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| developer diary 4.... | |
| Posted By: op_ivy | Date: 10/24/01 4:57 p.m. |
In Response To: What is your favorite "Waiting for Halo" memory? (Lophan) "As the game nears completion, it has become easier to see the unique aspects of Halo, the things that make it different from other action games. It’s great to see all the plans we made finally coming together. For example, one of the things that we planned for and worked very hard to capture is the fluidity of Halo’s action. At any time you can fire your primary weapon, throw a grenade, or melee attack. Taken separately, none of these options is particularly special, but the fact that you can do all of them at any time without switching weapons or using modifier keys meant we could make each an important part of the gameplay and gives Halo a unique flavor. You can throw a grenade to drive an elite out of cover, pin him down with your assault rifle and then finish him off with a rifle butt to the face in one seamless action sequence. Alternatively, you can use the plasma pistol overcharge blast or a quick jab to the face to stun a grunt, take the opportunity to stick a plasma grenade to him and watch him panic and run screaming back around the corner to where his friends are hiding, blowing them all up. Or you can use a melee attack to instantly kill a sentry who is looking the wrong way, lob a grenade into the group he was supposed to warn about you and then finish them off with a few bursts from your assault rifle. Halo gives you multiple tools to approach each encounter and all of those tools are tightly focused on tactical combat. When you add in the vehicles, tactics can become even more complex. The guy riding shotgun in your warthog during a multiplayer game can toss a grenade into the enemy base from his seat, then leap out of the warthog, grab the flag, use the flag to smack another defender and jump back in without you even letting up on the accelerator. Since all of your tools are focused on combat, and since they can be used together seamlessly, Halo’s action is both faster and more tactical, than in most action games. Another thing that makes Halo very unique is its cooperative mode, where two people can play through the solo campaign together. Halo’s cooperative mode allows a player to automatically respawn after he dies, but only if the living player is safely out of combat. The enemies are just as lethal in cooperative as they are in solo play, so you can’t just roll over them with twice as much firepower and twice as much health, you have to make coordinated assaults. For instance, one player can go toe to toe with a Hunter long enough for the other to snipe it in its weak spot. Or one player can distract a large group of Covenant while the other stealthily sneaks around the back, using the silent melee attack on any grunts he finds sleeping or looking the wrong direction, to access the control panel they were guarding. Double-teaming an enemy pilot banshee in an aerial dogfight is definitely one of the coolest cooperative moments in Halo. Although other games have done cooperative play, Halo’s freedom of movement and lifelike AI gives cooperative players numerous options and requires more precise coordination. The main thing that I think makes Halo unique, however, is that the gameplay is inherently dramatic. Carefully scripted music, constant chatter from friends and enemies, and the epic nature of the combat all work together to make each encounter feel like a carefully orchestrated action sequence. I’m not talking about canned cut-scenes that you can only watch but not interact with. The AI, the music, the encounters, the physics and the tactical combat combine to create an unlimited variety of dramatic situations. I’ve seen someone nail a Banshee that was dive-bombing him, watch the flaming wreckage crash into the wall he was taking cover next to and then barely dive out from under it as it nearly fell on top of him. I’ve seen a warthog drive out of a second story window, do a complete back flip and land right in the middle of a squad of Covenant just as one of them said “Does anybody see him?” I’ve seen an energy sword wielding Elite leap down off a ledge right behind two players and cut them down while they were distracted by other Covenant forces, then laugh over their corpses. These things don’t happen rarely in Halo, either, all those examples were from a single coop game. Halo is probably the only game I have ever played where watching someone else play is just as enjoyable as playing yourself, and a good player will often have an entire crowd around his desk as he tackles a particularly tough level. This dramatic quality extends to multiplayer as well. Yesterday we played a giant 16-player LAN game of CTF that ended with our entire team bearing down on the enemy base with two tanks, three ghosts and a warthog, shelling it to force everyone inside, driving a ghost down into the base to swipe the flag, and ended with a high-speed warthog chase back to our base, where we only scored because the pursuing player was sniped out of the driver’s seat mere moments before running over our flag carrier. Any game of Halo has the potential to be as dramatic as any scripted cliffhanger, and it’s even more exciting since it all plays out in real time." nothing got me more excited for halo then this diary entry. i was already very excited for halo and it was easily my most wanted game, but this article increased that "wanting" ten fold.
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