Making Halo 4: First Look

Making Halo 4: First Look is a video documentary by 343 Industries, about Halo 4 in general. It was released on Halo Waypoint and YouTube on 5 March 2012.

Transcript

Fades in to the Legendary ending of Halo 3. Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is seen placing his MA5C Assault rifle on to a racket on the wall beside a cryo chamber.

• John-117: "Wake me, when you need me."

He enters the cryo chamber, and the UNSC Forward Unto Dawn is seen drifting towards an unidentified planet.

HALO 3
LEGENDARY ENDING

• Josh Holmes: "Halo has a magical feel to it, that is unlike any other game."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "To what degree do we need to rework great work that's already been done?"

• Frank O'Connor: "What do we keep? What do we throw away? What do we add?"

• Neill Harrison: "Equally, we want this to be our Halo game, the first Halo game 343 has developed."

• Josh Holmes: "We've really focused on trying to craft these moments that live up to the legacy of the Halo experience."

• Neill Harrison: "We're working within the constraints of what makes Halo, Halo, but trying to make every aspect of it bigger and better."

MAKING HALO 4: FIRST LOOK

John-117 in Halo 4.

• Josh Holmes: "In Halo 4 we are really delving into Master Chief's humanity and exploring what makes him tick as a character."

• Frank O'Connor: "Most of the exploration that we've done of the Master Chief has been through other media outside the game; through comic books, through novels. We wanted to put it squarely in the video game this time."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "Fighting for something that is really important, where there's something big at stake. Those are the things we carry forward."

• Josh Holmes: "One of the things we wanted to do is really introduce a threat that is beyond anything that Master Chief has faced before."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "It also gives us an opportunity with that threat to add new gameplay."

• Frank O'Connor: "The backstory of the Spartans and of the Master Chief in particular promises all this hyper athletic speed, and mass, and weight, and power."

The development of animations used in Halo 4.

• Neill Harrison: "There's supposed to be this guy in a supersuit and he should feel like a superhero in it and in order to do that we wanted the armor to look and feel functional."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "We've done everything from really looking at what should the HUD look like."

• Brad Welch: "It's kind of like a fighter jet HUD, if you think of it that way."

• Josh Holmes: "As a player, you're really empowered and you're given a set of tools to employ in any way you want."

• Brad Welch: "The fans will be really happy about what will be in Halo 4. The battle rifle is back. It's the old burst fire precision weapon that they know and love."

• Neill Harrison: "All weapons, vehicles, and enemies have all been updated graphically."

• Josh Holmes: "A lot of that is just in service of the experience we're trying to create. We want you to feel like you can step right into that world."

• Brad Welch: "We're trying to bring that across in multiplayer. There's this whole universe out there. You can play in all these cool locations."

• Frank O'Connor: "We're absolutely creating multiplayer levels from scratch."

• Josh Holmes: "So these are not playspaces that are recycled from the campaign. They're purpose built with competetive in mind."

• Brad Welch: "The two maps we're going to be showing: Warhouse and Wraparound. Wraparound is a looping arena type structure. Lots of verticality. Up and down combat. Warhouse is like an abandoned military base, which has got a giant mech being constructed in the center of it."

• Frank O'Connor: "We've always had this sort of schism between multiplayer and campaign, and the campaign was completely ripped and featured and the multiplayer just wasn't."

A SPARTAN-IV model.

• Brad Welch: "The Spartans in multiplayer are SPARTAN-IVs. These are the newest breed of Spartans."

• Frank O'Connor: "We have a fairly compelling and fairly convincing reason why red Spartans can fight blue Spartans."

• Brad Welch: "There's other parts to our multiplayer experience. They will be coming in the future."

• Josh Holmes: "With Halo 4 we've tried to create a more cinematic approach to the experience in everything that we do."

• Frank O'Connor: "We have a completely new audio team building all of the sound effects from scratch."

• Sotaro Tojima: "We've redone almost everything. We've already recorded a hundred tracks of music."

• Neill Harrison: "Artistically, the number of assets that are going into this is way more than any other Halo game."

• Frank O'Connor: "We wanted to do so much more."

• Josh Holmes: "We have this massive team of people, who have all come together at this one point in time that focuses on every day that we have left, doing everything we can to make this game the best that it can possibly be."

• Kiki Wolfkill: "It's still Halo, but it has its own voice and it's extraordinary."

The Halo 4 logo is shown.

HOLIDAY 2012

Gallery

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  Another image of John-117, from a different angle and background.

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  A close-up of John-117.

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  A comparison between John-117 in Halo 3 and Halo 4.

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  The Battle Rifle used in Halo 4.

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  The development of Halo 4's Warthog.

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  The HUD utilized in Halo 4.

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  An image of Warhouse.

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  An image of Wraparound

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  A first-person view of Halo 4's multiplayer.

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  A SPARTAN-IV jumping in Halo 4 multiplayer.

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  A SPARTAN-IV firing at another player in Halo 4 multiplayer.