A new era in the Halo franchise is upon us with the release of Halo 4 on Tuesday Nov. 6 for the Xbox 360. Gone is the series' creator Bungie, as 343 Industries ushers Master Chief into the future of gaming.
In a recent Time Magazine interview, Halo 4's creative director, Josh Holmes explained the similarities between Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved, Master Chief's evolution as a character and how Fumito Ueda's puzzler Ico influenced the game.
Holmes said in the interview that giving Master Chief more dialogue is a controversial topic, but if the developer did not evolve the character, 343 Industries runs the risk of making John-117 flat and one-dimensional.
"It's a really controversial topic when it comes to first-person games, because there are probably as many people who feel exactly the way you do, where the silent protagonist starts to destroy that sense of immersion and takes away from the storytelling," Holmes told Time Magazine. "Then you have the people who feel that when a character speaks too much and is speaking for them, that destroys their connection."
He is also said that the developer strived for "a marriage of player and protagonist." The studios want to let player become involved with the Chief, but also keep the character's trademark stoicism.
"He's a man of few words," Holmes said. "If he speaks too much, it goes against his innate persona. And yet if we don't have him speak at all, there's no way to really understand his mind and you can't chart his growth as a character - he becomes dull and one-dimensional."
He said that the team went through a pretty exhaustive process to find the middle line. The developer went through stages with the Chief had many lines of dialogue and stages where he was almost completely silent.
"I'm pretty happy with the way Chief comes through because I think you get enough of the character expressed that you can see his growth as a character - not just in the cinematics but in the game as well.," Holmes told Times Magazine. "And there's enough of that expression and interrelation between Chief and Cortana, which is really important to the story we're trying to tell. It's a personal story set against a larger action story, but you don't feel, hopefully, like it steps on your toes in terms of the immersion."
In terms of the Cortana and Chief relationship, Holmes said, that they share many of the same aspects as the boy in Ico and Princess Yorda in Fumito Ueda's puzzler Ico. According to Holmes, Chief and Cortana have an interdependent connection "that bond they have, that need to be there for one another," he said.
"I'll always be influenced by that game, probably in ways that I don't even understand, because it's definitely one of the pinnacle moments in my gaming career," Holmes said. "But beyond that core bond, they're very different, obviously, in terms of experiences and the way that they express one another, and so I don't see a lot of mechanical similarities, but definitely on a story level, the interdependence is similar."
Halo 4 will release worldwide on Nov. 6 with the exclusion of Japan where the game will be released on Nov. 8.
The first official Halo 4 launch trailer was produced by "Fight Club" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," director David Fincher and was directed by visual effects craftsman Tim Miller. You can check out the 'Scanned' trailer below. You can also check out the five best trailers in the video game series here.
If you want to more about how 343 Industries has attempted to make Halo 4 feel familiar and brand new at the same time, check out that article here. Have you seen Microsoft's "Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn?" The new web series consist of five web segments. Here are the first four segments; Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4 and Episode 5. Don't forget to check back here later this week for our review of Halo 4.