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| The Genealogy of Halo Maps, Pt. 1 | |
| Posted By: FyreWulff <mkidder@gmail.com> | Date: 9/13/11 3:46 a.m. |
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This is the first part of a 20 part series in which I'll dissect both the distant and direct relationships between the multiplayer arenas of Halo 1. Ever feel like a map has a familiar element to it? You might be closer to the truth than you think. Just like any artist, Bungie designers have taken elements from their previous releases or even other games that are not even Halo and adapted them for the latest sandbox. These writeups will be based off my observations and opinions with some direct Bungie quotes here and there. The dissection will be complete, and at the end of it all I'll post the entire family tree - one that will span almost the entire 20 years of Bungie's existence. I'll ease us into this series with a lineage some may expect and some may have not known about. A map that has appeared in every single competitive multiplayer Halo to date. Part 14 Generations of Fun: Hang 'Em High, Tombstone, Longshore and Anniversary Hang 'EmHang em High. One of the first and probably ugliest maps made for Halo 1. It had to be ugly for performance reasons, forged out of strangely smooth Forerunner steel and many uses of the 3DS Max "Extrude" tool. Many people called this home during Halo 1's LAN heyday.
The map is a large asymmetric box arena, centered around a trench on the lowest floor and catwalks over the top. A few tunnels allowed covered movement on one side, while the other side was fairly exposed. Default starting weapon? Everyone's favorite overpowered sidearm, the Pistol. I could on about other aspects of this map, but let's fast forward almost 7 years. A little game you may have heard about called Halo 2 recieved a map pack from some developer named Certain Affinity, headed up by former Bungie main man Max Hoberman. In this 2 map pack was a remake of Hang Em High. Codenamed Highlands (where have I heard that map name before..) with the final name of Tombstone, it continued the western film naming theme. A number of flow and gameplay improvements were made in this map. A jump was added to the rear tombstone rocks, a new back entrance/exit tunnel was added to the red base (formerly blue in Halo 1), and an air lift added in place of the main ramp due to scale issues. It started looking silly after they scaled the map vertically to accomodate the moon-gravity of Halo 2 jumps. As Frankie put it:
Tombstone was well received, even after they had to re-issue it to deal with collision geometry bugs, and all was well. It was a remake of a Halo 1 favorite! Not much to talk about there (and I won't be talking much about direct remakes in future parts). 3 months later, Halo 3 came out. The majority of the population moved on. Had things gone Bungie's way, Tombstone's spirtual successor would have been out a year later. But they did not. We'd have to wait 2 more years to get the grandson of the original Hang 'em High: Longshore. "What?" Yes, Longshore. While this fact has not been trumpeted as much as you would think, Longshore is a direct descendant of Hang Em High. It's not a remake like Tombstone, but a separate category called "spiritual successor" - where a map has elements of the one it is based off of, plays functionally similiar, but is mostly new components. To quote Bungie employee Ken Taya: " In the beginning was Cotton, and Cotton was with box, and Cotton was the box (Cotton 1:1). He actually took the geometry of Hang 'Em High and overlaid it on top of it the geometry of Longshore. For the record Hang 'Em High was my favorite map...until Longshore. Bam, said the Lady!" So not only was the map based off the concepts of Hang em High, Longshore was literally built off the original geometry! Let's dissect Longshore and see where some of it's DNA comes from. Let's look at Red Base. We got some fronks, gate controls, and HEY THAT'S THE SAME BASE FROM THE ORIGINAL MAP!
While there aren't sprawling catwalks coming out of every orifice, the covered ramp is still there, with access to the hallway that wraps around to the back with a quick right. While the elevations are different (the wallway winds downwards instead of staying level), you can tell this map has it's mother's eyes. Still not convinced? Look at that picture, then look at this one of near the same spot in Halo 1:
Visualize the general appearance of the top of that base, and the tunnel leading around to the right, backwards, then left. You getting it yet? Here's the view from Halo 2. Note that this a community port of Tombstone, so some textures and scale might be a pixel off, but look:
The cover has been chopped off the end of the ramp to make it a bit more dangerous to hold in objective, but the ramp remains in pretty much it's entirety. The giant ramp off the side of the base has been entirely omitted. The top section of the base was re-oriented to account for the shifting of the sniper-spawn overhang ledge concept to being over the base as an extendable bridge. There's nips and tucks, but this is definitely the HeH base. The blue base is mostly retained from the original map, with some tweaks here and there for Halo 3 gameplay. The low 10% of the base was lopped off, and the top widened. Here it is on Longshore. It's a bit hard to capture as a Halo 3 screenshot, but take a look:
Now the same base from Tombstone:
Since the blue base is spatially isolated from the red base in Longshore it did not need to be as tall. Bye bye goes the first ramp section as the rest remains. The upper catwalk is even retained here, but I'm not sure how many people actually used it when not at the initial spawn. And here's what remains of the original Trench in trench form in the heater room:
The rest of the Hang Em High DNA comes not from geometry, but from spatial and flow concepts. Instead of red base leading directly into a covered tunnel system, the red base tunnel exits into open air. What used to be the windowed 'office' area (and the home of the Certain Affinity cola machine in Tombstone) and the bottom floor of the 2 story combat area is now sunken down and made into docks that are more vehicle friendly than before. Instead of canonically correct random tombstone rocks placed by a crane, we have crates of fish placed by bearded fishermen. The new central building has multiple purposes to it. It provides a safe place to spawn for both teams, proper gates to control in Objective, and balances the BR's range and makes it effective only on certain parts of the map, making players that know when to switch the tool for the job much more effective. An issue with the original map is that it was pretty much a killing field that needed to hand you a power weapon off the bat to defend yourself with - making Tombstone the only Halo 2 map that spawned you with a BR by default. Most of all, it provides a new experience while paying homage to what has come before. It's just unfortunate that it came so late. Plus, we've got a bit of influence of High Ground and Zanzibar with the interactive extending bridge that mostly comes into play during objective games. In asymmetric modes, the offending team must storm the red base and extend the bridge via the base controls. In symmetrical games, the bridge can be extended with a button right next to the bridge itself. Clever teams will capture and use the grav lift equipment to make an exit with a flag onto the bridge and freedom - as long as there isn't a ghost waiting for them at the top! Finally, we come to the clone of the original patriarch.. Hang Em High Anniversary.
I was hoping that we'd have more hands on detail with this map before I put this writeup, but HeH:A has yet to make a playable appearance at any event nor receive a name for it's "Reach" version. But it officially exists, unlike Headlong (for now). We can tell one thing from this screenshot: for the fourth time with the concept and the second time around for the developer, Certain Affinity has evidently adapted HeH:A with some Forge capability indicated by energy bridges that convienently don't case shadows replacing formerly solid catwalks in the original map. It remains to be seen if the non-Classic version will alleviate any issues with the map's openness and the DMR that Halo 2 exposed and Longshore dealt with beautifully. I think this one case where I might just want to bring some Longshore into this map via Forge, but it remains to be seen what kind of palette HeH:A anniversary will contain. Perhaps we'll even be able to make Tombstone via deleting the big ramp? Only time and publisher reveals will tell. I can tell you right now that I'm vetoing any sort of Halo 1 Pistol mode on this map after playing the gametype at Halofest. See you next time for Part 2 - Father and Son; Construct and Countdown / Lockout and Guardian
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