Transcript
Speaker: A very warm welcome back, everyone.
Speaker: And Dan, I am joined by, obviously, as I always am, my co-host, Dan Knapper.
Speaker: I am Bradley Steinbach.
Speaker: Welcome to Control-Alt-Rewind.
Speaker: And today we are...
Speaker: Very excited.
Speaker: We've got more content to share with regards to Halo.
Speaker: We have so much to share, as many of those that know us will know.
Speaker: Today, we're going to unpack how did this become such a mass movement globally?
Speaker: This was obviously a genre-defining game, a genre-defining experience, and ultimately a
Speaker: like a lifestyle for so many people all around the world.
Speaker: This is one of the most popular games.
Speaker: So obviously we have a lot of content to share.
Speaker: And last time in episode 4.1, we touched on obviously us and just getting exposed to the multiplayer aspect of it.
Speaker: I know we brushed over a lot of topics, but I want to dive in to start at least in talking about the other side of it, which was the
Speaker: we call it the single player campaign, but it was also a really good co-op experience.
Speaker: And that obviously led to more people being able to experience how special this game was, even people that obviously didn't have internet.
Speaker: As we know, lots of people just like you, as you mentioned, didn't have internet at this time.
Speaker: So yeah, your take, Dan, over to you.
Speaker: Yeah, so the Halo campaign, I'm just going to give a brief starting point of Halo 1.
Speaker: I played that after Halo 2, actually.
Speaker: So Halo 2 was the first one that we did.
Speaker: But Halo 1, it did have... Did it have four-player co-op on that one?
Speaker: No, two-player co-op on Halo 2.
Speaker: Yeah, two-player.
Speaker: Four-player committed Halo 3.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what was so groundbreaking about the Halo 1 campaign was it was, it wasn't open world, but some of the levels were kind of open world and it just blew everyone away.
Speaker: It completely changed how first person shooters were made for consoles.
Speaker: The controls were awesome.
Speaker: Like before that, you just had like Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, all that stuff, which, you know, the controls aren't very good in that, but yeah.
Speaker: So Halo came out, it had like a near perfect control,
Speaker: controls and movement and all that.
Speaker: And it's actually kind of what saved the Xbox because somehow this game just became a huge hit.
Speaker: So everyone was just buying Xboxes and they just had Halo.
Speaker: Everyone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They just bought us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just for the one game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The campaign was actually pretty good.
Speaker: A little basic, you know, their first game, Bungie.
Speaker: I think originally it was going to be a PC game, but then Microsoft was like, we want that.
Speaker: It was going to be third person too, actually.
Speaker: But Microsoft bought them.
Speaker: They revamped it.
Speaker: They changed some stuff.
Speaker: You know, they made a first person, which was, you know, the right choice, obviously.
Speaker: And yeah, it just exploded.
Speaker: Like everyone's like, it was like a system seller.
Speaker: It was a system seller for sure.
Speaker: And just to add to that, Dan, something you may not even know is the IP for this game was made by some random developer in the basement of Apple, believe it or not.
Speaker: This was meant to be a Macintosh game.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: And they sold it for paper towel to Microsoft.
Speaker: So this was, yeah.
Speaker: And just to add to what you said before,
Speaker: The reason this was genre defining, the keyword here was sandbox and the sandbox that Bungie built with these games.
Speaker: I think we might have used the terminology last time with the multiplayer, the sandbox, the variety.
Speaker: You play the game and yes, it is an open world, but it is so close to it.
Speaker: Because the way you interact with it, the choices that you make as in, do we want to go on foot?
Speaker: Do we want to go in a warthog, which is the all-terrain vehicle with a turret on the back?
Speaker: Or do we want to go in a wraith, a tank, a scorpion, or a banshee, or any variety of them?
Speaker: And you just have all of these options.
Speaker: Do we want to be stealthy?
Speaker: Do we want to use sniper rifles?
Speaker: This is the beginning of...
Speaker: what is currently now in 2023, a sand, like games must have a sandbox or there's no variety.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I add to that, Dan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically every game now, you know, it's like all open world.
Speaker: People are actually, I think are getting kind of sick of open world these days.
Speaker: Every game has it.
Speaker: There's always 8,000 collectibles that you don't want to do for, for like a 10 point achievement.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: And, but just to go back to Halo here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What made the campaign so great as well is like it had personality, like even the enemies, the grunts would talk to each other and,
Speaker: It was just charming.
Speaker: The grunts would talk to the elites, and they'd scream if you'd throw a sticky at them.
Speaker: And so there was just a lot of attention to detail.
Speaker: A bunch of guns, and yeah, like you said, the vehicles.
Speaker: And it was just a really fun experience, because obviously online gaming wasn't that popular yet.
Speaker: when Halo 1 came out.
Speaker: So this is like the time of couch co-op still like prime couch.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, go ahead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like there was this, the, some of them are famous maps, like assault on the control room that was in Halo one.
Speaker: And yeah, that was, I remember at the time, like they, well, in gaming, there's this comment called a water cooler chat, which is when you go to work or you go to school and you're standing around the water cool and you're discussing something and the assault on the control room, which was the snow level for those that
Speaker: don't remember the snow level with all the vehicles now you remember i'm sure uh and that that mission could be done in so many different ways this was like i just remember as a kid launching into that mission and replaying it because i would just literally have a smile on my face knowing that i was going to be playing it it was just one of the one of the greatest missions it was a combination of
Speaker: There was a CQC close quarter combat that you could be doing in stealth.
Speaker: There was a stealth aspect to it.
Speaker: And then there was this, it would open right up and you had the choice to go in Scorpion, Warthog, Ghost.
Speaker: It was just, there was another...
Speaker: another map in Halo 2, another mission, I think it was number two in Halo 2, where you go across the bridge when you're going to kill the Scorpion.
Speaker: Sorry, the giant spider, forget the name of it.
Speaker: The Scarab.
Speaker: The Scarab, yeah.
Speaker: When you're going to take down the Scarab for the first time.
Speaker: Like, these are just absolute genre-defining missions.
Speaker: Yeah, like that kind of stuff was so cool.
Speaker: It's like, how do you take this thing down?
Speaker: You got to find a way up.
Speaker: You got to jump in.
Speaker: You got to destroy the controls and yeah, all that fun stuff.
Speaker: So yeah, they had a lot of really good set pieces.
Speaker: Like the final mission of Halo 1.
Speaker: It was epic.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: How good is that?
Speaker: yeah so for those for those that don't know in halo hail well i mean they replicated it in a lot of the halos but yeah they just kept doing yeah they just yeah in halo one you're in a warthog which is the vehicle i mentioned before you're with your your teammate who's in the turret and you're driving and
Speaker: The maps, it's like a Todd Howard action sequence.
Speaker: It's just exploding parts of the bridge that you're on.
Speaker: You're flying through tunnels in your Warthog, hitting huge ramps and jumping and getting attacked by every enemy in the game.
Speaker: The music is, so Marty O'Donnell was the creator of all the music of most of the Halos, at least all of the old ones that we're talking about with Bungie.
Speaker: And the music was, this is another element to it, Dan, that tied this community together.
Speaker: The music in these games, the intro music that played on the intro behind me here, this is nostalgia at its absolute finest.
Speaker: The music was incredible.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I still like hum it to myself in my head, like to this day.
Speaker: Watching this, I think of it.
Speaker: A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, back to Halo campaign.
Speaker: So I actually have a kind of an interesting take, kind of a bad take.
Speaker: Brad, we'll go into his take a little later here.
Speaker: He loved the lore.
Speaker: He had all the books.
Speaker: You know, he was just right into it.
Speaker: And I just love the mechanics and controls of the game.
Speaker: So I didn't care what we were doing in the campaign.
Speaker: I didn't care what the story was.
Speaker: I didn't want to know anything about it.
Speaker: But that's okay.
Speaker: I still love the campaign.
Speaker: So we would play co-op campaign when Xbox Live was down or if we're just like, sometimes you get a little burnt out.
Speaker: You need a day or two break, come to Halo and
Speaker: Some of my best memories are doing that.
Speaker: Especially on Legendary, when we're just going to the first level, we have plasma pistols killing the elites in that Bay Area, if you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: A bunch of the ships coming through the, I don't know what to call it, the barrier.
Speaker: and they land they drop off a bunch of elites the only thing you can really do every gun sucks against the elites except every gun sucks the new combo so um campaign was pretty fun for that actually like we of course we did it on legendary because you know that's kind of what for those for those that know and for those that don't know so nor like there's obviously difficulty levels to every video game normal uh there's easy normal then heroic is sort of
Speaker: Hardish, but sort of normal for Halo.
Speaker: And then Legendary is very, very hard.
Speaker: And Halo 2 was completely infamous for having the hardest campaign.
Speaker: And Halo 2's Legendary difficulty was... It was so, so, so hard to do, especially solo.
Speaker: And it was...
Speaker: slightly easier to do co-op because you could have your teammate could have dual plasma pistols which was the only basically the only you could shoot you could shoot four rockets at at the basic like elite in the game and it does nothing you shoot snipers it does nothing so it's only the the noob combo sorry i interrupted them
Speaker: I know, that's a great addition.
Speaker: Yeah, so you just had to find the like the strategies to take each enemies and you know, you get the checkpoints and all that.
Speaker: And if you don't have the right guns, it could get a little area, you could usually figure it out the checkpoints are usually aren't too bad.
Speaker: And you can usually make your way through it.
Speaker: And, you know, it was just a great experience.
Speaker: And just by word of mouth, like Halo 2, the graphics of Halo 2, absolutely demolished Halo 1.
Speaker: Like, it was insane.
Speaker: I guess the difference of Halo 2, like they introduced dual wielding, okay?
Speaker: So now you can have your favorite combos, like dual needlers, needler handgun, plasma pistol, plasma, the rifle, whatever.
Speaker: Pretty much all that.
Speaker: But yeah, like the memories are just, you know, how should I put it?
Speaker: It's just something that can't be replaced, I guess.
Speaker: And it won't happen again, really, because, you know, you're just sitting there with like one of your best friends or your best friend.
Speaker: And you're just going on this journey through it together.
Speaker: And he plays Elite.
Speaker: He plays Master Chief.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you're saving uh captain keys i believe in yes yeah and most of like you're still fighting a lot of the flood i believe in halo 2 yeah or was that was that three yeah the flood was in two as well as in most of the games it's a lot in one and i know it's a lot in three so maybe it's not so much into two
Speaker: more no it is you you're forgetting you're forgetting it as the arbiter and the the maps that you fight the so you go in the flood missions there's three missions in i think it's around mission seven eight nine they're very difficult flood missions they're really and that's when you play as the arbiter um who's an elite oh yeah commander keys
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, I know.
Speaker: I know those.
Speaker: Those are the hardest flood missions.
Speaker: They're so, so, so, so hard.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the flood is like a like a scourge of the universe that essentially the Halo rings are actually, spoiler alert, super weapons to basically wipe out all the
Speaker: life in the galaxy and they're the only weapon against the flood essentially.
Speaker: So yeah, my take is definitely different to Dan's on the campaigns.
Speaker: I was just your classic Halo nerd through and through, knew most of the lore.
Speaker: I start to forget a little bit about it now, but back in the day I was very switched on with it all and I would be
Speaker: I would make a point to play the campaigns before I played multiplayer and I would sort of force Dan to do it as well as they came out.
Speaker: So I was, I would replay the campaign on my own solo co-op, everything.
Speaker: I just, I was obsessed with the whole story, the lore, but very similar to like to other video games, like Legend of Zelda, the,
Speaker: the music and the soundtrack were something that tied your emotions to the game, just like exploring the sandboxes for the first time.
Speaker: Like this is the stuff of true emotional grab that you can get from like a really good, it's on a different level.
Speaker: Like those that don't know as much about gaming, like when you read a book, obviously you can get sucked into that book.
Speaker: You can start to really get familiarity with the characters.
Speaker: But when you have a medium like gaming where you've got this unbelievable soundtrack, you've got visually striking visuals in front of you, and then you also get to share that with your best friends, whether it's online or this person sitting right next to you.
Speaker: That is what Dan means.
Speaker: It just cannot be replicated.
Speaker: You can't sit next to someone and sort of read a book with them and be on the same journey with them.
Speaker: And I'm a huge book reader.
Speaker: I love reading books.
Speaker: I'm not saying that it's – you can share a movie with someone.
Speaker: But to actually experience and play the game with someone right next to you, like that, it was so –
Speaker: It felt so immersive because of the graphics at the time, especially on console.
Speaker: Even PC, these graphics were so, so, so ahead of their time.
Speaker: PCs weren't that good back then, even.
Speaker: They weren't that good.
Speaker: There were some okay ones, but you're talking about such, there's still such a small percentage of people that can play PC gaming.
Speaker: That number has gone up hugely in the last few years, that percentage of PC gamers.
Speaker: But back then, there was no way we could afford one.
Speaker: Like, it wasn't even on, like, this spectrum of let's get a PC.
Speaker: It was, no, how do we get the next console to play these games?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: And actually, I'm not even sure, like, I like PC building now is easy.
Speaker: I'm not sure it was just as easy.
Speaker: No, it wasn't.
Speaker: 15 years ago, I think it was still pretty, like pretty, not
Speaker: complicated but you just kind of have to know way more you needed to know more there wasn't you yeah we've talked about this before then there wasn't there wasn't like youtube wasn't a thing back then like we're talking years ago there wasn't
Speaker: there wasn't guides to do things back then.
Speaker: It was like exploring, like you had to know, like you had to be educated if you were going to be building a computer.
Speaker: You needed to know about the parts and what they did and how they spoke to each other.
Speaker: So just accessibility for PC gaming was just so, so, so rare.
Speaker: Is there anything else you wanted to add about the campaign?
Speaker: Yes, yes, there is.
Speaker: Just going back to the graphics, and honestly, you touched upon the sound, you were mostly talking about the music, but the gun sounds and all of that, that was perfect.
Speaker: They still haven't really changed that.
Speaker: So they just hit it out of the park.
Speaker: The VR sounds good, plasma pistol, plasma rifle, just the ambience of some of the missions, that all sounds great.
Speaker: Just to go back to that though, like PlayStation 2, what did that have?
Speaker: That looked anything like this?
Speaker: Yeah, nothing.
Speaker: It wasn't even close.
Speaker: It wasn't even close.
Speaker: Like, yeah, Grand Theft Auto is cool, and I love that game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I don't know.
Speaker: I think the Halo 2 graphics absolutely destroy it.
Speaker: That's just my opinion.
Speaker: They were incredible.
Speaker: Yeah, they were pushing this hardware.
Speaker: Very, very, very hard at this time.
Speaker: It was towards, yeah, it was like it was middle to end of the Xbox, like the original Xbox's lifespan.
Speaker: It didn't, did it come out?
Speaker: No, it didn't come out as obviously a launch game because that was Halo 1 was a launch title with the Xbox.
Speaker: So this is on the same platform that Halo 1 was on, but it was unbelievably different.
Speaker: And this, yeah, and I guess as a headline, like this,
Speaker: So we have the music, we have the gameplay, which Dan's talked a ton about.
Speaker: I've talked about the music, the graphics, and then the sandbox.
Speaker: This is what started to build this community.
Speaker: So this is a world touching community of people that were obsessed with
Speaker: this game and emotionally connected to this game because of the experiences that it was offering us and our friends.
Speaker: So we obviously touched on the last time a lot about the multiplayer aspect, and this is how the community connected at a grand scale, but this is how the community
Speaker: just became an absolute dominant force and we'll talk about halo 3 in a coming episode but this is how this is like the start of how all of these elements cooked into this unbelievable recipe which was which created this community that was so well connected absolutely everywhere in the world and was one of
Speaker: the most popular games for years to come.
Speaker: Sorry, games as in Halo 2, 3, whatever.
Speaker: Yeah, not just Halo 2, but all the upcoming Halos after that.
Speaker: Yeah, it was the game.
Speaker: The game.
Speaker: Like the game to play, the game to talk about, get an Xbox, hang out with your friends.
Speaker: We're all doing it.
Speaker: Have some LAN parties, you know, bring your 800-pound CRTV, like four of those, connect your Ethernet cables, you know.
Speaker: and this game this game like in my opinion so gaming and i think this is a really important topic to touch on here because gaming before halo 2 and halo 3 and even when it even when they came out that gaming was still had that we talked about it before that stigma that nerd stigma to it i i genuinely hand on heart believe that
Speaker: halo 2 slash 3 at this time was when gaming became something that people wanted to talk about more and and started to lose that stigma this is when gaming went to the stratosphere with popularity and even if
Speaker: just so many people wanted to be to play it because it was such an experience.
Speaker: It started to break down those barriers where the click jock sort of person at school wanted to play it.
Speaker: Everyone wanted to play it.
Speaker: This is what started to break those barriers down that are almost gone today.
Speaker: But back then there was barriers everywhere.
Speaker: Anything on that note that you have to add, Dan?
Speaker: I know you pretty much nailed that and it's true like it was just you know you woke up one day everything was Halo everyone was waiting in line you know for Halo 2 it was it was an insane launch Halo 2.
Speaker: Everyone was ready for it.
Speaker: Everyone wanted it.
Speaker: It was massive.
Speaker: I've never seen anything to this scale.
Speaker: Like I said, everyone was just waiting for it.
Speaker: And another cool part about Halo, though, going back to the campaign and that kind of stuff real quick.
Speaker: So what's cool about Halo is you can just play the campaign.
Speaker: But if you're really into it, you want all that extra lore, it's really well-developed.
Speaker: Like they had really good writers on all of that.
Speaker: So if you want it to go deep, you could go really deep.
Speaker: Really deep.
Speaker: Yeah, like crazy deep.
Speaker: And I think that's another thing that got people hooked on it as well.
Speaker: Yeah, in almost to the level of like the popularity of, if you think of the Lord of the Rings series and how the Lord of the Rings, like the book series that everyone had read and everyone was obsessed with the, obviously the lore of Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: And that became one of the most successful trilogies of all time.
Speaker: And, you know, obviously the history from there, but very similar sort of level that, yes, it had this incredible lore, this incredible world building in 2552.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: between the human and the government at war and it just was so engaging and that all those elements obviously kept everyone um kept everyone engaged is there any anything else you wanted to add before we wrap this one up dan uh no just halo took over
Speaker: It did.
Speaker: And excited, obviously, this won't be the end of us talking about Halo.
Speaker: Excited to sort of bridge into Halo 3 next, which is really a really exciting topic for us.
Speaker: And I think that it's sort of a good segue as well.
Speaker: Like this is this community that was built, this worldwide touch factor.
Speaker: This is what started to stem, obviously, eSports to absolutely explode.
Speaker: So, yeah, excited to get into that with you, Dan.
Speaker: And we'll leave it at that for now.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us and all the best.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: See you guys.
