1UP: There has been a little bit of controversy about multiplayer maps as it relates to campaign maps, what is the official statement on the multiplayer maps and how they relate to campaign spaces?
Brian Jarrard: Well the official response is that we're not delving into all the details of multiplayer yet, this is the tip of the iceberg, but the core of
the multiplayer map offering is based on the fiction and they are grounded in campaign spaces, and I think I'm just going to leave it at that for right now. People shouldn't get too spun out, there's a long time between now and launch and we obviously have a lot more to talk about.
Marcus Lehto: Brian's right, we just scratched the surface tonight and, yeah I hope people don't get spun out about that, because that's the least of the things they should be worried about, I mean there so many good things within the game overall that we're going to be offering and it'll... like he said, it's just the tip of the iceberg.
1UP: Are you guys changing the field of view at all for Halo Reach?
Brian Jarrard: Hmm? Marcus? I don't know...
Marcus Lehto: (chuckle)
1UP: Specifically as it compares to the Halo 3 field of view or the ODST field of view...
Marcus Lehto: Is that fair game?
Brian Jarrard: I don't even know the answer to that question Marcus.
Marcus Lehto: Errr... We did take some liberties with changing field of view, changing some of the player mechanics, like we did with ODST as well, we understood that for Reach we wanted that gameplay experience because
one of the things we're doing was actually having players play through more human scale environments and that actually does require us to do a little bit more with what we're doing with FOV, player speed, jump height, those kinda things, we did subtly tune them so they worked just perfectly for Reach.
1UP: When looking at the backgrounds of all Noble team and Noble 6 has a highly redacted classified background, is there an actual canon story to Noble 6 or is it simply for the player to define what Noble 6 is by their actions?
Marcus Lehto:
We have written back story for Noble 6
1UP: Will that be revealed in the course of Reach then?
Marcus Lehto: It may.
1UP: I was just wondering if there was a purposeful story to him or is it just simply that he's a blank slate so that players can be as cool as they make Noble 6 to be?
Marcus Lehto: To some degree that's absolutely true. We're giving Noble 6 more of a... your ability to jump into the skin of that character, and really make them your own. But there is a history to that ... that we purposely wrote in order to have the other Spartan Noble team members interact with you in the story in a more believable way.
1UP: Why is there one Spartan II in with a group of Spartan III's? Why not all Spartan III's?
Marcus Lehto: We felt like this was an opportunity for us to play with the flavour and character of each one of the Noble team Spartans... Reach is the home of both of the Spartan II and Spartan III programs, so it had all of that good stuff just waiting for us to play around with, and we really wanted one of these characters really help stand out and be a little bigger than life than some of the other characters and we decided you know what that this is a perfect opportunity for us to make Jorge 052 the only one with Spartan II credentials, so it worked out pretty well for us and we're definitely bringing logic to it overall through the story so that it makes sense.
1UP: In one of the concept art of Kat she has two pistols, one on each hip, is there anything we should read out of that?
Marcus Lehto: Ermmmm... mistake?
Brian Jarrard: Creative levity?
Marcus Lehto: It's a painting.
1UP: Will there be dual wielding?
Marcus Lehto:
There will be no dual wielding, no.
Brian Jarrard: It's a prequel yeah? No-one had learned how to dual wield yet so...
Unknown: She had it in her concept but she hadn't figured it out!
1UP: Can you elaborate at all on Rob McLee's comment that civilians will have a bigger role in Reach?
Marcus Lehto: Oh sure yeah, part of the real meat of this story is that there are 700 million innocent civilians on this planet, and that many of them are gonna die because the Covenant destroy this planet. So it was really... We put a lot of effort into bringing that civilian culture to life and you will definitely see civilians, play alongside civilians, and understand their story a little bit so you can connect with it and have some understanding of what Reach was really all about and have some understanding of what's so special about it. So you care about it.
1UP: In past Halo games the Flood have been a kind change to the combat style in the game. How do you keep the encounters with the Covenant forces interesting throughout the entire course of a full Halo campaign?
Marcus Lehto:
Well with Reach we're definitely re-visualising the Covenant, we want them to feel a little bit fresher than what we've ever seen them before, we're giving brand new characters to the Covenant that you've never seen before, we're giving the existing Covenant complete facelifts from the ground up in many cases, we're giving them brand new abilities and new things to do, but that said we are definitely taking a look wholeisticly(sic) at the campaign and understanding that we're not gonna throw the same thing at the player encounter after encounter, we're actually taking the player through experiences that they've never been through in a Halo game before in order to make sure that it stays fresh and it stays alive all the way through from beginning to end.
1UP: You mentioned that the perspectives is a little different, the height of the character, the human character's is a little different, is that going to affect the type of characters that you can select to play as in multiplayer? Specifically the height of an Elite versus a Spartan III?
Marcus Lehto: That's a good question. T
he Spartans are a little bit shorter than Master Chief and the Elites are taller, that definitely plays into the mechanics of each of those characters absolutely, and we're playing with that we're actually having a good time making sure that that actually balances well together in multiplayer.
1UP: A while ago we heard that Jason Jones was incubating some secret project, is Reach that project? Is he one of the main guys on this game?
Brian Jarrard: No I don't think that's the project we were talking about, I should say that Jason is the Creative Director of our whole studio so I mean everybody at Bungie sort of has their hand in the pot, but Marcus is the Creative Project Lead for Reach, but Jason and a core of people are actually at the helm of what will be Bungie's next big thing and it's been in development you know in various forms for a little while now and it still happens to go in parallel with Reach, but
the full firepower of Bungie is purely focussed on getting Reach out of the door and making it awesome, but we do have other stuff under way and it's something non-Halo and totally new and when the time comes we look forward to talking about it.
1UP:
There have been quotes that perhaps this is the last Halo game, at least that it's the last Halo game that Bungie will be making any time soon, have you thought about what emotions are gonna be there, that last day you're sending it out for certification and it's this baby that you guys have put years and years of your life into, what is that emotion going to be like when you have to hand it off to...?
Brian Jarrard: Marcus is tearing up right now already...
Marcus Lehto: I will weep, no no definitely...(laughing) It's sad, this is our last big hurrah to Halo and I've worked on it since 1997, Jason and I were in the same room building Halo together we started this franchise with just a very few number of people and so we've seen it grow to unimaginable size, I mean we never knew it was going to be this big and so, yeah,
we're putting everything we've got into Halo Reach and yeah I'm really sad to see, I'm going to be sad to see it go.
Brian Jarrard: Walking your daughter down the aisle...
Marcus Lehto: I am.
1UP: Is Frankie the person giving away the bride? Is that how it's working here?
Marcus Lehto: Oh god don't, just don't...(fake cries)
Cloudus
