Chronique:Halo Bulletin 05/10/2011

It’s all in my head.

I have a very strange all-or-nothing personality. Take my dietary habits, for instance. I eat an insubstantial breakfast, an extremely light lunch, and then for dinner I turn into Chris Farley’s SNL Gap Girl character. I’m the same way with money, too. I pinch pennies for a predictable length of time but feel guiltless when I exceed my carefully outlined budget on a single, splurgetastic luxury, as the numerous headsets that litter my house attest.

When the sequel to Combat Evolved came out, I celebrated by treating myself to the translucent green Halo 2 special edition headset. It rested ever-so-delicately upon my ear, delivering my teammates sometimes game-related but often not communications directly into my auditory canal. Several months later, upon its expiration, I was forced to find a new comm apparatus. Happy with my previous acquisition, I bought the same headset again, this time at a cheaper price. That money-saving pattern continued well into the life of Halo 3 but finally screeched to a halt when finding a new one proved almost as difficult as getting Frankie to shave. Yup, it just wasn’t going to happen.

Looking for something new to adorn my then unembellished head, I began considering options that, cost-wise, were equivalent to the amount of money I had saved by purchasing old headsets over the previous four years. I finally snagged a fancy-schmancy 7.1 surround sound gaming audio system, and my first night with those beauties is one I’ll never forget. I was on The Pit and found myself suddenly exposed to the faintest sounds. I could hear approaching footsteps, the ping of a grenade bouncing off the cement, and the purr of an Overshield beginning its three-second charge process. With the improved experience, however, came confusion. At one point I heard the unmistakable staccato of a turret, and my headset told me it was to my left. A glance to my right, though, revealed its source. I spent the remainder of the game spinning in circles, attempting to make sense of the dissonant audio-visual cues while trying not to vomit from the vertigo. After the game was over, I expressed my befuddlement (and nausea) to those that were in the party. A few people mentioned that my headphones may be on backwards, and after a quick flip, I discovered they were right (how was I supposed to know the “R” and ”L” on each side actually meant something?).

Music to your ears.

Anyway, as I work my way through Anniversary, I find myself grateful for my superior cans as they allow me to revel in the rejuvenated sounds. During my most recent play session, I focused on the Needler and the Shotgun. While the Grunts that were recipients of the sharp pink shards didn’t appreciate the detonating acupuncture session, my ears did. Nothing though, in my opinion, compares to the Shotgun. It’s an extremely powerful weapon, especially in close quarters, and that is magnified by the remastered sound effects. Words can’t adequately describe the sound, so instead I’ll let you hear it for yourself. Whether you have awesome speakers, not-so awesome speakers, or speakers that fall somewhere in between, crank up dat volume, soldier. You don’t want to miss the audio awesomeness that is the Anniversary Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Plasma Pistol, and Plasma Grenade.

As you can tell from the audio-video comparison, our goal with the Anniversary sounds was to boost their fidelity while retaining their classic Halo feel. What the video doesn’t show, however, is how those revitalized sounds enhance the overall Anniversary experience. Hearing those effects nestled within your favorite CE level, sandwiched between a beautiful new layer of graphics and the gameplay you already know and love, is a truly magical experience, and it’s one I won’t attempt to adulterate with words. (A little tip: ensure vibration is enabled on your controller before you start playing—your Assault Rifle, and perhaps the bodily region on which you rest your controller, will thank you.)

Why I oughta...

Speaking of adulterating with words, Game Designer Chad Armstrong loves to do just that, so he dropped off 971 of ‘em, the majority about his recent Anniversary-related Tokyo Game Show adventures. From the stooge himself:

I’m going on a journey into the past. Back, back, back still to a time long ago, when men were men and so were the women if you had only met them on the Internet. A time when the songs of summer birds filled the air, playing loudly from smartphone speakers. A time when my boss came up to me, looked at me with those big Canadian eyes, and said “Hey, Chad, so I think we need you to go to Tokyo for TGS.”

I’m going on a journey into the past. Three weeks ago, to be exact. Join me, won’t you?

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is, to all intents and purposes, on the threshold, and almost ready to go out the door. Before we let our child out free, though, we’re turning ‘er over and over to make sure she’s prim and proper. And nobody is more diligent than our own Dennis Ries. As the Anniversary producer, Dennis is our ultimate closer, the person who ensures you’ll be getting the game this holiday. He’s also part of the globe-trotting campaign presentation team; playing the game while Dan Ayoub narrates. Unfortunately, Dan was indisposed and Dennis had to visit our friends at Saber. As such, it fell to Frank and me to play the roles of straight man and stooge. Destination: Tokyo Game Show! Who was straight man? Who was stooge? We may never know.

Our presentation followed the format Dan and Dennis have used since E3. For the campaign, however, we debuted the Pillar of Autumn, the first Halo mission EVAR, for members of the press. While we were presenting, Frankie made an interesting point that really drives home the import of Pillar of Autumn not just to Halo: CE specifically, but to console gaming in general. For many people out there that now have a plethora of genre-headliners to play, Halo was their first console FPS, and Pillar of Autumn was the first level they played. It’s not a stretch, then, to suggest that Pillar of Autumn was, for many people, the tutorial for what has since become the standard for FPS control schemes. For me, it made the presentations a touch surreal as we presented a piece of console gaming history. To say the least, it made me appreciate the decision to rely on the original Halo engine that much more.

One way we deviated from the established formula set by the “D” brothers was with our terminal presentation. In the past, D^2 demonstrated terminals in an isolated fashion, generally by switching to another Xbox and loading a copy of a terminal video saved to the hard drive. For TGS, Frank and I had the unique pleasure of showing the first terminal in-game, not off a video. In Anniversary, you’ll find a terminal in every level. In some cases, the terminal is an object; a device that stands out in its surroundings. In other situations, the existing environment provides terminal locations. For Pillar of Autumn, for example, you’ll find the terminal on the bridge; one of the consoles screen flickers with a hard-not-to-notice “Incoming Message” warning. You’ll see the light from the screens before you see the screens themselves, and that’s how you’ll know you’ve found something. The original design has changed and terminals will all now be found in the same places, no matter which difficulty is chosen. And because terminals are a new feature made for Anniversary, you can only see and interact with them in the remastered visuals; switching to Classic visuals hides the terminals. Switching back and forth is a pretty good way to locate terminals, actually. When you switch, look to see what changed.

After showing off the campaign side, we switched to Multiplayer and flew through Headlong, one of the big team maps that shipped Halo 2. “But Shishka,” you ask me with your trademark quizzical gaze, “why include a Halo 2 map remake with Anniversary?” Well, you see, Susan—I can call you Susan, right?—we followed a few guidelines for which maps we wanted to remake, and we decided early on that we did not want to remake a map that had been remade for Halo 3 or Halo: Reach. Obviously, this eliminates Blood Gulch as Hemorrhage is already part of the Reach lineup. Sidewinder was the tougher decision, but ultimately we felt that we could give the most value to players if we gave them something they couldn’t already play on the Xbox 360. We didn’t consider using a smaller Halo: CE map instead. BTB is hurting for a map experience that Invasion maps don’t provide, and Forge Maps aren’t really enough to fill the gap. You know it. We know it. We hear you. As such, we looked to Halo 2 to provide us our second big team map, and Halo 2 more than delivered.

Presentations filled two days of TGS, but once the consumer show started I managed to roam the show floor a bit. Trade shows start to blur together after a while, but TGS has its own ways of standing out. Among those are the cosplayers. If you’ve ever been to any event relevant to gaming, such as Gamescom, PAX, or even San Diego Comic-Con, you’ve seen people dressed up as their favorite game characters before. And (and I’ll be blunt about this) some people try harder than others. In Tokyo though, those folks don’t mess around with their cosplay. The rest of the world has some stepping up to do.

And that actually is all, for this week’s Bulletin anyway. If you’re looking for information regarding October’s Halo: Reach Matchmaking playlist update, please refer to this here handy-dandy post. Otherwise, I have a plane to catch, as I’m on my way to the other side of the pond. See you next week, when the Bulletin will come to some readers from THE FUTURE. Only hours into the future, but the future nonetheless. Until then…

<3,

bs angel

PS: What? You still want your customary Friday Caption Fun image? Fine, I’ll leave it for you, but if I end up missing my plane, I know who to blame. Here’s a hint: it’s one of us, and it’s not me.

Lastly: Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Street Fighter X Tekken, Dark Souls. That is all.