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| Halo stuff from the Expo | |
| Posted By: SiliconDream=PN= <querl@uclink4.berkeley.edu> | Date: 1/6/00 2:35 a.m. |
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First, a few miscellaneous tidbits: We met Marty O'Donnell at the Bungie booth, and he said that one of the things he's looking into for Halo is dynamic music, where tracks don't just turn on and off according to where you are and what you do, but vary their "emotional intensity" by altering individual instrument tracks and so forth while keeping the same basic tune. Joe Staten (or Staaten, I forget how many a's) gave the diameter of the Halo as 10,000 *miles* and stuck to this figure when I asked him whether he meant kilometers. We were told at the gathering--I think by Matt--that Halo is intended to be extensively modifiable and that, probably, the editors will be made available immediately upon release. Matt sez #2 is 8 MB compressed, that it's on his hard drive, and that once the Expo is over he won't sleep or bathe until it's released. So Sunday or Monday, I'd guess. That guy who ate the shirt on BTV? He just had his wisdom teeth out. There was blood on the shirt afterwards. Dedicated fan. :) Now, here's my synopsis of Joe's talk about Halo's story. It has a couple of things Xzzy left out. I'd give it word for word, but I gave my camcorder tape to Deus Ex Machina for converting to Quicktime. Anyway, I'm sure someone will post a movie of his talk soon. At an as-yet-unspecified point in the far future, humanity is steadily expanding into space, colonizing more and more systems. Colonies are probably fairly small at the moment--Joe called them "outposts." Our primary direction of colonization is toward the galactic core. The Covenant's attack comes from this side (which, Marathon story buffs will note, implies that they may have explored L'howon), although they attack from many different directions (in other words, the coreward area they control is BIG). Little is known about them, as their only communications are brief transmissions of a seemingly religious nature before opening fire on whichever outpost they're currently attacking. Humanity can offer little resistance to their superior numbers and tech, and in an enormous Star Wars-style space battle (described by Joe as "with star cruisers and all that stuff") the human fleet is annihilated. A single ship, the Pillar of Autumn, flees-- I didn't catch if Joe gave a specific motive for this but Xzzy says he said they're trying to decoy or confuse the Covenant--and its female captain puts the crew in stasis and hands over control of the ship to its AI. Joe said we were "going to hear a lot more about this AI later;" can anyone guess who it is? ;) The ship, following an evasive course, eventually arrives at the Halo system, which contains (perhaps among other bodies) the gas giant Threshold, its moon Basis, and the Halo. Unfortunately it also contains an enormous Covenant fleet, which got there a little bit earlier. The human ship's AI puts up quite a fight and destroys most of the fleet, but the ship is disabled and crashes on the Halo. It ejects its crew before the crash and their escape pods land all over the ringworld. As the game opens, you, an elite, high-ranking military officer, have just woken from stasis and climbed out of your escape pod. And so begins the guerilla war, in which you will encounter, in Joe's words, a "f*ckload of aliens." Then he sprinted from the mike before we could badger him with questions. I'm DEFINITELY going back Saturday. --SiliconDream | |
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| Replies: |
| Halo stuff from the Expo | SiliconDream=PN= | 1/6/00 2:35 a.m. |
| Addendum... | SiliconDream=PN= | 1/6/00 3:21 a.m. |
| Re: Addendum... | Forensic | 1/6/00 7:09 a.m. |
| A note on scale | L. Tankersley ("Cap'n Carnage") | 1/6/00 10:28 a.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Forensic | 1/6/00 10:44 a.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Tyrbiter | 1/6/00 3:19 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Otokam | 1/6/00 3:32 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Picky | 1/6/00 5:23 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Nemesis | 1/6/00 5:47 p.m. |
| Re: A note on scale | Mark Levin | 1/8/00 12:54 a.m. |
| Context-Sensitive Music? | Loren Petrich | 1/7/00 1:50 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | SiliconDream=PN= | 1/7/00 2:47 a.m. |
| ROFL n/t | CyberBob =PN= | 1/7/00 3:55 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Mark Levin | 1/7/00 11:17 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Butcher | 1/7/00 4:31 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | h'biki | 1/8/00 8:49 a.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Butcher | 1/8/00 12:50 p.m. |
| Re: Context-Sensitive Music? | Chris Huff | 1/8/00 6:08 p.m. |
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