Halo 3 ViDoc: Cinema Paradiso

Halo 3 ViDoc: Cinema Paradiso is the third ViDoc released by Bungie for Halo 3. The 7 minute 30 second video was released on September 20, 2007. Its name, "Cinema Paradiso" is the title of the 1989 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, and is Latin for "Moving Paradise".

Features

The video showcases the Replay feature of Halo 3 's multiplayer. It highlights various abilities with the camera and the controls required to do these. The ViDoc features several interviews by Bungie Studios employees, as well as a huge amount of replay footage. It showcases many Armor Permutations, including all of the ones that had been officially released as well as several that had not.

A large amount of the video was also devoted to the Forge feature. Bungie Employees described how Forge would work, its uses, and their predictions for Forge in making Halo 3 a unique and widely played game.

Transcript

0:35 - Luke Timmins: Man, where did that grenade come from that killed me?

0:39 - Tyson Green: Did you see how I did that barrel-roll and then hit two guys and it all blew up? Wow, that was awesome.

0:45 - Luke Timmins: CJ just got sniped and then cartwheeled over the side and then got run over by a Warthog.

0:48 - Lars Bakken: We flipped six times in the air, landed it and kept going.

0:56 - Luke Timmins: So it's sort of fun that with saved films, that single bullet that comes and that's actually going to kill you, that hits and then to actually watch blood start coming out and to watch the guy get shot back - to watch them in slow-motion and to see..." Look how cool that ragdoll is, look how cool this particle system is, look how cool that looks" is just fantastic and is really fun to see.

1:15 - Lars Bakken: People can't make things up now, they can't lie about what happened in the game last night, they can't exaggerate.

1:22 - Brian Jarrard: Saved film is essentially an automatic replay of every game you play. Fly anywhere you want to in the map, pan around, check things out.

1:29 - Lars Bakken: The amazing thing about saved films is that you can actually relive any moment that happened at any time, and look at it from any angle.

1:37 - Brian Jarrard: If you're not quite sure how did they actually get the flag out of our base when we supposedly had three guys guarding it, now its easy to go back, watch the film, see what they did.

1:48 - Lars Bakken: The controls basically work exactly how you would expect them to.

1:53 - Luke Timmins: It's so simple conceptually, but making it a reality, it took years.

1:59 - Lars Bakken: You're first person; if you click the right stick, it shows you what that person was looking at from third person. The other option you have while following someone in third person is to break out into a orbiting cam. So anytime you hit the right stick you automatically move out into this orbiting camera, and you can zoom in and out.

1:19 - Luke Timmins: I'll say it. I did not know that the Warthog actually had like an internal like dash lights and crap. And so then like I'm flying around and I'm like, "Wait, what? Like there's actually like lights in here?"

2:30 - Lars Bakken: There's two ways to rewind. You can either press left on the D-pad, which is a shortcut, or you can bring up the control pad, highlight the back button on the control pad, press A, and you'll rewind that way.

2:44 - Luke Timmins: Every time that someone rewinds in a saved film, I hold my breath, because there's like... it's like God reaching in and being like, "Make magic happen," and then it magically just keeps working. Like, the complexity of that system is so insane.

3:01 - Lars Bakken: Now the other cool thing is the ability to go into flying camera, and you do that by hitting the Y button, and that breaks you out into a free-roaming camera.

3:12 - Colm Nelson: You can watch it from above and you can see what you did. Maybe get a perspective where you can actually the impact of that grenade you threw and, and zoom in really closely on the action that happened after that.

3:26 - Luke Timmins: So there's one group who's like, "No, don't allow it. They're gonna see too many lies. It's a pain in the ass." The other side it was like, "Look, flying camera's cool as shit, it actually is a big deal."

3:35 - Lars Bakken: When you're in flying camera if you hold in the left trigger you can actually fly around the map faster, and then the right trigger is your speed control. If hold down the right trigger in just a little you'll notice it's slow motion, and if you hold it in all the way it actually becomes fast forward.

3:56 - Luke Timmins: I want people to be able to make those snippets, you know make those moments and share them, and be like, "Look at this awesome game, look at these crazy things I did." And that's so awesome. I want that to be inside our engine not to have to go to some external site.

4:08 - Brian Jarrard: Saved films in Forge I think represent like the coolest features that we have in Halo 3.

4:13 - Lars Bakken: We're giving them the tools to basically play Halo how they want to play it. They can set up any map however they see fit.

4:22 - Petar Kotevski: It's just crazy how much a map will change with just a small variation of either weapon placement or just where the flag spawns in CTF. If you don't like it there move it one meter to the right.

4:34 - Brian Jarrard: If you want to in Forge you can build your own base on the beach, maybe add some turrets for defense, add some crates to hide behind.

4:40 - Petar Kotevski: Try building a building out of fusion coils and then blow it up.

4:46 - Brian Jarrard: You could have fifty versions of Sandtrap that are each built differently, that each emphasize a different type of game style.

4:52 - Lars Bakken: Forge is actually an old school Bungie name. It was the name of the map editor for the Marathon games. It's kind of a nod to the hardcore Bungie fans.

5:04 - Tyson Green: One of the guys on your team is this partially-omnipotent little Monitor flying around, dropping weapons for you, and holding crates to block enemy fire, picking up your Scorpion and carrying you to the other side of the map.

5:17 - David Candland: It's like the hand of God that has come and picked up this large vehicle and started slinging it around in front of this guy's face.

5:23 - Brian Jarrard: Your buddy could drop a Bubble Shield in front of you, now instantly you're protected. Maybe now you'd like to go on the offensive. Ask your buddy to drop a Spartan Laser for you. The next thing you know you've got a laser in real time.

5:33 - Petar Kotevski: Once you realize you can do something like that, you're like, "This will be the mother of all multiplayer matches."

5:42 - Lars Bakken: You can manipulate everything on the map. It's not just weapons, and grenades, and vehicles. It's spawning, it's where the flag sits, it's where the turret sits, it's every single object in the level.

6:00 - Luke Timmins: They're gonna love the Forge, cuz they can spend hours dropping tanks on each other.

6:05 - Lars Bakken: Each item has a cost associated with it.

6:09 - Petar Kotevski: You have only so much Halo currency to spend on a particular map.

6:14 - Luke Timmins: Yeah, I've joked that people are gonna take our maps that are broken, and within a week they're gonna fix 'em, because they're actually gonna make the real version of like, "Hey you know Bungie, your version of Territories these levels sucked, and here's the real one."

6:26 - Tyson Green: We're not really sure what people are gonna do.

6:29 - Lars Bakken: People are going to figure out new ways to use the Forge that I think we don't even understand or know are possible yet.

6:37 - Luke Timmins: The next crazy thing that you're like "Oh my God. They just took Forge, and they took saved films of that, and they added voiceovers, and they just did Macbeth. Holy crap. Like, that's crazy and that's awesome.

6:47 - Tyson Green: Everyone's riffing off each other's ideas, and then all of a sudden some diamond just emerges from it where everyone needs to have this map.

6:55 - Petar Kotevski: Oh, this is so cool, I can't believe we're actually letting people do this.

7:00 - Brian Jarrard: This is the stuff that's going to keep people playing for years on end, that's going to make a billion hours get logged on Xbox LIVE. This is the thing that is really going to set our game apart from the rest, I think.