, I think the forum reaction was instantly,
04:04Chief looks wrong, his visor's too big, the color's all wrong.
04:07Some people thought we were doing it intentionally, as a retro.
04:10If you saw the original Chief from, like, 1999 era,
04:13he had a really tall, very matte, reflective helmet that actually looked similar to that.
04:17The thing about this group working on this project is that we are very, very passionate about getting this right.
04:24We iterated on that probably six, seven months before we finally got a final Chief's armor that I think looks
04:31awesome.
04:32One of the number one asks that we had for a Halo remake was, we won't co-op all over
04:35live.
04:36The original Halo 1 campaign experience had already been designed for cooperative play.
04:40You notice when you're getting out of the initial cryotube, there's actually two cryotubes for cinematic.
04:44It definitely creates another challenge for us when you're playing with somebody else, but we obviously wanted to support that.
04:49Codebase was built 10, 15 years ago, so we had to figure out how this codebase is structured, how it
04:54was designed.
04:55We had a lot of people work really long hours to make it happen, and to really code it ultimately
04:59from scratch.
05:00It's pretty seamless, so you'll go into the campaign lobby, and there you'll see your friends who are online playing
05:05the game.
05:05You fire off an invite to a friend, and they'll be able to join you.
05:09Allowing you to play what was originally a split-screen cooperative campaign experience, now a cross-line.
05:16Classically, skulls in Halo tend to affect behavior, which means the AI needs to support those behavioral changes.
05:23How do we create something that alters gameplay?
05:25Well, one of our fundamental tenets is keeping gameplay the same.
05:27Skulls are one of the tools we're giving the player that if they do want to change their gameplay experience
05:31a little bit, they can do it.
05:32The benefit to this is that most of these skulls are brand new. You've never seen them before, you've never
05:35played them.
05:36Like Malfunction, where random head elements disappear whenever you respawn.
05:40Boom is a skull that increases the radius of explosions, making explosions more dangerous both for the Covenant and for
05:46the player.
05:47That, in combination with something like Grunt Funeral, means that you become very afraid of grunts.
05:55We must continue. This way, please.
05:57There are a few features that got into the game that turned out better than we expected.
06:00And 3D is probably the number one. It was unexpected, it was a bonus, and I don't see 3D very
06:07well, but it really worked for me.
06:08So, for some reason, it just pops in Halo in a way that it doesn't in other games or even
06:12movies.
06:13Yeah, I'd say the feature that surprised me the most was Kunex.
06:17So, we've got a number of voice commands throughout the course of the game.
06:19Things like grenade, reload.
06:21At a point during the game when you're playing, you can say analyze, and this mode comes up where you
06:26can almost capture items.
06:27So, you move your cursor over, say, in a lead or a grunt, and in the library, you can go
06:31in there and see the things you've captured, move the model around in 3D, and it gives you a bit
06:35of a breakdown and explanation of what those characters are.
06:39For me, when I think about Halo, I think about looking around and just the scope and the scale of
06:44everything.
06:44This is the game that started it all, and people can really dive in and play and remember what it
06:50was like to play it 10 years ago, and if you didn't play it 10 years ago, you can see
06:53what it was like 10 years ago.
06:54It's the quintessential walk down memory lane with much better visuals.
06:58Ultimately, the thing you learn is, it doesn't just look modern, it feels completely modern.
07:02Completely remastered campaign, great additional features like co-op over live, skulls, terminals, 3D, Kinect, and multiplayer.
07:12Once you see it for yourself, it's a pretty awesome experience.
07:16There's a lot of stuff in there for $40.
07:19We're actually really excited about the fact that there's so much there, and it's a real smorgasbord of stuff for
07:24people who enjoy Halo.
07:25One of the best values that you'll find this holiday season, by far.
07:29One of the best values that you'll find this holiday season, by far.
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