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00:01He's hot! Blowing the pins in five!
00:08Welcome to Mojo Plays! And rather than finishing the fight, we're showing where it all began as we delve into
00:14the archives to uncover the truth behind the origins of and behind the scenes secrets of one of the greatest
00:20first-person shooter series of all time.
00:23Sure you wouldn't rather take a seat?
00:25We'll be fine.
00:29If I still had fingers, they'd be crossed.
00:31Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest
00:37videos.
00:39Monkey Nuts
00:40Sleep well?
00:43No thanks to your driving, yes.
00:45So you did miss me.
00:47Halo didn't immediately start out as Halo, and instead it all began as a tiny side project by Jason Jones
00:54and Marcus Leto during Myth 2 development.
00:57Internally, it was Monkey Nuts, a placeholder so embarrassing they knew they'd have to ditch it faster than a grunt
01:04drops a plasma pistol when things get spicy.
01:06Jones renamed it to Blam because there was no way he was telling his mom he was working on a
01:11game called Monkey Nuts.
01:13This was Bungie's first game primarily built on PC instead of Mac.
01:17And at first, it was literally just Jones, Robert McLeese, and Leto slinging code on the prototype like three Spartans
01:24trying to hold a flood outbreak with spitballs and hope.
01:27From a placeholder embarrassment that sounded like a rejected adult film title to a game that launched Xbox.
01:34Every legendary franchise starts somewhere ridiculous, Blam indeed, and thank the great Journey they didn't ship it as Monkey Nuts.
01:42Hold on now, he's a friend.
01:44Oh, I didn't realize. He's your pal, is he? Your chum?
01:49Do you have any idea what that bastard almost made you do?
01:53Rough Drafts
01:54Oh, this is loco! Get back here, Marine! That's an order! Jenkins!
02:02As far back as 1997-98, The Flood started as a covenant-created living minefield or disease-like agent designed
02:11to crank up aggression and intelligence in its hosts,
02:14long before the Ringworld or any of the deeper lore even existed.
02:18Early drafts featured a human Empire, pre-UNSC, whose ship crashes on the Ring.
02:24Loose marathon ties lingered with Chief as a security officer variant, covenant scraps from the Fjord, and forerunners echoing the
02:31Jaro.
02:32However, they slowly stripped it all away for the cleaner UNSC tale we all got.
02:36Just imagine Chief playing survival instructor to retro future tribes while dodging plasma and parasitic rage zombies.
02:44It would have been gloriously messy, but the final version tightened the focus and hit harder.
02:49What started as a chaotic crossover fever dream became the definitive sci-fi shooter epic.
02:54Sometimes the best horrors are the ones that survive the chopping block.
02:58This thing is falling apart!
03:00It'll hold.
03:01We're not gonna make it!
03:03We'll make it.
03:03Pull up!
03:04Pull up!
03:08You did that on purpose, didn't you?
03:11First impressions.
03:12And the Halo project lead. Halo is the name of this game.
03:15And we're gonna see, for the first time, Halo. Welcome, Jake.
03:19Steve Jobs strutted out at Macworld to introduce the then-Mac and Windows game back when Halo was still a
03:26wild RTS turned third-person experiment that hadn't even discovered its first-person soul yet.
03:32Marty O'Donnell knocked out the iconic theme in a single day, drawing on Gregorian chant vibes inspired by the Beatles
03:39yesterday.
03:40The demo CD literally shattered en route to the event, but a backup copy saved the day.
03:46Jason Jones was visibly nervous during the pitch, probably wondering if the whole project would crash and burn right there
03:52on stage.
03:53Bungie turned that near disaster into the soundtrack of a generation while Jobs played Hype Man.
03:59It's the ultimate underdog story.
04:01Nervous devs, broken plastic, and a melody that carried an empire from those early genre experiments all the way to
04:08ring-dominating glory.
04:10Without that backup, we might have never gotten the ring.
04:13Fate loves a dramatic save, preferably with sturdier packaging next time.
04:28John-117
04:30Captain Keyes.
04:33Good to see you, Master Chief. Things aren't going well.
04:36The name John came courtesy of Eric Nyland while writing The Fall of Reach.
04:41The 117 was Eric Troutman's contribution, nodding to Revelation 117 in the Bible.
04:47Microsoft briefly pushed the Commando, but thankfully cooler heads prevailed.
04:52They landed on Master Chief Petty Officer for that perfect Navy-inspired gravitas.
04:57Cortana drew heavy inspiration from Durandal in Marathon and was originally planned with a sharp British accent and a far
05:04more contemptuous, rampant personality.
05:06Some lines like, sawed off, survived the switch to Jen Taylor's American voice, partly to dodge similarity with another game
05:13she'd worked on.
05:14Visually, she was modeled after a Nefertiti statue with green eyes and facial symbols later removed.
05:20The name evolution for both icons mirrors the game itself. It started messy, but ended legendary.
05:27Imagine pitching the commando while Cortana tells you to sawed off in a posh accent.
05:31Thank goodness they stuck with the strong, silent Spartan and his sassy hologram.
05:36A construct in the car? That is absolutely unacceptable.
05:40Sawed off!
05:42Beta level.
05:43The cartographer is a map room that will lead us to Halo's control center.
05:48Internally known as B30, the assault on the control room level was built, torn down, and rebuilt more times than
05:55most marriages.
05:56It served as the ultimate proving ground for gameplay, weapons, and that epic ring reveal.
06:02Early builds were hilly terrain testbeds packed with buildings, marines, and gloriously bouncy tank physics.
06:08Programmer Charlie Gao casually hooked up controls to a single unit one day out of pure curiosity.
06:13Turns out, controlling it felt surprisingly good.
06:16Good enough to help shove the whole project away from its RTS roots toward third-person action,
06:22and then eventually the first-person masterpiece we got.
06:25The team planned levels with humble index cards such as A30 for the intro Halo section,
06:30or A50 for truth and reconciliation shenanigans.
06:34Every frantic sprint through these corridors carries the ghost of one curious programmer discovering the joy of running and gunning.
06:40Some of gaming's best maps and genre shifts came from treating design like chaotic Warthog Jenga.
06:47Look on the bright side, film habit.
06:49The last thing the Covenant will expect is an aerial insertion from underground.
06:54Glitch features.
06:56What? How did we get here? What?
06:58What's wrong with you?
06:59With me? What's happening?
07:00Um, we're being held prisoner? Where the hell have you been?
07:04What? How? I'm so confused.
07:06Here's a glorious near-release glitch.
07:08Look straight down, and Chief's head stays facing forward like he's perpetually judging your aim.
07:14Instead of fixing it last minute, they left it in.
07:17Machinima gods, and especially early Rooster Teeth, embraced the relaxed talking head pose for their many hilarious and iconic sketches.
07:24It even inspired the official alert carry animation in later games.
07:29Bungie turned a bug into an accidentally genius feature.
07:33Next time you're watching old Red vs. Blue and Chief looks weirdly chill while chaos erupts,
07:38thank that one overlooked animation quirk.
07:41It's the video game equivalent of leaving the typo in because it became iconic.
07:45Who needs perfect rigging when you can accidentally birth an entire comedy empire?
07:49Pure serendipity wrapped in Mjolnir armor.
07:52Ow! The back of my lower legs!
07:55Ow! The side of my head!
07:57The back of my face!
07:58The front of my front!
07:59Shrinkflation
08:00Deadlines hit like a hunter's shield slam, forcing heavy asset and layout reuse across the campaign.
08:06Several full levels were cut late, shoving story beats into quick cutscenes such as the bridge between the silent cartographer
08:13and the assault on the control room.
08:15The flamethrower worked great in beta and the PC port, with enemies dropping weapons and running in panicked circles before
08:22dying, but it got dummied out for Xbox.
08:25Other losses include the human machete, an energy sword counterpart, the tri-barrel chaingun from early promos, the late drops
08:32covenant shadow vehicle, jetpacks which were originally key to boarding action, and numerous vehicles.
08:38Wild creatures like rideable thorn beasts, symbiotic blind wolves, three legs, thorax, vulpards, sharkwai, and keel bugs were all axed
08:47mostly over AI headaches, though some resurfaced later in books and Halo Wars.
08:52Bungie turned Crunch Chaos into a living ring, proving you can still slap together a classic with whatever's left in
08:58the fridge at 2am.
09:00Land Party Underestimation
09:08Bungie figured Halo multiplayer would be a cozy little college dorm thing used only by existing LAN parties with freshmen
09:15and Mountain Dew.
09:17But surprise, regular people started hauling massive CRTVs to friends' houses, rigging up makeshift networks, and turning living rooms into
09:25blood-soaked arenas.
09:26The team was floored when folks treated it like a legitimate social event instead of niche nerd ritual.
09:33Anyone who grew up during this time can remember explaining to their family why they need to borrow the family
09:38TV for four hours of Slayer.
09:40What started as a happy accident became the blueprint for console multiplayer domination.
09:45Bungie basically invented the bring-your-own-monitor meta without realizing it.
09:50So, next time you're yelling at your screen in a random match, tip your helmet to those early pioneers who
09:55lugged heavy glass just to get owned by a guy named XXEliteSlayerXX.
10:01Pure evolution, baby.
10:11Working to the end.
10:13No, that can't be.
10:14Oh, those Covenant fools, they must have known, there must have been signs.
10:18Slow down, you're losing me.
10:20By mid-2001, about 80% of the script was still floating in the void.
10:25Enter Eric Troutman and Brandon Boren from the Microsoft side, who rolled up their sleeves and knocked out the bulk
10:31of the level dialogue while the team was already running on fumes.
10:35Joseph Statton, meanwhile, was out here piloting characters in cutscenes like a deranged puppet master, manually recording every input.
10:42The result?
10:43Occasional clipping and jitter that they just shrugged and kept because deadlines don't care about perfect animation.
10:49It's peak bungee chaos where half the memorable lines came from last minute heroes while the other half survived because,
10:55eh, close enough.
10:56Next time Chief delivers a stoic one-liner or keys drops exposition, just picture exhausted riders and a guy frantically
11:03keyframing awkward walks.
11:05No wonder the flood feels so invasive.
11:07They were probably stressing in the schedule too.
11:16Microsoft meddling.
11:18This is it, baby.
11:20Hold me.
11:25You'd think naming the biggest Xbox launch title would be simple, right?
11:30Well, yes, but also no, apparently.
11:33Bungie just wanted to call it Halo.
11:35Clean, mysterious, perfect.
11:37Microsoft and the marketing folks panicked though,
11:39worried a single word might scream religious epic instead of religious epic where you shoot aliens in the face.
11:45So, they slapped on combat evolved like a safety label on a plasma grenade.
11:50We can't even imagine the pitch meetings.
11:52Guys, we love the ring, but we need people to know this is an action shooter, not some mysterious art
11:57piece.
11:57The subtitle stuck, and honestly, it worked and eventually grew on everyone.
12:02Classic corporate save that accidentally nailed the vibe since nothing says evolved combat like wielding a needler while your warthog
12:09flips into a canyon.
12:10The full title ended up working perfectly for what became a defining shooter.
12:15We had no choice.
12:18Halo, it's finished.
12:20No, I think we're just getting started.
12:23What's your favorite making of fact about Halo Combat Evolved, and what's your favorite Halo game ever?
12:29Share your knowledge and picks in the comments.
12:32Did you enjoy this video?
12:34Check out these other clips for MojoPlays, and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about
12:39our latest videos.
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