Well, I don't know that I'd call it troubled, but I think it's usual even for successful projects to change a lot over the course of development. Bungie does have a history of being forced to cut things that they bring back later...

Troubled may not have been the best choice of words. It was early, my brain can only think of so many words before 9am.

Well, I don't know that I'd call it troubled, but I think it's usual even for successful projects to change a lot over the course of development. Bungie does have a history of being forced to cut things that they bring back later...

Great article! I thought something felt very familiar about the whole concept but I couldn't quite place my finger on it. I had a hazy recollection that when I'd first read about Halo in some magazines back in 1999-early 2000 it was being spun as a sort of massive seamless game with a strong emphasis on cooperative multiplayer but when I dug around for the original articles I just came up with a lot of links to dead websites. Aside from the ambitious press release, I'm sure there was some pretty imaginative embellishment going on in the media as well. It would be interesting to read some of those early articles again.

...And I should have just checked HBO: http://halo.bungie.org/pressscans/?sortby=date

With Halo, Bungie's attempting to build an entire, wholly convincing world, with both indoor and breathtaking outdoor scenes joining together to make a massive playing area.

Bungie says there'll be an emphasis on teamwork: multi-player network or Internet games will see several players work together against the aliens

It's set in an expansive, level-less world where you wage determined guerrilla war against an alien power. Especially interesting is the co-operative multi-player mode, which enables you to play an entire squad of heroes and so create alternative strategies.

The emphasis is on multiplay, and you will be able to run wild online. [...] "We will design the game to encour- age players to specialize in certain skills, so that a player who is known as a good driver or pilot in a tight situation will make a name for himself as such, and will be sought out for these skills."

The game is mission-based, but there are no actual levels and different objectives can be pursued in any order.

Rather than the game being mission-based, Bungie has decided that Halo should be as free-flowing an experience as its impressive game engine allows and this lets the player take the battle to the air, water or underground -- anywhere the player sees fit to go.

However, all that is about to change with Halo -- they've picked up the game developers rule book, ripped out the chapter on level design and thrown it away. Halo has not one level but a big 'ringworld' on which players are free to roam, whether on foot, in ground-based vehicles, in the air or under water.

At some point in early-2000, prior to the Microsoft acquisition, those wild ambitions began to get cut down by reality.

But - and note this well - the rumours floating the Web of an entire planet for you to do as you will with are just delusional. Bungie have decided that 'Total Freedom' is impossible, so have to border their levels in natural ways (for example, mountain ranges of the edge of the ringworld).

Fascinating article, it's great to be able to compare their original hype for Halo with what we actually got from Bungie over 10 years of Halo.

Pursued by alien warships to a massive and ancient ring construct deep in the void,
the player must single-handedly improvise a guerilla war over land, sea and air,
using the arsenals and vehicles of three distinct cultures.

This probably should have been a bigger giveaway than it was, in retrospect. If you
count human as one distinct culture and the Covenant as the other... what was the
third? You can't exclude humanity and turn the Covenant into the source of all the
cultures, because that's too many. Of course, it may have been that the Covenant was
originally envisioned has having a tripartite structure, but if not, then the
existence of the Flood was hinted at pretty early. Of course, the problem with that is
that they don't really seem to have a culture, let alone an arsenal or any vehicles.
Still, it was a hint that there was a third party to the game's major conflict.

I'd actually argue that evidence of the three cultures are visible within the MacWorld trailer itself: Human, Covenant, and Forerunner. The Flood would technically be a fourth culture. This would explain the player being able to use the "arsenal and vehicles" of the third culture. However, Sentinel Beams weren't in use until Halo 2 (plus one weapon does not an arsenal make), and we never have driven a Forerunner vehicle. So it's still safe to say this bit from the press release changed significantly.

I think one could make that argument. However, the Forerunner culture never really gets rounded out. We never get a playable Forerunner vehicle, and I think Forerunner weapons beyond the Sentinel Beam (rather than Covenant duplicates or derivates) don't appear until H4 (which I haven't played, I'm basing this just on what I've read and seen). Of course, the same is true for the Flood. They don't have their own vehicles or weapons. So perhaps each counts as half a culture?

Forerunners, in the form of Sentinels and variations thereof, only get used as a temporary ally against the Flood and/or Covenant, much like rebellious S'pht in Marathon, or the infighting of the Fallen Lords in Myth. (Notice that name coming back again in Destiny as well, just with out the "Lords" bit.)

The epic single-player game is complemented by a role-based, cooperative
multiplayer team game. Playing the humans or the aliens, players will use entirely
different skills, strategies, vehicles and weapons to compete in a variety of game types.

Here we get a flat-out declaration of a kind of cooperative play in Halo that we
never, ever got. Competitive multiplayer is not mentioned, although it eventually
became the staple of online Halo play. You could eventually choose to play with an
Elite player model, but the difference between it and the Spartan model were
extremely slight.

Invasion is pretty darn close to that original description. Not only is it Elites vs. Humans, but there are even pre-set Loadouts to facilitate the choices of "entirely different skills (i.e. armor abilities), strategies, vehicles, and weapons." Granted it took almost 10 years for it to be in a Halo game! :p

Certainly I think that Invasion was as close as we ever got to that original vision, but somehow I think the original idea was still broader than that... perhaps something along the lines of asymmetrical play the way L4D does it.

I always thought it would be neat to take the other side during campaign play, the way the old Light vs Dark Myth mod would let you do.

Thanks for reading, glad you liked it!

This probably should have been a bigger giveaway than it was, in retrospect. If you
count human as one distinct culture and the Covenant as the other... what was the
third? You can't exclude humanity and turn the Covenant into the source of all the
cultures, because that's too many. Of course, it may have been that the Covenant was
originally envisioned has having a tripartite structure, but if not, then the
existence of the Flood was hinted at pretty early. Of course, the problem with that is
that they don't really seem to have a culture, let alone an arsenal or any vehicles.
Still, it was a hint that there was a third party to the game's major conflict.

I'd actually argue that evidence of the three cultures are visible within the MacWorld trailer itself: Human, Covenant, and Forerunner. The Flood would technically be a fourth culture. This would explain the player being able to use the "arsenal and vehicles" of the third culture. However, Sentinel Beams weren't in use until Halo 2 (plus one weapon does not an arsenal make), and we never have driven a Forerunner vehicle. So it's still safe to say this bit from the press release changed significantly.

eh
In Halo 2 there were two kinds of Sentinel beam, the familiar one with a yellow beam and one with a blue beam that was stronger and overheated faster, and they experimented with other weapons-- if you're quick and lucky, you can still find a Sentinel on Quarantine Zone that fires needles (and drops a needler when killed instead of a Sentinel beam). It was supposed to also have a "Forerunner Tank" level, so I think they had "let the player use three cultures' equipment" as a real goal and (pretty much like you said) weren't able to feasibly reach it in the first game or the second one... come to think of it, the Brute stuff that started showing up a lot in Halo 3 seems like it fits that, it's different from human stuff and other Covenant stuff... and Halo 2 had the Brute shot, the Brute plasma rifle, and a gravity hammer (not usable, but still), I wonder if they were aiming for four sets of stuff in Halo 2....

The epic single-player game is complemented by a role-based, cooperative
multiplayer team game. Playing the humans or the aliens, players will use entirely
different skills, strategies, vehicles and weapons to compete in a variety of game types.

Here we get a flat-out declaration of a kind of cooperative play in Halo that we
never, ever got. Competitive multiplayer is not mentioned, although it eventually
became the staple of online Halo play. You could eventually choose to play with an
Elite player model, but the difference between it and the Spartan model were
extremely slight.

Invasion is pretty darn close to that original description. Not only is it Elites vs. Humans, but there are even pre-set Loadouts to facilitate the choices of "entirely different skills (i.e. armor abilities), strategies, vehicles, and weapons." Granted it took almost 10 years for it to be in a Halo game! :p

I'd say Firefight Versus is close too.