• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Halo |OT2| Hyper-Athletic Speed And Mass And Weight and Power

scently

Member
The base of the engine is probably Halo 3, though I would think that the incorporated a lot of Halo Reach into it. I mean, the game started development at the end Halo 3.
 

Trey

Member
All halo engines start with the one before it... It's disingenuous to say something like that. I mean you could say Halo 4 is based off of the Halo 1 or 2 engine and still technically be accurate, I think.

I thought Halo 3 had a new engine from 2.
 

FyreWulff

Member
I thought Halo 3 had a new engine from 2.

It's been rewritten each time from 1 -> 2 - > 3 -> Reach. The only game that really used a similar codebase was ODST (from Halo 3), and even then I think they bolted some stuff onto that, and made it so it wouldn't impact loading performance if it was installed.
 

Fuchsdh

Member
The whole GameInformer stuff shows how stupid European game sites are or how stupid GameInformer is.

Game 'journalism' is plain awful. It's sad that often the most honest and thorough content is always straight from the developer's mouth. There's only a few publications that actually do thorough work, and fewer still that don't have a broken review system.
 
And Halo 4's composers are:
Neil Davidge and Matt Dunkley
The team working on the music for 343 Industries' upcoming Halo 4 have confirmed that they are moving on from the series' iconic themes and Gregorian chants. They insist, however, that they have nothing but the highest regard for Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell's work.

With the series out of Bungie's hands, and development passed to 343 Industries, it's clear that Halo 4 will be something of a departure from the established series template. That's certainly the case for its soundtrack; Neil Davidge, a former member of Bristol-based trip-hop outfit Massive Attack, is composing the game's music.

Both he and right-hand man Matt Dunkley believe it is time for the series to move on - meaning O'Donnell's iconic compositions are being left behind. In an interview, Dunkley, an orchestrator and arranger whose CV features the likes of Inception, Batman: The Dark Knight and Iron Man, tells us that Microsoft and 343 made a conscious decision to move on, but insists that should not be interepreted as disrespect or distate for the Bungie composer's work.

"We respect absolutely what [O'Donnell] did, and obviously these iconic themes are very close to gamers' hearts," he tells us. "So we all listened to what he'd done, and I think you'll always be on a hiding to nothing if you're trying to pastiche that. Instead, we wanted to take that to another level.

"Hopefully the Halo fans will see that we're being respectful," he says, "but we've also taken it somewhere else, and maybe onto a higher plane. If you're always trying to reference back, you're not creating new things."

Davidge only began working with Massive Attack in 1996, and as such wasn't involved in their laid-back, melodic early work. Instead, his first full-length project with the group was their third album, Mezzanine, which steered their sound in a markedly darker direction. He's worked in film, too, scoring Clash Of The Titans for Warner Bros - but what can he bring to the Halo series? During a visit to his Bristol studio, he tells us of his love of the series, and the recognition that taking on O'Donnell's work head-on would be a mistake.

"Personally, I've loved those games and I've spent a lot of time with them, and gone through each several times," he says. "I enjoy them. They can't be bettered, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't sign on to this to improve on what Bungie and Marty have done, but just to take it somewhere else.

"It's a new journey, it's a new story, it's a new arc, and so I feel like my job is not to revolutionise or reinvent but to continue the evolution, and I have a slightly different voice to those guys.

"I have fresh energy to bring to a project like this. And everybody at 343 has the same intense passion that I have to contunue the story. The passion of the people that are involved in this project makes you want to do your very best. And then go beyond that."



Announced at E3 last June, Halo 4 will be released for Xbox 360 before the year is out. There's a preview of the game in our latest issue, E240, which is on sale today; look out for more from Davidge and Dunkley in a future issue.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/composers-taking-halo-4s-music-another-level
 
Neil Davidge.

calledit00jyfxoox8.gif
 

WJD

Member
Never heard of Dunkley but I'm going to put that down to my own ignorance more than their quality.

The music released so far in the reveal trailer and Vidoc give me more than enough hope that they're well up to the job anyway.
 
So no more Halo CE - 3 main menu style music?

Gonna miss the "Gregorian chants." Added a level of mystery in the actual game for me. Hopefully they have something that tops it :D
 
He did Dark Night and Inception, so would be a good guess that he does do the last Batman movie.

He conducted the music, he didn't compose it. From what I can see on IMDB, he's only composed for a few TV series and TV movies. Davidge has only done a few documentaries and composed a few songs for Massive Attack. It'll definitely be interesting to see how they fare now.
 

TheOddOne

Member
He conducted the music, he didn't compose it. From what I can see on IMDB, he's only composed for a few TV series and TV movies. Davidge has only done a few documentaries and composed a few songs for Massive Attack. It'll definitely be interesting to see how they fare now.
Yeah, I know but it was more an aswer if he is a regular working with Zimmer.
 
So no more Halo CE - 3 main menu style music?

Gonna miss the "Gregorian chants." Added a level of mystery in the actual game for me. Hopefully they have something that tops it :D
They will. Music is important to the story, to the world. Everyone will agree with me on this point. Neil and Matt must create the world in the music again. They have to foresee what the player/the MasterChief will feel when he enters Requiem the first time. The world is new. A world where the players know nothing about. The soundtrack has to have mysterious part from the beginning. I hope the soundtrack will catch the story and the world good and 343i will place it right.. If not, it will be terrible.

As an example for wrong placement, I only have to show this cut scene... It is nearly self-explanatory.
The Halo theme better still be in there. And not some crappy remixed version either.
I just wanted to say that the Halo 4 soundtrack needs part of this track.
 
He did Dark Night and Inception, so would be a good guess that he does do the last Batman movie.
He didn't 'do' them; most of his credits are for orchestration and composing: he takes the themes and work of principal composers (in this case Davidge?), fleshes them out, and gets an orchestra to play them as well as possible.

Edit: beaten somewhat.
 

monome

Member
Those little electronic blippy sounds at the end of the concept trailers are soooo good.

The only regular working partner of Hans Zimmer is the keystroke combination Ctrl + C.
First Strike?

Totally unenecassry spoilered fan fiction :

Halo 4 starts with our favorite Elite zealots introduced in Glasslands.
For them to be around Requiem, it means the place has been discovered and labelled as of importance regarding the Gods relicts they intend to find there.
It's been 4 years since the Infinity has launched, meaning all the Spec-ops missions we'll play happen during the interval between halo 3 and halo 4 and will help 343i shape the state of the universe.
We'll probably fight a lot of covies, but it opens up the possibility of seing what the Forerunners are doing on their own. I hardly the story of the Spartans IV linked to the Precursors story line. Hopefully we get some Forerunner action in there too.
End of Cryptum although mysterious may imply Humanity is fighting against Forerunners already by the time the Chief is back in action.
Having the all Infinity thing taking place during the Chief's cryosleep makes it possible the UNSC ship that crashlands on Requiem is indeed the Infinity but the awesomeness of having The Chief, Cortana, Spartans II, Spartans III and Spartans IV all in the same place is too much to take.

That said, if it is the Infinity it certainly brings the possibility of seeing something else tha Forerunners as ennemies closer as The Didact and Co seems not enough of a threat to justify getting all those guys together.

I happily imagine Halo 4 debut is a fan service to Halo CE players, and we'll rapidly move on to fighting local threats like Forerunners, Sentinels, beasts and infected Everything once it is revealed the Master Builder is here.

His presence makes for a practical excuse to switch from fighting Prometheans to fight off Flood type things while opening up the story to the Precursors plan.

What I can't fit in all this is Cortana's journey which has repeatdly been marked as most important to Halo 4 story.

Sure, it could be the Chief will try to elevate her to Forerunner AI lifespan, with the help of the Librarian. But she doesn't strike me as the biggest computer geek but rather as mother nature, and giving Cortana somekind of Shell is akin to give the Chief a Forerunner armor : probable yet critical.

Anybody wants to join the fiction party?
I have to vent seing how the Enemy reveal is gonna be kept for E3...
 
Top Bottom