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An Interview with the lead desginer in the great game halo for xbox
Games domain: Halo's looking absolutely marvellous, you must be pleased with your progress?
Jason Jones: Absolutely, it's been really fun in the last two months to get the real Xbox hardware and actually get the game up and actually see what it's going to be like. For the first time in the solo game we've got the guy in the back of the jeep and he's using the chain gun in the right way, it's been cool yeah.
GD: The machine gun on view in the demo looks great with some excellent effects including that great flashlight, but what we want really want to know is what else have you got in store for FPS fans weapons-wise?
JJ: We've got a bunch more but we didn't put most of them in because the art isn't quite as polished as this one. But yeah, about half the weapons in the game are going to come from the aliens you're doing as you get through the game. They're pretty cool and we've got some of the standards like beam shooting energy weapons to some fancier stuff. Then on the human side...well I won't give away too much but we've got your standard FPS favourites like the rocket launcher and cool stuff on top of that, but yeah absolutely many more than just this, with some real fun to come.
GD: We've seen the jeep and the alien flying machine at the beginning, can we expect more vehicles?
JJ: Again there are human vehicles and the alien vehicles and you're going to be stealing a lot of alien shit as you go through the game. A bunch of alien stuff, a bunch of human vehicles, a lot of the human stuff will be standard like the jeep with the mounted chain gun, really cool right? That just has this feeling, some of the alien ones don't quite have the same degree, but they're cool in very different ways like that flying vehicle you saw in the demo, that's alien. The aliens have really cool stuff like the mortar tank, it's like a really big fat thing that shoots green bolts and then there are all the drop ships. The human drop ship which you saw in the video, a lot of the vehicles are going to have automatic weapons, that is, weapons which will target and shoot automatically so you can concentrate on driving or flying them around.
GD: What about the actual gameplay - will it be more open ended and go where you like, do what you like, or will it have more of a structure and be mission based?
JJ: You know what we've found a lot recently, is that people want structure. It's like when you're reading a book, you want chapters right? You don't want to read a book without chapters, you want to get that like two or three or maybe even 15 minutes of entertainment and then you want to go onto something new. So there are going to be really specific missions that you can succeed at, work through, you finally win and then you move onto something new. What we're really trying to avoid is levels in that disjointed, irrelevant to the storyline kind of way. Back in the beginning on the PC side we were talking about "go anywhere, do anything" but that's really an RPG thing. We're not quite going that hardcore but what we're really committed to...Perhaps it's easiest to give you an example: the environment in this demo you're inserted by a drop ship onto this island, you can drive all the way around it and attack various alien structures on it and then assault each of them individually. You can do that however you want in a bunch of different ways or in a different order, with different vehicles or different weapons. We're certainly not going to stop any of that, but once you're done with that environment, you stop it and succeed and then move onto a new one.
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GD: The control system was obviously a concern, an FPS which uses a gamepad could seem totally alien to hardcore FPS PC fans?
JJ: You know, we really thought that was going to suck. Of all the reasons people gave in the beginning apart from Microsoft being the evil empire, etc., that was the number two reason, you know? "We're never going to be able to make it work, the controller will kill everything." I think we've gone a long way towards making it something that can really happen. We've got a bunch more user testing to go through and it was interesting to watch people play today. But I think we've already got a system that is totally functional for people that are pretty good at FPS and we just need to go all the way down to the total beginners. Personally I love the controller, I think it's great, it fits in my hand great, I love those two triggers, they feel so good, I really like it.
GD: How has Halo's focus changed since last E3?
JJ: For a long time we were very focused on a very cinematic third-person network experience on the PC though some people might say those words are mutually exclusive. What we boiled it down to sometime after last E3 was a much more first-person experience because we're primarily interested in the action and a little bit less in the cinema. We've really got down to work on the AI, not only how you'd play against it, but how it would assist you too. Like it's really fun to drive around with that guy who just hoses people with the chain gun.
GD: What can you tell us about multiplayer?
JJ: We have great plans but we're not really talking about that yet. Split screen is something that's really exciting on a console but just doesn't exist on the PC. Multiplayer is where we came from, all of our games have been multiplayer and we're gonna do everything we can but the Xbox guys haven't figured out their internet strategy yet, so we're waiting to talk about it.
GD: So how's the PC version shaping up?
JJ: You know we're concentrating on the Xbox version at the moment, there's still a lot of work to do, a lot of cool shit which we've got to pull out, so we're not even really thinking about the PC and Mac stuff yet. We're committed to doing it after we're done, but the core Halo team, actually a bunch of the guys from Oni, are doing everything they can to make Xbox Halo work out.
GD: How far away do you think you are from completion?
JJ: It's hard to put numbers on it, we've gotten to that stage in the solo player game where things are starting to look really, really exciting. The designers can really see where they're going now and that's cool. To be there at the launch of a new console and one that really kicks ass, that's really exciting. We're committed to Halo being an Xbox launch title.
GD: So what's next for Bungie? Will you go Xbox only or can PC and Mac gamers expect some more great titles?
JJ: Well there's a whole bunch of projects that we're working on but I can't really say anything about those at the moment. There's still so many cool things that you can do with a mouse and keyboard, there's so many cool RTS games - yes they're going to end up on a console eventually but it's not the same experience right? We'll always do Mac and PC stuff.
i whould like to thank jason for taking the time to talk to us allso next week the producer of jet set radio will be here so dont miss and an till next time good bye ..
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