Transcript
Speaker: Welcome, welcome, welcome all to Control Alt Rewind and today we are absolutely thrilled to bring you some information in an episode surrounded by, has to be Dan, my favorite game of all time, one that has just
Speaker: been so instrumental in building us as individuals, our competitive nature, our charisma, our teamwork.
Speaker: This is this is so this is Halo three, everyone.
Speaker: And tonight
Speaker: On this episode, we're going to talk about the launch, what made it so absolutely epic.
Speaker: Last episode, we talked a lot about Halo 2 and how it started to create this community and this platform that was just going to be absolutely paramount in creating the platform for success of Halo 3 and one of the biggest games of all time and just launching esports into the absolute stratosphere.
Speaker: As always, joined by my co-host, Dan.
Speaker: Welcome, Dan.
Speaker: And of course, I'm Bradley Steinbach.
Speaker: Hello, everyone.
Speaker: So, yeah, Halo 3.
Speaker: Let's just jump right in.
Speaker: Where do we start?
Speaker: Where do we start on this one?
Speaker: My brain's just, you know, it's just firing on all cylinders.
Speaker: You can go this way, you can go that way.
Speaker: I have so much to talk about.
Speaker: My heart's pounding thinking about it.
Speaker: Like, it's...
Speaker: This is truly for us and so many like us.
Speaker: And I just hope that Dan, I just hope this episode gets out to more people that have played this game.
Speaker: There's so many out there and I hope we can really strum on some nostalgia chords here.
Speaker: This, and we've got a couple of episodes to cover Halo 3 because it was so interesting.
Speaker: It was so epic and instrumental in our life.
Speaker: This game came out in September 07.
Speaker: Lay the groundwork, Dan, and then I'll get into the night of the release.
Speaker: Yeah, so Halo 3 is coming out.
Speaker: We're still in high school.
Speaker: Bradley's working at Subway.
Speaker: I was not working anywhere.
Speaker: So midnight release, EV games.
Speaker: Brad's closing subway, right?
Speaker: So I'm there in line.
Speaker: The line's pretty huge because I don't know which one's bigger, but both were pretty huge launches, Halo 2 and Halo 3.
Speaker: and halo 3s was bigger though it was bigger uh because all of the fans that were created from halo 1 created from halo 2 and then halo 3 the the even before this dan like the marketing campaign for halo 3 i i do not i i truly do not believe there has been a game that has to to date that has had the marketing budget to create videos like the one that you'll see behind me throughout this episode just
Speaker: absolutely epic cinema cinematics and story driven marketing campaign sorry i interrupted dan keep going yeah so yeah going to this launch you know you go you go you like start waiting in line at like 8 p.m you think you're there early enough but you're still you're you're far back and it's cold and like it can be cold in september so yeah it was cold it was cool so i was
Speaker: I was working at Subway at the time as a sandwich artist, and I remember I h ad a closing shift, which I wasn't too thrilled about because closed technically was midnight.
Speaker: Don't tell my old boss, but I was definitely, I was a good employee all the time, except for tonight was very important.
Speaker: So I had to sneakily close up shop a little bit early in order for me to race down the
Speaker: Dan was obviously waiting for me in line.
Speaker: I raced down.
Speaker: We had our driver's license at this point.
Speaker: I would have just had my license to drive like a couple of weeks before, for sure.
Speaker: So I flew down.
Speaker: I was actually, I remember I was pissed because I was surprised how far back in the line Dan was.
Speaker: I was like, when did you get here, Dan?
Speaker: I wanted to be the first one to get this game.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: I remember that.
Speaker: I was upset about it.
Speaker: We'd obviously pre-ordered, so we were guaranteed a copy.
Speaker: So I'd pre-ordered the legendary edition.
Speaker: The Giga edition.
Speaker: And we were disappointed that the Master Chief helmet wasn't life-size.
Speaker: You couldn't put it on.
Speaker: You couldn't put it on.
Speaker: It was unbelievable.
Speaker: I just had to sit there with the game in it.
Speaker: But that's another story.
Speaker: So I remember I arrived.
Speaker: Dan was in line with our other friend Dylan.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Aaron and yeah, there was some other guys from our hometown that we knew of.
Speaker: And this was huge.
Speaker: So there's a huge lineup.
Speaker: There would have been what 100 people by the by midnight there at least in delay.
Speaker: Yeah, at least in a small city.
Speaker: Oh yeah, in our tiny city.
Speaker: There was lines around the world that were way bigger than ours.
Speaker: Oh yeah, like New York.
Speaker: It was huge.
Speaker: You're there for like a week.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, just last video.
Speaker: Last video we discussed, you know, the cultural impact, social impact of Halo 2.
Speaker: So by this time, Halo 3...
Speaker: everyone in our high school was playing it pretty much.
Speaker: We had so many friends to meet at the line.
Speaker: We see so many people we know.
Speaker: We're just getting like, you know, everyone's just so hyped.
Speaker: We're like getting Halo.
Speaker: And the first thing Brad wants to do, once we got, I think he got the strategy guide too.
Speaker: So we waited in line.
Speaker: We wanted to be first because we wanted to get home as fast as possible.
Speaker: But, you know, it didn't take too long, though.
Speaker: Maybe like 30 minutes.
Speaker: I think we waited for about 30 minutes before we physically grabbed copies.
Speaker: I felt like it was about 14 hours.
Speaker: I wanted to be...
Speaker: at home playing this game.
Speaker: I remember as well.
Speaker: So we physically got our copies and then Dylan, our friend was like, oh, can you drive me home beforehand?
Speaker: And I don't know if you remember this, Dan, but I remember it like it was yesterday because I was like, I was pissed about that because I went home and I literally said to Dylan as he was leaving, I said, Dylan, I want to be the first one to play this.
Speaker: So you better not turn on your game before I get home.
Speaker: I was crazy at this time about that.
Speaker: I was insane about the Halo lore.
Speaker: And I just, yeah, it was just, it was such a important night for us.
Speaker: But anyways, yeah, keep going, Dan.
Speaker: So we, we drop Dylan off.
Speaker: We go back to my house.
Speaker: This is a school night, by the way.
Speaker: This is like Tuesday night.
Speaker: Yeah, it comes out on some stupid school weekday.
Speaker: And we convinced some other friends because we're going back to his place.
Speaker: We're playing Halo.
Speaker: We don't care about anything else.
Speaker: We're pulling an all-nighter as well.
Speaker: There's no question we're sleeping.
Speaker: And I'm like feeling the room.
Speaker: I'm talking to Brad.
Speaker: I'm like, so should we just jump into multiplayer?
Speaker: Because we played the beta and all that stuff.
Speaker: The man was not having any of it.
Speaker: We played one game of multiplayer, I think.
Speaker: So he compromised.
Speaker: He compromised a bit.
Speaker: We did like a social slayer or something.
Speaker: And we had two other friends.
Speaker: We made them stay up all night.
Speaker: We beat it before school the next day.
Speaker: And I just remember...
Speaker: It was almost school time.
Speaker: We were all four.
Speaker: You know, doing the ghosts.
Speaker: Doing the ghosts.
Speaker: The final mission of Halo 3.
Speaker: Super X. It was like super hype.
Speaker: So awesome.
Speaker: And yeah, we get to school.
Speaker: We're so dead.
Speaker: Obviously.
Speaker: We played it straight.
Speaker: So we would have started playing it.
Speaker: Let's say we started the campaign at 1 in the morning.
Speaker: This is legendary difficulty.
Speaker: There's four people.
Speaker: We went straight in.
Speaker: Dan stays at my house we're sitting next to each other this is the first time we've like Halo's ever had four player co-op so I was just beyond we were beyond jacked up about this so I make I force us all to play legendary and we I actually didn't expect us to beat it I was just so I just wanted to get through as much as we sort of could and enjoy it and then we'd play again the next night
Speaker: At 7 o'clock, we're on the final mission, and we need to be schooled by whatever it was, 8 o'clock.
Speaker: So I'm just like, no, everybody stay.
Speaker: We're beating this.
Speaker: I remember we did it a couple of times in a row, and I'm like, no, we're going to do this.
Speaker: We're going to do this.
Speaker: We're going to school soon.
Speaker: We need to beat the game before we get to school.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: And yeah, we ended up doing that.
Speaker: It was epic.
Speaker: We all talked about it the next day.
Speaker: Everyone's like, you guys are dead.
Speaker: No one believed us at school.
Speaker: We got to school the next day.
Speaker: We were telling everyone we, oh yeah, we just, we just beat it.
Speaker: We just beat everyone at the school is playing the game at this time.
Speaker: It's the talk of the town and Dan and I are rolling in.
Speaker: Oh yeah, we just beat it on legendary.
Speaker: It's done.
Speaker: We beat the game.
Speaker: They're like, no, you didn't.
Speaker: It just came out.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So we talked about it.
Speaker: We tried all the new weapons.
Speaker: You know, it was a really fun experience.
Speaker: And then at this point as well, we both had gamer tags.
Speaker: And we took that Cool Cat concept, right?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We just took the cat part.
Speaker: I'm not sure.
Speaker: I think Bradley thought of this.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he took like half of his last name and added Cat, K-A-T.
Speaker: Cool cat is out the door.
Speaker: That was gone.
Speaker: We kept the cat part and we just made it Stein cat.
Speaker: And then the natural thing for obviously with the surname of Napper, it was Napcat.
Speaker: So it was Steincat and Napcat.
Speaker: Those were the originals.
Speaker: And from there, somehow our influence spread throughout our small town.
Speaker: And there was cats joining us everywhere.
Speaker: Grime cat, Gill cat.
Speaker: Glen cat, Noel cat.
Speaker: Green cat.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: There's every cat.
Speaker: Everyone was cat.
Speaker: Most nine out of 10 people that played Xbox live in the town of Brockville was their certain, the start of their surname plus cat.
Speaker: And we like the cat clan.
Speaker: The Brockville cat clan.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: post launch at some stage, I don't even remember what, when we would have slept the next time because we went to school, but then obviously schools up where, where are we going?
Speaker: We're going to multiplayer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I don't know when we would have slept, but I just know that there wouldn't have been a lot of sleeping in the coming days, weeks, months.
Speaker: And we obviously having campaign behind us, legendary difficulty behind us, I got to appease
Speaker: the story, the lore, and now it's time for the greatest competitive online game to ever.
Speaker: And we call it like, it's the race to level 50.
Speaker: Level 50 is the highest level you can get in Halo.
Speaker: And now it's all about just getting that level 50.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was such a great experience.
Speaker: Like this is, you know, Halo 2 had the MLG scene, but I didn't really follow that.
Speaker: But Halo 3, Halo 3, I was in from the start.
Speaker: like triggers down, you know, neighbor, my favorite player at the time, even though he was just known for not talking and calling him, which is, you know, really bad.
Speaker: Um, you have like triggers down instinct, final boss, of course, carbon, carbon.
Speaker: Um, I, I can think of the hype.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: It's right.
Speaker: We can believe the hype.
Speaker: Yeah, we knew all the teams.
Speaker: We followed it.
Speaker: We watched it when it was on.
Speaker: I think they had like T squared, like Dr. Pepper or Dr. Pepper.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is like, everything we said before, th is is taking it to the stratosphere with esports.
Speaker: Again, we acknowledge that there was esports with like CSGO and Counter-Strike, there was esports.
Speaker: But like I said before in an earlier episode, accessibility to PC gaming, you're talking like less than a percentage of the population.
Speaker: Everyone had consoles.
Speaker: The rest of the population, which was the other 99% of gamers,
Speaker: had consoles because no one could afford a PC game.
Speaker: So yes, there was, there was, uh, e-sports, but this is, this took it to the stratosphere.
Speaker: This ESPN, it was sponsored by ESPN.
Speaker: There was, um, yeah, T squared was a, was a player in the scene and he was featured on Dr. Pepper bottles.
Speaker: This was insane.
Speaker: It was huge.
Speaker: Um, and yeah,
Speaker: I remember at the beginning though, Dan, when Halo 3 first came out, it wasn't, there wasn't like an MLG game type.
Speaker: First, there was still a lot of popularity to stem from just being the multiplayer game in a similar format to Halo 2.
Speaker: But literally, so every time you logged into Halo 3,
Speaker: you were greeted by how many people were playing the game.
Speaker: I remember on launch night, there was over a million concurrent players that you could see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This time to have a million concurrent players, you are talking about nowhere.
Speaker: No game was even close to that.
Speaker: Like this was...
Speaker: Every time you logged in, so that was after that was opening night, but then every time you logged in after that, it was like 700,000, 800,000.
Speaker: This is like Baldur's Gate three, obviously at the moment you're getting these kind of concurrent players that that level at this time was, I cannot stress it non-existent anywhere else.
Speaker: Yeah, it completely changed the game and
Speaker: I remember playing it until there was like 500 concurrent users.
Speaker: Like the whole timeline.
Speaker: And we would play a lot of social when we're messing around.
Speaker: Brad has this insane esoteric ability.
Speaker: Like, you know, we're young, we drink and stuff like that.
Speaker: The man could like...
Speaker: He would wake up, we would wake up and he would have like the greatest clips, like Kiltacular.
Speaker: Blackout drunk, very intoxicated.
Speaker: And there's a superpower that I possess that I can turn up my... Yeah, look, my mind could focus in like, it was like subconsciously, it could focus on the game.
Speaker: And yeah, so it was incredible.
Speaker: Sorry, I interrupted.
Speaker: Yeah, I just wanted to say, like you can continue on, is, like I just said, Halo 3, it had a clip system.
Speaker: Nah, that's so good.
Speaker: Yeah, so Halo 2 didn't have that.
Speaker: So it saved your recent games.
Speaker: You could go back and watch it.
Speaker: Yeah, theater mode.
Speaker: You could watch it.
Speaker: And yeah, we, we would like wake up in the morning, watch some of the gameplay.
Speaker: I'm just dead or I'm just standing there, not even moving.
Speaker: And then you look at his screen, it's like, kill Taka.
Speaker: I'm like, how did you do that?
Speaker: How is that even possible?
Speaker: It would blow my mind.
Speaker: So yeah, another, uh, another actually cool feature of Hill 3.
Speaker: forge mode that really changed the game too creativity uh puzzle maps you know for forge was another again i'll use it's a it's a pun but it was a community builder uh and and the community of creativity that stem from being able to interactively build maps for the game and even interactively build them together you could actually play yeah you could
Speaker: I never actually did that when you could do like big team battle and you could like spawn in vehicles.
Speaker: I never did that.
Speaker: Yeah, we never built anything.
Speaker: No, we weren't very creative.
Speaker: I'm just not creative in real life.
Speaker: I wasn't creative in Halo, but we loved using people's maps to do creative things.
Speaker: There was maps that like platform it, like they'd bring out platforming.
Speaker: Dan loved obviously platforming.
Speaker: I love the jump maps.
Speaker: And it would turn turn the game into anything.
Speaker: It wasn't just a first person shooter anymore.
Speaker: It was just sharing different experiences in the community and like duck hunters simulations.
Speaker: It was just manipulating the game in different ways that has never been seen before.
Speaker: And this was all like at launch as well.
Speaker: The game was so robust.
Speaker: It was incredible, Dan.
Speaker: Yeah, so, and just to add on to that whole community thing, so what was cool about Halo 3, like, your profiles, you'd have, like, your top six screenshots.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And you'd see things, you'd see so many people would have things like, my nades have placement, and they have, like, a grenade with wings on it.
Speaker: Just a bunch of crazy stuff, and it's funny stuff like that, which, you know, added that little extra thing.
Speaker: And there was also a tab for your...
Speaker: personality.
Speaker: What was it your top clips?
Speaker: Like, I don't know how many I don't remember clips and your top and your top screenshot.
Speaker: Yeah, I think you had a choice like you could you had just oh, yeah, six slots and you can you can either do photos.
Speaker: You want it?
Speaker: It's a mix.
Speaker: You can put whatever you want photos or videos.
Speaker: Um, yeah, that was just such a cool feature.
Speaker: So like someone destroys you or, you know, you just want to go like, you know, check out their clips, see how good they are.
Speaker: You know, you could just download like someone else's clips, like your friend, you know, in your high school, you play a lot.
Speaker: He's like, check this out.
Speaker: And, you know, that really helped like making montages and stuff like that.
Speaker: So they really upped the features and and that along with forge mode, you know, playing zombies or which, you know, that's actually pretty OK sometimes.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: like zombies.
Speaker: There's this game type called Cops and Robbers I never played, but I don't know.
Speaker: It seemed very popular, if you know what I mean.
Speaker: And then what was the 1v1 BR?
Speaker: about oh it'd just be our practice be our octagon practice octagon there it is yeah and we would we would play that a lot and uh once that finally came out and it was just so fun like having different ways to play the game rather than like you know the bungee way like having a community ways to play it really opened it up
Speaker: and made the replayability of a skyrocket.
Speaker: Yeah, hugely.
Speaker: And look, I'm going to use a word because it's a word that I actually saw on a YouTube video recently talking about Baldur's Gate and how good the launch was.
Speaker: And the word was feature complete.
Speaker: And I can't remember the streamer right now.
Speaker: I can put it in the footnotes.
Speaker: But he said about Baldur's Gate that
Speaker: all the features and more were there at launch.
Speaker: It was feature complete.
Speaker: And this game was beyond feature complete.
Speaker: Like it had everything as promised and then way more that we never imagined possible.
Speaker: Way more.
Speaker: Like it was so feature complete at launch that it was, that's what, it just made everyone...
Speaker: all around the world talk about it and want to be involved with it and buy an xbox 360 it was just so incredible to have that that connection to so many people and like dan said that like the feet the the theater mode and everything that just brought another personality element to it so you're starting to you're starting to have a digital personality and we would we would have clips about us doing our best like
Speaker: hardcore MLG clips, but other people would just do more social clips if they weren't as into the MLG scene.
Speaker: There was different layers to the game.
Speaker: There was the competitive side that we had.
Speaker: I hated losing way more than I loved winning.
Speaker: I couldn't stand losing a game of Halo.
Speaker: It wrought my soul when I'd do it.
Speaker: I was very sweaty, as they call us nowadays.
Speaker: But there was different layers of it.
Speaker: There were so many people that loved
Speaker: There's way more people that love the social element of playing the game, the social slayers and the multi-teams.
Speaker: And I loved all of that as well, but I also love to win.
Speaker: And even when Dan and I were sitting around drinking, getting drunk in blackout, I didn't like to lose.
Speaker: I had to turn on my superpower.
Speaker: Yeah, he's very good at that.
Speaker: And just kind of as a funny memory we have,
Speaker: which we'll never forget.
Speaker: And it's just me losing a game on high ground.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: I don't like to talk about it.
Speaker: I know you take this one.
Speaker: So, yes, on that topic of me being extremely competitive, I would even be, like, at that time as well, Dan... My friends are bad.
Speaker: Yeah, and I was still definitely better than you at that time, Dan.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So I didn't like anyone... In our party.
Speaker: I didn't like anyone being an anchor or anything.
Speaker: And I remember...
Speaker: It was just me and you in this game.
Speaker: And yes, it was a game on high ground.
Speaker: And I was getting close to the 50.
Speaker: The 50 had eluded me longer than it should have as well, getting a 50 in Team Slayer.
Speaker: And so the score is 49 to 49 out of 50.
Speaker: 50 also was how many kills you needed to win the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dan had what would be known as a 1v1.
Speaker: Dan also had overshield, which was double the extra shield capacity that you typically had.
Speaker: So essentially it was at least one kill, if not two kills that you're trying to get out of it guaranteed.
Speaker: And I turned to Dan because I saw what was happening.
Speaker: And I said, Dan, you have to win this fight.
Speaker: This is all happening within a very short period of time.
Speaker: You're talking about seconds, milliseconds of a game.
Speaker: And I turned to Dan, Dan, you need to win this fight.
Speaker: And Dan, it was such a joke.
Speaker: You've never seen such a joke in all of your days.
Speaker: And I just remember thinking, Dan, fuck.
Speaker: Like, he didn't even roast me.
Speaker: Usually he roasts.
Speaker: It was just like a moment of silence.
Speaker: I don't know if I've even recovered from that yet.
Speaker: I don't know if I've recovered from it ever.
Speaker: It was a heartbreaker for me.
Speaker: And look, I think we should leave it at that, Dan, because we have so much more to cover.
Speaker: That's an unbelievable story, and I can't wait to share more.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: winning competitive aspect to our life that stemmed from this, the charisma, the communication, Halo 3 becoming basically like a game of basketball, the level of communication that we'd go through to win games.
Speaker: I can't wait to get into all of that, but that's probably enough to sign off now.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So thanks for watching, everyone, and we'll catch you on the next one.
Speaker: Thanks for watching.
Speaker: Take care.
