Xbox Addict

The Making Of The Halo 2 Trailer Part I

Is there anything significant about the trailer that you think people might miss? Any details that might shed light on the game, or just amuse the viewer? Lots of technical details, certainly. But I hope folks pay close attention to the dialog: therein are plenty of juicy story tidbits to debate on the forums. Also, you might notice that one of the Covenant’s nukes hits a very definite location in the state of Washington. How will cinematics in Halo 2 differ from those in the original Halo? Is there anything the new engine can do that will unlock previously closed vistas of creativity for you? Were there any constraints on this trailer that won’t be present for the cutscenes in the final game? The most significant differences for the non-interactive cinematics will be technical. On the most fundamental level, art assets in Halo 2 will look a lot better than they did in Halo: characters will be more lifelike, environments will be lit more dynamically, etc. The engineers are also stuffing my little-bag-of-tricks with things like depth-of-field as well as writing more robust editing tools, so I’ll have a great deal more flexibility with regard to shot composition and pacing. I don’t want to give away too many details too soon, but suffice it to say that our story ideas for Halo 2 are much more ambitious than those we had for Halo, and I’m confident the new engine will enable me to take these ideas from the script to the screen without cutting very many corners. Now you have some idea of how we wrenched all that stunning imagery out of an Xbox. But all true Halo fans know that the visuals only tell half the story. Check back soon for our next Making The Halo 2 Trailer installment, when we’ll talk to Marty O’Donnell and Jay Weinland to find out more about the music and sound in the trailer.