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Frankie's Bungie Updates - Search results for Parsons
Friday, October 01, 2004
Roger handed off the tapes in LA yesterday, and as I write this, Alta, the Bungie Princess, is picking some discs up at Seatac Airport. And the office is eerily quiet – the calm broken intermittently by the rustle of a tumbleweed, or the rhythmic "barrrrrump" of a Parsons Sushi fart. Terrifying as it is to me, Parsons ordered Sushi for the celebratory lunch today.
Friday, September 24, 2004
So, about that kimchee. If you're a regular reader of the updates, you'll know that within Parsons beats a tiny black heart, shriveled by eons of relentless evil, fluttering inside his ribcage like a frantic vampire bat. Well, nothing makes his heart swell (admittedly to a slightly less papery husk) than acts of purest evil. He tells me I may have to fly from Japan to Seoul, Korea, to get the game rated. It's midnight here in Tokyo, and I'm at his mercy. More news next week.
Friday, September 24, 2004
So Parsons comes up to me and he says, "Frankie, do you like kimchee?" But more on that later.
Friday, September 10, 2004
You know what else is packed full of really cool stuff? Apart from Parsons body part fridge, that is? The game. This week I downloaded the first build of the game with every level, every cinematic and every encounter in it. That was a pretty big deal. That meant I was finally able to play through the entire thing at the correct pace, fighting bad guys where I was supposed to, watching the dramatic cinematics when I was supposed to, and getting a true feel for the length of the game. Which I will not discuss here. Because I've been playing the levels out of order, I had entirely the wrong idea about the pace, and instead of doing my normal crap - that is, playing the bits that the job requires me to in an order that isn't always best suited to the narrative. I've been diligently going through one level at a time, in the correct order and watching all the cutscenes in their entirety (another first for me). I love them.
Friday, September 10, 2004
As I write this, I'm in a video editing studio in LA putting the last finishing touches to a number of projects. One of them you already know about - the special limited edition DVD. The documentary stuff on there is really cool and perfectly captures the mood and drama of daily life at Bungie. It's 100% realistic with the following exceptions: Hardly any swearing and all of the really obscene graffiti from the whiteboards has been cleverly removed.
The documentary was a real eye-opener even for me. It gives a true insight into the process here: The ups, the downs, the struggles, the triumphs, and the constant drive to make everything great. And Parsons' spastic-colon gets a whole chapter. I expect the FCC will kill that part.
Friday, August 27, 2004
MULTIPLAYER MADNESS
Chris Carney, he of all things multiplayer is, and Parsons will HATE me for saying this, nearly finished. Multiplayer is almost complete. From 2pm today, when some final lightmaps are applied, the multiplayer game will be all but content complete. That means the maps are finished, the layouts complete and everything after that will be fine-tuning and testing.
Chris says that the multiplayer team will even have some time (a rare commodity) to go in and do some extra tweaks and additions they didn't think they'd have time to do, including res-ing up some textures, sharpening some graphics and improving some visuals just for the hell of it. Of course, there's still lots to do in terms of testing and tuning of gameplay on those maps, but some of the new levels are amazing.
The use of big, big maps is going to make for some very interesting scenarios. One particularly massive map has enough indoor and outdoor locations for totally different game styles to break out. There could be Banshee dogfights going on in the sky, shotgun deathmatches in a building and sniper matches on the rooftops, all while Warthogs race each other around the same level. It is considerably bigger than the relatively large Zanzibar.
There's even an indoor space big enough for vehicle fights and full of potentially explosive moving objects. Which ought to make for some interesting and pyrotechnic matches. And all told, the biggest spatial innovation in Halo 2 multiplayer, is the increased use of asymmetrical maps, which makes objective-based gametypes, like CTF, all the more fun. Also, asymmetrical maps tend to "feel" more like real places. The varied architecture and geometry in Halo 2 MP tends to be much more realistic than some of the very simple, older maps from Halo.
Dave Dunn and the environment guys are also reaching a stage where they're not really creating new art or objects, merely fixing problems with existing spaces. Asked which of the levels was the furthest from completion, Dave paused, reflected, ran his hands over his plush new Mohawk, and said, "Well really, there isn't a space in the whole game that hasn't been 'touched.' There's a couple of things here and there, but mostly we're fixing bugs."
Friday, August 27, 2004
BUILD QUALITY
The system kind of works like this: We have a general resource at Bungie where the latest builds of the game are located. One is recommended as stable by the test department, while others may have been built to test or debug a specific problem. The testers get the stable build and rampage through it, looking for any problems, "bugging" them (that is, saving their exact position in the game, noting what the problem was, and entering it into a database.) and then play on, looking for problems.
Parsons has asked Brian and me to get stuck into that process as well. He thinks I'm basically stupid though, so while Brian has been asked to look for "clipping errors, instance geometry problems and physics anomalies," Parsons told me to "watch out for colors that aren't pretty," or "scary things that make you want to go wee."
Friday, August 13, 2004
Last, but certainly not least, Nathan would like to take a jab at "Pistol Pete" -- Pete apparently did some dorky thing when he introduced himself to someone last week and made pistols out of both hands and pointed and said "Pete Parsons"...I personally did get to witness a later revival of the pistol gesture and it is pretty lame. Nathan also mentioned something brief about "his first man hug with Chris (butcher)." Aaahhhhh.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Bungie's Euro Dash
First things first, this is an unusual Halo update. It's unusual because there's almost no Halo 2 info here, thanks to the fact that the team was on a very intense crunch to complete a very important stage oif development. So if that's the kind of thing that makes you mad, relax, take a week off and things will be back to normal next week. But if for some reason you're curious to know what I was up to this week, then read on.
It began not with a bang, but with a whimper. In this case, the whimperer was Parsons, known colloquially, for terrifying reasons, as "Mango." Mango, you might be aware, is the Studio Manager, which gives him unlimited power. When he barks, we mew, submissively. Now, as Spider-Man noted, with great power comes great responsibility. Parsons must have been watching a chick-flick that day however, since he's about as responsible as a drunk Terminator in the John Connor Children's Library.
"Frankie," he says, his eyes narrowed to hide whatever emotion might be lurking in his beady, reptilian eyes. "Do you have a passport?" he enquires.
"Why yes, I do!" replies I, still bubbly with the effervescence of youth and stupidity. That was a big mistake. As a matter of fact, from now on, when Parsons/Mango asks me a question, I shall simply respond with the opposite of whatever the truth happens to be that day.
"I need you to run a little errand," he says. "To London, and Germany, and you need to leave on Saturday." This was of course, Friday afternoon.
So the next day, I'm off to dear old England, with a bag full of underwear and a relatively complete (although sometimes broken and occasionally untextured) build of Halo 2 on the hard drive of a large and suspicious-looking Xbox Development kit.
The build I took was picked from the last few days of progress for the simple reason that all the blood, expletives and crunching noises were functioning perfectly.
Most of you probably have experienced the joy of carrying an Xbox around. Well a dev kit is heavier, bulkier, and impossibly, sharper. I actually have grooves on my shoulder from lugging it around Europe. But we're not in Europe yet, so we'll get to that.
Going through airport security with anything sharper than a Nerf hackey-sack is cause for much wand-waving, shoe-searching and sphincter-tightening these days. Going through with a huge, heavy, electronics packed box of mystery is always a crapshoot. On one hand, if the security inspector is a young guy, you might squeak through with a couple of game-related questions. On the other hand, if it's an older lady with a distractingly large mole and a bad attitude, you're headed for the ergonomically correct cavity-search station.
At Seattle's security station, they've seen plenty of Xboxes. "That's weird," says the inspector, "The debugs are green and the dev-kits are usually crystal. Why's this one two-tone?" he asked, with altogether too much expertise.
"I don't know," I replied, "I think it's because it's a Euro version."
"Aah, PAL devkit with SCART video kit. Gotcha." He says. Creepily.
So onto the airplane I get, for a ten-hour flight in coach class, near the rear of the aircraft (See: "Mango"). Luckily my view of the toilet was partially obscured by two hysterical toddlers, who proved that kids actually will not stop screaming when they're exhausted. As a matter of fact, eight hours into the flight when one of them paused for a minute, the wit in the seat in front of me muttered, "Thank God. One of them's died."
So why am I going to Europe, you probably asked about a minute ago? Well, the game has to be certified for sex, violence and mild antics by European censors. In this case, the Video Standards Council in Borehamwood, near (allegedly) London, and a German outfit known by the catchy title, Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle, or USK for short.
Now the problem I faced was getting to Borehamwood from Heathrow Airport, since the one train service that goes there, happened to be on strike that day. Cue hilarious race across London and then through ever-narrower country lanes (think Death Star trench sequence), stick-shift, right-hand-drive and wrong side of the road escapades. Everything was fine until I hit my first roundabout (four way stops are an exceptional UK rarity) and totally forgot which way to go around. As the old dude in Indy and the Last Crusade said, "You chose....poorly." Sorry London. I promise not to scare everyone next time.
If they check the left hand side of that car they'll see that I hit every curb in central London as I hilariously misjudged the width of the car.
The demo in London was fairly straightforward. I sat with two very polite English chaps and ran them through much of the game. I was especially careful to show them how many human allies you could kill and using what brutal methods to do so. I had to force some characters to swear. One of the marines, as you'll find, doesn't take too much prodding.
Actually, I noticed, going through single player for the first time in ages, that the Marine voice work is awesome. Not so much what they say (some of it is incredibly funny though) but more the way they react properly to circumstance. Even staring at a character for a long period of time will illicit different responses, depending on the circumstances.
The VSC was totally unconcerned with the murderization of Covenant forces. Apparently, if the game didn't allow you to turn on your allies, we'd have gotten the UK equivalent of a PG, regardless of the galloons of alien blood we had flooded the Galaxy with. Britain is now completely unconcerned with bad language, as I discovered watching BBC TV in the hotel that night. Just as well, since every other word out of our game seemed to be bastard., asshole or bullshit.
I did point out that technically, you can kill tens of thousands of Grunts, Elites, Brutes, Jackals and "others" while playing a typical game. "No problem, as long as they don't look human," said one of the chaps.
As I liberally coated every surface of New Mombassa with human blood just to show it could be done, the two fellows hummed and hah-ed, but clearly knew exactly what they were doing. Just as I was explaining that you could continue to blast corpses after they'd fallen, but that they wouldn't move, an animation bug kicked in and caused the poor cadaver to twitch horribly, whether I blasted him or not. It has been fixed.
In the end, after seeing tons of game, checking out a few very shocking twists, and finally agreeing that it was not in your best interest to kill all your buddies, they let us squeak by with a UK 16 rating, thanks to blood, swearing and violence.
To be honest, I was glad to get out of London. The city itself is hip and cool, but airport hotels SUCK and the only local entertainment was a gas station. I did play a stupid amount of single player Halo in my room, but I was too jetlaggy to enjoy it. I ended up being frightened and confused and couldn't remember whether I inverted my controls or not. And I was pining for some multiplayer by the end.
So off to Berlin. Now, when you're flying to Berlin, on business, it's hard to not feel like a spy. I tried to look especially international and dangerous. Don't know if I pulled it off or not, but nobody gave me any guff at Tegel International Airport. Berlin, if you haven't been there is pretty awesome. Beautiful old city, interspersed with some truly horrible communist-era buildings and intersected by pretty canals, a river and lots of cool modern buildings. AND the most graffiti you've ever seen. "Ich Bin Ein Berliner," might actually be German for, "I have hella spray cans yo." Berlin is awesome, but it needs a wipe.
So to kill time before prostrating myself before the German censors, I wandered around the museum district, and absorbed myself in the German culture. I speak just enough German to make ein arschloch of myself, and more than enough to order huge plates of meat. Which I enjoyed thoroughly. Meat, cheese and mustard for breakfast. No wonder the Germans drive so fast. They're trying to reach the next bathroom.
The Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle is located in a modern office building, but to get to it, you have to walk through an especially shady looking couple of blocks. I began to suspect that Mango was having me whacked. I saw a comic array of efficient German prostitutes and a gang of actual Skinheads. My head was freshly shaved and one or two of them actually nodded agreeably. I nodded back and quickly hobbled away, the 30 pounds of Xbox and 200 million dollars of software loaded on its hard drive, weighing heavily on me, all of a sudden.
I thought it prudent at that point, to refrain from expressing my disagreement with their politics, but wondered why German skinheads put such stock in the British Union Jack flag.
It was a relief to finally reach the USK building. Now, the British office was stacked high with software, paper, ashtrays and full of cigarette smoke and semi-organized chaos. The German office was almost stereotypically efficient. But things took a turn for the strange rather quickly.
So I thought it was going to be the same deal. Show the guy some gameplay, answer his questions and take off, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Remember the scene in Superman the Movie, where the hovering blue faces pass judgment on General Zod? Well that was the quorum of German "experts" that passed judgment on Halo 2. Hovering, blue, the whole deal. As far as I remember. I was pretty spazzed by then.
They asked a lot of very specific questions, including, "Why is this Master Chief so aggressive in his actions against the Covenant?" It got very weird, very fast. So after showing them as much blood, gore and horror as they could stomach, I was finally permitted to leave.
Berlin's subway system, as far as I could tell, appears to operate on the honor system. I never once had to show, display or wave the stupid ticket I bought at the hotel. So remember kids, when in Berlin, cheat them out of five Euros.
Good news on the way back. I had to spend one more night in London, and a cab driver, irate that I only wanted to go to the airport hotel for a measly 10 quid, called me the WORST SWEAR WORD IN THE WORLD, and when I asked him to repeat himself, said literally, "Nuffing guv'nor." Then when I took my seat, he muttered, "Bloody yanks, they've got *#%#@$* buses for *#$@%! like you." Aah, dear olde England. And its honest cockney cab driver. By the way, I'm not American, I'm Scottish.
The flight back from London was bizarre, because I was actually hallucinating from jetlag and lack of sleep. Sick of flying, I suddenly remembered that I have an eight hour flight to the Yucatan Peninsula in exactly seven days and had a near panic attack. But I got through customs, shaking and sweating like my bowels were packed full of heroin and Swiss currency. They paid me no mind, however, and so Halo 2 is safe for kids (16 and over) in the UK and Germany.
When I got back, Mango asked me if I'd ever been to Singapore...
http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=eurodash
Friday, July 23, 2004
Sketch was out in New York being a muckety-muck all week, and I got roped into another classic Parsons travel-trap. It involves a passport, and some international shenanigans. Think sauerbraten. Anyway, lots going on in the studio, and I've been playing through a very nice-looking build of the game. I noticed the skyboxes are looking amazing. Skyboxes are basically the sky (duh) designed to look 3D with flitting clouds, translucent fog and a feeling of real space and height. One in particular made me actually gasp as I looked up. 'Gasp!" went I.
The skyboxes are often fixed later in the polishing process and a bunch of the placeholders have had big holes in the center for a long time. Probably the ozone layer or something. Anyway, placeholders are becoming rarer and rarer. There's even a placeholder sound. A startling, yet melodic tinkle accompanies any footstep on an undefined texture - that is to say, a texture that hasn't yet has a footstep sound associated with it.
I kinda miss the tinkle on multiplayer maps, since it loudly announced when somebody was walking in certain areas. Which you would then blast. With a Brute Shot. "Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. Whump, whump, whump. Blam! Blam! Blam! Ow."
Friday, July 09, 2004
Frankie
So Parsons sticks his head out of an office at around 7pm on Friday night, just before 4th of July weekend and says, "Frankie! Is Mrs. Frank in town this weekend?"
I was all, wow, the bossman is gonna invite us to his BBQ! Career advancement here I come!
So Parsons instead tells me he has this "Great opportunity." Which as it turns out is the "chance" to wait around until 3am for replacement code to be ready, stay up all night and then fly it to Roger in Burbank at 5am on Saturday morning. I was then trapped in Burbank airport from 9am til 2pm. And the airport's single espresso machine was broken, so I couldn't even get a coffee. Thanks Parsons. Still, 12 hours of screwing around with tapes, DVDs and no sleep is still better than a Parsons sushi fart.
Friday, June 18, 2004
PARSONS NOSE
So Parsons comes over, says he has something for the weekly update, eats his lunch noisily, lets fly with an eye-watering air biscuit and takes off, saying, "That's a sushi fart."
Thanks Parsons. That's great.
Friday, May 28, 2004
Parsons' Crazy Theory
OK everyone. Deep breath. Studio manager Parsons has a theory, that the unkind might refer to as crackpot, but he's thought it out, so we'll go along with it for a bit. So his theory boils down to this fundamental premise: "If you want a flying car, you must buy a Roomba." Now it gets more complex than that. Parsons thinks that the Roomba's tech is cool, but relatively inconsequential, but its social impact is of paramount importance.
Now a Roomba, for the uninitiated, is that robotic vacuum cleaner. He thinks that if you're cool with leaving a Robot, or SuckBot as I call it for short, to rampage around your house while you're out, then you'll be cool with all sorts of AI in your house and life. Like a fly-by-wire robot-driven car.
I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. I would counter that obviously Robots are good at one thing: Rampaging. And there are further problems. For starters, they never have hands, always claws, gaping sucking maws, or lasers. None of these implements is useful for hugging, massaging or any other things you think you might want in your house.
Friday, May 14, 2004
THE CREW
Hard to express enough how awesome the small but perfectly formed Bungie crew was. Everyone chipped in and we mean, carrying boxes, gluing crap together, doing endless game demos standing on their feet for ten hours straight - they're all troopers. Sketch organized things so that fanfest went off without a hitch, Harold and Ryan made sure all the Xbox systems were working and the flat panel displays were calibrated, Parsons and Hoberman got their hands dirty with the demos, Lorraine showed up and helped run things behind the scenes, Jay was all over it, and Michel showed up to kick ass with the demos too. Alta, Bungie Princess and house den mother ensured that nobody had to worry about anything but feeding his or her face. I'm sure I forgot some peeps, but basically everyone rocked.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Parsons Knows
Parsons, Studio Manager and Whoremonger extraordinaire has been working on final E3 preparations, to make sure what we have to show there is cool. He's also been practicing total sensory and sleep deprivation by not going to bed, or even going out in the sunshine. He amusingly left the lights on his nasty-looking Ford hooptie on all night with predictable results. His car is so old and busted that not only is there no warning chime for lights-on, there's also no safety equipment. In fact, for a passenger side airbag, Parsons simply stuffs his glove compartment with bubble wrap and donuts.
Parsons says he's looking forward to seeing more on Half Life 2, Conkers, WoW, and Doom 3. For strictly non-competitive reasons, he says.
Friday, April 30, 2004
David's Bells and Whistles
David Candland, User Interface master and all around superhuman, says, "This past week or so was devoted to experimenting with new elements into the Heads-Up Display. Right now in the HUD, there are new bits mixed alongside old bits. We're trying something different with the look of the health and shield system people knew in Halo 1, so eventually that is the biggest difference people will notice. We're also toying with an icon system instead of text to warn you about low ammo, reloads and no grenades. Cuban has been huge in getting these working slick. We're also bringing back a favorite feature that has been missing in Bungie games since the Myth series.
In UI land, we've been getting all the half-built, work in progress menus to look un-broken. And- as Frank knows, I've been going back and forth with Parsons (I'm winning) about what we should reveal about our secret Xbox Live plans that will change the way people play online forever. Not only have we got a system that fixes the bad things about playing on Live, but one that makes the experience even more fun. We're shooting to make playing on Live as close to the amount of fun as playing at a friend's LAN party. This plan will put an end to war and poverty. It will align the planets and bring them into universal harmony, allowing meaningful contact with all forms of life." From extra terrestrials to common household pets... OK maybe not. But it will be cool. You saw it first here, kids."
Friday, April 23, 2004
Parsons' Projects (sorry)
Parsons thinks his combination of number crunching and marketing speak is boring, but really, Bungie is a rock band, and Parsons is the bass player. So, he might have a point. But he's been busy, no doubt, here's his breakdown:
1. Fun with numbers! Budget is in the air and the bean counters are scurrying around asking stupid questions like, "Do you really need the four-person mini-sub to get your job done?" ...Always remember. The 52' Plasma TV for Parsons' palatial office suite goes under "Misc Product Development - Other." 2. Robt and I are working on something pretty cool for the mkt guys (I think it's pretty funny to use Robt and mkt in the same sentence - funny until he kills me that is). 3. Really busy this week doing a whole bunch of mildly unpleasant things that nobody else would want to do
Friday, April 16, 2004
Cinemagic!
Joe Staten is very pleased with a new technique he's incorporating into cinemas for the game. Thanks to some code-wizardry, he's able to render a camera-image to a texture,. In this case, it was a view of an epic conflict through a window of a human ship. Joe says the engineers claim the technique can be applied to any surface, and one programmer told him he could do it on a biped. So, like, we could display an entire cinematic on a Grunt's eyeball!
Anyway, the point is that instead of flat-looking video outside the window, or on a video screen, we'll be able to show the actual, alternate 3D scene.
What was the dramatic scene in question? Well, Parsons calls it a pant-filler, I personally would call it a diaper-bulger..
Friday, March 26, 2004
Mon Frere!
Michel (who's a handsome French Canadian and a huge hit with the ladeez thanks to his combination of Gallic charm, sexy accent and excellent nationalized health care system AND the angriest 23-year old in the world) talked to me about moving BSPs today. A BSP is a Binary Separation Plane, or in other words, a great big chunk of level. The thing about a BSP is that it's all one giant piece (they can be small too) that's interconnected and joined at every seam. That means it's all rendered in one go, and can be manipulated at will ? if there's enough processor power. And that's been one of the things the team has been optimizing ? big moving BSPs.
The BSPs in question contain some future surprises, but a good example would be say, a drawbridge (nope, the bridge we talked about a couple of updates ago is NOT a drawbridge) with like, a tollbooth, some gun emplacements and a bouncy castle. It's one thing to draw those objects as a Static BSP ? quite another to move them around. Optimizing things like that frees up more processor power for AI and other tasks, so it's important to get it done before the gameplay is tuned on those levels.
It's also a weird mix of programming and design ? since in a way, a moving BSP acts more like a character or a vehicle than a building or a level. Often the various departments can just get along with polishing their bits, but in an instance like this, close-knit cooperation is a must.
Michel has also been working out the nuances of the weather system with the environment guys. Mmhmm. Weather system. It won't be a big surprise to say that there's going to be rain and snow (it is Earth after all) but weather isn't always wet and cold. One level is set in a dry climate where dust, wind and sand all play a part. Filling out the levels with weather makes a tremendous difference to how "alive" the spaces feel. The snow and swamp levels in the original game are still some of my favorite levels. Rumors of a lava and minecart level are to be ignored.
Parsons, our Studio Manager, hates making big promises (except about how he's going to crush me to death in a rat-filled refrigerator), so I won't tell you what Michel said about how much better the weather effects were this time around, I'll just say they're a "bit" better and leave it at that. To avoid the crushing.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Pete Parsons claimed that he couldn't tell me what he was doing this week because it was so top-secret. However, he later admitted it was because it was boring.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Finally, I would like to thank Alta, the Bungie Princess for hooking us up with food all the time - people here are putting in crazy hours at both ends of the day (except for Parsons, who rolls into the parking lot in his Ferrari around noon on a good day) and totally kicking ass. Anyhoo, enjoy the new objet d' horror and we'll see you next week! For more! Bungie! Update! Don't eat stuff off the sidewalk.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Weekly Update:
Intro.
We'll get to the update in a second, but I wanted to just tell you what my first week was like before I dunk you into the fiery vortex of the Bungie experience.
So, after my first real week at Bungie I can honestly say that part of my new morning routine is the application of an adult-sized diaper. Let me explain.
Before I started here, Brian Jarrard, our Community Manager and Pete Parsons, our Studio Manager, were rightly insistent on secrecy. Before I was hired, I knew practically nothing about Halo 2. Sure, I knew about the bits you may have read in OXM or EGM magazines, and I had some background on where the development process was at, but I didn't know any secrets.
I guess I was expecting to slowly absorb the development pace, learn a few tidbits here and there and figure out what I could from spying on Bungie monitors when artists and designers weren't looking. It's because I was still thinking like a sneaky, good for nothing games journalist. So imagine my surprise (delight?) when Brian and Pete deliberately tried to blow my mind during my first hour as an employee.
I was taken on a tour of the building, stopping at various stations and departments with the ostensible goal of "just bringing me up to date." Brian looked just a teensy bit amused, but Pete's face was split by a hideous rictus grin, the kind that you might see on a Frat boy holding a cricket bat, or a Manhattan plumber handing you a bill. Either way, I knew something was up.
Plot. In a way, my Halo 2 experience is being ruined. By the time the game ships, I'll know a lot more about the story than I want to. People working on The Sixth Sense or The Lord of the Rings movies must have felt the same way. But it's a fascinating process, seeing how carefully managed, how cleverly written the story is.
Seeing real character development is an eye-opener in an industry where Pac-Man is still the most charismatic leading man. When you're reared on dialog like, "Take the key for coming in" or, "I am the master of unlocking," it's very easy to be skeptical. But Halo 2 is to game scripts what a rocket launcher is to a Faberge Egg collection.
And then there are graphics. I'm not just a graphics whore, I'm a graphics burglar, murderer and molester all rolled into one. I would happily run around in a video game as long as something bright, shiny or vertexy was there to distract me. Ask anyone. During game demos I'll stop earnest developers in their tracks and ask if they wouldn't mind "walking over there so I can see the water." Seriously.
So two minutes in Bungie's art department(s) would turn a Graphics Nun into the skankiest Graphics Whore on the strip. If I'm bludgeoning you with brutal metaphors, tough, I'm simply trying to tell you how it is. I was shocked to see everything was bump-mapped. Sounds dumb given that Bungie promised to bump-map everything, but when you see it - you'll realize immediately why. As the art department is fond of explaining, everything looks the way it does for a reason, and the overriding reason in Halo is to tell a story. Nothing is done for show, or simply because "it's there." Every single applied graphics technique advances Halo's story and its characters.
And the technical side is staggering. Almost every aspect of Halo 2 is new. This is NOT based on the Halo One engine. You will not see a single repeated texture, skeleton, bitmap or particle effect. It's all new. The robust, imaginative design anchors it firmly in the universe you've grown to love of course. Massively improved or not, you'll recognize it instantly as Halo. You could walk up to a textured wall until your helmet was mere inches from the surface and recognize somehow that it's Halo. It's kept its flava.
But there's so much here that's new. It's so much bigger than I'd anticipated. So much more ambitious, that it takes a while to wrap your head around. I think it's going to redefine my expectations for a sequel. I think that after Halo 2, more tracks, more characters, different music - that's simply not going to be enough.
But really, you didn't come here to read about me (even though I'm super-awesome) you came here for the resurrection of the Halo 2 Weekly Update. Here's what's going on:
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