7 Things You Didn’t
Know About Halo

SMALL MAPS ARE BIG, AND BIG MAPS ARE FOR FEWER PEOPLE THAN YOU THINK.
When it comes to multiplayer spaces, “We design the map, we build the map, and we put the map in engine…and then we stop, go back to the artist, and say ‘Can you shrink that by 20 percent?’” says Green. “It always happens. All of our maps on paper [become] a little bit larger than we want in-game.” Meanwhile, large-scale maps are really designed to accommodate 10 to 14 players. “We don’t explicitly design any maps for 16 players because there’s usually no harm fitting 16 players on a map that’s designed for 12.”

HALO’S BEST MISSION WAS A HAPPY ACCIDENT.
“‘The Silent Cartographer’ was just a test level that we kept polishing and polishing and then eventually built a mission on,” reveals Griesemer. “Mostly it was a test level for our portal technology, and figuring out visibility and seeing what we could build in our engine and how large we could make things, how much detail we could put into the environment. We just wanted a level that was an exterior, had interiors, and had an interesting visibility scheme. The island was good because you could see out from the island, but you could never see back into another part of the island. I actually made that mission, and I had to deal with all these things that, if I’d been able to plan and do things right from the start, I would not have done. But since I had to deal with them anyway, I had to come up with creative ways to work around them.”

You were never intended to play this level.

THERE ARE STILL THINGS YOU CAN’T DO IN HALO 3.
Someone shut down the rumor mill: You can’t fly the Pelican. You can’t switch between Master Chief and the Arbiter at will during the campaign. You can’t play as a Brute in multiplayer. And — sniff — you can’t dual-wield swords. For now, at least, kiss these fanboy dreams goodbye.

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