GDC-3.0-The Design of New Enemies for Halo 4

by Scott Warner ( Lead Game Designer - 343 Industries )

There was a 'fatigue' from fighting the Covenant in every Halo game so far.
Where was the '30 seconds of Fun'?

• Find this from everything from Halo to Halo Reach.
• Apply it to the Prometheans in Halo 4!

Foundations:

• Every alien race is unique in Gameplay, Visual Silhouette, and Personality.
• Enemies support experimentation (Halo is an open sandbox game).
• There's a Leader/Minion hierarchy.
• Some are easy to dispatch, others are real conflicts when encountered.
• There are 'minibosses' with a squad/squad leader.
• The Halo Encounter must exist for Prometheans.
• Classically, it's Plan, Take by Surprise, Beat Back, Break Them, Mop-up, and Repeat.
• Enemy characters (Leaders) raise or lower Minion moral and action.
• The Halo approach to difficulty is Smarter-Faster-Stronger.
• Higher difficulty only speeds-up gameplay; it doesn't change it fundamentally.
• PROMETHEANS MUST USE EXISTING CONTENT CREATION TOOLS!

The Gold Triangle: Shoot - Hit - Throw

Promethean Inspirations:

• Voltron
• Forerunners are involved beyond anything else in the galaxy.
• Adaption of form to fit events and environments.
• T1000
• They can take any form, but stay relatively humanoid.
• The Thing
• Cranium Rats
• Units are smarter the more there are.

Early Enemy Goals:

• There should be a combination of 'familiar' and 'alien'.
• They cooperate with each other to defeat threats.
• They adapt their form and the environment.

The Knight is something easily understood and relate-able.

The Crawler (Pawn) started as a biped.

The Watcher (Bishop) was wanted to be something like a Necromancer from Diablo; a game changer.

Other enemies were Rooks, Queens, and Kings, all of which are likely to be included in future releases.

Watcher Prototyping:

• Had the abilities of a shield, resurrection, deflection, spawning, focus fire, physics impulse, a 'junk attack', etc.
• From focus fire on, players just didn't get what the abilities did.

Knight Prototyping:

• They used squad tactics in a combination of alien and human strategy.
• Use cover like a human, but use a bound move like a Metroid ball.
• Enter and exit battle through the environment.
• Dismemberment is shown when damaged, answering 'am I damaging this thing or not?'
• Have a deadly melee attack!

Problem: Pipeline.

• Pipeling rewriting for Maya was a pain.

Solutions:

• Bring in more engineering staff.
• Reduce the scope, cutting the Rook, Queen, and King enemy types.

Problem: Who are they, the Prometheans?

• They were not fleshed-out with gameplay features seeming to be random.

Solution:

• Center everything around the Knight.
• Finally say 'this is it' and drop some features.

Problem: Pawn

• The team didn't like the biped design because it felt like the Covenant.

Solution:

• Walk on walls as a quadruped!

Post Mortem Wrongs:

• Early team communication
• Long absence of high-level vision
• Watcher encourages one-dimensional solutions
• Prometheans are devoid of emotion
• Forerunners are like bullet-sponges

Post Mortem Rights:

• Early gameplay contraints and a foundation
• Enemies players enjoy
• Creating different enemies from either the Covenant or Flood
• Team orientation

// Next: Kanban-How To Make Your Production Scream.