interview

EDGE has a feature up here: http://rampancy.net/weblink/bungie/Edge_Interviews_Isla about the AI in the Halo series. They interview AI programmer Damian Isla, where he brings up an interesting concept I'd love to see in a Halo game-- or any Bungie game, really:

There was the well-known example in Halo 2 where your 'hog full of marines would just drive off if you got out. That's actually not that easy a problem to solve because how does the game know you intend to come back?

My grand thesis is, what if you can say: "Wait for me"? Communication with AI has been sorely neglected; you can ask them to charge, retreat, go there, but what about a richer level of communication than just orders? Even just a 'You're doing it wrong' button - literally.

Yes, Damian. Please. Yes.

Bungie president Harold Ryan tells Variety how to be swallowed by Microsoft and emerge unscathed. Some highlights: thoughts of going independent went back 3-4 years, the preparations went back more than 2 years, and one of the driving reasons was the freedom to work on non-Halo titles.

... well, not really THAT personal. However, Ducain at HIH did go into an awful lot of detail in his questioning of yours truly and Louis Wu at HBO, and the resulting fountain of verbiage is now duly formatted and posted for the benefit of those wit intestinal fortitude to spare and time to waste.

Comic website Earth's Greatest interviewed Eric Trautmann about his comic Checkmate. Trautmann previously worked at Microsoft and was involved with Halo and the Halo novels written by Eric Nylund.

Asked about working on Halo, this is what he had to say:

Helping Eric Nylund craft "The Fall of Reach," the first HALO novel was a treat. Eric's a hell of a writer (and I actually was one of the people who more or less bullied Del Rey into using him in the first place) and a good friend, so that kind of contribution is effortless.

Working on the game itself, HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED, was a considerably less pleasant experience. The deadline pressure was enormous; my co-writer at the time, Brannon Boren, and I had just a couple days to bang out a massive amount of dialogue at the request of the game's designer, John Howard, and Bungie co-founder Jason Jones. Apparently, whoever had written the original in-mission dialogue had not done a job everyone was happy with, and they needed, essentially, a writer or writers who could work fast. We happened to be around and available, so we agreed to do it, but Bungie is VERY secretive, and, despite the fact that we operated under the same non-disclosure agreements THEY did, they can be quite mistrustful.

So, we had three days to bang out some ridiculous amount of dialogue, but they wouldn't actually let us LOOK at the game (which is why some of the dialogue doesn't make total sense; I conservatively estimate we got it about 80-90% right, which I think is an accomplishment given how blind we were flying).
THAT was no fun at all.

Deadlines are never fun. Check out the full interview for more information on some of the work Trautmann is doing for DC Comics and has done on Lucasarts properties in the past.

1Up talked to Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard (community lead) and Tyson "Ferrex" Green (multiplayer design lead) about what worked (and what didn't) in Halo 3. A must-read item. Kudos to PlanetHalo via Louis Wu at HBO.

Editor's note: Ferrex does reveal that originally, the Ark was buried on Earth, and the idea of a portal that leads to an Ark somewhere else came later. So, in the final moments of Halo 2, when the Arbiter asks 343 Guilty Spark where the Ark is, and the scene shifts to Earth before he can answer, that was indicating that the Ark was on Earth. It's just that it was moved before Halo 3 was made.

John Olin at Xbox Evolved interviewed Wideload Games' Matt Soell about how he came to Wideload, about Hail to the Chimp, and also about Stubbs the Zombie. Stubbs, it seems, may be getting a sequel:

Stubbs is near and dear to all of us, and we’ve heard from lots of people who would like to see more of him. I can’t say anything specific right now, but it’s safe to say he’ll be back. They say you can’t keep a good man down, and that goes double for the ones with an insatiable hunger for brains.

For more info on Hail to the Chimp, be sure to check back regularly at the animal news station, GRRNews.

Over at HaloBabies, mr smiley has posted an interview with DigitalPh33r, creator of the Arby 'n' the Chief machinima at machinima.com.

Newsweek columnist N'Gai Croal interviewed Bungie's Joe Staten about the Halo 3, Halo 2, and the Halo movie back in August of 2007. The first part is online now. Croal picked out one blockbuster revelation by Staten to highlight in a second post prior to the publication of part two, however: that the faceless Master Chief wasn't really going to be the film's protagonist.

In the film, the other characters begin to comment on Master Chief's anonymity, like "Who is he?" and "What's his story?" He becomes a really wonderful source of mystery, a sort of anonymous problem solver. So we definitely worked on that. In the final version of the script the Master Chief was certainly absolutely critical to the film, but there were other characters around him which carried most of it, that did most of the emotional heavy lifting. The Master Chief was there in support of their story.

Staten also does confirm something that many fans have long suspected, and that even some people "in the know" have expressed doubt at: that Halo 2 was supposed to be the end of the story. Staten says, "we didn't think we were necessarily going to make Halo 3. I mean, we made Halo 1 not knowing we were going to make Halo 2. So we started out designing Halo 2 not thinking that we were going to make a Halo 3." Halo 2's third act, even though it was different from what we got in Halo 3, could have ended the story. Halo 2's cliffhanger simply made it impossible to stop there.

All those who think there must be a Halo 4 should take heed of that.

Last time I felt I had to apologize for mentioning Ron Gilbert's new adventure game, DeathSpank. It's not a Bungie game. It's not a Halo game. Gilbert never worked for Bungie, or worked on Halo. The two have nothing to do with one another, and this site has always been about Bungie or people and things connected to Bungie somehow. In my own twisted way I justified including the item because while completely separate, Gilbert's Monkey Island games stood out to me as special and memorable, as well as the pinnacle of good concept and solid execution in a graphical adventure.

This time, though, Gilbert makes my job easy when he answers the question posed to him by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, about why adventure games have lost their way. He blames Halo... sort of. Kinda. Well, not really. But he does mention it:

In same ways, adventure games are just as popular as they were back in the day, the real issue is that the rest of the industry took off without them. I blame Doom. That game showed up and interjected testosterone in gaming that wasn't there before and adventure games had a hard time competing with that kind of energy. There is an audience for adventure games, but it's not the same people that are buying Halo, Bioshock, or even Mario. Problem is, until a company really decides to focus (spend money) and discover that market, it's going to remain small.The future my lay in good adventure hybrid games, like... oh just to pull one out randomly... DeathSpank.

Ron... not entirely true! We're here! We love Halo and Monkey Island, and we're looking forward to DeathSpank! Really!

As a footnote: for all the old RHL gang who remember the great Crotchfest, Gilbert offers this:

DeathSpank frequents a local pub called the Haunted Crotch Bar and Grill (all you can eat salad-bar Tues nights) owned by Grimtub Hobblepotty.

There is no game so good that a few crotch references can't make it even better.

HaloBabies just recently announced the new Halo comic Larry The Marine, which I neglected to mention at the time and richly deserves it.

In addition, HaloBabies has posted a profile of Halo fan artist Kelli "Etoli" Davis, who is now working on an upcoming game at SuperVillain studios. Check out mrsmiley's interview with Etoli over at HaloBabies.

Avateur in the HBO forum pointed out a Halo Wars Q&A with Ensemble Studio's Graeme Devine over at GameTap. Devine is the lead designer on Halo Wars.

In addition to mentioning how Ensemble must simultaneously respect the Halo canon and being free to make the best Halo RTS game Ensemble could make, rather than the best Halo RTS game Bungie could make, the article touches on the touchy issue of console controls:

GameTap: Obviously, the control scheme is always an important subject when discussing real-time strategy games on consoles, how do you go about striking a balance of offering the depth that RTS games are known for, but at the same time, keeping the controls simple enough as to not be overwhelming?

Graeme Devine: I think this is key. When we started work on Halo Wars we started from scratch, we threw the mouse and keyboard paradigm away and rethought what it meant to control a real-time strategy game. I really think that's one of the big differentiators with Halo Wars because it allows us to bring the depth to the controller while, in our opinion, improving how controllable we can make the genre.

Although no solid date is given, Devine says that Halo Wars has the "magic in the disc" to be one of the "biggest games of 2008" so that seems to indicate fans have twelve months or less to wait before they see the first non-Bungie, non-FPS Halo game hit the shelves.

Bungie recently demonstrated the Heroic map pack to the press, and Gamasutra spoke to lead mission designer Steve Cotton of Halo 3's DLC team.

Couple of great behind-the-scenes articles pointed out over at HBO: Next Generation interviewed Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell about music in games in general and polishing the Halo series in specific, and Sci Fi Tech put up Faces of Halo that shows us some of the actors and actresses who lent their voice talents to the Halo series and points out other things you might have seen (and heard) them in. Thanks HBO.

Once again more news has transpired in 24 hours than I'm able to handle with the individual loving care that each unique-as-in-snowflake bit of news fully deserves to be treated. So sue me.

Here's what happened:

Bungie cheated HBO out of a Humpday win. Makes you wish there was some large company comprised of adults watching over these boys Luke Smith while at play.

Speaking of cheating, NBA player Gilbert Arenas apparently sets up dummy matches of doubles in social slayer and gets the dummy to quit out, leaving him with the victory and the experience points. MC187 sniffed out the method looking at statistics, and the Washington Post got Arenas to admit to it, who arrogantly asserted it wasn't cheating. Bungie, instead of banning him, pointed to Arenas' apparently legitimately high matchmaking skill ranking as proof of the player's ability and ignored the fact that he's manipulating the experience system. So that's it, it's OK to set up fake social games to get free experience points. If you're a famous NBA player who is friends with top MLG teams. Otherwise, don't. You might get banned.

Speaking of HBO, Bungie AI engineer Max Dyckhoff gave an excellent and wide-ranging interview to HBO about exactly how the Saved Films feature works (it is simultaneously both more and less complex than you'd think) as well as how driving AI works (or doesn't).

Frankie pointed out Halolcats, the content of which is pleasantly predictable.

Shacknews interviewed Wideload's Alex Seropian about being an independent game studio.

Since I've been spending way too much time playing Halo 3, a lot of news has slipped by the last couple days:

Kotaku notes a new Xbox 360 bundle that includes Halo 3, destined for Europe.

TTL says Halo 3 is blam!ing awesome.

Wired interviews Frankie about Bungie's independence and its future. This is actually one of the better interviews out there on the subject, and while there are still things Bungie won't talk about, there's less evasiveness here.

This I can't let pass without comment:

FO: Microsoft Game Studios is our publisher for two projects that we've announced, and beyond that I can't talk about the details of the deal, because we are a privately held LLC, but on the other hand Microsoft is a publicly held company, so they might be able to talk about those details in more depth than we can.

That's a bit of spin there. Bungie being private doesn't prevent them from talking about this deal; that's a choice they've made. Microsoft being public doesn't enable them to talk about this deal. What really should be said here is that, due to Microsoft being a publicly held company beholden to its shareholders, it might be compelled to talk about this deal, whereas Bungie cannot.

TeamXbox interviews Frankie about Bungie's future relationship with the Halo franchise, and what it's like to have other developers work on it.

BusinessWeek interviews Brian "SketchFactor" Jarrard on what Bungie plans to do next.

bs angel in a blog entry over at hawtymcbloggy posts a few useful netiquette tips for Social playlists on matchmaking.

Speaking of matchmaking, Bungie has rolled out its first playlist update, extending Big Team Battle back to 16 players, and adjusting the balance of shotty sniper games, the upshot of which being, you'll get less shotty snipers, and if you do get shotty snipers, and you veto shotty snipers, the next game you get will not be shotty snipers. Me? I love shotty snipers.

Microsoft has updated its content usage rules for machinima makers. The changes are, to be kind, mild, and consists primarily of apologies for leaving things in, blamed on Microsoft's lawyers.

The vague prohibition against "offensive" content is still there.

The music and sound clause now essentially says you're on your own to secure those rights, instead of flat-out telling you that you can't have them, which is good. It also says Halo music is okay to use due to an agreement with Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori. No word on sound effects, though.

The clause about "lost chapters" or backstory now says you can do this, but if you do you're granting Microsoft permission to use what you make, royalty-free, worldwide, without crediting you. Not that they actually want to do that, but they have to make sure machinima makers can't sue Microsoft for coincidental similarities. Not that Microsoft would lose those suits, but just going to court costs money.

Stories from HBO were used in compiling this report.