Transcript of Halo movie, cover CD Incite PC/January 2000 Narrator: On the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois, Bungie Software is preparing to blur the line separating the virtual world from our own. Their next game, Halo, is still very early in the development process, but it is already very clear that it will make a massive impact on PC gaming, and perhaps even change the way we look at games. Halo is a third-person, sci-fi action game that depicts a great war between the human race and the Covenant, a consortium of different alien races who are highly motivated to destroy a fledgling human interstellar civilization. The action will take place on a huge alien-built ring construct that orbits a gas giant in the far reaches of space, a perfect battleground for a celestial war. [marine jumps from back of jeep, runs across terrain with small grasses on it... fade to hologram room, camera pans around for several good views of the hologram] Doug Zartman: Ah, so the, the main character, um, the character that the player plays, is, is, is a human military officer. Um, what we're seeing here on the screen, uh, the player is inside, uh, sort of a hologram room, which, uh, is showing, uh... you've got a hologram of the, the ring itself, you can see the terrain, uh, on the surface of it... um, it's orbiting a gas giant, and you can actually see a, a, ah, an image of the halo itself is that small blue ring... Narrator: When it comes to gameplay, Halo will have robust multiplayer play mode, much like that of Starsiege: Tribes, but Bungie is devoted to creating a single player game with a deep, non-linear storyline as well. [marine looks around grndsprtcraft hangar, jogs outside, looks all the way up to vertical at the halo in front and above him] DZ: One of the things about, uh, the prime characteristics about halo is that uh, it takes place in this entire, in this uh, huge, completely seamless world, uh, it's an indoor-outdoor environment, uh, in which there are sort of no breaks between moving between the two environments... [marine runs out towards the jeep, camera pans around behind him, shows the base, a long grey articulated cylinder] Narrator: Making the human and alien weapons and vehicles as different as possible is the key to ensuring that players will be able to specialize in playing the human or alien sides in multiplayer games. DZ: One of the things we want to be very distinctly different in the game is the experience of playing humans and aliens... [marine stands on a bluff, cycles through weapons. Weapons appear like magic in his hands... morph into other weapons. It's not clear if this is how it'll work in the game, or if this is just for demonstration purposes. Scene switches to Covenant firing the green plasma bolt gun... has a heck of a recoil] Charles Gough: So this is the, uh, yeah, the antiarmor, this will be used to, like, take out tanks and other heavy equipment, uh... it's got some cool looking animations here, uh you can see if I fire through it, the barrel moves up, revolves, it's basically got two, two barrels that fires two really quickly, then it's gotta reload... [marine with rocket launcher... crouches to fire, smoke effects both in front and behind weapon amazing. Stands up to reload, weapon drops down, marine looks down to add new rockets. They come from his belt... you never actually see them, but from the way he moves, they look to be the size of bullets or so. Another angle of a crouching marine firing a rocket into the air, great lighting effects.] Narrator: Halo's physics model uses highly advanced mathmatical computations to create a moving world that parallels our own. This concept was made clear to us in the demonstrations provided to us by physics programmer extraordinaire, Charles Gough. [marine jumps into jeep, drives] CG: If you watch the guy here, as I brake, um, I speed up and I brake, he goes flying forward, [chuckling in the background] and the same way he goes backwards, and it's harder to see, actually, with this, but if I turn, you can see him leaning out there. Narrator: Progressively designed in every way, Bungie's new 3D engine pushes contemporary hardware standards well beyond the current norm. With the entire gameworld rendered in 32-bit color, it is one of the first games to truly harness the power hidden deep within the current generation of graphics accelerators, and depict landscapes that come alarmingly close to our own. [jeep drives through varied terrain. Air caught as the jeep crests the hill suggests gravity is far below earth normal. Driver fires machine gun rounds, then grenades, while driving. Demo of camera rotating around alien hovercraft as it flies. Marine drops to a meter or two above ground and jumps out, runs to a jeep. Climb-in animation very lifelike. As he drives away, a mountain range pops into view... disconcerting. Demo of an alien flyer doing loops] The concept of exploring this vast and resplendent world is intriguing in itself, but when all of the pieces are in place, there will be much more to do than just sit on the bench and enjoy the rolling waves. [camera focuses on rolling waves] It is clear to us that if Bungie's dream is fully realized, PC gaming will have yet another path to follow, a path that will surely lead us all to the next level of gaming. [camera pans to take in bridge, some nice riverside terrain. Fade to black.] home

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