288-458: Halo 4 is a 2012 first-person shooter video game developed by 343 Industries and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console . Halo 4 ' s story follows a genetically enhanced human supersoldier , Master Chief , and his artificial intelligence construct Cortana , as they encounter unknown threats while exploring an ancient civilization's planet. The player assumes
576-410: A FPS game engine as well as a customizable HUD , an auto-map , jumping, swimming, flying, shapeshifting with each metamorphosis featuring its own characteristics to adapt to each situation. Then it got enhanced with redbook audio narration , voiced dialogues which replaced the text boxes, two new levels, and 3D rendered cutscenes , then re-released on CD-ROM in 1994. ShadowCaster started
864-462: A Halo -themed massively multiplayer online game , often referred to as Titan Project , or just Titan . The project was canceled internally in 2007–2008, without a formal announcement from Microsoft. 343 Industries announced a free-to-play Halo multiplayer game for Windows PC, Halo Online , in 2015. The game launched with a closed beta test limited to Russia that year. The title was developed with Saber Interactive using modified version of
1152-427: A periscope viewfinder similar to submarine shooting arcade games such as Midway 's video game Sea Wolf (1976) and Sega 's electro-mechanical game Periscope (1966). Battlezone became the first successful mass-market game featuring a first-person viewpoint and wireframe 3D graphics , with a version later released for home computers in 1983. MIDI Maze , a first-person shooter released in 1987 for
1440-438: A sci-fi setting about a British secret agent named Blake Stone pursuing a mad scientist through his facilities like a sci-fi James Bond , a similar Wolf3D's gameplay of exploring mazes while battling various foes to find keycards required to unlock doors to reach each floor's exit all while searching every wall for secret areas filled with treasures for a higher score until each episode's last floor's boss but with
1728-598: A thesaurus to search synonyms for the word " construction ", and named his new game engine "Build". Apogee Software wanted Build since id Software went their own way and didn't want to license their new Doom engine (yet). Both Epic MegaGames and Apogee Software attempted to contract Ken Silverman who chose Apogee Software which he never explained his reasons however Epic Games expressed no regret since not relying on Ken Silverman motivated them to develop their own technologies, which paid off. Most shooters in this period were developed for IBM PC compatible computers. On
2016-550: A "Specialization", enabling them to unlock further cosmetic and gameplay-enhancing customizations for their Spartan. War Games is a competitive multiplayer matchmaking mode. There are various playlists with different game types ranging from standard deathmatch to objective oriented modes such as capture the flag . War Games can be played with up to sixteen players on Xbox Live and has up to four-player split screen support. In Halo 4 , players are able to join certain multiplayer matchmaking sessions while they are in progress. Spartan Ops
2304-582: A "multi-discipline research and reflection" project experimenting with the series' aesthetics in Unreal Engine 5, while also acting as a reference tool for training developers on future entries. The success of the main Halo trilogy spurred the creation of spin-off games. Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game developed by Ensemble Studios for the Xbox 360. Set in the year 2531, the game takes place 21 years prior to
2592-551: A 320GB hard drive. It was also announced that Microsoft would be releasing a standalone Xbox 360 Halo 4 Limited Edition wireless controller featuring a different design to the one included in the console bundle. Microsoft reported that their security teams and law enforcement were investigating the possibility of Halo 4 content being leaked on the internet in October 2012. Jessica Shea, Community Manager at 343 Industries, warned fans to be wary of Halo 4 spoilers that were posted on
2880-666: A Halo ring to stop the Covenant and the threat of the Flood. Master Chief defeats the Prophet of Regret, leading to the Prophets of Truth and Mercy denouncing the Sangheili race as no longer the most honorable species amongst the Covenant. This began a civil war within the Covenant, with many grappling over the revelation that their religion was false. The disgraced former Covenant Sangheili commander known as
3168-563: A SNES by itself which is why the SNES game cartridge was actually an adapter cartridge which required another licensed SNES game cartridge to be inserted into it in order to get Super 3D Noah's Ark to work despite being unlicensed. Star Wars: Dark Forces was released the 6th of February 1995 after LucasArts decided Star Wars would make appropriate material for a game in the style of Doom . However, Star Wars: Dark Forces improved on several technical features that Doom lacked, such as
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#17330852534223456-407: A United Nations Space Command military camp installed and Balzers Quarry was transformed into a battleground where fifteen actors played out a two-hour-long adventure. Halo 4 was announced with a trailer at E3 2011, titled "Awakening". It was directed by Joseph Kosinski and visual effects were created by animation company Digital Domain . Kosinski and Digital Domain had collaborated previously on
3744-521: A Windows version of Halo: The Master Chief Collection even though such a version would later officially release in December 2019 and would later include maps from Halo Online in further updates to the game. A Mega Bloks -branded spinoff game, similar to the style of Lego video games, was prototyped for the Xbox 360 and never pursued several years prior to details and footage of the game leaking in 2017. Halo characters have appeared in tie-ins, such as
4032-505: A black ops team of Spartan supersoldiers assigned to the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. The rebranded comic, Halo: Blood Line , debuted in December 2009. The most recent comic series is a comic retelling of the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach , titled Halo: Fall of Reach . Fall of Reach is split into three mini-stories: Boot Camp , Covenant , and Invasion . Two new series were announced in 2013. A three-part series, Halo: Initiation
4320-414: A bunch of people who were genuinely passionate about the product. That is a huge advantage, and that helped in hiring and forming our team." This rapid hiring and growth occurred during development of the game, creating issues; because the team was committed to a delivery date, Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill said that the team was forced to make "necessary mistakes", with production difficulties and
4608-456: A central hub for Halo content called Halo Waypoint. Waypoint is accessed from the Xbox 360 Dashboard and offers players access to multimedia content in addition to tracking their Halo game "career". O'Connor described Waypoint as intended to be the prime destination for Halo . In December 2014, 343 Industries general manager Bonnie Ross expressed Microsoft's aim for the Halo series to last at least 30 more years. Halo 5: Guardians ,
4896-718: A chance of winning Halo 4 -themed prizes. The contest was open from October 22, 2012, until December 30, 2012; entering participants also received a free code for a Halo 4 Xbox 360 avatar outfit. Microsoft partnered with American Express to offer a promotion for eligible card holders in the United States and United Kingdom. Card holders who sync their American Express card with their Xbox Live account receive coupons and credits and are also rewarded with additional credits and coupons for obtaining achievements in Halo 4 . Microsoft also offered Halo 4 armor, for Xbox Live avatars, to people who watched at least thirty minutes of footage from
5184-557: A character. Medal of Honor , released in 1999, gave birth to a long running proliferation of simulative first-person shooters set during World War II. Valve 's Half-Life was released in 1998, based upon Quake ' s graphics technology. Initially met with only mild anticipation, it went on to become a commercial success. While most of the previous first-person shooters on the IBM PC platform had focused on visceral gameplay with relatively weak or irrelevant plots, Half-Life placed
5472-477: A coin-operated arcade game called Halo: Fireteam Raven that was released in the later part of 2018, with Round1 USA and Dave & Buster's arcades releasing first. Alternative reality games have been used to promote the release of Halo games, beginning with the Cortana Letters , a series of cryptic email messages, circulated by Bungie prior to Halo: Combat Evolved ' s release. I Love Bees
5760-483: A combat encounter. Holmes explained that one of the goals for Halo 4 ' s campaign was to incorporate more human elements into the story. To accomplish this the team wrote a B story that explored Master Chief's relationship with his AI partner, Cortana, who would break down into a dementia -like state. The development team realized that Halo 4 ' s narrative could be dense and hard to approach, making it inaccessible for new players. They found incorporating such
6048-413: A console game is something entirely new — and entirely wonderful." In an editorial for Edge , N'Gai Croal stated that Forge could "help prove the viability of user-generated content on consoles." Halo 3' s iteration of Forge has received comparisons to Garry's Mod , a 2004 Half-Life 2 mod with a similar emphasis on free-form construction and experimentation. Outside of its intended use as
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#17330852534226336-496: A cult following; 1UP.com called it the "first multi-player 3D shooter on a mainstream system" and the first "major LAN action game". Id Software's Hovertank 3D pioneered ray casting technology in May 1991 to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators; and Catacomb 3-D introduced another advance, texture mapping , in November 1991. The second game to use texture mapping
6624-437: A deal with Microsoft Studios to create a Halo 4 -branded gaming headset; the product shipped on October 30, 2012. 343 Industries and Microsoft also created a Halo 4 art book, titled Awakening: The Art of Halo 4 ; it was published by Titan Books and released on November 6, 2012. The book contains a collection of concept art and sketches accompanied by commentary from the artists at 343 Industries. A limited edition version of
6912-476: A declining mental state faced by smart AIs past their usual seven-year life span. Chief promises to get Cortana to Earth, believing that Cortana's creator, Doctor Catherine Halsey , can fix Cortana's condition. Chief and Cortana pick up garbled transmissions from a human ship, UNSC Infinity , who have picked up the Dawn ' s distress call. Cortana attempts to warn Infinity away from Requiem's gravity well and directs
7200-429: A doppelgänger of the player running towards a target point. Sprinting returns in Halo 4 ; however, players can now use it independently of their armor ability. New gameplay mechanics introduced to the series include throwing and catching, which has been implemented into the multiplayer game modes Oddball and Grifball . Halo 4 ' s story or campaign mode can be played alone or cooperatively with one other player on
7488-407: A durable close friendship between id Software and Raven Software as id will always share their technologies with Raven who will continuously use and upgrade them. Apogee Software , the publisher of Wolfenstein 3D , followed up its success and released another FPS game based on its engine titled Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold from another developer Jam Productions 5 December 1993 which featured
7776-401: A dystopian 3D first-person dungeon shooter, has been argued to be the first true FPS. This is due to the combination of a fully perspective-shifting 3D maze with enemies ahead, and what may be the earliest representation of weapons appearing in perspective in front of the player. A slightly more sophisticated first-person shooting mainframe game was Panther (1975), a tank simulator for
8064-477: A far bigger focus on strong narrative; the game featured no cut scenes but remained in the first-person perspective at all times. It capitalized heavily on the concepts of non-enemy characters (previously featured in many other titles, such as the Marathon series and Strife ) and wider in-game interactivity (as first introduced by the likes of Duke Nukem 3D and System Shock ) but did not employ power-ups in
8352-606: A far more believable 3D environment than Wolfenstein 3D 's levels, all of which had a flat-floor space and corridors. Doom allowed competitive matches between multiple players, termed "deathmatches", and the game was responsible for the word's subsequent entry into the video gaming lexicon. According to creator John Romero , the game's deathmatch concept was inspired by the competitive multiplayer of fighting games such as Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury . Doom became so popular that its multiplayer features began to cause problems for companies whose networks were used to play
8640-435: A far wider diversity of enemies, and added textured floors and ceilings, switches to find and to press to open new areas, traps, an auto-map , stats tracking, a grenade launcher, limited-use vending-machines , teleporters , enemies spawners, back-tracking to previous levels as well as some friendly NPCs in the form of scientists who would give the player hints and supplies provided the player didn't kill them. The game
8928-418: A file sharing system that allows players to upload and share video clips, screenshots, custom maps and game variants. Halo 4 takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting in the year 2557, four years after the events of Halo 3 . Backstory details that hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era, humans were one of several interstellar civilizations. Following a war with the parasitic Flood ,
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9216-504: A futuristic missions-based FPS game called CyClones . The name referred to Cybernetic Clones , the minions of aliens who had ravaged and devastated Earth . The game was in first person 3D , as was most other Raven games, so reusing the ShadowCaster engine and its tools was a natural choice. But within a short time, the team found that they wanted to do more with the game and engine than they had done before. A new, 100% in-house engine
9504-529: A gameplay standpoint the design for the Prometheans also needed to fit in well with the sandbox so they would be suitable enemies to fight. A goal when designing their behavior was to make them highly adaptive from a tactical standpoint. For example, the Promethean Knight can phase in and out of space, allowing it to retreat or charge the player at any given moment; this changes the way that a player engages in
9792-458: A greater emphasis on narrative, problem-solving and logic puzzles. In addition to shooting, melee combat may also be used extensively. In some games, melee weapons are especially powerful, as a reward for the risk the player must take in maneuvering his character into close proximity to the enemy. In other games, instead, melee weapons may be less effective but necessary as a last resort. " Tactical shooters " tend to be more realistic, and require
10080-715: A hivemind to the minds of the last Precursors: the Flood . The Forerunners sent the humans to Earth, reverting them to a primitive civilization based in Africa , and fought the Flood, which spread through an infestation of sentient life and overran much of the Milky Way Galaxy . Exhausting all other strategies, the Forerunners conceived the Halo Array — ring-shaped megastructures and weapons of last resort that would destroy all sentient life in
10368-478: A large scale by Doom . While its combination of gory violence , dark humor and hellish imagery garnered acclaim from critics, these attributes also generated criticism from religious groups and censorship committees, with many commentators labelling the game a "murder simulator". There was further controversy when it emerged that the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre were fans of
10656-453: A map editor, Forge has been used to create art installations by arranging in-game props to draw pictures and write messages. Game modes and maps created in Forge have occasionally informed the development of Halo itself. Grifball, a fictional sport that originated in the Halo -themed web series Red vs. Blue , inspired a popular user-created Forge map and game mode styled after rugby . Grifball
10944-452: A medieval-themed/dark fantasy game using a modified version of id's Doom engine . Raven considered themselves as typical D&D fans and initially drafted the game with role-playing elements. They then took instruction from id programmer John Carmack to simply "do it like Doom , and add the fantasy flavor." Raven Software then used and upgraded the Doom engine and released Heretic
11232-467: A motion tracker that detects allies, enemies, and vehicles within a certain radius of the player. The game sees the return of the alien species who were formerly members of the Covenant as foes, and introduces a new type of enemy called the Prometheans, which are Forerunner artificial intelligence (AI) constructs. There are three types of Prometheans: Knights serve as leaders of the group and are considered
11520-515: A mysterious artifact excavated by 'Mdama's Covenant; Infinity scientist Doctor Glassman disappears after studying the device. Catherine Halsey is brought to Infinity due to her knowledge of Forerunner technology. She is kept under guard by marines and Spartans including Gabriel Thorne, who lost his family during the Didact's attack on Earth. While studying the artifact, Halsey begins receiving messages on her computer from an anonymous sender. The source of
11808-575: A nearly fully destructible environment since the flamethrower could set people and environments on fire, which could make movement extremely hazardous for the player, especially since the fire randomly spread, and the grenade-launcher too could destroy any wall (with some hard coded exceptions). OBC also featured textured floors and ceilings and an auto-map like Blake Stone however, unlike BS , OBC featured more than one floor texture per level although its floors and ceilings' graphics were partially parallax meaning that they appeared to "warp" as
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12096-634: A new product series in their Mega Bloks Halo Universe collector's line. Both McFarlane Toys and Mega Brands revealed their figures at the 2012 American International Toy Fair . Jada Toys launched a new line of Halo 4 die-cast toys in August 2012; Sideshow Collectibles also revealed a Halo 4 Premium Cortana Figure. Toy manufacturer Funko released Master Chief, Cortana and Spartan-IV figures for their Pop! Vinyl toyline on November 8, 2012. On June 11, 2012, video game console peripherals manufacturer, Mad Catz Interactive, Inc. announced that they had signed
12384-458: A new standard for first-person-shooter video-games widely emulated, improved, and still applied to this day. Tom Hall originally designed it to be a first-person infiltration game including stealth, hiding dead bodies, disguises and alarms, following the legacy of its predecessors, and the game engine does include these original features, however John Romero and John Carmack wanted a simple shooter and Tom Hall had to fight hard to even include
12672-417: A newly designed aiming system that allowed players to aim at a precise spot on the screen. Though not the first of its kind, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six started a popular trend of tactical first-person shooters in 1998. It featured a team-based, realistic design and themes based around counter-terrorism , requiring missions to be planned before execution and in it, a single hit was sometimes enough to kill
12960-460: A newly formed Covenant splinter faction board the vessel. The remnants of Forward Unto Dawn are caught in Requiem's gravity well and pass through an opening to crash-land on its interior. As Chief and Cortana explore Requiem, fighting hostile forces from the new Covenant faction and mechanical warriors called "Promethean Knights", Cortana malfunctions. She reveals that she is experiencing "rampancy",
13248-807: A particularly potent power-up . These match types may also be customizable, allowing the players to vary weapons, health and power-ups found on the map, as well as victory criteria. Games may allow players to choose between various classes , each with its own strengths, weaknesses, equipment and roles within a team. There are many free-to-play first-person shooters on the market now, including Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory , Apex Legends , Team Fortress 2 , PlanetSide 2 , and Halo Infinite Multiplayer . Some games are released as free-to-play as their intended business model and can be highly profitable ( League of Legends earned $ 2 billion in 2017), but others such as Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade begin their life as paid games and become free-to-play later to reach
13536-411: A position to work on what I love in a franchise I love." Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori collaborated to produce the soundtracks for Bungie's Halo games. Approached by Bungie to produce something ancient and mysterious for Halo ' s debut, O'Donnell decided to compose a theme using Gregorian chant , joining in with others to sing the vocal parts. Due to the varying nature of gameplay,
13824-507: A promotion ran from September 24, 2012, until December 4, 2012, where purchasers of Mountain Dew were able to redeem codes to have a chance of winning copies of Halo 4 , Xbox 360 avatar items and a trip to Seattle to attend a tour around the studio of 343 Industries. Microsoft also partnered with Pizza Hut branches in the United Kingdom; people who entered the contest via an official website had
14112-482: A protagonist who delivers regular one-liners , commenting upon the situation at hand. Much of the humor is derived from over-the-top, stereotypical portrayals of Asian culture . Based on the James Bond film , Rare 's GoldenEye 007 was released in 1997, and as of 2004 it was still the best-selling Nintendo 64 game in the United States. It has been the first landmark first-person shooter for console gamers and
14400-451: A realistic and tactical approach aimed at simulating real life counter-terrorism situations. GoldenEye 007 , released in 1997, was a landmark first-person shooter for home consoles , while the critical and commercial success of later titles like Perfect Dark , Medal of Honor and the Halo series helped to heighten the appeal of this genre for the consoles market, straightening the road to
14688-447: A retrospective article in Edge , Bungie's Jaime Griesemer commented, "The influence of something like Ringworld isn't necessarily in the design—it's in that feeling of being somewhere else. That sense of scale and an epic story going on out there." Griesemer also explained, "One of the main sources of inspiration was Armor [by John Steakley ], in which a soldier has to constantly re-live
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#173308525342214976-581: A rifle, or even limiting the players to only one weapon of choice at a time, forcing them to swap between different alternatives according to the situation. In some games, there's the option to trade up or upgrade weapons, resulting in multiple degrees of customization. Thus, the standards of realism are extremely variable. The protagonist can generally get healing and equipment supplies by means of collectible items such as first aid kits or ammunition packs, simply by walking over, or interacting with them. Some games allow players to accumulate experience points in
15264-435: A role-playing game fashion, that can generally be used to unlock new weapons, bonuses and skills. First-person shooters may be structurally composed of levels , or use the technique of a continuous narrative in which the game never leaves the first-person perspective. Others feature large sandbox environments, which are not divided into levels and can be explored freely. In first-person shooters, protagonists interact with
15552-554: A secret door. It also included vertical aiming, jumping, various missions objectives as well as one of the first training modes in a FPS game. Apogee Software 's Rise of the Triad: Dark War , released the 21th of December 1994, began as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D , but was soon altered and became a stand-alone game . The game included "ludicrous" gibs, bullet holes persisted, and sheets of glass could be shattered by shooting or running through them. Bungie Software released
15840-417: A sequel to Halo Wars titled Halo Wars 2 . The soundtrack was composed by Gordy Haab , Brian Lee White and Brian Trifon under the direction of Paul Lipson who had helped in the audio and music of nearly every previous Halo title. The Halo Wars 2 soundtrack featured many melodies from the music that Stephen Rippy had composed for the first Halo Wars but with new arrangements and more melodies to represent
16128-598: A short extension for Wolfenstein 3D titled Spear of Destiny released the 19th of September 1992 to tease the players with the Hell to come in Doom as Spear of Destiny concluded into Hell, then two years later, Doom 2 included two secret levels featuring Wolfenstein in Hell while re-using Spear of Destiny 's Hell final level's music to close the loop. Ken Silverman decided to develop his own game engine after he played Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. His first game , that he named Walken as in "Ken's Walking simulator",
16416-427: A side story, Halo 3: ODST (2009), and a prequel, Halo: Reach (2010). Reach was Bungie's final work on a Halo release. While Bungie remained involved in the Halo series by developing games such as ODST and Reach , the rights to Halo remained with Microsoft. To oversee everything Halo , Microsoft created an internal division, 343 Industries , to oversee the franchise. 343 had already codeveloped
16704-429: A similar genre with a first-person perspective which uses dedicated light gun peripherals, in contrast to the use of conventional input devices. Light-gun shooters (like Virtua Cop ) often feature "on-rails" (scripted) movement, whereas first-person shooters give the player complete freedom to roam the surroundings. The first-person shooter may be considered a distinct genre itself, or a type of shooter game, in turn
16992-439: A special facial motion capture solution that would retain facial expressions from the actors when creating the animation. Visual effects house The Sequence Group, who had previously developed animation for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary ' s terminals, returned to create additional animation for Halo 4 . The Terminals feature a painterly artistic style, which Sequence president Ian Kirby felt appealed to gamers familiar with
17280-488: A still active community. Many sci-fi games both from Bungie themselves and from other studios have cited the Marathon trilogy as a huge influence on their stories and settings such as the series Halo , Destiny , Mass Effect and Warframe . After having provided a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine to Raven Software for ShadowCaster and being impressed by the final result, id Software requested that Raven develop
17568-421: A storyline into an action game to be extremely challenging and considered dropping it during development. Holmes was adamant about including it; he took inspiration from his mother's battle with dementia, which she was diagnosed with near the start of the game's development. This led Holmes to want to capture the emotion and tell "a perfect story". The senior art director for Halo 4 is Kenneth Scott; he described
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#173308525342217856-488: A subgenre of the wider action game genre. Following the release of Doom in 1993, games in this style were commonly referred to as " Doom clones "; over time this term has largely been replaced by "first-person shooter". Wolfenstein 3D, released in 1992, the year before Doom , has been often credited with introducing the genre, but critics have since identified similar, though less advanced, games developed as far back as 1973. There are occasional disagreements regarding
18144-432: A team inexperienced with working together contributing to development difficulties. Nine months before shipping, the developers restructured the game's production pipeline and gave individual teams more control due to bottlenecks in development. With so many developers from different backgrounds, forging a common goal and company culture was different. Creative director Josh Holmes recalled that an "epiphany moment" that proved
18432-488: A team of American scientists which opened a portal and connected Earth to another world from which an alien invasion started into the research facility . Corridor 7 added animated textures such as computer screens, distant shading which darkened distant areas to limit the player's sight's distance, dark areas and night vision mode to see into them, some invisible aliens and traps which could only be seen through infrared vision mode, some energy stations to recharge
18720-513: A varying number of enemies. Because they take place in a 3D environment, these games tend to be somewhat more realistic than 2D shooter games, and have more accurate representations of gravity, lighting, sound and collisions. First-person shooters played on personal computers are most often controlled with a combination of a keyboard and mouse . This system has been claimed as superior to that found in console games, which frequently use two analog sticks : one used for running and sidestepping,
19008-593: A way to immunize biological beings from the parasite, the Didact used a device called the Composer to convert the warriors under his command into Promethean Knights immune to infection. Requiring more soldiers, the Didact forcibly converted captured humans into Prometheans, before being stopped and imprisoned by the Librarian. The Librarian, who has guided humanity's development, accelerates the Chief's evolution to grant him immunity to
19296-436: A wider audience after an initially disappointing reception. Some player communities complain about freemium first-person-shooters, fearing that they create unbalanced games, but many game designers have tweaked prices in response to criticism, and players can usually get the same benefits by playing longer rather than paying. The earliest two documented first-person shooter video games are Maze War and Spasim . Maze War
19584-478: Is 343 Industries' first original title within the Halo series—previously, development of the main series was undertaken by Bungie , the creator of the franchise. In the developmental process, 343 Industries decided to explore the Forerunner fiction within the Halo universe, leading the team to design a new setting, enemies, and main antagonist. Existing characters and assets received visual overhauls, recreated from
19872-442: Is a military science fiction video game series and media franchise , originally developed and created by Bungie and currently managed and developed by Halo Studios (previously 343 Industries), part of Microsoft 's Xbox Game Studios . The series launched in November 2001 with the first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved and its tie-in novel, The Fall of Reach . The latest major installment, Halo Infinite ,
20160-537: Is a sci-fi story revolving around a neural drug named Tek and the Matrix, a virtual reality (four years before the first Matrix movie ). The video-game featured FMVs, digitized live-actors and actresses, a stun gun to neutralize people in a non-lethal fashion , and gibs and dropped the player into a lively open-world future Los Angeles , making it the first FPS game which featured an open-world modern city, full of civilians, cops and enemies where civilians panicked if
20448-436: Is a shooter game in which players predominantly experience gameplay from a first-person perspective; the game perspective switches to third-person when using certain weapons, abilities and vehicles. The player's head-up display (HUD) shows real-time information on the player character's armor system, such as shield status, information on current weapons and abilities, and waypoints for goals and objectives. The HUD also has
20736-418: Is a heavily modified version of the engine established by Bungie. Unlike previous games in the Halo series, Halo 4 runs natively in 720p resolution . The game itself comes on two discs and requires 4GB of available storage space either on an 8GB USB flash drive or Xbox 360 hard drive to play the multiplayer component. Disc two is used to install the multiplayer content and disc one is used for launching
21024-523: Is a story-driven episodic game mode, that can be played solo or cooperatively like the campaign mode. It serves as a replacement for the Firefight game mode that featured in Halo: Reach and Halo 3: ODST . Ten episodes of content were released for Spartan Ops, each featured a cinematic and five objective-based missions. The first five episodes were delivered on a weekly basis following Halo 4 ' s launch,
21312-843: Is best known for his work as a co-writer and producer for the band Massive Attack , and also composed the scores for numerous films. Davidge intended to add "a touch of romance" to the score as well as adding more electronic sounds while keeping Halo ' s style. Sotaro Tojima, best known for his work on Konami 's Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots , served as Halo 4 ' s audio director. The team performed many live audio recording sessions, several of which occurred in Tasmania , Australia. Some of these recording sessions took place in generally inhospitable environments, such as underwater, in fire, and in ice, through
21600-608: Is briefly shown. Six months after the New Phoenix incident, the UNSC Infinity returns to Requiem, where the Prometheans and the Covenant splinter faction—led by Jul 'Mdama, who styles himself as "the Didact's Hand"—are still active. Sarah Palmer, commander of the Spartan-IVs, deploys Spartan squads to clear out Jul 'Mdama's Covenant and Promethean forces in Requiem's interior in order to set up research bases. Fireteam Crimson recovers
21888-571: Is his 800-pound (360 kg) armor. They studied the armor changes that were made for the Spartans in Halo: Reach , which were much bulkier than renditions in previous Halo games. Character and concept artists began redesigning the Master Chief by creating sketches; these sketches would be rendered into 3D models so the team could analyze the design from every possible angle. The team would then return to creating sketches to make adjustments, and repeat
22176-528: Is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time , spanning novels, graphic novels, comic books, short films, animated films, feature films, and other licensed products . Many millions of years ago, a species known as the Precursors assumed the Mantle of Responsibility - the guardianship of life in the galaxy. The Precursors chose an ancient form of humanity as their successors, over another species known as
22464-401: Is taken back to Infinity , where he mourns the loss of Cortana. In a post-credits scene, the Didact proclaims the Forerunners' role as custodians of the galaxy having to bear the Mantle of Responsibility, and humanity as the greatest threat in the galaxy. Master Chief removes his armor aboard Infinity ; if the player completes the game on Legendary difficulty, the Chief's heavily scarred face
22752-463: Is the "Tome of Power" which acts as a secondary firing mode for certain weapons, resulting in a much more powerful projectile for each weapon, some of which change the look of the projectile entirely, then Raven added two more episodes and re-released it as Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders the 31st of March 1996. Super 3D Noah's Ark , developed on Wolf3D engine and published by
23040-451: The Halo and Destiny series which took a lot from the Marathon trilogy which is no more exclusive to Mac since Bungie Software open-sourced it in 2000 then released the original trilogy as freeware in 2005, some fans have source-ported it to Windows and Linux as well as remastered them using the open-source engine Aleph One and have even been developing many new scenarios, total conversions, and multiplayer maps sustaining
23328-553: The Halo Legends animated series and had overseen production of Halo: Reach and 2011's Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary , a remaster of the franchise's debut title. The next game in the series, Halo 4 , was announced at E3 2011 as the first entry in what would be originally known as the "Reclaimer Trilogy". The game included many staples of previous games, such as new or redesigned weapon types, an improved map-editing tool and expanded multiplayer options and maps. Halo 4
23616-503: The PlanetSide series allow thousands of players to compete at once in a persistent world . Large scale multiplayer games allow multiple squads, with leaders issuing commands and a commander controlling the team's overall strategy. Multiplayer games have a variety of different styles of match. The classic types are the deathmatch (and its team-based variant) in which players score points by killing other players' characters; and capture
23904-465: The 2012 United States presidential debates on their Xbox 360. On October 31, 2012, Microsoft and government-owned organization Liechtenstein Marketing transformed the countryside of Liechtenstein for a special live action event for fans and members of the press. The Gutenberg Castle was transformed into a military fortification where guests tried out Halo 4 for the first time. A nearby countryside had
24192-622: The Arbiter , along with the rest of his race, helped the humans destroy the Covenant and stop the Prophet of Truth from activating the Halo Array via the Ark. The Human-Covenant War ended, though new conflicts began to emerge throughout the universe. In the post-war era, the UNSC trains a new generation of Spartans, and tensions between the UNSC and colonist rebels resumed. The Master Chief and Cortana accidentally free
24480-511: The Atari ST , featured maze-based gameplay and character designs similar to Pac-Man , but displayed in a first-person perspective. Later ported to various systems—including the Game Boy and Super NES under the title Faceball 2000 —it featured the first network multiplayer deathmatches , using a MIDI interface. Despite the inconvenience of connecting numerous machines together, it gained
24768-535: The Build engine for MS-DOS , but was later spun off into releases for Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation using developer Lobotomy Software 's in-house SlaveDriver engine. While the PC version is a traditional linear first-person shooter, the console versions feature non-linear progression and unlockable player abilities reminiscent of a metroidvania . Strife , developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity Inc.
25056-643: The Doomsday engine and completely remastered by its modding community . The 12th of March 1994, the Japanese company Exact released Geograph Seal for the Sharp X68000 home computer. An obscure import title as far as the Western market is concerned, it was nonetheless an early example of a 3D polygonal first-person shooter, with innovative platform game mechanics and free-roaming outdoor environments. CyClones
25344-528: The E3 2011 . Halo 4 is the first installment in the Reclaimer Saga of Halo games. The studio's creative team, which included nearly 200 people led by creative director Josh Holmes , started developing the game as early as 2009. Prior to the release of the game, Microsoft Studios Vice President Phil Spencer stated that the Halo franchise is the "most important entertainment product in the company" and that Halo 4
25632-539: The Halo universe. In the 2000s, spin-off titles were planned or rumored for the Game Boy Advance , Gizmondo , Ultra-Mobile PC , and Nintendo DS . Microsoft announced an episodic video game to be developed by film director Peter Jackson 's Wingnut Interactive in 2006. The game, Halo: Chronicles , was ultimately canceled as part of budget cuts tied to job layoffs in January 2009. Ensemble Studios developed
25920-464: The Halo 3 " Starry Night " commercial . The trailer is set on the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn during the opening events of Halo 4 . It depicts the Master Chief being awakened from cryonic sleep by Cortana, as the remnants of the frigate drift towards Requiem. The trailer was short-listed in the Visual Effects and Design categories at the 2012 AICP Show and NEXT Awards . On April 30, 2012, it
26208-451: The Halo 3 engine, and published by Innova Systems. The project was canceled in August 2016. Players modified the game to circumvent the region limitations and add new content after the project's official cancellation. The "ElDewrito" project saw legal takedowns from Microsoft for violating its game usage rules. Despite this, ElDewrito's playerbase remained active, and the modders claimed its popularity hastened Microsoft's plans to release
26496-412: The Halo 4 launch gameplay trailer was revealed; it featured segments of gameplay footage from the campaign and multiplayer. In October 2012, visual effects company Framestore assisted advertising agency McCann London in producing live TV adverts for Halo 4 . The adverts aired on November 9, 2012; they featured live data on how many people were playing Halo 4 online, correct to within five minutes of
26784-466: The Halo Array . The Array's firing killed all sentient life in the galaxy to deprive the Flood of their food. Life that the Forerunners cataloged was then reseeded throughout the galaxy. In the 26th century, humanity came under attack by the Covenant, an alien collective of species that worship the Forerunners as gods. The human supersoldier Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and his artificial intelligence companion Cortana , were instrumental in stopping
27072-511: The Mac game market because it was smaller and easier to compete, Bungie became a preeminent game developer on the platform. What became Halo: Combat Evolved started as a real-time strategy game for the Mac, originally code-named Monkey Nuts and Blam! , and took place on a hollowed-out world called Solipsis. The planet eventually became a ringworld called "Halo", which became the game's title. Halo
27360-573: The Macintosh side, Bungie released its first shooter, Pathways into Darkness in August 1993, which featured more adventure and narrative elements alongside first-person shooter gameplay. Pathways had been inspired by Wolfenstein 3D , and born out of an attempt to take their previous top-down dungeon exploration game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete into a 3D setting. ShadowCaster , developed by Raven Software and published by Origin Systems
27648-540: The PLATO system . Atari's first-person tank shooter arcade video game Battlezone (1980), modeled closely after PLATO Panther, was released for arcades and presented using a vector graphics display , with the game designed by Ed Rotberg. It is considered to be the first successful first-person shooter video game, making it a milestone for the genre. It was primarily inspired by Atari's top-down arcade shooter game Tank (1974). The original arcade cabinet also employed
27936-473: The PlayStation console, called Jumping Flash! , which placed more emphasis on its platform elements. Witchaven , developed by Capstone Software and published by their parent company IntraCorp the 20th of September 1995, was the first commercial game licensed on Apogee Software rebranded 3D Realms ' Ken Silverman 's new Build engine to rival id Software 's John Carmack 's Doom engine and
28224-445: The SNES version was itself a mere reskin from Wolfenstein 3D's SNES version as well however the PC version did upgrade some things upon Wolfenstein 3D such as textured floors (like Blake Stone ) along with higher resolutions graphics and MIDI music, and added a new gameplay feature such as quizzes which tested the player's religious knowledge whose rewards were more ammo to keep playing
28512-466: The christian video-games company Wisdom Tree (formerly named Color Dreams ) the 1st of January 1995, was the first non-violent FPS game along with being the first religious FPS game ( Doom was already based on christian mythology as well since the enemy was christian's Hell however unlike Super 3D Noah's Ark , it merely used it as a setting and didn't attempt to teach religion) which featured Noah from Abrahamic mythology 's Noah's Ark as
28800-428: The crosshair was not fixed at the center of the screen on which it could move freely as opposite to nowadays standard fixed aiming, CyClones 's aiming was comparable to Metroid Prime ' s years later. CyClones used the mouse not only for aiming but also for picking up objects and interacting with the environment such as doors and switches and even revealed secret doors since the crosshair changed color upon pointing
29088-416: The protagonist and re-used Wolfenstein 3D 's gameplay and level-design while replacing enemies' death animations by seemingly friendly animals falling asleep upon being hit by the player's weapon which was a slingshot shooting food to feed the unresting hungry animals aboard goats filled Noah's Ark made of the recycled original maps from Wolfenstein 3D including the same items' placements and even
29376-420: The sci-fi FPS game Marathon the 21th of December 1994 still exclusively on Mac , which streamlined concepts from their previous game Pathways Into Darkness by eliminating role-playing elements in favor of the shooter action spurred by Doom 's success. Marathon was highly successful, leading to two sequels Marathon 2: Durandal released the 24th of November 1995 then Marathon: Infinity released
29664-566: The " Halo sound". Rather than use the Northwest Sinfonia, Rippy traveled to Prague and recorded with the FILMharmonic Orchestra before returning to the United States to complete the music. A standalone compact disc and digital download retail version of the soundtrack was announced in January 2009 for release on February 17. The music of Halo 4 was composed by Neil Davidge and Kazuma Jinnouchi. The Halo 4 Original Soundtrack
29952-416: The "Golden Triangle of Halo ". The player's health is measured in both hit points and a perpetually recharging energy shield. Released for the Xbox in November 2001, Windows and Mac OS X ports were later developed by Gearbox Software , and released in 2003. A stand-alone expansion, entitled Halo: Custom Edition , was released as a Windows exclusive, and allowed players to create custom content for
30240-548: The "wealth of influences adopted by the Bungie team", a list of Bungie employees' favorite science fiction material was published on the company's website. The developers acknowledged that the Halo series' use of ring-shaped megastructures followed on from concepts featured in Larry Niven 's Ringworld and Iain M. Banks ' Culture series (of which Consider Phlebas and Excession were said to be particularly influential). In
30528-560: The 15th of May 1996, was the last commercial game which used and modified the Doom engine before id released the new Quake engine the following month and it introduced some RPVG 's features into the standard FPS formula such as an actual lively open-world filled with NPCs , dialogues with choices of answers, some of them were even voiced, trade, reinforcements who engage the enemies in battle, mandatory and optional quests, character's evolution of his abilities, an intriguing plot branching into different routes and conclusions according to
30816-506: The 15th of October 1996 to form the Marathon Trilogy , and becoming the standard for FPS games on Mac which pioneered or was an early adopter of several new gameplay features such as default freelook , ammo clips and weapons reloading though not manually, forcing the player to keep an eye on their ammo clips to anticipate the next reloading, dual-wielded and dual-function weapons, a motion sensor to detect both enemies and allies in
31104-425: The 17th of March 1995 ), a game in which the player pilots a spacecraft around caves and factory ducts, was among the earliest truly three-dimensional first-person shooters. It abandoned sprites and ray casting in favour of polygonal models and allowed movement through all of the six possible degrees of freedom . The 28th of April 1995, the Japanese company Exact released the successor to Geograph Seal for
31392-436: The 2007 New York Comic Con , Marvel Comics announced they would be working on an ongoing Halo series with Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev . The limited series, titled Halo: Uprising , bridges the gap between the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3 ; initially planned to conclude shortly before the release of Halo 3 , the constant delays led to the final issue being published April 2009. Marvel announced at
31680-440: The 2009 Comic Con that two new comics, a five-part series written by Peter David and a second series written by Fred Van Lente , would appear the coming summer and winter. David's series, Halo: Helljumper , is set prior to Halo: Combat Evolved and focuses on the elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The five-part series was published between July and November 2009. Lente's series, originally titled Spartan Black , revolves around
31968-414: The 23th of December 1994 which introduced larger maps , vertical aiming, flying, gibs , randomized ambient sound effects, interactive environments such as rushing water and winds which push the player along, an inventory system to store and select many different items which range from health potions to the "morph ovum" which transforms enemies into chickens and one of the most notable item that can be found
32256-567: The 27th of October 1993, used a heavily modified version of Wolf3D engine made by John Carmack during summer 1992 who offered it to Raven Software after he was impressed with their first RPVG Black Crypt because he was curious about how Raven would use his game engine to make a RPVG instead of a FPSG. ShadowCaster was the first commercial game released with classic "2.5D Doom engine " improvements such as distance fogging, non-orthogonal walls, textured ceilings and floors, etc before Doom itself came out. It introduced some RPG elements into
32544-546: The 3D engines that powered the games of that period, such as the iconic id Tech 2 , the first iteration of the Unreal Engine , or the more versatile Build . Other seminal games were released during the years, with Marathon enhancing the narrative and puzzle elements, Duke Nukem 3D introducing voice acting, complete interactivity with the environment, and city-life settings to the genre, and games like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike starting to adopt
32832-402: The 5th of May 1992 in which the player had to explore mazes while battling Nazis to find keys required to unlock doors to reach each floor's exit all while searching every wall for secret areas filled with treasures for a higher score until each episode's last floor's boss and was an instant success because of its first episode's distribution and spread as shareware whereas the second and
33120-457: The 6th of May 1996, was a sequel to the first Witchaven which set the knight from the first game onto an even more perilous quest to rescue the princess abducted by the witch 's sister seeking vengeance, still licensed on 3D Realms ' Build engine , it added dual weapons wielding or wielding a shield in the place of the second weapon as well as a map editor to let players create and share their own maps , however Capstone didn't fix
33408-410: The Chief to deactivate what she believes are communications jammers. Instead, the Chief unwittingly releases the Didact, an ancient Forerunner warrior, from imprisonment. The Didact, who deems Man unworthy of the Mantle of Responsibility, takes control of the Prometheans and the Covenant faction, then attacks Infinity after it is dragged into Requiem. Chief makes contact with Infinity and helps repel
33696-448: The Composer. After destroying the gravity well, Del Rio orders a retreat back to Earth, doubting the Chief and Cortana's testimony. The Master Chief disobeys orders to stand down and relinquish the malfunctioning Cortana, and stays behind to oppose the Didact. Chief and Cortana attempt to sabotage the Didact's ship before he leaves, but are unsuccessful. They follow the Didact to a Halo ring, Installation 03. The Composer has been moved from
33984-454: The Covenant invaded Reach in 2552, the UNSC's last major stronghold besides Earth, Master Chief John-117 was left as one of the few remaining Spartans. The rediscovery of the Halo rings later that year set the humans against the Covenant, who believed they were instruments of transcendence, not destruction. Master Chief and his artificial intelligence Cortana are instrumental in the destruction of
34272-454: The Didact and he briefly returns to assert supremacy over humanity, though he is foiled by the pair, resulting in Master Chief initially believing Cortana dead in the attempt. Cortana's survival through the Domain leads her to break with the UNSC and assert a new hegemony over the galaxy, with artificial intelligence (the "Created") in control. After two years of a scattered war between Cortana and
34560-543: The Didact's attack. Chief and Cortana recommend attacking the Didact while he is vulnerable, but Infinity captain Del Rio orders them to destroy the gravity well so their ship can escape. In the process, Chief is contacted by a Forerunner known as the Librarian—the wife of the Didact, as well as ancient humanity's protector. She explains that the Forerunners were divided on how best to combat the Flood . After failing to discover
34848-401: The Didact's computer systems to overwhelm the Didact's shield, but not before the Didact directs the Composer at Earth and begins composing the population of New Phoenix. With the help of Cortana, the Chief defeats the Didact, who falls into a portal underneath the Composer. The Master Chief activates the bomb but is saved by Cortana, who sacrifices herself. The Chief is found by a rescue team and
35136-478: The Didact, Travis Willingham as Jul 'Mdama, and Lori Tritel as the Librarian. Additional voices provided include Conan O'Brien , Andy Richter , and Jason Bradbury . Employees of Rooster Teeth Productions ' have cameo roles in Spartan Ops, as characters from the Halo machinima Red vs. Blue . Bruce Thomas was the performance capture actor playing the role of Master Chief and actress Mackenzie Mason played
35424-400: The Forerunners. In retaliation, the Forerunners attacked their former masters and drove the Precursors into extinction. Instead of fighting back, the Precursors allowed themselves to die, with some turning into dust intended to spread and later transform into themselves once again. This dust eventually became defective, infecting and contorting organisms into a new parasitic species, connected by
35712-648: The Halo Waypoint website. The web services team at 343 Industries utilized the Windows Azure Service Bus messaging infrastructure to relay data from the Xbox Live network to back-end databases , where player data and information is stored. Halo 4 player data can also be accessed via the Xbox SmartGlass application. British record producer and composer Neil Davidge wrote the music for Halo 4 . Davidge
36000-539: The Halos from being activated, sterilizing the Flood outbreak before they could menace the galaxy once again, and defeating the Covenant resulting in the end of the war. At the end of Halo 3 , Chief and Cortana were left stranded in unknown space aboard the remains of the vessel Forward Unto Dawn . Forward Unto Dawn drifts towards an unknown Forerunner planet, later revealed to be the shield world Requiem. Cortana wakes Master Chief from cryonic sleep shortly before forces from
36288-657: The Hill, Kill the Man with the Ball, and cooperative campaign) and a map editor for players to create and share their own maps for the games. The Marathon games also had a strong emphasis on storytelling in addition to the action, which revolved around evolving relationships between the human player's character and some AIs during a surprise invasion and subsequent war against a hostile alien Empire which already conquered and enslaved some other alien species, much like Bungie's future projects such as
36576-597: The Latin epic Aeneid , written by classical Roman poet Virgil . Travis posits similarities between the plots of both works and compares the characters present in them, with the Flood and Covenant taking the role performed by the Carthaginians and Master Chief taking the role of Aeneas . First introduced in Halo 3 , Forge is an in-game map editor designed for adjusting weapon, vehicle, and prop placement. While in Editor Mode,
36864-515: The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), orders Infinity captain Thomas Lasky to kill Halsey, but he is reluctant to do so. Palmer sets off to Requiem to kill Halsey; Lasky tells Fireteam Majestic to intervene and rescue Halsey from 'Mdama. Halsey steps into the Forerunner device and makes contact with the Librarian. The Librarian gives Halsey the two pieces of the "Janus Key", an instrument that provides
37152-587: The UNSC, Cortana attacks the Banished, a mercenary organization largely led by the Jiralhanae race. The Banished win the resultant conflict, terminating Cortana and battling the UNSC for control of Zeta Halo. Video game developer Bungie was founded in 1991 by Alex Seropian in Chicago, Illinois , who partnered with programmer Jason Jones to market and release Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete . Focusing on
37440-458: The United States players were able to earn double experience in Halo 4 by purchasing Mountain Dew and Doritos and then redeem product codes found on the packaging using an iOS and Android app game called Halo 4: King of the Hill Fueled by Mountain Dew . Players were able to redeem product codes from October 15, 2012, on websites that PepsiCo set up for the promotion. In the United Kingdom,
37728-467: The ability to crouch, jump, or look and aim up and down. Dark Forces also was one of the first games to incorporate 3D-designed objects rendered into the game's 2.5D graphics engine. The game's success launched the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series, beginning with the direct sequel Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II the 9th of October 1997. Descent (released by Parallax Software
38016-569: The action had to take place in enclosed areas, such as corridors and small rooms. During the 1990s, the genre was one of the main cornerstones for technological advancements of computer graphics, starting with the release of Quake in 1996. Quake was one of the first real-time 3D rendered video games in history, and quickly became one of the most acclaimed shooter games of all time. Graphics accelerator hardware became essential to improve performances and add new effects such as full texture mapping , dynamic lighting and particle processing to
38304-408: The additional support and encouragement for game modifications attracted players who wanted to tinker with the game and create their own modules. According to creator John Romero, Quake ' s 3D world was inspired by the 3D fighting game Virtua Fighter . Quake was also intended to expand the genre with Virtua Fighter influenced melee brawling , but this element was eventually scrapped from
38592-493: The appearance of a rat running through a maze. Another crucial early game that influenced first-person shooters was Wayout . It featured the player trying to escape a maze, using ray casting to render the environment, simulating visually how each wall segment would be rendered relative to the player's position and facing angle. This allowed more freeform movement compared to the grid-based and cardinal Maze War and Spasim . Among PLATO games, Witz and Boland's 1977 Futurewar ,
38880-429: The area, gravity alterations, swimming, interactive environments such as healing stations, oxygen stations, save points , teleporters , many computer terminals spread all around the levels as plot devices which provided messages, informations, various objectives and maps to the player's character as well as friendly defense drones and non-player characters (NPCs), versatile multiplayer modes (such as King of
39168-480: The atmosphere was gripping, the aliens were more appreciated than the stereotypes of Arabian people, the AI was improved with some enemies patrolling routes and some others camouflaging into environments or being invisible and not attacking until the player was close enough to ambush them, providing an actual challenge to players, and the game was considerably more evolved than Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone , however it
39456-585: The auspices of the Unified Earth Government, or UEG, and their United Nations Space Command, or UNSC— has colonized many worlds thanks to the development of faster-than-light "slipstream space" (i.e., hyperspace ) travel. Tensions between the government and colonies desiring independence sparked violent clashes. The UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) created the SPARTAN-II Project to create an elite group of enhanced supersoldiers to suppress
39744-447: The book was also released with only a thousand copies available worldwide. Another book, Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide was created by 343 Industries in collaboration with DK Publishing and was released September 24, 2013. It contains annotated artwork and profiles on characters, items, and locations within the Halo universe. Microsoft once again partnered up with PepsiCo , having done so previously while promoting Halo 3 . In
40032-402: The broadcast. Halo 4 was released in all territories except Japan on November 6, 2012; the Japanese version was released on November 8. Microsoft initially released the game in two separate retail versions, branded as "Standard" and "Limited" editions. The Limited Edition includes digital items for Xbox 360 avatars and in-game Spartan-IVs, as well as access to future downloadable content in
40320-433: The case of Portal , the 'gun' the player character carries is used to create portals through walls rather than fire projectiles). Some commentators also extend the definition to include combat flight simulators and space battle games, whenever the cockpit of the aircraft is depicted from a first-person point of view. Like most shooter games, first-person shooters involve an avatar , one or more ranged weapons , and
40608-628: The character they are controlling (usually from behind, or above). The primary design focus is combat, mainly involving firearms or other types of long range weapons. A defining feature of the genre is "player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space." This is a defining characteristic that clearly distinguishes the genre from other types of shooting games that employ a first-person perspective , including light gun shooters , rail shooters , shooting gallery games , or older shooting electro-mechanical games . First person-shooter games are thus categorized as being distinct from light gun shooters,
40896-546: The characters Spartan Nicole-458 and the Arbiter being playable fighters in Dead or Alive 4 and Killer Instinct: Season Three , respectively. Master Chief was added as a playable character in Fortnite alongside a stage inspired by a Halo multiplayer map in 2020. Another game, Halo 2600 , has the players control Master Chief and fight through four regions filled with enemies. It
41184-416: The construction of complex cinematic storylines with a well defined cast of secondary characters to interact with. Furthermore, certain puzzle or platforming games are also sometimes categorized as first-person shooters, in spite of lacking any direct combat or shooting element, instead using a first-person perspective to help players immerse within the game and better navigate 3D environments (for example, in
41472-431: The context, other first-person shooters may incorporate some imaginative variations, including futuristic prototypes, alien-technology or magical weapons, and/or implementing a wide array of different projectiles, from lasers, to energy, plasma, rockets, and arrows. These many variations may also be applied to the tossing of grenades, bombs, spears and the like. Also, more unconventional modes of destruction may be employed by
41760-457: The creation of a new race of enemy, the Prometheans, warriors of the Forerunner empire. Given that the Forerunners themselves had never been featured in previous Halo games, the design process for the appearance of the Prometheans was long and tedious. The art team produced a large number of sketches, which were presented to other members of the studio to get feedback and reactions. Many variations of different character models were considered before
42048-452: The current tendency to release most titles as cross-platform, like many games in the Far Cry and Call of Duty series. First-person shooters are a type of shooter game that relies on a first-person point of view with which the player experiences the action through the eyes of the character . They differ from third-person shooters in that, in a third-person shooter, the player can see
42336-603: The deadliest of the Promethean forces; Crawlers are a weaker class that often attack in packs; and Watchers offer support and have the ability to shield or revive Promethean allies. Halo 4 features updated versions of many human and Covenant weaponry from previous Halo games, as well as introducing new weapons for the humans, Covenant and Prometheans. The game also features reusable equipment, called armor abilities, introduced in Halo: Reach . New armor abilities are autosentry ;
42624-477: The development of Halo 4 ; they started work on the game in early 2011. Certain Affinity has worked alongside Bungie and 343 Industries on producing multiplayer content for previous Halo titles. The studio developed the Forge mode, co-developed War Games and created a number of maps and multiplayer modes for Halo 4 . Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary were both officially announced on June 6, 2011, at
42912-584: The earlier platformers Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II ), released as shareware the 29th of January 1996, which ran on the then new Build engine developed by Ken Silverman with the support of John Carmack . Duke Nukem 3D won acclaim for its humour based around stereotyped machismo as well as its adrenalinic gameplay and graphics. However, some found the game's (and later the whole series') treatment of women to be derogatory and tasteless. Witchaven 2: Blood Vengeance , developed by Capstone Software and published by their parent company IntraCorp
43200-420: The earlier games. The majority of the game is lit statically using lightmaps ; this allowed the art team to achieve realistic lighting effects with full global illumination and ambient occlusion . Image-based lighting is also used to ground scenes and make everything fit together better. The cooperative Spartan Ops mode originally began as a Firefight-type mode, similar to that featured in Halo: Reach , but
43488-495: The editor for the replay value it provided. Heather Campbell of Play Magazine named Halo 3 her game of the year due to Forge, with co-editor Greg Orlando explaining later in the issue: "What separates Halo 3 from other console shooters such as Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Team Fortress 2 , though, is the inclusion of a forge mode and the ability to save and edit gameplay films. [...] Although these modes are standard fare in most PC online shooters, their inclusion in
43776-444: The enemy attack dogs with giant rats to allow it to be released on SNES because of their anti-violence policy. id Software released a map editor to let players create and share online their own home-made maps for the game which started the players' modding communities who blossomed with Doom and maintain their games alive continuously sustaining new content for them. During Doom 's development, id Software quickly developed
44064-832: The environment to varying degrees, from basics such as using doors, to problem solving puzzles based on a variety of interactive objects. In some games, the player can damage the environment, also to varying degrees: one common device is the use of barrels containing explosive material which the player can shoot, harming nearby enemies. Other games feature environments which are extensively destructible, allowing for additional visual effects. The game world will often make use of science fiction, historic (particularly World War II ) or modern military themes, with such antagonists as aliens , monsters , terrorists and soldiers of various types. Games feature multiple difficulty settings; in harder modes, enemies are tougher, more aggressive and do more damage, and power-ups are limited. In easier modes,
44352-502: The events of Halo 4 at the beginning of the Human-Covenant War. The plot is centered around the character Thomas Lasky, who appears in the video game, he is primarily portrayed by Australian actor Tom Green in the live action series. The series also ties in with the plot of the Halo 4 campaign and Spartan Ops mode. The Master Chief is featured in the latter part of the series, and is played by actor Daniel Cudmore . At E3 2012,
44640-512: The events of Halo: Combat Evolved . Much effort was spent on developing a control scheme that was simple and intuitive, unlike other console strategy games. The game was announced at X06 , and released in February and March 2009. In October 2017, 343 Industries developed and released a virtual reality demo title in partnership with Endeavor One called Halo Recruit . In 2018, 343 Industries partnered with Raw Thrills and PlayMechanix to develop
44928-460: The eyes of the main character . This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games , and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world , and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in
45216-413: The field of graphics processing units . Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years. Although earlier games predate it by 20 years, Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was the highest-profile archetype upon which most subsequent first-person shooters were based. One such game, considered the progenitor of
45504-651: The final five episodes were released in early 2013. Other game features include Forge , a map-editing tool first introduced in Halo 3 . Like War Games it has both split screen and Xbox Live support. Using the tool, players can edit default multiplayer maps by adding or modifying spawn points, weapons and items, or create new ones using canvases. Forge in Halo 4 contains a new "magnet" feature for connecting forge pieces together. Theater mode allows players to view films, create video clips, and capture screen shots from recent matches in War Games or custom games. Halo 4 also offers
45792-580: The final game. Shadow Warrior , developed and published by 3D Realms the 13th of May 1997, introduced 3D voxels instead of 2D sprites for weapons and inventory items as well as weapons' secondary firing mode, climbable ladders, true room-over-room situations, transparent water, some vehicles to drive, and a brand new Asian hero named Lo Wang into a brand new Asian setting in contrast to its predecessor Duke Nukem 3D's occidental atmosphere and Shadow Warrior, just as its predecessor, features deliberately immature and politically incorrect humor, as well as
46080-402: The final mix for the Spartan Ops cinematics. Facial motion capture was also utilized to take the movements and facial expressions from actors and apply them to the in-game cinematics for both Spartan Ops and campaign. Performance capture for both campaign and Spartan Ops cutscenes was directed and recorded at Giant Studios. Axis worked in conjunction with Giant Studios and Cubic Motion to develop
46368-424: The first game's issues and it was their last game before going extinct as they were developing a Build-based sequel to their previous Wolf3D -based game Corridor 7 when their parent company IntraCorp went bankrupt . Witchaven 2 was open-sourced in 2006 then source-ported into BuildGDX by its community which fixed most of its original issues in 2018. The game PowerSlave was initially designed using
46656-485: The first three Halo novels with new content and cover art. Another collection, Halo: Fractures , compiled new and previously released short fiction in 2016. The Halo universe was first adapted into the graphic novel format in 2006, with the release of The Halo Graphic Novel , a collection of four short stories . It was written and illustrated by graphic novelists Lee Hammock , Jay Faerber , Tsutomu Nihei , Brett Lewis, Simon Bisley , Ed Lee and Jean Giraud . At
46944-420: The flag , in which teams attempt to penetrate the opposing base, capture a flag and return it to their own base whilst preventing the other team from doing the same. Other game modes may involve attempting to capture enemy bases or areas of the map, attempting to take hold of an object for as long as possible while evading other players, or deathmatch variations involving limited lives or in which players fight over
47232-430: The floor, and Ken himself voiced the protagonist and filled his game with pictures of himself which hurt the player if they dared to shoot them, which made his game personal. Epic MegaGames , then Wolfenstein 3D 's publisher Apogee Software 's main competitor, noticed it, saw potential, then signed a commercial agreement with Ken's father, as Ken was still minor. However, the original Advanced Systems' Ken's Labyrinth
47520-516: The form of three competitive multiplayer map packs, containing a total of nine maps. It also includes a 90-minute extended version of the live action digital series, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn and a UNSC Infinity Briefing Packet. At launch, two Specializations were available to all players; only owners of the Halo 4 Limited Edition had access to all eight Specializations. However, 343 Industries later granted access to players, in certain countries, who participated in an online multiplayer match during
47808-495: The form of up to 12 players' deathmatch and team deathmatch modes (believed to be the first FPS game to allow that many players) and 8 additional maps made specially for it. In deathmatch, the player could choose among 12 of the game 's characters both humans and aliens who had different speed and health stats, however all characters used the same weapons though. Corridor 7 was a significant improvement after Capstone's previous FPS game Operation Body Count (read above),
48096-417: The franchise and develop future games. In 2008, while 343 Industries was still in formation, Microsoft approached Starlight Runner Entertainment to help assemble the " Halo bible". Starlight Runner is a New York -based company that specializes in creating and producing transmedia franchises. Their job was to examine all content of the Halo universe, clean it up, and make it coherent and understandable for
48384-498: The franchise. Microsoft established 343 Industries to oversee Halo going forward, producing games itself and in partnership with other studios. Combat Evolved was a critical and commercial success, serving as the Xbox's " killer app " and cementing Microsoft as a major player in the video game console space. Its sequels expanded the franchise's commercial and critical success, and have sold more than 81 million copies worldwide. With more than $ 6 billion in franchise grosses, Halo
48672-497: The franchise. More than one million people played Halo 4 on Xbox Live within the first 24 hours of its release. The game was met with positive reviews by professional critics and received multiple nominations and awards from the press. It was re-released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One in 2014, and for Windows in 2020. It was followed by a sequel, Halo 5: Guardians , in 2015 for Xbox One. Halo 4
48960-505: The galaxy to stop the Flood. A civil war began between the Forerunners' commander, known as the Ur-Didact, who wanted to assimilate all the humans on Earth into his army as AIs, thus immune to the Flood, and his wife, the Librarian, who created the Ark, an instrument that was to shelter sentient species outside the galaxy and allow for the mass creation of Halo installations which could all be activated simultaneously. The Librarian, along with all
49248-412: The game along with some score 's points. This is not what Wisdom Tree had originally designed though, since they originally designed a FPS game based on the horror movies Hellraiser themselves adapted from Clive Barker 's novels , until they realized that this was in contradiction with their christian social image then designed Super 3D Noah's Ark instead. A popular rumor has it that Wolf3D engine
49536-608: The game disc and traditional Xbox packaging; and the Collector's Edition with a specially designed steel case, along with an additional bonus DVD, extra booklet, and slightly different user manual. Halo 2 introduced new gameplay elements, chief among them the ability to hold and fire two weapons simultaneously, known as " dual-wielding ". Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 fully supported online multiplayer via Xbox LIVE . The game uses "matchmaking" to facilitate joining online matches by grouping players looking for certain types of games. This
49824-449: The game had already gone on sale with an unrestricted M certificate, but these copies are in breach of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993 . First-person shooter A first-person shooter ( FPS ) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective , with the player experiencing the action directly through
50112-418: The game to eventually name his black metal band after it. Witchaven was open-sourced in 2006 then source-ported into JFBuild by JonoF and into BuildGDX by its community which fixed most of its original issues in 2018. William Shatner's TekWar , developed by Capstone Software and published by SoftKey Multimedia Inc. the 30th of September 1995, barely ten days after Witchaven (read above),
50400-500: The game's code with him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where with help from Dave Lebling to create an eight-player version that could be played over ARPANET , computer-run players using artificial intelligence, customizable maps, online scoreboards and a spectator mode. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974 on the PLATO mainframe system. The game
50688-409: The game, causing frequent bandwidth reductions. Doom has been considered the most important first-person shooter ever made. It was highly influential not only on subsequent shooter games but on video gaming in general, and has been made available on almost every video gaming system since. Multiplayer gaming, which is now integral to the first-person shooter genre, was first successfully achieved on
50976-416: The game. The success of the game led to a sequel, Halo 2 , which was announced on August 8, 2002, at Microsoft's X02 press event. It featured improved graphics, new weapons and enemies, and a multiplayer mode on Xbox Live. Halo 2 was released on the Xbox on November 9, 2004 , and later for Windows Vista on May 17, 2007. The game was released in two different editions: a standard edition with just
51264-475: The game. Due to rendering issues and significant engine changes, Theater support for Halo 4 ' s campaign and Spartan Ops was not featured in the game on launch; however 343 Industries expressed that this feature may be implemented in the future. As with previous Halo titles, 343 Industries provides a statistic tracking service for players of Halo 4 . Player data such as game history, character progression, and various statistics can be accessed in game or via
51552-666: The game. He would later go on to be the sole composer of the game's sequel, Halo 5: Guardians , in 2015. Voice actors returning to reprise their roles in Halo 4 include Steve Downes as Master Chief, and Jen Taylor as both Cortana and Halsey. The two actors recorded together for the first time, as Downes actually flew to 343's Washington headquarters instead of recording in his hometown of Chicago. Voices for new characters include Mark Rolston as Captain Andrew Del Rio, Darren O'Hare as Thomas Lasky, Jennifer Hale as Sarah Palmer, Adrienne Barbeau as Dr. Tillson, Keith Szarabajka as
51840-491: The game; the families of several victims later unsuccessfully attempted to sue numerous video game companies - among them id Software - whose work the families claimed inspired the massacre. John Carmack explained how he designed his Doom engine to Ken Silverman that he considered his only equal which inspired Ken who was in the process of developing his Build engine . Operation Body Count , developed on Wolf3D engine and released by Capstone Software on 1 January 1994,
52128-400: The genre's mainstream acceptance and popularity, was Doom (1993), often cited as the most influential game in this category; for years, the term "Doom clone" was used to designate this type of game, due to Doom ' s enormous success. Another common name for the genre in its early days was "corridor shooter", since processing limitations of that era's computer hardware meant that most of
52416-422: The ground up, and motion capture was used for animation within cutscenes. A goal for Halo 4 ' s story was to incorporate more human elements; to achieve this, the developers chose to delve more deeply into the relationship between the two protagonists, Master Chief and Cortana. Several external studios assisted 343 Industries with developing Halo 4 , and over 350 people worked on the game in total. The game
52704-495: The hardlight shield, which activates a protective barrier similar to a riot shield ; Promethean vision, which diminishes environment detail and shows hidden players as silhouettes ; a regeneration field, which heals all players in close proximity and can emit a short range kinetic blast; and finally the thruster pack, which allows the player to launch themselves several feet in a horizontal direction. Returning abilities include active camouflage ; jetpack ; and hologram, which creates
52992-455: The humans came into conflict with the Forerunners, a powerful race that upheld a policy of benevolent shepherding of other races known as the Mantle of Responsibility. After centuries of war the Forerunners defeated the humans and stripped them of their technology and empire. The Forerunners soon fought the Flood themselves; after exhausting every other strategic option available to them, the Forerunners activated weapons of mass destruction known as
53280-442: The individual characters. The original game soundtrack was released on February 17, 2017, and released digitally on February 21, 2017. The music for Halo Infinite was a collaboration between Gareth Coker , Curtis Schweitzer, Joel Corelitz , Alex Bhore, and Eternal Time & Space, overseen by 343 Industries Music Supervisor Joel Yarger. Infinite 's soundtrack was released digitally on December 8, 2021, in two albums, one covering
53568-409: The internet. O'Connor stated at New York Comic Con that leaks of the game and footage would not have any impact on how the game is released or marketed and that unlicensed uploading of high-profile games is inevitable. Over ten thousand stores across forty countries opened for the midnight launch of Halo 4 . On the evening before the release of the game, a fifty-foot diameter illuminated Didact glyph
53856-603: The literary influences present in the Halo franchise commented on similarities between Halo and Orson Scott Card 's Ender's Game : aspects of the SPARTAN Project and the design of the Covenant Drones are perceived as reminiscent of the super soldier program and Buggers found in the novel. Bungie has also acknowledged James Cameron 's film Aliens as a strong cinematic influence. A report written by Roger Travis and published by The Escapist compares Halo with
54144-480: The live action video. On October 18, 2012, the Halo 4 launch trailer, titled "Scanned", premiered on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon . The trailer was produced by David Fincher and directed by Tim Miller . The trailer was filmed in Prague and features both CGI and live action sequences. It shows Master Chief, bound by a force shield , being approached by an enemy. The enemy moves toward John, scanning his mind to find
54432-434: The location for all Forerunner technology in the galaxy, and instructs Halsey to use the key to advance humankind. Upon receiving the key, Halsey exits the device and 'Mdama takes half of the key from her. Halsey passes the second piece to Fireteam Majestic. Palmer wounds Halsey in the arm just before a Promethean teleports 'Mdama and Halsey from the base. 'Mdama sets Requiem to collide with the nearby sun and his forces evacuate
54720-573: The market as 3D Realms thanks to Ken Silverman and some personality. Doom , released the 10th of December 1993, refined Wolfenstein 3D's template by adding support for higher resolution, improved textures, variations in height (e.g., stairs and platforms the player's character could climb upon), more intricate level design ( Wolfenstein 3D was limited to a grid based system where walls had to be orthogonal to each other, whereas Doom allowed for any inclination) and rudimentary illumination effects such as flickering lights and areas of darkness, creating
55008-450: The market while a challenger Captone Software persisted at attempting to be original and compete with them and failed every time for diverse reasons where another challenger LucasArts succeeded and Bungie Software made FPS games featuring a complex plot, the modding communities who sustain life into their games blossomed starting from Doom, 2D sprites were replaced with 3D polygons starting from Descent then Quake and Apogee Software returned on
55296-524: The market, with Apogee Software/3D Realms and Epic MegaGames being their main competitors. This technological race, monopoly, and three-ways rivalry started during the Wolfenstein 3D's era from 1992 to 1993. Wolfenstein 3D was the first episodic FPS game developed by id Software , as a successor to the successful 1980s 2D infiltration video-games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein from Muse Software , and published by Apogee Software
55584-446: The missions. Glasgow based animation studio, Axis Animation, assisted 343 Industries on the creation of CGI cinematics for the Spartan Ops game mode. Axis have produced animations for numerous video games, including the award-winning announcement trailer for Dead Island . To make each Spartan Ops episode as engaging as possible the team at Axis shot and edited episodes in live action using performance capture . The team then used
55872-467: The music was designed to change dynamically based on the gameplay. To afford a more enjoyable listening experience, O'Donnell rearranged portions of the music of Halo into standalone suites , which follow the narrative course of the game, for the soundtrack releases. For Halo 2 , the soundtrack included licensed music from Incubus and Breaking Benjamin alongside the orchestral score; rock guitar virtuoso, Steve Vai , performed various solos throughout
56160-415: The new Zeta Halo. The story mainly focuses on exploring the deeper lore of the Halo series, finding what happened to Cortana, and battles with the Banished. It released December 2021. On October 6, 2024 during the year's Halo World Championships, 343 Industries unveiled a seven-minute video where they officially announced their rebranding as Halo Studios, while also confirming that multiple new games in
56448-523: The novels First Strike (2003) and Ghosts of Onyx (2006). Other novels have been written by Joseph Staten , Tobias S. Buckell , Karen Traviss , Greg Bear , Matt Forbeck , John Shirley , Troy Denning , Cassandra Rose Clarke , and Kelly Gay . A collection of Halo short stories, Halo: Evolutions , was simultaneously released in print and audiobook formats in November 2009. Evolutions includes original material by Nylund, Buckell, Karen Traviss and contributions from Bungie. Tor re-released
56736-463: The only way to get rid of some invulnerable enemies, water fountains which slowly restored health (much like in Duke Nukem 3D three years later), changed the goal from the original's merely escaping the labyrinth to rescue the player's abducted dog Sparky and save the world, added the requirement to have Sparky follow the player to the exit of each floor to be able to reach the next floor, which made
57024-467: The opening fortnight. For the remaining players, the Specializations were gradually unlocked in the months following launch. Microsoft produced an Xbox 360 Limited Edition Halo 4 console bundle that launched alongside the game. The bundle features two custom designed controllers, a standard edition of Halo 4 , a wired headset, exclusive downloadable content and a Halo 4 -themed Xbox 360 containing
57312-563: The original Halo formula. In 2014, Kazuma Jinnouchi confirmed he would be composing the soundtrack for Halo 5: Guardians . On October 30, 2015, Halo 5: Guardians Original Soundtrack was released on CD and vinyl. The soundtrack used a 30-person choir located in Prague, Czech Republic. The orchestral soundtrack was recorded at the Abbey Road Studio over the duration of 5 separate trips. In 2017, 343 Industries and Creative Assembly released
57600-439: The other for looking and aiming . It is common to display the character's hands and weaponry in the main view, with a heads-up display showing health, ammunition and location details. Often, it is possible to overlay a map of the surrounding area. First-person shooters generally focus on action gameplay, with fast-paced combat and dynamic firefights being a central point of the experience, though certain titles may also place
57888-401: The people involved with the creation of Halo games and media. Frank O'Connor, a content manager at Bungie, assisted the team with the creation of the " Halo bible" before moving to 343 Industries to become Halo franchise development director. Unlike the original trilogy, the story for Halo 4 was designed to be part of a multi-game arc from the beginning. Christopher Schlerf and Holmes wrote
58176-601: The performance role of Cortana. Taylor served as the motion capture source for Halsey. On January 19, 2012, McFarlane Toys announced that they would be creating action figures for Halo 4 , bringing new characters, weapons and vehicles from the video game to the fans. McFarlane Toys CEO and founder, Todd McFarlane said that he was "really excited to be working with the all-star team of 343 Industries". McFarlane also stated that they would continue and expand their previous figure line which would be rebranded as Halo Universe . On February 14, 2012, toy company Mega Brands revealed
58464-575: The planet. Fireteams Crimson and Majestic disable devices that anchor Infinity to Requiem, allowing the ship to escape before the installation is destroyed. Meanwhile, Halsey, who has lost her arm, offers to ally herself to 'Mdama. In October 2007, shortly after the release of Halo 3 , Halo developer Bungie split off from parent company Microsoft. Microsoft retained the intellectual property and rights to Halo , and Bungie continued developing Halo games until 2010. During this period of time Microsoft formed an internal division, 343 Industries, to manage
58752-403: The playable character, such as flames, electricity, telekinesis or other supernatural powers, and traps. In the early era of first-person shooters, often designers allowed characters to carry a large number of different weapons with little to no reduction in speed or mobility. More modern games started to adopt a more realistic approach, where the player can only equip a handheld gun, coupled with
59040-487: The player becomes a floating robot, or " monitor ", who can spawn, move, and delete any game object on the map. All objects are assigned a monetary value, and cost money to spawn; the level's "Forge budget" determines how much money the player can use to spawn objects. As a component of Halo 3 , Forge received critical acclaim upon its release. GameSpot 's Jeff Gerstmann described Forge as "an extremely powerful addition that might just take over your life", and praised
59328-495: The player can succeed through reaction times alone; on more difficult settings, it is often necessary to memorize the levels through trial and error. First-person shooters may feature a multiplayer mode, taking place on specialized levels. Some games are designed specifically for multiplayer gaming, and have very limited single player modes in which the player competes against game-controlled characters termed "bots". Massively multiplayer online first-person shooters like those in
59616-537: The player drew a weapon who they begged to not shoot while holding their hands up and ran away for their life whereas cops drew their gun onto the player and ordered him to drop their weapon and enemies shot him on sight from everywhere without the cops ever reacting whereas they shot the player if he dared to shoot back at the enemies, which is the main issue with this game: everyone is allowed to shoot you but you are not allowed to shoot anyone. Some civilians were actually kamikaze androids who self-destructed when close to
59904-468: The player have to pay attention to another character beside their own, and commercialized Ken's Labyrinth v2 still as shareware the 21st of March 1993. All versions of Ken's Labyrinth got to be source-ported many times and even onto Nintendo Switch by a fan. As soon as id Software showed off some previews of Doom in the middle of its development, Ken Silverman started to develop his own game engine to rival with John Carmack once again, used
60192-563: The player is an unnamed mercenary (sometimes referred to as the Strifeguy) who joins the Front to fight the Order's oppressive rule while being remotely assisted by a Front's radio operative woman nicknamed Blackbird who occasionally comments with humor the situations that the player encounters. However despite all of its innovations, Strife went relatively unnoticed because it was released right between
60480-466: The player moved around. Despite some of its original ideas , it was badly made, the terrorists were stereotypes of Arabian people, the AI was not smart enough to make nor the enemies pose any challenge nor the squad's teammates be actually useful, and being based on Wolf3D engine after Doom was released made it already technologically outdated and "doomed" from the start as opposite to Blake Stone which did enjoy one week of glory before Doom
60768-400: The player though. During the Doom & Quake's era from 1993 to 1997, FPS games were still all about their game engines as original and innovative games were ignored for the only reason that their game engine was outdated. FPS games were simplistic shoot them all without any complex plot however their gameplay started to evolve and the combo id Software & Raven Software still dominated
61056-531: The player to find other weapons and save the strongest weapons for the strongest foes, evolving stats from earned experience where each level up unlocked new spells and abilities such as lockpicking in the form of an unlocking spell as well as dual wielding some weapons. The campaign involved a knight on an epic quest to defeat a witch who cast a curse of never-ending darkness onto his land. In order to complete this quest, he had to battle hordes of minions with both medieval weapons and magical spells to reach
61344-631: The player's HUD. The campaign also features terminals which provide the player with additional backstory via videos viewed in the Halo Waypoint application on the Xbox 360. In Halo 4 ' s multiplayer component, titled "Infinity", players assume the role of a customizable Spartan-IV super-soldier . Players can progress through ranks by earning experience points from completing matches and challenges. Gameplay items such as visual customizations, weapons, armor abilities, and various upgrades are unlocked and can be acquired by players when they gain ranks. Once players attain rank SR-50, they can enlist into
61632-425: The player's approach, weather effects, some destructible objects, scripted environmental changes such as earthquakes, different character classes to allow different playstyles as well as interconnected maps through hub maps instead of the standard linear succession of maps which granted a taste of open-world in a FPS game. Apogee Software , then renamed 3D Realms , followed up with Duke Nukem 3D (sequel to
61920-492: The player's choices and actions, some burning effects as well as some infiltration gameplay such as stealth, disguises and alarms. The plot takes place in a medieval world struck by a comet which released a virus which wiped out almost all life on the planet and corrupted most of the remaining people who created a high-tech theocratic new world order known as "The Order" whereas the few remaining free people organized into an underground resistance known as "The Front" and
62208-459: The player, taking them into their explosion . Half of the game also took place into the Matrix. William Shatner's TekWar was the worst of Capstone's FPS games however it still got to be source-ported into BuildGDX. Raven Software upgraded the Doom engine further and released Hexen: Beyond Heretic the 30th of October 1995 which added jumping, more immersive environments with effects such as swirling leaves or scattering bats upon
62496-583: The players to use teamwork and strategy in order to succeed; the players can often command a squad of characters, which may be controlled by the A.I. or by human teammates, and can be given different tasks during the course of the mission. First-person shooters typically present players with a vast arsenal of weapons, which can have a large impact on how they will approach the game. Some games offer realistic reproductions of actual existing (or even historical) firearms, simulating their rate of fire, magazine size, ammunition amount, recoil and accuracy. Depending on
62784-461: The presentation of Halo 4 was preceded with a live action segment called "The Commissioning". The video was directed by Nicolai Fuglsig and filmed over two and a half days, with four weeks of post-production and visual effects were added by Method Studios . Music in the trailer was scored by Neil Davidge. The video shows the UNSC Infinity vessel being pulled within the confines of the planet Requiem. Mark Rolston portrays Captain Andrew Del Rio in
63072-399: The process until the main structure for the Master Chief was created. The team then worked on the finer details of his appearance. During the concepting process of Halo 4 , O'Connor decided it would be best for the franchise to explore the Forerunner fiction of the Halo universe, which had remained largely a mystery before 343 Industries' involvement in the franchise. This ultimately led to
63360-414: The protagonist. The soundtrack for Halo 3 was released on November 20, 2007. O'Donnell noted he wanted to bring back the themes from the original game to help tie together the end of the trilogy. The tracks are presented, similarly to the previous soundtrack for Halo 2 , in a suite form. Unlike previous soundtracks, where much of the music had been synthesized on computer, the soundtrack for Halo 3
63648-446: The range of all weapons at once, also replaced the original final boss with Ken himself, added diverse monsters, temporary power-ups such as reflecting enemies' projectiles, kill enemies on contact, and invincibility, as well as treasures for buying these power-ups from vending-machines and for paying doors' toll, slot-machines to win coins instead of finding treasures in secret areas, death-traps such as holes in floors which were
63936-444: The rebellions covertly. In the year 2525, human worlds came under attack by a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant , whose leadership declared humanity heretics and an affront to their gods: the Forerunners. The Covenant began a genocidal holy war. Their superior technology and numbers proved to be decisive advantages; although effective, the Spartans were too few to turn the tide of battle in humanity's favor. After
64224-433: The reference cameras at the live action shoot to create a performance edit, before shooting with CG cameras to provide more coverage of all scenes and a greater selection of shots for the editorial team. The shading team at Axis made use of the 3D animation package, Houdini , to procedurally generate the environment in the cinematics. Axis worked with Glasgow-based audio post production company Savalas on sound design and
64512-437: The release of Duke Nukem 3D , id Software released the much anticipated Quake the 22nd of June 1996. Like Doom , Quake was influential and genre-defining, featuring fast-paced, gory gameplay, within a completely 3D game environment, and making use of real-time rendered polygonal models instead of sprites. It was centered on online gaming and featured multiple match types still found in first-person shooter games today. It
64800-423: The remaining Forerunners, trapped her husband inside a Forerunner repository of knowledge known as the Domain, and disappeared as the Array was activated, thus destroying all sentient life in the galaxy and ending the outbreak of the Flood— though some Forerunners are known to have left the Milky Way galaxy for a different, unknown galaxy. Nearly a hundred thousand years later, in the 26th century , humanity— under
65088-487: The rest of the music, much of which was incomplete or not included in the first soundtrack, as the first soundtrack was shipped before the game was released. Halo 2 , unlike its predecessor, was mixed to take full advantage of Dolby 5.1 Digital Surround Sound . In 2014, the in-game music was rerecorded and remastered for the Halo 2 Anniversary release which was part of the Master Chief Collection which included remastered versions of all Halo games with Master Chief as
65376-430: The ring onto the nearby Ivanoff Research Station, which the Covenant faction attacks. The Chief defends Ivanoff, but the Didact retrieves the Composer and uses it on the station, composing every individual save Chief. Chief and Cortana use a fighter to follow the Didact's ship to Earth. Aided by Infinity and the home fleet, the Chief boards the Didact's ship with a nuclear warhead . Cortana inserts copies of herself into
65664-455: The role of Master Chief who battles against a new faction that splintered off from remnants of the Covenant , a former military alliance of alien races, as well as a new enemy: mechanical warriors of the Forerunner empire known as the Prometheans. The game features a new selection of weapons , enemies, and game modes not present in previous titles of the series. Development of Halo 4 began in 2009 and continued until September 2012. Halo 4
65952-441: The same color within the floor whereas some computers were traps which triggered an alarm which attracted nearby enemies to the player. Capstone Software released Corridor 7 first as floppy disks , then as a CD-ROM the 6th of May 1995 which featured a different soundtrack , randomization of placements within floors, and added 10 more levels into the alien homeworld with new weapons and alien types along with multiplayer in
66240-409: The same console via split screen , and up to three other players through Xbox Live . Unlike in Halo 3 cooperative campaign where each player takes the role of a different character, in Halo 4 all players assume the role of Master Chief . Players can enable "skulls" in the campaign menu which act as gameplay modifiers such as increasing enemy health, changing NPC behavior or removing elements of
66528-513: The same in Catacomb 3-D . Catacomb 3-D also introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (in this case, magical spells) on the screen, whereas previously aspects of the player's avatar were not visible. The experience of developing Ultima Underworld would make it possible for Looking Glass to create the Thief and System Shock series years later. From Wolfenstein 3D to Quake, FPS games were all about their game engines. id Software & Raven Software completely dominated
66816-436: The same war over and over again. That sense of hopelessness, a relentless battle, was influential." The Flood were influenced by the assimilating alien species in Christopher Rowley 's The Vang ; it has also been speculated that the Master Chief's name "John 117" may have been a reference to a character named Jon 6725416 in Rowley's Starhammer , or to the John Spartan character of Demolition Man . An IGN article exploring
67104-616: The score for the campaign, and another covering the music for the game's multiplayer component. The Halo franchise includes various types of merchandise and adaptations outside of the video games. This includes bestselling novels, graphic novels, and other licensed products, from action figures to a packaging tie-in with Mountain Dew . Numerous action figures and vehicles based on Halo have been produced. Joyride Studios created Halo and Halo 2 action figures, while Halo 3 poseable and collectible action figures, aimed at collectors, were produced by McFarlane Toys and became some of
67392-465: The score. The music of Halo helped spur a renewed interest in chant music. For Halo 2 ' s soundtrack , producer Nile Rodgers and O'Donnell decided to split the music into two separate volumes. The first, Volume One, was released on November 9, 2004, and contained all the themes as well as the "inspired-by" music present in the game (featuring Steve Vai , Incubus , Hoobastank , and Breaking Benjamin ). The second release, Volume 2, contained
67680-955: The script and story. In addition, 343 Industries aimed for "a more complete connectivity between all of their future media than before"; relating Halo 4 ' s story to the Forerunner Saga and Kilo-Five Trilogy novels as well as using terminals in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary to introduce background knowledge on the Forerunners. 343 started with a staff of roughly a dozen people, but grew to nearly 200 through development. Halo 4 ' s development team included former employees of more than 25 triple-A studios. Prospective employees could not be told they were going to be working on Halo 4 . "We had people who we hired who hated Halo because of 'X,'" said Frank O'Connor, 343 Industries' franchise development director. "But what that really meant was, 'I feel like this game could be awesome because of 'Y input' that I'm going to bring into it. I want to prove it, and I'm passionate about proving it.' So we ended up with
67968-399: The secret areas. Despite its violent themes, Wolfenstein largely escaped the controversy generated by the later Doom , although it was banned from Germany due to the use of Nazi iconography which is a sensitive topic there where Wolfenstein has been forbidden until 2022 and Nintendo too required id Software to remove blood , gore, and all Nazi iconography as well as replace
68256-441: The series were currently in development, and that said games would use Unreal Engine 5 as opposed to the proprietary Slipspace Engine. Studio head Pierre Hintze explained that the decision to rebrand the studio came from an internal shift in development philosophy behind the franchise, giving the team a "clean break" as was the case with transitioning between Bungie and 343. Halo Studios also unveiled "Project Foundry", described as
68544-399: The soundtrack. O'Donnell wrote "somber, more visceral" music to reflect the darker nature of the campaign and style of the game. As Bungie had been making Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach at the same time, Martin O'Donnell had also been composing the soundtracks at the same time, but production for the music of Halo: Reach did not begin until after the release of Halo 3: ODST . The soundtrack
68832-405: The source of his strength and search for weaknesses. A live action sequence proceeds with flashbacks of John's past; showing him being kidnapped as a child, the Spartan-II augmentation procedure, and him being suited into his MJOLNIR armor. The trailer then shows John attacking Promethean Knights, before returning to the scene of him bound and being faced by his enemy, the Didact. On October 23, 2012,
69120-534: The specific design elements which constitute a first-person shooter. For example, titles like Deus Ex or BioShock may be considered as first-person shooters, but may also fit into the role-playing games category, as they borrow extensively from that genre. Other examples, like Far Cry and Rage , could also be considered adventure games , because they focus more on exploration than simple action, they task players with multiple different objectives other than just killing enemies, and they often revolve around
69408-561: The style of concept art . In addition to creating the visuals for the Halo 4 terminals, their work appeared in one of the game's main cinematics. To save time and expense using traditional motion capture methods to animate the 3D characters, The Sequence Group used twin Microsoft Kinect infrared sensors to create a home-made solution. The game utilizes much of the "sandbox" that has been featured across all six prior Halo games and other media, in addition to introducing new characters, weapons, vehicles, and other elements. The game engine used
69696-412: The team decided on a final design. The main goal when designing their appearance was to make them resonate with the player, and evoke the image of the Forerunner architecture and language that had been portrayed in previous Halo media. Upon death, the Promethean Knight dissolves from the point where it was last shot; this visual effect also occurs when certain enemies are killed by Promethean weapons. From
69984-466: The team was headed in the right direction was early in development, when the team completed a section of the game that was "very traditional [ Halo ]". Despite positive feedback from testers, 343 Industries discarded the prototype as too traditional, but felt that it showed the team could work together. Including contractors, 350 people worked on the game. 343 Industries contracted Certain Affinity , an independent video game development studio, to help with
70272-413: The third available after registration; and the three last prequel episodes available as a separate mission pack, to the point that it has since been credited for having single-handedly invented the concept of first-person-shooter as a genre of video-games. It was built on John Carmack 's ray casting technology already experimented into id's previous games Hovertank One and Catacomb 3D to create
70560-506: The top-selling action figures of 2007 and 2008. MEGA Bloks partnered with Microsoft to produce Halo Wars -themed toys. As part of Microsoft's multimedia efforts, Microsoft Studios decided to create a tie-in novel for Combat Evolved . Eric Nylund wrote Halo: The Fall of Reach in seven weeks, and it was published in October 2001. The game itself was turned into a novelization by William C. Dietz in 2003, called Halo: The Flood . Nylund would write additional Halo works including
70848-423: The traditional sense, making for a somewhat more believable overall experience. The game was praised for its artificial intelligence , selection of weapons and attention to detail and "has since been recognized as one of the greatest games of all time" according to GameSpot. Its sequel, Half-Life 2 , (released in 2004), was less influential though "arguably a more impressive game". Halo (series) Halo
71136-555: The transmissions is 'Mdama, who captures Glassman and forces him to work on a Forerunner device that supposedly contains the Librarian. Palmer arrests Halsey for communicating with 'Mdama, but Halsey uses an override code to force Infinity ' s AI, Roland, to assist her. Halsey contacts 'Mdama to try and strike a deal, as they both want to find the Librarian; Roland breaks free of Halsey's control and summons guards to apprehend Halsey. Promethean forces invade Infinity , capture Halsey, and teleport her to 'Mdama's base. Serin Osman, head of
71424-456: The two other overwhelmingly popular games Duke Nukem 3D and Quake which made the Doom engine already outdated by then. Still, players who discovered it many years after its original release appreciated its originality for its time and even compared it to Deus Ex and Marathon . Doom 's modding community source-ported Strife into GZDoom to update and upgrade it from its original version to modern standards. Shortly after
71712-425: The use of specially designed microphones; other recording sessions have utilized "home made" explosives. Tojima intended for the game's audio to be clearly grounded in the Halo universe, while also having a more realistic quality than in past titles. Music composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, also formerly from Konami, joined 343 Industries during the production of Halo 4 in 2011. He contributed several additional tracks for
72000-435: The visor's battery, some aliens who camouflaged into the environments (like Blake Stone: Planet Strike released half a year later), screen jumpscares whenever the player was idle for 10 seconds, body armors , limited-use healing chambers, force fields which hurt the player if they walked into them, mines to trap corridors, maps of the floors, and replaced keys with security computer screens which unlocked all doors of
72288-420: The visual style of Halo 4 as being more ingrained in the expanded universe fiction, and more "mature" than before. With the game's increased focus on the Forerunners, the artists invested heavily into the look and feel of Forerunner technology. The game also features more diversity in Forerunner structures, including fully active Forerunner technology as opposed to the mostly inert and abandoned structures seen in
72576-410: The whole trilogy. Players battle various aliens on foot and in vehicles to complete objectives, while attempting to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo. Halo limited the number of weapons players could carry to two, forcing them to carefully select their preferred armament. Players fight with ranged and melee attacks, as well as grenades. Bungie referred to the "weapons-grenades-melee" format as
72864-504: The witch on her volcanic island . It featured digitized graphics , however the characters made of clay didn't appeal to everyone and the environments were empty, as well as adjustable level of gore, the same Corridor 7 's trick to spawn a screen jumpscare whenever the player is idle, and it is known for game logic issues, dumb AI , hazardous map triggers and game physics that cause slippery player movement, sudden deaths, and faulty hit detection. That didn't stop an original fan of
73152-467: Was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss , a March 1992 action role-playing game by Looking Glass Technologies that featured a first-person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine. In October 1990, id developer John Romero learned about texture mapping from a phone call to Paul Neurath. Romero described the texture mapping technique to id programmer John Carmack , who remarked, "I can do that.", and would feel motivated by Looking Glass's example to do
73440-476: Was Capstone's first FPS game, was all about a terrorist attack on the UNO tower, and was an early attempt at making a tactical FPS game since the player was in command of an anti-terrorist squad that they could order around and even switch to any of their body at any time as long as they were not dead and featured some digitized graphics , transparent textures such as breakable glass, randomization of enemies and items' placement, body armors , booby-traps , and
73728-446: Was a medieval fantasy First Person Slasher game as in a melee -focused FPS game, reminiscent of Raven Software 's Heretic including an inventory system, both a single-player campaign and multiplayer, but far harder as it was far more tactical , making use of environmental hazards such as magma and traps against enemies, while implementing more of a RPG gameplay such as weapons' durability which broke after many uses, requiring
74016-424: Was a change from the more traditional "server list" approach, which was used to find matches in online games at this time. Halo 3 was announced at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo . It utilized a proprietary, in-house graphics engine , and employed advanced graphics technologies. Halo 3 is the final game in the original Halo trilogy, ending the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved . The game
74304-498: Was a rudimentary space flight simulator for up to 32 players, featuring a first-person perspective. Both games were distinct from modern first-person shooters, involving simple tile-based movement where the player could only move from square to square and turn in 90-degree increments. Such games spawned others that used similar visuals to display the player as part of a maze (such as Akalabeth: World of Doom in 1979), and were loosely called "rat's eye view" games, since they gave
74592-402: Was announced on July 21, 1999, during the Macworld Conference & Expo . The game morphed from a real-time strategy game into a third-person action game. On June 19, 2000, Microsoft acquired Bungie and Halo: Combat Evolved became a launch title for the Xbox video game console . The game turned into a first-person shooter, and was modified to work with a controller. Though the first Halo
74880-422: Was announced that a web series, titled Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn , would play on Machinima Prime and Halo Waypoint during the weeks leading up to the release for Halo 4 . The series debuted on October 5, 2012, and contained five 15-minute live action shorts. It was directed by Stewart Hendler and the project was Microsoft's largest investment in a live action promotion. The series is set in 2526, 31 years before
75168-404: Was begun in February 1994 and published by Raven Software the 1st of November 1994, marking the beginning of a new period for Raven who split into two groups: One which worked with id 's new DOOM engine to create Mage , a fantasy action game, which would eventually evolve into the game Heretic . The other team started on a project that was to use the engine from ShadowCaster to create
75456-662: Was close to Wolf3D engine . Then he improved his game with his friend Andrew Cotter, added narration to each floor , renamed it Ken's Labyrinth , and released it on Internet as shareware under his brother's company Advanced Systems on 1 January 1993. The game was about escaping a bizarre dream labyrinth full of people shooting projectiles at the player while projectiles were more balls than bullets, meaning they had limited range and were slow enough to dodge them as opposite to Wolfenstein 3D whose weapons were hitscan firearms , some walls reflected projectiles, killed enemies vanished without any death animation nor remnant body on
75744-414: Was composed of different objective-oriented mission types. Over the course of development, changes were made to Spartan Ops to include a narrative that would tie Halo 4 ' s multiplayer together. The missions were designed primarily for four player co-op. The Spartan Ops development team worked with the narrative team to use ideas and storylines to shape the mode such that the cinematics would tie in with
76032-480: Was created that could handle moving platforms, catwalks, sloped areas, and transparent textures. The engine, by Carl Stika, was nicknamed STEAM. A small budget was granted for full-motion video sequences to be created for the game, to be presented between missions as briefings. CyClones allowed to use the mouse to aim without moving, as opposite to other FPS games from the time which bound the mouse to both aiming and moving simultaneously, and without turning either, as
76320-413: Was developed into an official weekly playlist for Halo 3 , and would go on to be included in every subsequent Halo game after Halo: Reach . 343 Industries employee Nick Bird, working as Forge Quality Assurance on Halo Infinite , credited Forge for his interest in game development; "My time in Forge and the Forge community eventually led me to pursue a career in the industry, and ultimately landed me
76608-455: Was flown by a helicopter over the River Thames in London, from the Greenwich Peninsula to Tower Bridge . The glyph was created by a team of over fifty designers, engineers and fabricators and took approximately eight weeks to design and construct. Following the release of the game, New Zealand censors declared many copies of Halo 4 illegal, after deciding to label it with an R13 rating, restricting it to buyers aged 13 and over. Many copies of
76896-410: Was given to Wisdom Tree by id Software as a kind of " revenge " against Nintendo for all the censorship that Wolfenstein 3D had to go through to be on the Super Nintendo. However, there's no proof of this, and Wisdom Tree bought a license for the game engine like everybody else instead of having it "given" to them. The SNES version was not licensed by Nintendo and therefore couldn't be played on
77184-457: Was highly acclaimed for its atmospheric single-player campaign and well designed multiplayer maps. It featured a sniper rifle , the ability to perform head-shots, and the incorporation of stealth elements (all of these aspects were also included in the game's spiritual sequel, Perfect Dark ) as well as some Virtua Cop -inspired features such as weapon reloading, position-dependent hit reaction animations, penalties for killing innocents, and
77472-436: Was initially well-received but sales rapidly declined in the wake of the success of id's Doom , released a week later. It still got a sequel Blake Stone: Planet Strike the 28th of October 1994 which integrated the auto-map into the HUD as a rotating mini-map which revealed secret doors at the cost of consuming auto-mapper charges and added some enemies who camouflaged into the environment or were cloaked to surprise
77760-404: Was made from Ken and Andrew's limited resources to the point that Ken made the sound effects with his mouth, therefore Epic MegaGames made use of their resources to revamp the game, replaced the projectiles balls with bubble gum balls , starbursts which bounced off walls, and homing missiles , while collecting more of the same weapon increased their range and collecting thunderbolts increased
78048-496: Was meant to include an online multiplayer mode, it was excluded because the Xbox Live service was not yet available. Halo was not intended to be the Xbox's flagship game due to internal concerns and gaming press criticism, but Microsoft VP of game publishing Ed Fries did not act on these concerns. The Xbox's marketing heavily featured Halo , whose green color palette meshed with the console's design scheme. Halo: Combat Evolved introduced many gameplay and plot themes common to
78336-449: Was officially announced at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 (E3) on June 6. Prior to launch, Microsoft stated that Halo 4 was the most expensive video game title the company had created so far. The game was marketed with promotional events and videos, including the creation of a live-action film, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn . Halo 4 grossed US$ 220 million on its launch day and $ 300 million in its opening week—a record for
78624-414: Was originally developed in 1973 by Greg Thompson, Steve Colley and Howard Palmer, high-school students in a NASA work-study program trying to develop a program to help visualize fluid dynamics for spacecraft designs. The work became a maze game presented to the player in the first-person, and later included support for a second player and the ability to shoot the other player to win the game. Thompson took
78912-473: Was recorded using a 60-piece orchestra, along with a 24-voice chorus. The final soundtrack was recorded by the Northwest Sinfonia at Studio X in Seattle, Washington. The soundtracks were bundled and released as a box set in December 2008. A soundtrack for Halo 3: ODST was released alongside the game and included many of the tracks from the game. For Bungie's last game in the Halo series, Halo: Reach , Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori returned to compose
79200-408: Was released for the Xbox One on October 27, 2015. The game takes place across many worlds, mainly the Elite homeworld, and revolves around Spartan Locke's hunt for the rogue Master Chief, who is trying to find a still-living Cortana. The third part of the Reclaimer Saga, Halo Infinite , was announced during E3 2018 . It brings the focus back to Master Chief, and Halo's roots by taking place on
79488-415: Was released in late 2021. Spinoffs include real-time strategy and twin-stick shooter games. Combat Evolved started life as a real-time strategy game for personal computers, turning into a first-person shooter exclusive to the Xbox video game console after Bungie was acquired by Microsoft. Bungie regained its independence in 2007, releasing additional Halo games through 2010 before moving on from
79776-432: Was released on October 22, 2012, followed by a two-disc Special Edition on November 6. Neil Davidge served as an out-of-house composer for 343 Industries which proved to be very expensive leading Kazuma Jinnouchi to take over the responsibility of music production for Halo 5: Guardians . The music by Neil Davidge and Kazuma Jinnouchi for Halo 4 received mixed reviews, being recognized as creative music but too different from
80064-458: Was released on iTunes on September 15, 2010, and in a two-disc set on September 28, 2010. For Halo Wars , the task of creating the game's music fell to Stephen Rippy . Rippy listened to O'Donnell's soundtracks for inspiration and incorporated the Halo theme into parts of his arrangements. In addition to synthesized and orchestral components, the composer focused on the choir and piano as essential elements, feeling these were important in creating
80352-581: Was released on the Xbox 360 on September 25, 2007. It adds to the series vehicles, weapons, and a class of items called equipment. The game also includes a limited map-editing tool, known as the Forge , which allows players to insert game objects, such as weapons and vehicles, into existing multiplayer map geometry. Players can save a recording of their gameplay sessions, and view them as video, from any angle. Following Halo 3 ' s release, Bungie became an independent company once more. They created two more Halo games as part of their deal with Microsoft:
80640-404: Was released worldwide on November 6, 2012, achieving record sales for the franchise. In a new addition to the series, a story-driven multiplayer campaign entitled Spartan Ops was released over the weeks following Halo 4 ' s release, telling what happened after the end of the main game. In announcing the formation of 343 Industries, Microsoft also announced that Xbox Live would be home to
80928-484: Was released. OBC still got to be source-ported into GZDoom and remastered by its modding community eventually though. Corridor 7: Alien Invasion , developed and published by Capstone Software the 1st of March 1994, was their second attempt to make a FPS game. Still based on Wolf3D engine , the plot reminds strikingly of Half-Life 's, four years later, since it was about scientific experiments with gamma beam on an alien artifact brought from Mars by
81216-549: Was showcased by 343 Industries and Certain Affinity at RTX which took place at the Austin Convention Center . On September 26, 2012, O'Connor announced that the game's development was complete. Following Halo 4 ' s announcement, O'Connor reported that both Master Chief and Cortana would undergo "radical" changes in appearance for the game, some of them attributed to better graphics and others to story elements. The studio wanted Master Chief's appearance to convey an imposing mass and weight, to show that one of his characteristics
81504-414: Was still based on the then outdated Wolf3D engine after Doom was released and therefore was "doomed" from the start too even if it did better than its predecessor, it was still not technologically on par with Doom and Capstone moved onto another new game engine after this game. Still, Corridor 7 was so appreciated that it got to be source-ported only five years after its original release into
81792-410: Was the first FPS game to gain a cult following of player clans (although the concept had existed previously in MechWarrior 2 ' s Netmech , with its Battletech lore as well as amongst MUD players), and would inspire popular LAN parties and events such as QuakeCon . The game's popularity and use of 3D polygonal graphics also helped to expand the growing market for video card hardware; and
82080-411: Was the most expensive game that Microsoft had made. A demonstration of the game's campaign was first shown at E3 2012 . The developers described it as a pivotal moment in development, as it was the first time the game had been shown publicly. The positive reaction was a morale boost for the team, who were unsure how the public would react. On July 7, 2012, a pre-release build of Halo 4 ' s Forge mode
82368-452: Was the second commercial game licensed on Apogee Software rebranded 3D Realms ' Ken Silverman 's new Build engine to rival id Software 's John Carmack 's Doom engine and was a FPS game adapted from William Shatner 's TekWar novels and TV series who personally contributed to the video-game to the point of live-acting the player's boss during briefings and debriefings. William Shatner's TekWar , both novels, TV series and video-game,
82656-484: Was used to promote the release of Halo 2 . The game revolved around a website created by 42 Entertainment , commissioned by Microsoft and endorsed by Bungie. Over the course of the game, audio clips were released that eventually formed a complete five-hour story set on Earth between Halo and Halo 2 . Similarly, Iris was used as a viral marketing campaign for the release of Halo 3 . It featured five web servers containing various media files related to
82944-468: Was written by Ed Fries, former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft, in 2010 for the Atari 2600 . The Halo theme tune was also available as downloadable content for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock . In Forza Horizon 4 one level has the player racing across the map in the Warthog as the Master Chief, with the Halo ring visible in the sky, Cortana on the radio and various Covenant based obstacles to avoid. In 2006, in acknowledgment of
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