The Making of Halo: How Combat Evolved from Blam! Part 2
If you missed part 1, catch up here.
It was the dawning of a new millennium and Bungie had two of the hottest games in development in Oni and Halo. First order of business for the new year was attending MacWorld San Francisco to show off the former, since it was closer to release. But while Oni was the only game they had prepared to show, they kept getting asked about Halo. The game had just gotten the full preview treatment in several magazines over the last couple months so there wasn’t really anything new to show. But that didn’t stop the fan pressure. So Bungie, always keen to be crowd-pleasers, looked to whip something up. Luckily, several members from the Chicago office were on hand including Executive Vice President of Publishing Peter Tamte, who was on his way to show off Halo to Bungie’s Asian publishing partners. He just happened to have a computer with a build of Halo on it. So Joseph Staten, who was a designer on Oni at the time, took his digital camera and recorded a couple off-screen videos that were shown to convention goers and streamed online through Bungie’s website. The footage from day 3 even included the first glimpse of the enemy known as the Grunt.
In March, at the annual Game Developers Conference, Microsoft finally confirmed the worst kept secret in gaming: they were joining the console market with the Xbox. Bungie was among the developers who made it known that they were interested in the new machine. In an exclusive preview in the May issue of German magazine Gamestar, the idea was floated of porting Halo to the new console. It was yet another in the line of rumored ports, along with the rumored Playstation 2 and Dreamcast ones. Unbeknownst to Gamestar (presumably) and the general public, Bungie had already met with Microsoft in late January. Xbox team members Seamus Blackley and Kevin Bachus had gone on a tour of game publishers to pitch them on the Xbox and a couple Bungie guys had tagged along with their Take Two partners. Co-founders Jason Jones and Alex Seropian sensed an opportunity.
E3 2000
The Electronic Entertainment Exposition in May 2000 had a big profile. SEGA had just released the Dreamcast in the US the previous fall and was looking to strengthen its position in advance of the incoming competition. And speaking of that competition, Sony was expected to announce the American release date and price for the followup to their incredibly successful Playstation, the Playstation 2. They would also show off a stunning trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2. And there was the chance that Nintendo would show off new hardware. Their new console, code named Dolphin, had been grist for the rumor mill for over a year, and they were known to be working on a new handheld.
For months, Bungie had been teasing a big presence at the show. It would mark Halo’s first public appearance at the convention after its behind closed doors showing for select press the year before. And Bungie wanted to make it count. They brought a brand new, 9 minute trailer to the annual expo in May. In a small, closed theater on the show floor, after a 5 minute introduction by Joe Staten with some live game play, Bungie played the trailer off a DVD for groups of about 20 at a time. Similar to the MacWorld showing, the music had been finished at the last minute. According to composer Marty O’Donnell, he had completed the final mix of the sound and burned it with the trailer to the DVD just 2 hours before leaving for E3. The first showing on the show floor was the first time the final trailer had been shown to anyone. Before the expo officially opened one day, Bungie ran through their presentation for people from Microsoft [1].
The trailer showed an overhauled game, even more graphically impressive than the MacWorld trailer, and packed with new things. Set in a similar environment to previous footage, the trailer depicted a tactical human assault on a Covenant held outpost on the titular ring world. It began and ended with a new green armored human expertly taking out several aliens. With a sniper rifle in the beginning and an energy sword, another new addition, at the end. It was the first public appearance of the character that the world would come to know as the Master Chief.
The new armored soldier was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the new sights and sounds. There was a human aerial transport vehicle, two new Covenant land craft (though one wouldn’t make the final game), ambient fauna for the ring, and even new music. The trailer even had voice acting, including an early, robotic voice for the Master Chief. The Marines in the trailer were modeled, and named, after Bungie employees. According to the press kit Bungie gave out at E3, the game was approximately 60% complete, though that was likely a rather rosy estimate. A preview in Gamestar magazine that was on newsstands that month in Germany pegged two major components that were missing from the game: mission design and enemy AI.
That’s what happens when your lead is a crack addict. — Paul Russell on Jason Jones’ decision to change perspective.
The trailer was purely cinematic and did not show any game play, so there was no way for the public to gauge a possible change that Bungie had been teasing. They had begun toying with including a first person perspective, with Jason Jones even saying the balance was leaning towards first person [2]. Third person would be used for driving and first person for sniping. Anything else seemed to be in flux. Jones had been against a first person perspective initially, but third person was becoming difficult to use so he relented to a switch to first person.
Bought By The Enemy
On June 9th, a huge rumor began circling the web: Bungie was deep in talks to be bought by Microsoft. While it seemed crazy on the face of it, the groundwork had been laid months before when Bungie and their publishing partner Take Two had met with Microsoft to be pitched on the Xbox. At first Bungie was just interested in publishing their games on the system, but co-founders Alex Seropian and Jason Jones realized there were greater opportunities. Jason was keen on the Xbox hardware, and the chance to help define it, while Alex, ever the more business minded one, was interested in the vast amount of money Microsoft had. While not in dire straits, Bungie was in a precarious situation. They couldn’t absorb a flop. Bungie executive Peter Tamte had a relationship with Microsoft Game Studios head Ed Fries after helping MGS publish several games on the Mac. He became the point man for some type of deal with the house that Gates built. Over a series of meetings, many of them at Bungie’s San Jose offices, a publishing agreement turned to a full acquisition [3]. Bungie could use the financial stability, and were interested in being the premiere studio for a console, with the ability to steer its development. And Microsoft could nail down what could be, in Ed Fries’ eyes, a killer app for the Xbox [4].
Then on June 19th, the impossible was confirmed. Microsoft had bought Bungie for approximately $30 million and was planning on making Halo a launch title for their new Xbox system. Fan outrage was swift and passionate. Co-founder Alex Seropian did a round of interviews to calm nerves, but his inability to guarantee a Mac release only fanned the flames. The buyout did require some restructuring of the studio. Rights to Myth and Oni went to Bungie’s former partner Take 2 and Bungie East would move to Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus, with the Oni team to follow after completion of the game. Designer Joseph Staten moved from Bungie West to Redmond to head up the cinematics team for Halo, along with composer and audio director Marty O’Donnell. The move would take about a month, with Bungie expected on the Microsoft campus on July 17th.
If Mac fans were angry about the acquisition, their spiritual leader was incensed. Apple CEO Steve Jobs was made so angry by the move that he called up Microsoft executive Steve Balmer to yell at him. Balmer asked Ed Fries to talk to Jobs and calm him down. To placate the mercurial CEO, Fries agreed to set up a company, headed by Peter Tamte, to port games to the Mac, including Halo. Ed Fries, a Microsoft higher up, actually appeared at Apple’s MacWorld a couple months later to announce the news. But Jobs may not have just been angry about losing a key Mac game developer, but about being beaten to the buyout punch. Tuncir Deniz, a former Bungie employee who left before the buyout but who was still close to the company, claimed Apple had been made aware by Bungie that the company was available, but Steve Jobs turned the opportunity down. Upon catching wind of Microsoft closing in on a deal for the company, Apple suddenly became interested, but by then it was too late.
The new work location and target machine would have effects on the game. The beautiful environs of the Pacific Northwest influenced the team, leading to the signature cliffs and greenery of the early levels. Hardware limitations helped inform what would turn out to be a genius design choice. The Xbox would lack a keyboard, and it’s requisite row of number keys. It would also have just 64 MB of RAM, the minimum Bungie had been aiming for on PC. Those factors, combined with gameplay concerns, led to Bungie limiting the player to only two weapons at a time. Easier to switch between that way, both for the player and the machine [5].
With the studio in the process of moving into new digs and getting comfortable, as well as porting the game to a still-in-flux console, development slowed. Bits of info, and some new screenshots, would still come out over the summer from magazine previews that had been in the works before the buyout was finalized. The first shot of the Hunter appeared in Computer Games Magazine. PC Gamer also had a screenshot with a new enemy (the Engineer, though they didn’t identify it as such and it would be cut before release), and teased a full weather system [6]. Bungie confirmed that Halo was still coming to Mac at MacWorld New York, and Microsoft quickly added that the game was coming to PC. To keep fans satisfied, Bungie also released a couple videos made in the engine. First up was a parody of the Budweiser “True” commercials that were popular at the time.
They also made a commercial for the NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS that they first showed at MacWorld New York before it made its way online in September.
The buyout may have delayed movement on the campaign, as even by late September Bungie hadn’t started on it yet. In order to keep their fans up to date on progress on the game, community lead Matt Soell began doling out weekly updates, which he posted on a variety of fan sites. In the beginning these updates rarely included much beyond assuring fans that the engine rewrite for the Xbox was coming along. Brainstorming for campaign missions started in December, though artists had already started building environments, with one idea being a level that included a volcano. Work on multiplayer networking would begin in February, with a design document for the mode finished before then. But fans would have to wait for the first glimpse at Halo running on an Xbox, and their first look at it in first person, until Microsoft’s Gamestock event in March of 2001.
Reemergence Day
Aside from the two goofy promotional videos, Bungie had not released any new footage or screenshots since E3 2000. They were not present for the big reveal of the look of the Xbox during Bill Gates’ keynote at CES 2001 and a rumor about an Xbox Superbowl commercial featuring Halo turned out to be bunk. Over late 2000 and early 2001, the Halo team had been slowly cannibalizing members of the Oni team. In February, that process reached its natural conclusion as the remaining members of the Oni team were assimilated. At the same time, Bungie began working on the introduction of the Flood. They also confirmed what the fans were hoping for: Halo on Xbox would have it’s big coming out party at Gamestock.
The decision was made to focus on the level The Silent Cartographer for Gamestock. It was a fitting subject. Called “b30” for much of development, it had been the test bed environment for the game, morphing from undulating hills and streams to a beach ensconced plateau. One of the things they wanted to show off was the combat dialogue system, how your allies would react to what was going on in the game, but it was still coming together. Marines shouting “woo-hoo” when in a Warthog was practically the only thing working. Not happy with the level of excitement shown in the line, Joe Staten had it re-recorded. The new reading was too enthusiastic for Jason Jones, though it seems it still made it into the demonstration.
Microsoft had hosted their annual Gamestock get together for years, but 2001 was especially important. They were knee deep in preparations for their first game console and needed a good showing to impress a still skeptical industry. The ace in their hand was Halo, the game they had bought a studio for. At the end of the keynote presentation, Xbox head Ed Fries brought out Jason Jones and Joe Staten to show the game off, with Joe playing it live for the packed room of journalists. He flew around an island in a Banshee, drove around it in a Warthog, and ventured into the bowels of an alien complex in first person. The game was gorgeous and still retained the physics that had come to be one of its trademarks. Especially impressive given that the development kits at the time only ran at roughly 50% of the power planned for the final box. The dynamic music system wasn’t up to snuff yet, so composer Marty O’Donnell was actually in the back of the room playing music off a CD with Joe Staten needing to hit his marks to make it appear seamless. Though Joe was given a little help: the A.I. was dumbed down a bit to make it easier on him.
While the demo started off with the Master Chief in third person, it ended with the first footage of the game in first person. The game had become more focused on first person after E3 2000, which was tricky with the switch to Xbox. First person shooters, aside from Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, had rarely turned out well on consoles. Bungie was determined to change that. They had put a lot of thought into making the controls work on a controller. From here on out, the game was a first person shooter.
Bungie also used the occasion to reveal that the game would include cooperative multiplayer for the campaign. But the competitive multiplayer side was trickier. Jason Jones had approached Hardy Lebel and Michael Evans, who had just come over from the Oni team, and told them that multiplayer might have to be cut. They protested and offered to take it on, as Jones had hoped they would. While there were two people working full time on it, Bungie couldn’t actually promise that it would even make the game, at least the Xbox version. The studio as a whole was focused on getting the campaign working and up to their standards. Combined with the murkiness of the Xbox’s network capabilities at the time, this kept the competitive multiplayer in limbo.
Bungie was in full blown crunch mode. They’d had to transition the code base to the Xbox, without final development kits, and essentially create the entire campaign mode. While they’d had a story, they hadn’t really massed out any areas or created any encounters before November/December. Things were still tight at Gamestock. Music wasn’t working in the game yet, and many things were placeholder. The game had switched to a more traditional, mission based experience from the original non-linear design though the natural course of game development. And those missions were in flux. A couple were cut entirely. A few more were cobbled together out of existing geometry to get the game up to an acceptable length. Silent Cartographer was intended to include a Prophet searching for the titular map, but there was no time to create a unique design for him.
You’re not gonna get any sleep between now and the launch of that thing. — Cliff Bleszinzki
This did not go unnoticed outside the studio. Cliff Bleszinski, a developer at Epic Games, had been keeping track of Halo and worried that Bungie had months of crunch ahead of them. Next Generation Magazine had an exclusive preview in the May issue and got hands on with, as they called it, a “barely playable” level from the game [9]. They were anxious at how unfinished it was, filled with placeholder sounds and only featuring two types of enemies. IGN went so far as to ask Joe Staten and Lead Designer John Howard whether the game would actually make the launch of the Xbox.
E3 2001
The Electronic Entertainment Expo is always a big deal for video game manufacturers, but like every event in the lead up to the launch of the Xbox, the 2001 edition was especially important for Microsoft. The press and fans were lukewarm on the console and MS had only a handful of months to convince them it was worth buying. Unfortunately, thanks to shortages from graphics chip maker NVIDIA, final development kits weren’t ready yet. Games would have to be displayed on early, under-powered development kits. Microsoft did have some big news to announce: the release date and price for the console. It would launch in North America on November 8th for $299, the same price as the Playstation 2. During Microsoft’s press conference before the show officially opened, Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach brought out Joe Staten to play the game live for the assembled audience.
Bungie came out in force for the actual show. The game was playable on the show floor, both multiplayer and campaign, and the studio held one of their famous “Fan Fests” where they showed off more game play, with live commentary from a developer. But press reaction was muted at best. Several outlets named the game the biggest disappointment of the expo. Due to the under powered development kits, the game ran choppily. It also suffered from numerous bugs, some of them game breaking. A couple of the bugs had actually been fixed specifically for the expo, but somehow the wrong build had been brought to the show.
Bungie had no time to dwell on the poor showing. They had a game to finish. Multiplayer, as shown at E3, was working, but the scope still wasn’t set. Online play was ruled out, in part due to Xbox Live not being ready for launch. To underscore how much work was still needed, and how much was still in flux, the tank did not get added back into the game until late May. And the flamethrower was still in the game at that point as well. Bungie had even experimented with saved films and had them working in some capacity. Some help arrived in the form of final developments kits which landed in early June. The team working on the game also kept growing. Many a weekly update included a new name for Bungie diehards to learn.
Another casualty of the time crunch was ambient life. Bungie never had the time to add it back in after the switch to Xbox. They also felt the game worked better devoid of it. The first cutscene wasn’t up and running until the end of June. The Shadow, briefly glimpsed in the E3 2000 trailer, was added back into the game. For a week. Then it got taken out again, replaced by the Wraith. In the midst of the crunch, Microsoft’s marketing department struck. They weren’t comfortable with name being just “Halo.” They wanted to change it. Bungie pushed back. Eventually a compromise was reached. The game would be called “Halo: Combat Evolved” on the box and in marketing, but on the title screen in-game it would be just “Halo.” [7]
Bungie was reaching the part of development where tough decisions needed to be made. Designer Jaime Griesemer was told only one of the sniper rifle or shotgun could make the final game. He managed to rally together enough resources to keep them both. About two months before the ship date, a meeting was held to determine whether multiplayer would actually make the game [7]. Single Xbox multiplayer worked, but LAN play crashed regularly and Bungie wasn’t sure about shipping a diminished multiplayer. A conference room was set aside with as many development kits as Bungie could afford to spare [8]. Meanwhile, they submitted the game to the ESRB for a preliminary rating and got a T for Teen. By August, pretty much everyone at Bungie was working on Halo, including the Oni and Phoenix teams.
The ship date was looming large in the window and Bungie was scrambling to get there. They’d have several distractions along the way. While the game hit Release Candidate status in September, they also had a tie-in book to deal with, as Eric Nylund’s Halo: The Fall of Reach, the official prequel novel to the game, was due out before the game. The Xbox itself got delayed a week to shore up supply [4]. Then in October, the ESRB had a change of heart and changed the game’s rating to M for Mature. Community Lead Matt Soell also revealed that they’d already been approached about making a Halo movie. Bungie even had to deal with Microsoft accidentally sending out an early, rejected version of the box art to a Canadian retailer. But finally, on October 18th, after a marathon of bug checking and fixing that ended at 4 AM [4], Halo was sent for certification. But not without one last twist.
A common gaming trope in first person shooters at the time was to have the weapons the player acquires become ever more powerful the farther he or she made it in the game. Bungie wanted to get away from this. They wanted every weapon to have its place. At first the weapon balance had been kept the same between the campaign and multiplayer. That became difficult to deal with, so the values were separated. But then that led to them becoming too different. So they were put back together again [7]. Late, practically past the last minute, Jason Jones went in and increased the damage value for the pistol. The change was made so late, it had to be made in a small patch that overwrote the normal value whenever a level or map was loaded.
On October 24th, 2001, the long, winding, 4 year journey came to an end as Halo passed certification and went into production. There were still PC and Mac versions to do, but Bungie wouldn’t be handling those. Destineer, a company created by former Bungie executive Peter Tamte, would handle the Mac duties, while Gearbox translated the game for PC. But Bungie, for the first time in months, could rest.
The game was a hit right out of the gate. Reviews ranged from glowing to effusive. The game got perfect scores from numerous publications, including rare 10s from Edge and Electronic Gaming Monthly and racked up an amazing 97 overall on Metacritic. Edge, EGM, IGN, and others named it their Game of the Year. In January at CES, Microsoft announced that over 1 million copies had been shipped [4]. Its impact would be even more pronounced on the games it inspired. Halo popularized many things that have become shooter standards. Recharging shields, separate buttons for melee and grenades, and a two weapon limit are now staples of the genre. Its massive success and critical acclaim were crucial for the fledgling Xbox. Without the game, the platform may not have succeeded. And fan interest in a sequel would be gigantic, making Halo 2 possibly the most anticipated game ever. And all from a couple guys messing around with an RTS engine in the back room of a Mac developer in Chicago.
Videos:
- Here’s the footage from day 3 of MacWorld San Francisco. And here’s day 4.
- Gamespot footage from Gamestock 2001.
- Gamestar footage from Gamestock 2001.
- E3 2001 trailer and Microsoft promotional footage.
- Off screen footage of the Silent Cartographer from Bungie’s E3 2001 FanFest, with some developer commentary.
- Off screen footage of Halo from Bungie’s E3 2001 FanFest featuring some alternate Cortana dialogue.
- E3 2001 off screen gameplay from Gamestar with a short, placeholder intro cutscene.
- A playlist of videos purporting to be of a build of the game from September 2001, likely before September 7th.
- A commercial for the game from November 2001. And a later one touting its Game of the Year awards.
Notes
- The E3 2000 trailer was recorded on a computer with a 450 MHz Pentium III and a TNT2 graphics card. On a related note, as of E3, the minimum specs were a 266 MHz processor, 64 Mb of RAM, and a 3D card.
- Not directly Halo related, but multiple outlets reported that Bungie had thought about debuting a new game at E3 2000. Presumably this would have been Phoenix. Next Gen magazine even gave what might be the first description of it. Ed Fries took to calling it Fantasy Siege after the buyout, as did Turbine Entertainment when they hired away someone who worked on it, but community lead Matt Soell said it was not called Fantasy Siege. It was officially announced, in a way, at Bungie’s MacWorld San Francisco 2001 FanFest.
- Microsoft’s officially released footage and screenshots of the game for E3 2001 featured early, striped energy shields for Elites and drop shields, with the ones for Elites being spherical. The game on the show floor had closer to final shields.
- Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian apparently blabbed about the “Halo being a weapon” twist to a British TV show in September of 2000.
- If you look closely at Joe Staten’s hands when he’s playing in during the Gamestock demonstration, you can see he’s using a prototype Xbox controller.
- Oddly enough, Halo is older than the Xbox. The first work on what would become Halo occurred sometime in 1997. The first work on the Xbox happened in 1998 [4].
- According to Jason Jones, Activision made an offer for Bungie way back before Marathon came out.
- At one point, the game had jetpacks. The multiplayer map Boarding Action was specifically designed for them. When they were cut from the campaign, they had to be removed from multiplayer. The teleporters were a quick and dirty solution to keep the map.
- The game had come in so hot that several things that had been cut still made it onto the disk. The model and texture for the Engineer, an enemy that would eventually make it into Halo 3: ODST, as well as information for the Flamethrower and a weapon called the Gravity Rifle are still present.
Sources
[1] Bungie Podcast with Martin O’Donnell (12–17–2007)
[2] PC Gamer UK, July 2000 Issue
[3] Bungie Podcast with Dave Dunn (10–25–2007)
[4] Takahashi, Dean. Opening the Xbox. Roseville: Prima Publishing, 2002
[5] Retro Gamer Magazine, Issue 135
[6] PC Gamer, August 2000 Issue
[7] Halo Spectacular Podcast
[8] Bungie Podcast with Harold Ryan (1–18–2008)
[9] Next Generation Magazine, May 2001 Issue