Microsoft has huge plans for Halo: Reach. The company has already said that it expects the game to be the top seller in 2010. Additionally, from a symbolic standpoint, if Halo: Reach does end up being the last Halo game that Bungie works on, you can bet that the studio wants to make it a standout game. Either way, there's big pressure to make sure that Reach is a major blockbuster.
Speaking in the latest issue of Edge magazine, the game’s creative director, Marcus Lehto, noted that his team is really "bending the Xbox as far as it'll bend.”
“We are… taking every advantage of everything on the CPU and GPU, and every bit of memory in order to produce the look of Reach beyond anything of Halo 3,” he said. “We're pushing it as far as we can go. With every iteration we understand what more we can exploit with the hardware.”
Although visuals are certainly important, especially in the wake of graphically impressive titles like Uncharted 2 and Modern Warfare 2, A.I. is another area of game creation that Bungie's giving some extra care. “The A.I. system is super robust, and is taken for granted as a rich simulation,” noted community director Brian Jarrard. “A lot of people don't necessarily appreciate how much of a difference that makes in their experience, the fact that everything is simulated, nothing is bolted down. You can throw a grenade in a room and it's all physically simulated. Even in our giant environments you see films in which someone will throw a grenade and it will send a Warthog flying through the air and it'll kill someone on the other side of the map. It’s one of those things which is so hard and complicated to do, but it's just underlying the whole game. It's kind of delightful that people don't appreciate how hard that stuff is to make.”
4 Comments
January 22, 2010
I have appreciated good A.I. in games ever since playing the first Halo on the original Xbox. The Covenant were so determined to avoid my sticky grenades that the Elites would sometimes dive to avoid them.....even when on very high bridges. They may have plummeted to their death but atleast they did't get stuck.
January 22, 2010
Yeah, it's an area that some of the industry doesn't pay enough attention to. Improvements in AI will lead to huge changes in gameplay possibilities.
January 25, 2010
I'm not so sure that AI is going to be so important. With the rise and rise of online multiplayer who needs simulated opponents? I think the real challenge is delivering a compelling storyline and progression in a multiplayer environment, instead of bog standard death match or capture the flag affairs.
January 26, 2010
Halo's AI in the first game was pretty good compared to its contemporaries; unfortunately it stayed about the same in the three subsequent sequels. It'd be nice if it showed some changes, like advanced squad tactics, in Reach.