How Halo 2 was made in JUST 10 Months (Halo 2 Development)

after the release of halo combat evolved development on what would become halo 2 would begin and halo comet evolved releasing was a really big deal for its time the guys at bungie were so passionate and excited to launch the universe that would become this massively popular game series and going into halo 2 not only was the fan anticipation going to be completely off the charts but also bungie was fueled with so many ideas and concepts that they planned on implementing into the follow-up game to make it the definitive greatest game of all time whether it was crazy awesome ideas they had come up with towards the end of the development for hilo combat evolved or even some fresh stuff that they cooked up along the way the motivation behind the individual developers working on halo 2 was definitely something admirable but when stuff like microsoft deadlines meet game engine failures bungie would be faced with one of the biggest challenges in video game development history and they would have to make a decision whether or not they would scrap everything they had worked on for years or to release a subpar product [Music] so with literally just a few months to essentially make an entire halo game bungie had in front of them what seemed like an absolute impossible task yet somehow they pulled it off and to this day halo 2 is one of the most beloved games in the entire halo franchise and is one of the greatest fps games in the entire industry the story of these developers who were faced with something that seemed impossible and then managed to pull it off should be a story told as a monument of what could become possible when extraordinary talent would come together to quickly and swiftly stitch together what ended up being a masterpiece despite its disastrous development but it would also come with great hardships challenges and sacrifices so was it worth it this is the story of halo 2. when halo combat evolved unleashed to the world and lan parties were a thing and couch co-op was a thing halo was redefining the gaming industry and xbox really needed a home run if their console was going to be able to succeed and halo fulfilled everything they could have ever hoped for and then some and actually it seemed like bungie at this time of 2002 to 2004 was extremely excited about what they were going to do with halo 2 and how everything was going to be bigger and better and just massive in comparison to what halo combat evolved already had done in a lot of ways halo 2 is just the you know an extension of all the excitement we felt at the end of halo 1 and that we didn't get to you know that we didn't get to express it's actually really interesting if you take a look at some of these clips that bungie had released over the years from the earlier stages of halo 2's development you actually can get a glimpse of what the environment and company culture was like at bungie during those early years before you know halo 2 development hit the highest levels of gaming industry crunch in these early stages riding off the success of halo combat evolved was really clear what a lot of the team at bungie really wanted to do with halo as a franchise they really wanted to expand the lore and story and build antagonists making the story something much larger and greater than you know big green space man does some stuff key bungee employees like jason jones and joseph staton wanted to make halo 2 not just a good game but an experience that rivaled cinematic storytelling bungie had some of the most talented employees in the entire industry whether it was the game's music and sound department or it was the game design and coding departments it seemed like during this time everyone was really excited to be working on halo there was of course these massive plans to make technological improvements and really unique animations for various player models work was done scaling large environments that would be much bigger than anything experienced in halo combat evolved there would be a ton of weapons and players would go on a journey through levels that were unlike anything not only players had seen in the halo franchise but any first-person shooter and during the early years it was a mix of this active development and pre-production kind of happening simultaneously but e3 2003 was coming up and it was a very important deal if you were a game developer back then you see back in the early 2000s e3 was a huge deal for video games essentially this would sometimes be the only or the most exposure a lot of games would get to show off what games to get excited for but microsoft had a lot riding on 2003's e3 the first xbox really did struggle to get a foothold early on in the console race especially against sony's playstation 2. and halo was easily the number one reason people were interested in the xbox to begin with so with the next gen consoles not hitting consumers until 2005's xbox 360 xbox really needed to show off something in 2003 so people would continue to support the xbox through the holiday season and of course in 2004 when halo 2 would release that would be the game to carry the console through till the end of its life so when 2003 rolled around it would be putting it pretty lightly to say that there was some pressure on bungie to showcase you know potentially the coolest demo of the year and while a lot of games go for a trailer or maybe a pre-rendered tease with one of the main design goals at bungie to bring this cinematic experience to the gameplay when it came to halo 2 bungie wanted to showcase the game that people would be experiencing and show how these movie level moments would be experienced by the player in the gameplay and this was some pretty revolutionary stuff by 2003 standards and the demo for e3 though was something quite different audience members were introduced to sergeant johnson filling them in with what was to come detailing how there was no smoke and mirror stuff now this was all real gameplay and for the first time players saw earth duel wielding brutes ghost hijacking so much stuff along the way and honestly this gameplay audience numbers were dumbfounded halo 2 had easily stolen the show watching the demo and you climb up on the cruiser and kick the guy off i lost it master chief jumped up and it goes kicked the enemy down and got on and it was over it was game over after that so in just over a little bit of a year with the iconic gameplay that people got to see at e3 when halo 2 finally would hit store shelves and players could experience the campaign for themselves the level that many people saw in that demo essentially wasn't anywhere in the game what happened in the course of just a little over a year where something that looked as polished as this somehow didn't end up making the cut well let's go back to august of 2003. after the massive success of e3 the bungie developers would return from e3 with a huge sense of accomplishment for what they were working on right well not exactly through the months leading up to the big e3 demo a lot of the team had focused their efforts on polishing that demo so people would have the best impression as to what halo 2 would become but with e3 behind them the next milestone that the team would be looking at was essentially the game going gold and it was likely around this time where they started taking inventory as to how far along they actually were with halo 2 to get this game finished on time with all the hard work and effort that they put into making that e3 demo it actually turned out that it wasn't something that could realistically be implemented into the build of the game and essentially they worked on that demo for so long in a sense it had kind of become its own separate entity and it wasn't even something that they could go back into and work on if they wanted to they actually ended up having to scrap the demo altogether and that became something in itself that turned into kind of a big mystery to a lot of halo fans just because this demo vanished all of a sudden and it actually wasn't until 343 did a play through on stream revealing that the demo was actually pretty awesome and pretty well preserved and i hope that one day we can play it but i'm pretty sure 343 doesn't watch luke and i's videos so i don't think that'll ever happen for us but rest in peace us but despite the decision that bungie made to just completely move away from that demo and realize that a lot of that stuff would not be something they would be able to just easily put into a final build of halo 2 without the expense of some major resources and plans that they had for halo 2. it seemed like during this time there was some pretty massive concern internally as to how on earth they would be able to start putting those final pieces together to make halo 2 the experience that they all dreamed of with just 15 months for the game to launch there wasn't even a road map or an actual functioning version of the game just yet and to quote bungie they even said themselves at that point the game wasn't even fun yet and that was a pretty big deal they really had to take a hard look at the game and realize they were nowhere close to even being near where they should have been for that level of development and time was rapidly running out and to add to all of that microsoft themselves were planning on launching xbox live which would be a huge connected online experience and they needed halo 2 matter of fact at this time a portion of bungie's team would be involved in building the framework for networking and playlist curation and friends list found in many of the games and services that to this day most of us experience when we're playing video games over the course of the next couple of months bungie would start going over a lot of the ideas that they had in plans and start putting together some sort of organization to try to get things in order but at this point it was really clear already they were way in over their heads with having such a huge vision for the game that graphics engine that bungie had worked on and written for halo 2 during those first months of development turned out to be unsuited for the hardware capabilities of the xbox and some of the levels that were designed and planned out didn't play well with the engine and wouldn't even play well as a halo game it seemed like things were really falling apart with the stuff that they had been working on through the whole period of development that they had had up until this point and then on top of that bungie was also really ambitious with the multiplayer side of things they wanted to create a multiplayer experience just as visually pleasing as the campaign which would mean that considerations would have to be made for allocating resources for the multiplayer which in turn could affect how campaign would play as well and of course halo combat evolved was successful because of its campaign but it became a historic monumental game because of the combination of good gameplay along with an experience you could have with your friends multiplayer needed to not just live up to combat evolved but it needed to pass it up as well but campaign levels were taking way longer than expected to complete and the story would also need rewrites along the way to fit into what was capable in the games and it wouldn't be until december 2003 just 10 months before the expected launch of the game where bungie was faced with one of the biggest decisions that would directly impact the game in the potential it could have for success matter of fact there's rumors out there that execs at microsoft were pretty heavily looking at bungie and putting pressure on them because they needed halo 2 to work and upon seeing the state that halo 2 was in at this point they believed that the game would be impossible to be completed in time it would need another year at least the game could not wait another year so bungie would have to make some pretty massive decisions should they cut content from the original version in hopes that they could still make a good game or would having a larger sandbox with quantity of features but a less polished overall experience be the preferable treatment for the halo franchise moving forward bungie opted for the first option cutting content to make a polished game rather than releasing a low quality product so bungie took their precious project with all of the ambition and ideas that they had been working on for years to the cutting board and essentially developed a 10-month road map that just maybe would allow bungie to be in a position to pull off the biggest hail mary play the gaming industry had ever seen before which meant choosing and cutting and chopping things up that had original intentions and piecing things back together in a way that the game would still be finished and a high enough standard of quality that players would expect for a follow-up of halo while halo 2 was intended to introduce antagonists and dive deep into the lore with a huge climax culminating on earth humans final stand a lot of the plans for this game had to be cut and matter of fact there was an entire third act of the game where master chief and the arbiter would work together and chase the prophet of truth through the ark on earth which never ended up happening halo 2's plan was always to have a story that had a beginning middle and end and the narrative itself was going to be self-contained but instead they had to be okay with leaving things off where it had to be left off on but maybe this could save the halo brand as a whole so that they could finish the story in a halo 3. it wasn't ideal but just maybe they could pull it off and it could work with 10 months to go the team now had a road map that they put together and you can actually see it during the making of halo 2 vidoc and it was very clear that bungie would have to be very disciplined with self-imposed deadlines if they were going to pull this off it would be tight close to impossible but the one thing that they noticed along the way was that sometimes working against a tight deadline allowed them to make some of their best work and if you look at the overall road map that they had it's actually really interesting to see how much time they allotted themselves for play testing which was a massive pillar to bungie for halo 2's development if they were going to have to cut the features the game wouldn't release completely broken by any means sure there'd be glitches but there was no intention to have halo 2 launch and the core of the game be fundamentally broken matter of fact this is actually pretty different than what we see in the gaming industry nowadays so often games are released in an almost unplayable state and they get some patches sometimes later but halo 2 wouldn't suffer that fate instead they would cut into their self-imposed deadlines so they could leave themselves a window for polish that meant in the 10 months that they had they had just 12 weeks to code the entire game four weeks to add and implement the actual content and assets into the game two weeks to finalize and implement all audio and cinematics into the actual game build and then that last six weeks hopefully to play test and finalize any fixes along the way this is a huge deal that often gets overlooked but the fact that play testing got such a huge section during development is a really unique approach but that right there prioritizing the way that the game played rather than trying to push in all of their ideas was possibly the pinnacle decision that decided the outcome of halo 2 but the sacrifice in the following weeks would be a mountainous climb the difference between good enough and awesome is so big and i mean there's this this standard set by everyone here that i mean good enough sucks with much of the content having to be cut in favor of a condensed and focused experience many parts of the script story and work done would have to be scrapped matter of fact chunks of the script would have to be thrown out voiceover lines that had been recorded with a different narrative thrown out as well and some new stuff would have to be recorded and implemented in its place forge mode which was a planned thing for halo 2 would be scrapped altogether the mongoose didn't make the cut and that final warthog run that was planned also got ousted they had to take out these huge ideas that they had because cover to cover they wanted this game to be awesome and all of this was happening while the coding process and building of the game was simultaneously being put together and this is clearly one of the most extreme periods of game crunch ever and we hear about this a lot in the gaming industry but this seems like something to the next level the 9 to 5 thing wasn't happening at all the development team would be running on full cylinders and there was definitely a lot of really heavy struggles amongst many of the employees whether it was finding the right home work life balance relationships would be stretched to their limits during this intense crunch but bungie had a team of people who were not only proud of what they were working on but they also felt personally attached to the project they all wanted the game to be outstanding so the seven days a week thing was actually the norm bungie had been known for this relaxed fun culture but when push came to shove from what we can understand there was a camaraderie of hyper focus with the tasks that were at hand this game sure wouldn't be what it is gonna be if we had worked eight hours a day and maybe that sucks because we didn't plan right and maybe there's a way to do it all on the nine to five schedule and maybe one day we'll even find that but sure not the way it's going to be this time each team working on halo 2 kind of had to work together with the other teams if this thing was going to come together for instance without a finalized script the level designers couldn't work the voice actors obviously wouldn't have lines the music wouldn't have a direction for the mood that needed to be expressed every part of halo 2's success had to function symbiotically with each department working on it that this was going to be able to work but when it came time for the game to go gold and play testing had ended it turned out that they managed to somehow pull it off and jason jones was known for coining the term of turning a hurricane into a cathedral and halo 2 might just be a perfect example of that and when development for halo 3 would begin halo would go through a full year of full-on pre-production before work on the game even started and while of course halo 3 would have its own crunch the lessons learned along the way allowed for many grievances to be avoided the next time around and to put it simply when marty o'donnell jason jones and joseph staton came together to do a developer's commentary on halo 2. they described the end phase of development of halo 2 like this but i mean i remember i remember that distinctly just being being heartbreaking for everybody on the team when you know when we realized it was just it was just too late it wasn't that time to put that to put that polish on the game don't worry and that was that was pretty heartbreaking for everybody but the legacy of halo 2's development wasn't something just any studio could do it took a team of extraordinary people with strong enough relationships for collaboration put with a team of ambitious leaders all with one goal in mind bringing halo to players in the biggest and best way possible and now when we look at the halo franchise there's definitely a lot of concern when it comes to halo infinite and it sounds like halo infinite has had a great deal of chaotic development and now with joseph staton back on board working on the story side of things we know halo doesn't have a very long runway when leading into the inevitable release of halo infinite but joseph satan has done some crazy things before like what the team was able to do with halo 2 back in the day and while it seems like 343 has yet to fully prove to the community that they are capable of the same precision that bungie is known for i would like to think that a lot of the team at 343 industries the people that are working on halo want the opportunity to prove to fans that they are just as capable of pulling off an outstanding game now of course we are not advocating for a game crunch that fosters an unhealthy and toxic work environment but remember halo infinite's development isn't over just yet and we might be surprised what can be done in that last leg of game development when all of the best ideas can come to the surface out of necessity but we wouldn't recommend giving up just yet hey guys thank you so much for watching this video if you enjoyed it please consider checking out our patreon possibly there's a link in the description down below we just launched it we're working really hard on trying to make really high quality content videos and it would allow us if we could get a budget on there to maybe hire some extra help so we can get these videos turned around we pretty much did a crunch ourselves on getting this long topic condensed in just a day's time so that this video would come out shortly after the halo infinite news so yeah it was pretty much 12 hours of me writing and recording and then 12 hours of luke editing on alternating sleep schedules so that we could actually pull this one off either way thanks so much for watching we'll see you guys all next time

Channel: Rocket Sloth

Views: 75,384

Rating: 4.9315677 out of 5

Keywords: rocket sloth, rocket sloth halo, halo mcc, halo, halo 2, halo 2 development, halo 2 development documentary, halo 2 demo, halo 2 development hell, halo 2 crunch, how halo 2 was supposed to end, halo 2 beta, halo 2 was the best, halo 2 cut content, halo 2 cut levels, halo 2 cut missions, halo 2 deleted content, How Halo 2 was made in JUST 10 Months, halo cut levels, halo cut content, why halo 2 was so good, halo 2 leftover, why halo 2 is bad, halo 2 was almost bad

Id: ZMCPjdiibpY

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/bestgopmemes]

People really need to realize the human cost of Halo 2:

• Multiple people got divorced
• Multiple people spent months living at the office
• 100 hour weeks were the norm, not the exception (i.e. 14 hour days, 7 days a week)

Bungie nearly fell apart as an organization because of how horrendously overworked everybody was. If Infinite goes through the same kind of crunch/re-work as 2, then I wouldn't expect 343 to survive as a company--at least, not in the current form it does now.

[u/NamesR4Babies]

I fond this interesting. I felt like sharing this to those who have yet to see this video

[u/K1llerF0xGaming]

This is proof that even the original halo games are not perfect but still managed to be good.

[u/Charles_The_XII]

As much as crunch is horrible, I think with any form of creative work you should expect/mentally prepare (again, not saying it's justified) to go through some absurd workhours