CVG
With Bungie officially out the door and Microsoft's new boys 343 Industries feverishly recruiting for the future, the Halo universe is very much a world in transition.
343's first act - in gaming terms at least - was to co-develop the recently released Halo Reach Defiant map pack, and it's currently working on a 'triple-A' Halo instalment - but we don't know what that is yet.
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To help clarify where the series is going and what we should expect in the future, we sat down with creative director of 343 (and ex-CVG man) Frank O'Connor for a chat...
You worked with Certain Infinity on the latest Halo Reach map pack. Is 343 generally open to collaboration?
343 is a publishing entity and like Bungie before it is always open to collaboration.
We've done weird things in the past such as putting a Spartan in Dead or Alive 3, we worked with Itagaki and his team to make sure the Spartan was fighting correctly and using a style that was appropriate to the Spartan, was the right height and moving correctly.
So we've always been open to those sort of mini-collaborations but as far as the core game experiences are concerned we have to keep that close to home. I think of Certain Infinity as being close to home because there's a lot of Bungie guys on that team, it's very natural.
In the future - who knows. Fundamentally, right now we're building a large powerful top tier studio to make triple-A experiences in the future, that's our general direction right now. We'll continue to do little collaborations with people but for core experiences we have to keep those close to home. There's lots of ways to do that and 343 Industries is one of them.
What is the arrangement with Bungie concerning DLC going forward?
To clarify, the Defiant map pack was a collaboration between 343 and Certain Infinity, which is made up of a bunch of new guys and a couple of people that used to work at Bungie. They've worked with Bungie and made map packs since after Halo 2 so in that regard a few things have changed and stayed the same.
Right now Bungie is supporting the community with matchmaking and stats, but at this point that's it. They're going to continue to do that and support the community but in terms of actual Halo product this marks the first where there is no Bungie, or even tertiary Bungie involvement other than matchmaking.
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It hasn't felt different for me because I used to work with all of these guys so it feels like a continuation but it will be scrutinised differently by the fans, or at least the hardcore fans because there will be an apparent difference whether there is any reality to it or not.
So you're expecting some people are just going to be able to detect the change in developers?
Absolutely. There will be things that they'll say 'oh this is better than that' about but we'll just have to wait and see. I'll be watching that stuff, you have to take it seriously because your core fans are also the most educated,
But you also have to remember that probably 75% of the audience doesn't know who makes the games - to them it's like 'Xbox makes the games'. Those are a bulk of the audience that you also have to pay close, careful and loving attention to.
Is there a desire within 343 to take Halo in a new direction?
Definitely. We want to innovate and be creative. We don't just want to put our own stamp on things just for the sake of it.
While I was at Bungie every year or two you would have all these new faces with fresh ideas. We're kind of in the same imagination space there, which is that it has a different brand on it, it is different people and we're not at that stage yet but we're going to have people who work as the best graphics guy in the business, best X guy in the business, etc.
We're looking to prove ourselves to the gamers. We're not going to rest on our laurels but neither are we going to just reinvent the wheel just because we want to mark it with our stamp. Every single person we hired wants to work on a Halo game because they love Halo. Nobody wants to work on a Halo game because they like driving games right?
So, we have all the passion but we've also got all this new talent so we're working hard and people are doing things that are incredible.
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Do you think the series needs reinventing at this stage?
Bungie tried to reinvent it every time. If you think about it, with Halo it was about putting the controls on the sticks, which hadn't been solved properly. GoldenEye took a good stab at it but this was the first time we'd done it. That wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been on Xbox.
With Halo 2 we recreated the System Link, LAN party experience on Xbox Live and that wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been on Xbox.
So there are a lot of things that come from partnership with the hardware and platform guys, and a lot of innovations come through necessity, which is going to continue to happen with us.
Ultimately the core game mechanic and strength of the universe doesn't need to be changed, it just needs to be taken deeper. We want to make Halo games - we don't want to make Call of Duty or Ridge Racer. We want to make Halo games because we understand what's special about Halo.
But the next Halo will be the fourth instalment on the current console hardware... Will that make it a bit more difficult to innovate?
No, because I would say that one thing that has happened with previous Halo games regardless of hardware or platform shift is that there were always ideas left on the table due to time constraints. There were also ideas that didn't quite work because people didn't take to them or audience player patterns weren't exactly what we expected.
So no matter when it comes out the next Halo is going to contain improvements. Some of them are going to be dramatic innovations while others will be slight tweaks. You can't approach a problem like that, you've got to say 'what can we do to make this better?' It doesn't matter if that is a giant innovation or a small tweak, you've got to do it all over the board. That's how Bungie approaches it.
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What are the chances of seeing a new Halo Wars in the future?
The funny thing about Halo Wars was that it actually beat our sales forecast so it was a bigger success than we expected. It was a big critical success and is still, I think, the number one selling console RTS in that generation so in that regard it was a huge success. But is the will to do a sequel there? Who knows. We could do something that works on Kinect, for example. There's no will against it but we're not working on it right now.
We've done a lot of very cool experiments with varying levels of success. I'd say Halo Wars is a successful example. We take risks in the universe and we always have done for the last ten years. The new Greg Bear novels explores the Forerunners which were a mystery and goes deep and explains it pretty fully, it's a New York Times best seller now. That's another way to approach it right 'people will enjoy your stuff if it's good'.
Do you see a day when Halo products are not being generated?
Yeah sure, maybe in a thousand years (laughs). In the near future though it's a growing franchise with growing demands. It's a 2 billion dollar franchise and there's a constant demand for stuff. That's one of the reasons we've been a successful franchise, no matter how bizarre the thing is - and we've made some bizarre things - it has been in response to legitimate demand from our audience.
The number one thing we've been asked for over the last ten years was the Grunt plushie. We've been pushing that off because it's crazy but the fans wanted that. We're probably going to do one this year because it's the 10th anniversary but no matter what, if you make it because there's demand and you stay true to what's good about Halo - in this case that Grunt plushie has to be funny - then you're going to have a happy audience.
Not everyone likes everything though - we have an audience that only plays games, only reads the books, only playa one level or one weapon no matter what. You have to understand that you have a varied audience. When you have that many people playing you can't look at them monolithically and say 'you're all this one guy', you have to ask how the audience is broken up and this is the big challenge in matchmaking. Most people want to play Team Slayer, but others still want to play Firefight, or like Team Slayer but hate it when you have certain things.
It's like being a DJ and trying to figure out how you keep everyone happy and create an ecosystem so that the party keeps getting better and better rather than accidentally Rickrolling the audience.
Do you see demand for Halo products increase every year?
Yes. Our Halo mega block building company is like, more than a $100m a year business - just that. Forget the Halo underpants business.
It's a huge business and one of the reasons it is so successful is because every single thing from the box art on the mega blocks construction set to the logo on the t-shirt has someone from 343 or historically, Bungie, who cares about Halo working on it and making sure its appropriate.
We don't always get it right, I'm not saying that. We've had some errors in the past but most times we get it right because we care about it and keep it true to the universe.
Do you think that the Halo audience wants to sample the franchise in mediums other than games?
Yes and I think that video games aren't necessarily the best place to tell a narrative story - it is one of the best places to put a universe and Halo proves that. If you think about Halo without the Covenant and the Forerunner architecture, without the anachronistic human guns, the war, it stops making any sense. It's a fantastic place to build a universe because not only you can show the people, you can let them experience it, touch it, feel it, smell it.
That way it's better than movies. I think you can do Star Wars better in a game, ironically, than you can in a movie. You can let people be in the next Starfighter or fight with a Lightsaber. Games have a huge advantage over other mediums but telling a story while you're desperately trying to hold off hordes of Covenant can be distracting and so it's not necessarily the best place for a narrative.
So we lightly touch on a character in a game and people say 'I'd like to know more about this guy but you keep shooting at me'.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/295592/interviews/343-industries-we-dont-always-get-it-right-but-we-love-halo/
