User:JackVibe/Sandbox

The Heretic

• Joseph Staten: Woohoo!

• Martin O'Donnell: MGS logo. A little Steve. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, Jason Jones.

• Jason Jones: I didn't hear what you said, Marty. What was that?

• Jason Jones: Hey everybody, welcome to the farce that is the Halo 2 developers commentary. I'm Jason Jones. I'm here with Joe Staten, director of cinematics, and Marty O'Donnell. Uh, what did Marty do, Joe? I know he wrote something.

• Joseph Staten: The music.

• Jason Jones: The music. Some of the music. And, uh, we're going to talk about our favorite game that we've ever developed, Halo 2.

• Joseph Staten: And here... Ah yes, mellifluous tone.

• Martin O'Donnell: Some new actors. Wow. David... Keith...

• Joseph Staten: Keith David, yes.

• Martin O'Donnell: Keith David. David Keith.

• Joseph Staten: Now, if you were watching before, the Halo 1 stuff, it's just amazing the instant increase in graphic fidelity between these two things.

• Jason Jones: Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

• Joseph Staten: Actual crossfades in Halo 2, I have to say.

• Jason Jones: Crossfades were...

• Martin O'Donnell: Did you make it so things don't freeze anymore, Joe?

• Joseph Staten: Well, yes. This is what's known as the director's remastering of the Halo 2 cinematics, because if you actually played Halo 2, you might have noticed that there were some graphic glitches, some popping textures, some depth of field that wasn't quite in there. So, what I thought I would do, you know—and I know you audio guys went back and did a little bit, too—is really go and create the cinematics the way that we really wanted them to look. But it's all still in-engine; all still playing back from the engine.

• Jason Jones: I saw you in After Effects at least once.

• Joseph Staten: Shhh. This is called the "Developer Diary," not the "Cheaters' Confessional."

• Martin O'Donnell: I love it.

• Jason Jones: Truth...

• Martin O'Donnell: Wait, here comes a good line. Here it comes. Bob O'Donnell, ladies and gentlemen.

• Joseph Staten: Marty's dad.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes. Cameo appearance.

• Joseph Staten: We pretty much sneak him into every single game.

• Martin O'Donnell: Also known as the Surly Dwarf from Myth. And he was the Prophet of Denial. No, what were we calling him? Prophet of something.

• Joseph Staten: Yeah, we didn't do that. Good stuff. And the—one of the bugs that I could never fix in Halo 2, and I still couldn't fix it.... Riiight there. Bang. Arbiter's helmet pops every single time. And I could never figure that out.

• Jason Jones: Even in After Effects?

• Joseph Staten: Even in After- Hey... That's it. I'm going back and fixing it.

• Martin O'Donnell: It is nice to see all these cinematics without any popping at all.

• Joseph Staten: Mhm. Well, I mean, so what—so what was that all about, Jones? The—the popping that we—that we shipped with.

• Jason Jones: Cairo. I was just in Cairo last month. We guess—we guess code

• Joseph Staten: You know how it was a hardware problem, too, right?

• Jason Jones: It was 'cause we—it's 'cause we landed the plane in like an 89-degree power dive

• Joseph Staten: ...onto fire. Exactly.

The Armory

• Joseph Staten: But I mean, I remember that distinctly just being heartbreaking for everybody on the team when, you know, when we realized it was just too late.

• Martin O'Donnell: "Chilly hole?!"

• Joseph Staten: There wasn't that time to put that polish on the game. That was pretty heartbreaking for everybody.

• Jason Jones: Yeah, that was pretty... that was pretty hard.

• Martin O'Donnell: Here we go. How did he?

• Joseph Staten: "Classified."

• Martin O'Donnell: That's good writing.

• Joseph Staten: Thank you. Oh, wait. There's a a grand tradition in *Halo[ games of never really explaining how we get from one to the other. Almost, but not really. Like we hadn't actually planned to make the next one.

• Martin O'Donnell: What?

• Joseph Staten: I mean, we always do. I'm just saying it's like we hadn't really planned it.

• Martin O'Donnell: I remember when we were doing the Cortana letters years ago, where we had the entire plan from the beginning of the Cortana letters to the end of the trilogy. Remember that whole story arc? Yeah.

• Joseph Staten: Right. I think we might have lost that plan.

• Martin O'Donnell: Okay, let's look at it.

• Joseph Staten: Marty, that's some nice martial stuff.

• Jason Jones: Oh, the arm-pumping repeat animation.

• Joseph Staten: He is extremely excited to see the Master Chief.

Cairo Station

• Joseph Staten: Now, there was no addition of any post-effects in this scene.

• Martin O'Donnell: I don't remember seeing flashes like that in the game. What happened here?

• Joseph Staten: There were flashes in the game, but it—one of the things that we had to cut, unfortunately, from the final version was a lot of the effects work. So, all the flags were in there. All the scripting was in there, but we just couldn't—we couldn't... We just brought it back.

• Martin O'Donnell: Okay, that's good. For historical purposes.

• Joseph Staten: For historical purposes. Little Grunt standing on top of the thing. Extremely happy bystander.

• Jason Jones: That's my favorite line. "Heretic." This entire cutscene.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oooh, the Brutes.

• Joseph Staten: The Arbiter. He takes his punishment like a man. Look at him. Good old Tartarus.

• Martin O'Donnell: Boy, these voices are amazing.

• Joseph Staten: Put a little depth of field in. Sure, why not? Ouch. I mean, one of the challenging things, I mean—between—I mean, you see how quickly we're—the timing of this hasn't changed, but swapping back and forth between these environments. I mean, all Halo cinematics are in real time, right? So, you got to be running the stuff and loading textures and all that sort of thing, and we just couldn't quite do it. And the white flashes that you see in the game are actually hiding some stuff behind the scenes. So, yeah, went back, took out some of the white flashes.

• Joseph Staten: Uh-oh. Oh yeah, little comedy.

• Martin O'Donnell: Comedy! And that was cool because we had two voices saying something at the same exact time, which was not easy for us to do. In the cinematics,

• Joseph Staten: That's true. The Grunt wasn't quite tall enough. He had to stand on the other guy's shoulder.

• Martin O'Donnell: Ah, got it.

• Joseph Staten: There was an idea at one point to have little Engineers, the character that we never put in the Halo game, sort of floating gasbag character, float by on Legendary with a little ballpark tray of wieners and caramel corn.... and cotton candy.

• Jason Jones: Next time we'll leave a month for the Easter eggs.

• Joseph Staten: Yeah, we really should.

• Martin O'Donnell: Well, hey Jason, how did the skulls come in at the end?

• Joseph Staten: There she blinks. The only time that she blinked, ever.

• Martin O'Donnell: Did the skulls come in at the last minute, or were you always planning on doing skulls?

• Jason Jones: Actually came in after the last minute.

• Joseph Staten: I forget who modeled this, but I didn't quite realize how big and fiery that effect was going to be. But I love how the Arbiter sits here and takes that huge burning tank thing.

• Martin O'Donnell: He can take it.

• Joseph Staten: He's tough. The Arbiter is tough.

• Martin O'Donnell: Cortana looks slightly different than she did in Halo 1. What happened there?

• Joseph Staten: Cortana changes her appearance. A girl's got to stay fashion-forward.

• Martin O'Donnell: Ron Perlman. Ooo, he almost said "Cortay-na".

• Joseph Staten: Ooo!

• Martin O'Donnell: What's on the back of his head?

• Joseph Staten: Well, just like Captain Keyes in the first game, he too has a neural interface. Just in case someone needs to punch him in the head and take his code.

• Jason Jones: "I need a weapon."

• Martin O'Donnell: Once again, great line.

• Joseph Staten: Again, if you did watch the first part with the Halo 1 cinematics, there were no playback animations and very little AI work in the Halo 2 cinematics. It was almost entirely—well, 99%, I'd say—custom animated, keyframe animated, which was a big change for us from Halo 1 to Halo 2.

• Martin O'Donnell: Hey, you know, it looks like the gameplay section of this particular sequence is edited, and scored, and all sorts of things are happening. What's going on here?

• Joseph Staten: Marty.

• Martin O'Donnell: It's all right.

• Joseph Staten: I think what we were trying to achieve was a more full representation of the game.

• Martin O'Donnell: Okay. All right. Which meant more work for me.

• Martin O'Donnell: The Aussie/ Oh, here's the scene that no one actually ever saw. That's why we're showing you right now.

• Joseph Staten: Well, it's a real challenge in Halo games because we do have this cinematic storytelling. And we put a lot of our storytelling in the cinematics to get people to pay attention.

• Jason Jones: ...to anything except a Grunt.

• Joseph Staten: Right.

• Martin O'Donnell: Looks like there were more ships in the sky than I remember.

• Joseph Staten: Particles was one of those things that was a real challenge for... to a lot of them on screen.

• Jason Jones: Oh, a stuck Grunt.

• Joseph Staten: Miranda's little hat.

• Martin O'Donnell: This is cut like an MTV thing. What? This is quick. I can hardly follow it.

• Joseph Staten: Oh, just let it go.

• Jason Jones: I remember hearing you guys bicker about this.

• Joseph Staten: Boom!

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, see. The carrier that no one ever sees. There it is. Beautiful. I like that.

• Joseph Staten: I think no one ever saw it, Marty, because you n ever attached a sound to it.

• Martin O'Donnell: That's 'cause I never saw it.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, the pickle.

• Joseph Staten: Jason, why'd we put the Covenant Space Pickle in Halo 2?

• Martin O'Donnell: Okay, Jason, explain this one.

• Jason Jones: I just remember you were supposed to hitch it to the back of a Jeep and drive it.

• Joseph Staten: That's right, I forgot about that.

• Jason Jones: You're supposed to drive it all the way across the ship.

• Martin O'Donnell: That would have been awesome. That would have been awesome.

• Joseph Staten: The Warthog—the space—original space station, right? It was supposed to be a zero-G training facility where there was a big open environment with Warthogs and all that sort of stuff, right? And you were supposed to put the—put the bomb in the back of a little trailer, right, that attached to the Warthog and then drive it through the human—through the human space station.

• Martin O'Donnell: That would have been fun.

• Joseph Staten: That would have been a good time.

• Jason Jones: That would have been awesome.

• Joseph Staten: But the reason why we have the bomb...

• Martin O'Donnell: Well, that looks fast. What- That-

• Joseph Staten: That's because the original plan was to have a level after this one...

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh yeah,

• Joseph Staten: ...called "Covenant Ship."

• Martin O'Donnell: Covenant Ship.

• Joseph Staten: And the Master Chief, much like he did in the announcement trailer for Halo 2—there was no—there was no bomb. He would just man up, pop the airlock, bam, land on the Covenant ship, tear it apart from the inside.

• Martin O'Donnell: Right. But instead, you did probably one of the most amazingly ridiculous cutscenes in the history of games.

• Joseph Staten: Well, I figure if you're going to cut a level, this is the way to cut it.

• Martin O'Donnell: "I won't."

• Jason Jones: By creating just as much work.

• Martin O'Donnell: ...based on this cinematic alone.

• Joseph Staten: No, no, no. You just add a giant Covenant Space Pickle.

• Martin O'Donnell: So somehow... the airlock depressurization shoots the pickle...

• Joseph Staten: Yep.

• Martin O'Donnell: ...perfectly towards the Covenant ship.

• Joseph Staten: That's right.

• Jason Jones: The Chief's good.

• Martin O'Donnell: And then who exactly, while he's floating through the air, who blasts this open for him?

• Joseph Staten: The bombers come in. Don't you see? It's all—see, here they come.

• Martin O'Donnell: Is somebody telling them to do that? Like Cortana? Maybe.

• Joseph Staten: Let's just say that Cortana, she talks to other people while you're doing stuff.

• Martin O'Donnell: And the music is too loud for us to hear that.

• Joseph Staten: I think the music is definitely too loud.

• Jason Jones: Wow. The Covenant Ship level was going to be awesome.

• Joseph Staten: You were going to go in there and...

• Jason Jones: ...eventually steal a Wraith and end up shelling like the power core of the Covenant ship.

• Joseph Staten: That's right. And it was one of the missions where Miranda played a big part, too.

• Martin O'Donnell: Here's what I love.

• Jason Jones: Yeah.

• Martin O'Donnell: His legs themselves propel him enough out of here, and then he knew that the explosion would then also shoot him in exactly the right direction.

• Joseph Staten: It's almost like Marty thinks we're not making epic sci-fi space opera.

• Martin O'Donnell: And that's it. Comedy always distracts. That's good.

Outskirts

• Joseph Staten: But yeah, Miranda, I mean, unfortunately, some of... she really had her big introduction in the Covenant Ship level.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yeah.

• Joseph Staten: ...where she was inside the ship, you know, running around with her ODSTs for a little bit, too.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, yeah. These two cinematics in a row. It's interesting. They both represent two different... the announcement trailer for Halo 2 was sort of what we just did, and now this is very similar to the E3 trailer.

• Joseph Staten: right?

• Martin O'Donnell: Interesting. And we got it in the game anyway, yeah.

• Joseph Staten: Some of the same elements. But I mean, the one thing we didn't have in the E3 trailer, right, was the huge giant Covenant walking tank.

• Martin O'Donnell: That's right. Or the pickle.

• Joseph Staten: Or the pickle. That's true.

• Jason Jones: I remember how many times that guy missed his gun with that clip.

• Joseph Staten: Little sync problem.

• Jason Jones: That was like three months of...

• Martin O'Donnell: Whoa.

• Joseph Staten: Here it comes.

• Martin O'Donnell: There it is. What is that, ladies and gentlemen? This should have been a surprise to all the fans.

• Joseph Staten: Giant Covenant walking tank. A Halo 1 idea executed in Halo 2. Hey, it's good stuff. And Jen, you remember that in the recording studio?

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes.

• Joseph Staten: We say, "Hey Jen, Jen, could you just—" and she grabbed the lamp that she was—that was lighting up her script and just gave it a little tap. Oh, Marty, you're a huge jerk. Killing that poor little guy.

• Jason Jones: Grunt.

• Joseph Staten: Jones, walk us through this encounter.

• Jason Jones: There's some bad guys. You shoot them. It's really fun. The best part is the snipers. The big argument about whether the sniper should kill you in one shot or not on Legendary.

• Joseph Staten: Little Buggers. Hey, you know what you should be able to do? You should be able to hit the B button and take that turret off its stand.

• Martin O'Donnell: That would be cool.

• Jason Jones: Awesome.

• Joseph Staten: Why do we call them Drones, not Buggers? Oh, that's right. Because "bugger" means something else in different places around the world.

• Martin O'Donnell: We're—our guys are still calling them Buggers. It's about 50/50. Oh, here's the Hunters.

• Joseph Staten: Well, there's always the point in the Halo game, right, where you got to introduce the Hunters.

• Martin O'Donnell: And they have that special sweet spot in the back.

• Joseph Staten: Mhm.

• Jason Jones: It's their area.

• Martin O'Donnell: Their special area.

• Jason Jones: They don't like to be shot in their area.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, look at that. That was nice. A little lip-sync.

• Joseph Staten: There was a great deal of combat dialogue in Halo 2. Marty, you might not remember this.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes, 20,000 lines. I do remember it.

• Jason Jones: Oh my gosh. Tyson and I worked on this level so long. Snipers are like bacon—they make anything better.

• Joseph Staten:Mhm. Wait, even on Legendary when they shoot you with one shot?

• Jason Jones: Yep.

• Joseph Staten: And the Covenant—the Elite landing pods was one of those things that we just didn't... which was so cool in that trailer where we didn't quite have time to, well, put them everywhere... if I had my druthers, have them slamming down all around you.

• Martin O'Donnell: Did you get them slamming in here? You should—oh, you didn't.

• Jason Jones: I'm sorry. Watching the rocket launcher blow up the Ghost. I didn't hear anything you guys say.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes, because that was cool. Oh!

• Joseph Staten: Big jerk.

• Jason Jones: Also, something nobody saw.

• Joseph Staten: Well, it's really hard to get people to look at the giant hole in the ceiling when you put them in a vehicle that's moving 1,000 miles per hour and enemies in front of them. Not impossible.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, wow. It flew through that tunnel fast.

• Joseph Staten: That was a longish tunnel.

Metropolis

• Joseph Staten: Mr. David Cross, ladies and gentlemen.

• Martin O'Donnell: Michelle Rodriguez. Great voice. Come on, David. Oh, here comes Scully.

• Joseph Staten: Of course, Scully's always bringing you good stuff.

• Martin O'Donnell: Look at—oh, was there some depth of field I'm not remembering?

• Joseph Staten: I got to put it back in.

• Martin O'Donnell: That's David Cross acting. That's amazing.

• Joseph Staten: Well, one of the things that, you know, we always do in a Halo game is have a little bit of—legendary... on different difficulty levels. If you play on different difficulty levels, yes, you'll get something a little bit—a little bit different, a little bit of different dialogue. So, if someone's listening to this commentary and doesn't know that yet, this is one of those cinematics. If you start this level on different difficulty levels, Johnson... he says different things.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, wait. Here we go. Now, you have been criticized for that line, Joe. I don't know if you realize that. I think it's one of the best lines ever, but there are some people who think it's a little on the, sort of, cheesy side.

• Joseph Staten: When have I ever written a cheesy line of dialogue?

• Martin O'Donnell: I don't know. I wouldn't call it cheesy at all.

• Jason Jones: I think that line's brilliant.

• Joseph Staten: You know, I think that line really, Marty I think what it is really one of those really truthful lines that I really channeled from personal experience. My wife's not listening.

• Martin O'Donnell: Did you get any Laura Prepon?

• Joseph Staten: Now, at one point that part of the level was filled with water, wasn't it?

• Martin O'Donnell: That's true. There was some water. Yeah, at least one of those areas.

• Joseph Staten: Jones and his anti-waterways. You used to like water so much, man, in Marathon. What happened?

• Jason Jones: Yeah, water's in one spot in the game, like 20 square feet of water, and it doesn't work in the last two weeks. It's one of the things that doesn't get fixed, sadly. Sadly enough.

• Joseph Staten: Man, I don't even want to think about all the fun bugs that were involved withh this, all the months where you got tossed off, fell through... but a really fun fight.

• Martin O'Donnell: So, in Halo 2, we really, really enjoyed the moving giant pieces of geometry. Yeah. What were they called, Jones?

• Jason Jones: Moving BSPs.

• Joseph Staten: Moving BSPs. You and your mad moving BSP plans. That is good-looking effects work.

• Martin O'Donnell: How exactly did we destroy this Scarab?

• Jason Jones: You went inside of it, and you shot the biggest, glowiest thing you could find.

• Martin O'Donnell: Okay, I understand that. "You mothers"?!

• Joseph Staten: Little texture camera. Probably, I mean, I think pound-for-pound one of the most—it seems pretty simple, but one of the more complex cinematics in the game... just in terms of switching from little pieces of the world where the characters are with their own special lighting, and then going to these big environments outside, and then having all these texture cameras. This was definitely the cinematic that pushed the engine the hardest.

• Jason Jones: Really awesome camera work.

• Joseph Staten: Really great storyboards by Mr. Lee Wilson and some really great roughed-out stuff by CJ Cowan. But yeah, it was a really—

• Martin O'Donnell: Kaboom.

• Joseph Staten: ...a really ambitious cinematic that—that, uh, was probably a little bit more ambitious than we could pull off.

• Martin O'Donnell: It looks like we pulled it off here.

• Joseph Staten: Mr. Steve Scott. And I remember...

• Martin O'Donnell: I remember that.

• Joseph Staten: ...I could not for the life of me get that effect to move properly down the street... that one that kept coming down the street. And I remember I finally got it working, and I mean, you know me, I decided I can make it a little bit better, and I totally screwed it up. And I had to go back to Steve the next day and say, "Steve, uh, remember that thing that you placed for me that you've done it about eight times?" And God bless him, Steve Scott smiled and fixed it, but, oh man, I felt bad about that.

The Arbiter

• Joseph Staten: And you, Jones, who wanted to cut this part of the cinematic. Admittedly, this is a pretty long cinematic.

• Jason Jones: Yeah, it's true. I did. Yeah, you're right. I remember complaining about this one.

• Joseph Staten: Admittedly, I was wedded to the teat line, but I think it's true. This is—s really Tarturus introduction. Otherwise, he becomes—

• Jason Jones: Yeah, just another gray-haired Brute.

• Joseph Staten: Just another gray-haired Brute.

• Martin O'Donnell: Kevin Michael Richardson was Tartarus.

• Joseph Staten: Mhm.

• Martin O'Donnell: Excellent.

• Joseph Staten: Marty, with your—with your backwards satanic play the record backwards speaking here,

• Martin O'Donnell: ...which you guys had no idea actually there were real words to it, and have screwed everybody up thinking there's some secret message going on.

• Joseph Staten: Mhm.

• Jason Jones: That's funny. What's the secret message? I still didn't know that there were real words there.

• Martin O'Donnell: Oh, Jason.

• Joseph Staten: Truth’s go-to gesture. A little finger.

• Martin O'Donnell: That’s right. Should have been a sound effect on that.

• Joseph Staten: Elites without their armor on... they got swimmers' bodies.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes, they're sort of leathery.

• Joseph Staten: Mhm. Mr. John... Johnny Buckus. John Buckus with some really great cinematic animation in this scene.

• Martin O'Donnell: The Arbiter. It seems to me we had to re-record that line. Yeah.

• Joseph Staten: This is the part in the game, I think, where people start to go, "Why the hell are we spending so much time with this Arbiter guy?"

• Martin O'Donnell: Well, most people are like, "Yeah, when do I get to be Master Chief again? What is all this backstory exposition stuff? I don't really—I'm not paying attention right now."

• Joseph Staten: Yeah.

• Martin O'Donnell: "Halo something. This dude, he's disgraced."

• Joseph Staten: There's definitely...

• Jason Jones: The people who pressed the A button and skipped ahead were probably pretty surprised.

• Joseph Staten: Now, do you remember, Jason, when we were talking about making the Heretics all Hunters?

• Jason Jones: Yeah. No. What?

• Joseph Staten: Yeah. There was a time in Halo 2 where the plan was...

• Jason Jones: ...all Hunters?

• Joseph Staten: Well, the Heretic leader would be a Hunter. And most of the Heretics that you fought in the next level were all Hunters. And don't forget that early on in Halo 2 days, where you went to go attack the Heretics was actually the moon near the first Halo ring, the old infamous Alpha Moon environment. And that Alpha Moon environment, which became Gas Giant—where they killed the Heretic leader—or a gas mine... u I think some of that geometry actually got used again—I mean, completely tweaked—but for the Sentinel Wall level, right?

• Jason Jones: Yeah, right.

• Joseph Staten: Same sort of design. But yeah, originally in Halo 2, you were supposed to go as the Arbiter to the moon that you saw in the first Halo game, and that's where the Heretics' head hold up, and they were going to be Hunters. God damn, that sounds cool.

• Jason Jones: I'm trying to listen to the cinematic.

• Joseph Staten: Yeah, you can't just sit and be mesmerized in the developer commentary section.

• Martin O'Donnell: Miguel Ferrer is the Heretic, which is very cool.

• Joseph Staten: One of the few times in the game where—um, where we had these—were able to afford some great dynamic lights that—

• Martin O'Donnell: Here he goes. How in the world does his lips make those noises? He sounds like just a normal guy talking, but his lips are like, what is that?

• Jason Jones: Oh, High Charity.

• Martin O'Donnell: Robert Davi. SpecOps Commander. SpecOps Commander. He's a Special Operations Commander of the Covenant.

• Joseph Staten: That's right. SpecOps Commander.

• Martin O'Donnell: And he comes from Brooklyn or something, which is really amazing.

• Joseph Staten: Ah, turn on that methane. That's right. And I remember Jay—

• Martin O'Donnell: The last minute.

• Joseph Staten: ...at the last minute, one of the last foley things that went in. But worth it, Marty.

• Martin O'Donnell: Absolutely.

• Joseph Staten: Worth every—

• Martin O'Donnell: Had to have it in there.

• Joseph Staten: That's right. You know what I got to say? I definitely have my favorite piece of music in the game. This piece, second favorite.

• Martin O'Donnell: Cool. See? Davi.

• Joseph Staten: If someone hit the A button at any time in this cinematic, in about 15 seconds they're for a really big surprise.

• Martin O'Donnell: This sequence of cinematics is what, 25, 30 minutes long? What is it?

• Joseph Staten: Oh, come now. Let me put it this way: it's not quite as long as the Gravemind section, but we'll get to the reason why that's a little bit longer than it should be.

• Jason Jones: Why is that cable a different color? It's almost like it's going to get detached later.

• Joseph Staten: This is good. This is all good.

• Martin O'Donnell: And see, people are like, "Okay, I'm not really paying attention, but eventually I'm going to be the Master Chief because I want to be the—get back to shooting those Covenant."

• Jason Jones: "Whoa, what's going on?"

• Martin O'Donnell: "What?! Wait a minute..."

• Joseph Staten: As much as I think we all have mixed feelings about the Arbiter decision...

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes.

• Joseph Staten: ...and we absolutely didn't execute on it in the way that we really wanted to. But Halo 2, because we made this choice, I mean, all of a sudden, just blew the doors open on the Covenant in this interesting way that now. in Halo 3, I think we can go back to the Master Chief, that singular perspective. And we just, as people making the game, know so much more about that other side of the story. We can create something that's richer. And I think people who played Halo 2, you know, it's kind of this—we took the knock, we made the investment, and then I think we're a lot better off for it.

• Martin O'Donnell: I love this line.

• Joseph Staten: That's why I get to sleep at night.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yes. Joe, I think you're absolutely right. This is what I love, though. "Your armor system is not as new as ours." And we're going to, like, just completely gyp you out of the invisibility in about, like, 10 seconds. Oh, that worked out.

• Joseph Staten: Yeah, lead designer, what was fun about that?

• Jason Jones: Well, on Legendary, it was even less than 10 seconds.

• Joseph Staten: Was it really?

• Jason Jones: Like, it basically didn't even do anything.

• Joseph Staten: Now, I mean, I remember we went around and around in terms of... 'cause here you are as an Elite, right, fighting other Elites and other Grunts.

• Martin O'Donnell: Basically, at this point, a lot of people are going, "I don't know who to shoot or why, but I'm shooting everything that moves."

• Joseph Staten: Well, this is why having the Heretics be Hunters would have been genius.

• Martin O'Donnell: Yeah. Okay.

• Joseph Staten: But I remember the conversation, I think I had it with you and Jaime, where I said, "Hunter Heretics!" And you and Jamie looked at me and thought, for some reason, that a whole level populated by Hunters wouldn't be very much fun. I don't know why.

• Jason Jones: Yeah, it's true. You'd have a lot of areas to aim at.

• Martin O'Donnell: Hey, what's kind of ship is that there, Joe?

• Joseph Staten: That, my friend, is a Seraph fighter. It is a cinematic model, rarely seen. But, funny thing, the Seraph fighter is actually the old, old, old, old Halo Covenant tank, right, that Shi Kai built.

• Jason Jones: Yeah.

• Joseph Staten: That ship that you just saw, that sort of round, almost—what do you call it? Cuttlefish.

• Martin O'Donnell: You'll see it at the end of the level.

• Joseph Staten: It used to be a Covenant tank back in the day, and maybe again.

• Jason Jones: I worked with your guys on the sound for the Covenant Carbine and the Covenant sniper rifle for so long, Marty. They got so sick of me.

• Martin O'Donnell: I remember that.

• Joseph Staten: But what did you not like about those?

• Jason Jones: Oh, very tricky. I just—I don't know. It's weird. It's weapon sounds. They, like—they don't work. They don't work. They don't work. They don't work. And then you find something that works, and it's kind of hard to—did I ever come complain about this music, Marty?

• Martin O'Donnell: This is Incubus. I think you did. I think you complained about every piece from somebody else. So, which actually kind of makes me feel good, even though... there you go.

• Joseph Staten: One of the things that we wanted—

• Martin O'Donnell: This is one of the things we experimented with was some, like, music from some outside groups—Incubus or Breaking Benjamin—which I personally thought was pretty cool. There were some people, like Jason, who were not as excited about it.