Office of Halo Intelligence
Sous ce titre aux airs officiels ce projet est en réalité une nouvelle forme de Dev Diary, ou Journal des Développeurs.
Présentation
L'OHI sera un journal tenu par diverses personnes de l'équipe développement de Halo 4. Publié de manière irrégulière, ce bulletin servira à donner des précisions quant à l'avancée du jeu. La semaine du 15 janvier, c'est Josh Holmes, Creative Director sur Halo 4, qui inaugure ce concept.
Édition des news
Partie 1 - 12/01/12
Holmes ne peut révéler quoi que ce soit en-dehors du Planning Strict de Révélations™. Il explique simplement le fonctionnement de l'OHI, qui permettra à certains développeurs de donner leurs impressions sur le travail déjà accompli, sur le jeu... Mais les éléments croustillants devront attendre. Toutefois, il faut savoir que selon lui, le jeu est déjà fun à jouer, et que 2012 signifie la dernière ligne droite d'un projet de plusieurs années.
<toggledisplay hidetext=[Masquer]> Jessica has asked me to contribute to a Halo 4 developer diary as a recurring part of our weekly Bulletin. While we won’t be able to share secrets that would spoil any of the Carefully Planned Reveals™ that we have coming down the pipe, we will give you our impressions of some of the work that is going on behind the scenes here at 343. We’ll also provide our thoughts on anything that we do make public as part of the lead-up to the game’s launch. I realize that isn’t a lot at this stage, and trust me, this is hard for us, too. We are working on so many things that we can’t wait to share with you, but patience is in order. Good things come to those who wait. All will be revealed in due time. And assorted other clichés.…
Right now the team across 343 is shaking off the last remnants of our turkey-induced stupor and whipping ourselves into fighting shape for the year ahead. It’s going to be a huge one. This will be the culmination of a multi-year journey that has already filled several cylindrical space-canisters with delicious blood, sweat and tears. Now we’re entering the crucial final stretch in which we will ready our baby for release into the wild. It’s an exciting time but stressful, too, as we place pressure on ourselves to live up to your expectations. The good news is that the game is already looking great and fun to play. So, as we ready ourselves to give you your first real look at Halo 4 in the months ahead, we can only hope that you, too, will like what you see.
/Josh </toggledisplay>
Partie 2 - 25/01/12
<toggledisplay hidetext=[Masquer]> Sweet! I feel honored to get to contribute a little blurb to this week's Bulletin. I'll do my best to try to keep you entertained for at least 15 seconds with all sorts of savory and unsavory details about the goings-on here on the Halo 4 team. In all seriousness, this team is doing some extraordinary work, and I look forward to being able to share more of their heroic deeds periodically over the next few months.
So, what the hell are we up to? Well, as even Kotaku noticed, Seattle was hit with a Snowpocalypse of proportions unseen since, wait for it.... 2011. Some 343-ers were stranded at home, racking up gamerscore and ruining their futures with hours of TV viewing (my marathons of choice: Downton Abbey and Spartacus). Now we're back and man, catch-up is a b****.
We've had an action-packed week of internal mission reviews, a deep-dive with the Marketing and PR teams, and a quick little exec review thrown in for good measure. It may sound like a lot of reviews and that's because it is…. we are in full execution mode. There are hundreds of moving parts across 343 and Microsoft Studios that need to be aligned and coordinated—now is the time to get all our ducks in a row. While it’s been a little hectic making up for last week's snow days and going through these reviews, it's always invigorating to be able to get the game in front of folks who aren't staring at it every minute of every day. I do look forward to getting back to our normal routine of game-building, playtesting, and general creative rabble-rousing. More on this later.
Oh—did I mention that my favorite hour this week was our music review? Magic....
Kiki </toggledisplay>
Partie 3 - 08/02/12
<toggledisplay hidetext=[Masquer]> Ship Just Got Real
Obviously we’ve been working on the game in earnest for a long time, but it’s all starting to feel pretty real to me now. Campaign is playable from start to finish (not to be confused with complete or polished) and multiplayer has been running for a while. It’s amazing to see changes big and small have a dramatic effect on making the game smoother, more playable and more enjoyable in almost every session.
Personally I have been traveling a fair amount in support of the impending year-long launch activity. Visiting with our partners and colleagues in Europe to talk (and walk) them through the game, the features, the U.S. marketing plans and the sheer scale of the project. We certainly surprised some folks with the ambition and concrete realization of where we’re at, but it was kind of cool to see genuine excitement and enthusiasm for the game.
Our show and tell was pretty BIG, since the European partners (marketing, retail guys, etc.) need as much information as is available to make their plans and start building the path to launch abroad. So they went from knowing practically nothing about the game, to knowing practically everything about it. Which is a weird feeling when you expend so much effort and energy on security and secrecy. It’s amazing how much detail you need to go into. It’s not good enough to simply list off the changes and additions and improvements, you have to contextualize them. It’s been almost five years since Halo 3 and a LOT of stuff has happened between then and now: ODST, Reach, multiple map packs, loads of story and a whole swathe of technical and gameplay changes.
Creating material to explain those changes, walking people through the game features – showing them a lot of this stuff in action, it’s fun, but it’s nerve-wracking. In a way it’s a preview of our public showings, where we get a feel for which changes, which additions, which refinements are going to get people excited. It’s also a chance to get a feel for which new features are complicated and how to distill the explanations to capture the essence of what we’re making. Training wheels, as it were, for showing you guys.
Launching a game is a massive undertaking, with literally hundreds of people all over the world preparing and planning to make sure that every aspect, from the box art to the matchmaking, is executed flawlessly. And if it seems slow, ponderous, even, then remember that there’s a plan and a process, and that you’ll see Halo 4 soon enough. And we can’t wait to share it with you.
Frankie </toggledisplay>
Partie 4 - 15/02/12
<toggledisplay hidetext=[Masquer]> Big thanks to Jessica for dragging me gently into this week’s OHI. The 343 Art Team (and 343 in general) is thundering on all cylinders, and the seismic rumble has the neighbors all up in arms. When your landlord is the UNSC, you tend to giggle when the homeowner association mail starts to pile up!
With Chief making an appearance at the NY Toy Fair, the internet has bubbled with lots of questions around Chief’s design changes. Having cut my first game developer experience on Daikatana, I’ve developed a healthy respect and fear of the internet. I will step onto a message board with all the cautious ginger one would employ pulling lost forks out of a sink garbage disposal. I did want to risk mangled finger burger to talk a little about some of what brought us to our current design.
Above all, we wanted the player to really feel what it’s like to be the Master Chief. This manifests itself in a lot of ways, and for those who read the Fall of Reach, there’s a lot of character depth behind that helmet that has yet to make its way into the game experience. Every person who was allowed to touch him had to, HAD TO, understand his history as a person. The Chief’s origin is pretty sad and grim: A strong, vibrant child stolen from his parents, he underwent dangerous bioengineering that destroyed the weaker of his friends, and trained to stomp out human Insurrectionists. Pretty morally nebulous beginnings for someone who ultimately saved humanity. Of all FPS heroes, he is distinct in that his arc is aspirational and not a cynical view of the universe.
A big focus on the Chief’s armor was his physicality and putting the player in those mighty shoes. Getting that weight across in the design had us looking at a lot of contemporary military vehicles, and we pushed detail and form into the armor that implied that history. This is the bleeding edge of military technology.
A Spartan tossing his chest plate should feel like an anvil dropping….
A Spartan sprinting across concrete should be a stealthy whisper….
Putting on your helmet should feel like powering up an F-15E….
These are the sorts of experiences we want to give the players.
Kenneth </toggledisplay>
Partie 5 - 23/02/12
<toggledisplay hidetext=[Masquer]> I’m honored to have an opportunity to talk here! I just came back from a weekly music review, and especially this week, I was so excited about one piece of music. This emotional, digitized piece became the second favorite piece of Halo 4 music which we’ve made so far. I can’t wait to share this with you!
Producing the Halo 4 music is very difficult, but such a fun job for me. I know many people, including me, love the previous Halos’ music. Halo 4 will be a story for Master Chief and Cortana. Therefore, we are driving our music production respecting the previous music tone.
At the same time, we are working to establish some freshness in the music because this is a new trilogy and we are a new team.
I love creating game audio because it is a direct communication between fans and the team. I want to communicate with our "own" language of sound and music. Even if having a new language on Halo is very challenging...
My goal for making audio is always very simple. How much can we make people excited and immersed in the story and gameplay experience with our audio? There are three key ways I like to do that:
• Provide a sense of reality with sophisticated sound design to bring you into a believable world. • Achieve a memorable, dramatic experience with great music and sounds well synced with the story beat and your gameplay. • Share a delightful memory with all fans providing an iconic melody.
Actually, my real goal is to make you cry!
When I hired the people that make up the Halo 4 audio team, one of the criteria I had was that if you want to work it had to be "for fans more than anything." And now I have a great team. Everyone is so happy to work hard to surprise you.
Again, it is very hard to achieve a great audio for the Halo universe, but I believe we can do this as long as we don't forget you are waiting patiently for us. Stay tuned for next update from me, and for more exciting topics in OHI!
-Sotaro Tojima </toggledisplay>
Divers
- À ne pas confondre avec le nom de l'ONI.
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