On November 15th, 343 Industries - the powers that be in the Halo universe since 2007 - are delivering a labor of love. If you count yourself among its legions, you'll recall that Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is a visual remastering of the ten-year-old game that started the fight for fans both old and new.

Since the game’s announcement at E3 2011, a handsome serving of extra features have been revealed, all of which spare the campaign from intrusive tinkering: “Analyze mode” and voice commands via Kinect, 3D support, skulls galore, and a layer of Halo lore in the form of terminals.

 

I recently spent a few hours with the game, and had the privilege of talking to its lead designer, Chad Armstrong (of Bungie before 343i’s creation). Without further ado, here are a few of his answers pertaining to the crossroads that 343i faced in development, and the philosophy adopted to get through them.               

What can you tell me about 343i’s track record?

Chad Armstrong: As of a few months ago we took over the back-end for Halo: Reach, as in all of the stats and the matchmaking. In fact we now have full control over matchmaking. We have a dedicated designer whose job is updating playlists and modifying game types for Reach. Prior to that we worked with a partner, Certain Affinity, to release the second map pack [Defiant] for Reach, and of course all the Halo franchise for the past couple years: Halo Legends, the Halo motion comics that you can see on Waypoint, Halo merchandise... all those things actually come through us.

How did the idea for Anniversary come about? Was it a once in a decade opportunity, and/or something the whole team was eager to do?

It really came about because we were looking at the ten-year anniversary: Master Chief turns ten years old. There was not a whole lot of discussion to it, actually. There was a bit of “should we do this? how do we do it? can we even do it?”

But really it was about 16 months ago that we decided to make a Halo game. We needed to find somebody that could help us take the Halo engine and increase the fidelity of all the visuals while maintaining the original experience. We ended up meeting Saber Interactive, and the rest is history... or is going to be, I guess.

About the Author

Pierre Bienaimé

Scribeling

Pierre Bienaimé is an incipient blogger extraordinaire, with a soft spot for shooters, platformers, turn-based strategy, and games that reside outside of the box.