Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Exclusive

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Exclusive is a Halo Waypoint exclusive video by 343 Industries. In the video, various 343 Industries employees shed light on the creative process behind Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. It was released on June 6, 2011 shortly after the game's announcement.

Transcript

• Bonnie Ross: "When we first established 343, we spent a lot of time thinking about what stories we wanted to tell, bounding the universe with the first story we wanted to tell, with the last story we wanted to tell within the timeline. The story that 343 was the most excited about was Master Chief's."

• Dan Ayoub: "It's the tenth anniversary of Halo, we're like, 'okay, we kind of have, this at this point', and it makes some kind of sense."

• Frank O'Connor: "We're announcing at E3 this year Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and we're announcing Halo 4 which is the first in a new trilogy of Halo games. "

• Bonnie Ross: "I think for most people, Halo 1 is the quintessential Halo. Not only did Bungie nail the controls for an FPS on a console, but they also told a story in the most compelling way that it's ever been told in an FPS at that time."

• Frank O'Connor: "A couple of years ago, when we first started building the recipe for what would go into it, we had to put in a huge amount of thought into do we split up the multiplayer from the single player, do we use the original Halo multiplayer and try and make that code work with that, do we use the Reach code and keep that infrastructure and that ecosystem going..."

• Dan Ayoub: "The first thing we wanted to do is make it look like a 360 title. How would it look if this game came out today, how would it feel, how would it be different."

• Kevin Grace: "Sometimes you find little additions that's like kind of if, 'this could've been there ten years ago and it looks so right in there right now.' And that's what we're looking for in all the changes that we're making."

• Bonnie Ross: "Retouching Halo 1 needed to be a labor of love..."

• Kevin Grace: "The audio, the characters, the levels, the grass, the dirt, the sky, the moon... Trying to find a way to reproduce them faithfully, but in a way that looks like it's ten years later."

• Dan Ayoub: "Literally, you pick this up, the gameplay is identical to what it was ten years ago, because, I mean, that was just so original, it was so new, it was so fresh."

• Bonnie Ross: "It's great to kind of go back to that old gameplay and feel as powerful as you did in both vehicles and with the pistol."

• Frank O'Connor: "The Halo 1 pistol is back, it is still wildly overpowered. Three shots to the head from anywhere on the map will kill anything."

• Kevin Grace: "It's all in there. If you love flying into the beach on Silent Cartographer and starting in that first, big fight, that's in there. It's looking like 2011."

• Bonnie Ross: "Co-op play was probably one of my favorite features ten years ago. We have co-op play over LIVE."

• Frank O'Connor: "Anniversary will have stuff hidden in it. It's gonna have stuff hidden in it that you know about, like terminals and you're just gonna have to find them yourself."

• Bonnie Ross: "I'm also excited about the stories we're telling in the terminals and then having achievements - that's long overdue."

• Frank O'Connor: "Being able to switch back to the classic on the fly, it's just going to be kind of a magical experience."

• Dan Ayoub: "You hit a button and at any point in the campaign, you float back and that's how the game looks ten years ago. It's just great from a history standpoint, you just look at it and go like, 'oh my god, this is the game I remember.'"

• Frank O'Connor: "It feels like a modern game. It feels like an FPS that came out yesterday. It does not feel ten years old."

• Bonnie Ross: "So we didn't touch the gameplay. But it's amazingly beautiful now."

• Kevin Grace: "You look up in the sky and you see the Halo ring, and you see the mountains, and you're like, 'I've never been someplace like this before. And I feel that again now, seeing it. I mean, I feel like I did ten years ago.'"

• Frank O'Connor: "The beauty of this is, this time on Xbox LIVE, you can just get back together with the same old crew, the same old posse, and... I think virtual pizza parties are gonna be the order of the day."

• Bonnie Ross: "It's super exciting to finally be able to talk about what we've been working on for the last years."

• Frank O'Connor: "Just reliving the Halo 1 campaign, for most people, the overall experience is gonna be pretty incredible."

• Kevin Grace: "We get Halo, we respect Halo, we appreciate it, uh... And we're gonna do right by it. What we're gonna see at E3 is just going to be a first taste of that. We're looking forward to being able to dish out a little bit more in the months to come."

• Bonnie Ross: "At PAX, this August, we have Halo Fest, where you'll hear more about Halo 4 and you get hands-on play with Halo Anniversary both campaign and multiplayer."

• Frank O'Connor: That's gonna be a blast and a hell of a way to finish this summer."