Halo: Reach Interview
with Bungie Executive Producer Joseph Tung
With Halo: Reach landing in less than two weeks, we thought it the perfect time to catch up with Bungie Executive Producer Joseph Tung to discuss the development of the studio’s final Spartan bow. A member of the team since Halo 2, few folks can discuss the Master Chief-starring series with as much background knowledge and depth as Tung. Sporting a pretty slick UNSC hoodie, he enthusiastically discussed Reach‘s evolution over the previous games as well as its nostalgic nods to Halo: Combat Evolved. Oh, and he also made our trigger fingers itch with anticipation for Reach’s September 14th arrival.
AtomicGamer: What were sort of some of the primary goals going into Halo: Reach? What did you guys want to achieve?
Joseph Tung: First of all, we knew from the very beginning that Reach was going to be Bungie’s last Halo game. So we wanted to make it huge, we wanted to make it epic, we wanted to make it a real – a real farewell to the universe from Bungie. We also wanted to tell a more human story…to sort of tell a story from the trenches, as opposed to the sort of space opera we’ve told in the past. We wanted to make Reach, the planet, a character in its own right, and really make the player feel like Reach was a living place. Beyond that, like I said, we just wanted to make it the biggest, most ambitious Halo game, from Bungie, and I hope it doesn’t sound like self-promotion to say that I think we’ve accomplished that--it is the biggest game we’ve ever made. It has more features than we’ve ever made. It’s the biggest team we’ve ever had and it was a full, three year project cycle – labor of love – for the team.
AG: Even just playing a bit of Reach brings back memories from the original Halo. Was capturing that sense of nostalgia intentional?
JT: You know, I definitely think we wanted to. We went to Halo: Combat Evolved quite a bit for inspiration. We went to all the Halo games for inspiration in different areas. When it comes to the campaign, in particular, I think we definitely looked mostly to the original, and I think there are a couple of areas where we actually looked back at a particular mission and said: “That was an amazing experience…an amazing feeling that that mission gave you. How do we give you that feeling again?
AG: In terms of technology, are we seeing something different than we saw in ODST and Halo 3?
JT: Absolutely. You’re seeing a brand new engine, built from the ground up in a lot of cases. You’re seeing a brand new networking layer, brand new graphics engine, brand new animation engine. We obviously built off of the Halo 3 engine, but so much of it has been rebuilt, it’s a new engine.
AG: What are some of the cooler examples or the most impressive examples of how that’s reflected in the actual game? What has the technology sort of allowed you guys to do?
JT: I think one of the things we wanted to do, again, from the very beginning, was build huge, wide open environments. Bigger environments than you’ve ever seen before in a Halo game, and that very immediately necessitated all sorts of technical investments. So one of the things we built is a system called the Imposter system,. It’s a procedural system that renders down objects at a distance, and that’s what makes possible the really long draw distances in Halo: Reach. The views that are possible from the very first moment in the campaign wouldn’t have been possible in the Halo 3 engine. Another good example is the really believable human performances; there’s an unbelievable talent behind that…if you compare the Halo 3 human marine to the Reach human marine, it’s night and day. There’s a lot of the technology behind that, from animation to make character locomotion more believable, to specific facial animation technology and so on.
AG: How about in terms of gameplay? Are there things players weren’t able to do in previous Halo games that they’ll be able to do in this one due to the technology being used?
JT: There’s lots of stuff you weren’t able to do before from a gameplay perspective; armor abilities, load outs, all the options in Firefight, Forge and so on. I think Forge is a technological achievement for us; it is an insane, huge, wide open environment. Again, that’s sort of built on the Imposter technology. It wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t already kicked off the Imposter technology, so Forge was one of those features that originally started as five different spaces, and the artist, Steve Cotton, who was working on the map, said “I want to make them all one giant space.” Everyone thought he was crazy. Then we looked at it, and everyone sort of said “Wow, the promise of this is amazing, we have to get it in the game.” So we figured out how to get it in the game based on the previous technology. It’s just of one example of the way things come about in the course of development.
AG: You guys included space combat, a first for a Halo game, in Reach. How did that evolve?
JT: We had a lot of freedom around the story, basically to tell whatever story we wanted to tell. This allowed us to throw the craziest ideas at the wall and, of course, space was one of those crazy ideas from the very beginning. We had prototypes of space combat in pre-production, we had many early discussions about the transition from the planet to space, and it also fit in right away with the fiction. We wanted to make sure that the planetary scale of the conflict on Reach was emphasized, and it wasn’t just a ground battle; it happened in space as well, so why not go there?
AG: Halo’s multiplayer evolves with each new entry. What was left for you guys to refine? What are the most significant changes or improvements you made to Reach’s online experience?
JT: There’s a lot with multiplayer; armor abilities really changed that core game of play, and load outs in multiplayer are a way to, again, put armor abilities into the game that give you choice. For example, if you’re not the most hardcore Slayer in the world, but you still love playing multiplayer with your friends, load outs and armor abilities give you a way to choose a different role in the game. So, you could choose the Drop Shield and be the guy who sort of provides cover for your teammates when they need it. At the same time, it’s not a class that sort of locks you into that choice, you can change that up if you want to start out with a Drop Shield and move on to the Armor Lock in the next phase of a CTF game. That really changes the core gameplay. At the same time, I think there’s all sorts of other stuff we’ve done in multiplayer; Invasion is the new mode where, for the very first time, you really do play Spartans versus Elites, and it’s steeped in the fiction. It’s totally unique gameplay with big, epic environments in multiplayer. There’s also player customization for the first time in multiplayer, so it applies across the board. No matter what you’re doing in the game, you’re earning credits and you’re using those credits to customize your Spartan, but for multiplayer it’s really significant. People really care about their avatar in multiplayer, and I think it’s going to be exciting to see the amount of variety that players will be able to get out of our customization system. And then there’s all sorts of other stuff, like we’ve even taken something like the bread and butter of multiplayer Halo--four on four Team Slayer--and given you a new experience with that in the form of Arena. It’s this way to sort of play three games in a day and get a daily rating and get multiple ratings to get a seasonal rating; instead of just going from level one to level fifty, and staying at level fifty. It’s really exciting, and I think it’s going to be really fresh for people. I’m excited to start playing multiplayer on September 14th.
Thanks to Joseph Tung for taking the time to discuss Halo: Reach with us. We’ll be looking for him online when the game arrives exclusively on the Xbox 360 September 14th.
