Out of every game in the series, Halo 3 had the smoothest development by far, but the original finale also saw major changes during production. The game’s iconic Warthog Run, which saw players drive across an exploding Halo ring to destroy The Flood, was originally a flying mission.
As Halo: Campaign Evolved nears release and the 25th anniversary of the franchise approaches, we’re focusing hard on coverage of Xbox’s flagship series. For more of this coverage, read our interview with Burnie Burns about the longevity of Halo’s iconic web series Red vs Blue, or artist Eddie Smith’s thoughts on AI in games.
As for Halo 3’s finale, we talked to Halo 3 campaign design lead Robert Stokes about the creation of the third game. Stokes, who joined halfway through Halo 2’s tumultuous development, crafted some of the finest missions of the second game, Arbiter, Oracle, Delta Halo, and Regret.
Stokes recalls that Halo 2’s “development was pretty rough”, but Jason Jones’ return to the series ignited the team with a new gameplay ideology: movable game spaces. “It created this unique challenge for art, engineering, and design,” he says. “As a result, we got big spectacles like the Scarab tank, as well as more subtle uses, like the floating gondolas in Regret or the tilting cable room in Oracle.”
Nevertheless, production on Halo 2 was cut short with a major cut to “a final mission back on Earth that would have wrapped up the Covenant storyline”. Halo 2 became the Empire Strikes Back of the series, although Stokes recalls “it didn’t feel great” to end the story before its proposed finale.
For Halo 3, Stokes wanted to focus almost entirely on the cinematic moments he designed in the second game. “One thing we did differently as compared to Halo 2 was to approach the design of the missions with an eye toward the “F*ck yeah!” moments and the “Oh sh*t…” moments,” he says.
This led to moments like the multi-scarab fights and the brilliant Tsavo Highway—pure pulse-bounding moments of action adrenaline. But one mission was changed drastically during the game’s remarkably smooth development: the final Warthog Run.
Stokes explains that this mission is his “favourite” mission in the third game. From the start of development, the team planned to do an homage to the original game’s ending. “We knew from the very start what we wanted to do. Return to the control room, finally light a Halo ring, and then do an homage to the final trench run of Halo 1.”
However, Stokes recalls “there was a bit of a battle over the finale” with one lead “really pushing for it to be a flying mission in a banshee”. In this scenario, you wouldn’t have been jumping over ramps and steering across steep corners, but instead it was an homage to “the escape from the innards of the second Death Star in RotJ”.
This version went through a number of iterations. In fact, if you dig deep, you can find audio references to a version where you finally fly the iconic Pelican, something which wouldn’t be done until Halo 4. However, the real plan was to take a Covenant Banshee, which has far more manoeuvrability, in a mad rush to the Forward Unto Dawn.
“Dan [Miller] really wanted to do it in a Warthog, so I went to bat for him,’” Stokes reveals. “I even got my hands dirty again, making a quick prototype in 3DS Max that we were able to script to blow up in a similar fashion. Once we showed that around (with some Marty music playing) it was a done deal. And Dan worked his ass off with the environment artists to make that ending spectacular.”
For Stokes, a great Halo mission needs “ups and downs, those shifts in tone, and changeups to the gameplay”, and Halo 3’s finale has this in spades. From the battle against Guilty Spark, another homage to Combat Evolved, to the most bombastic Warthog Run the series has ever had, the game’s ending is a perfect encapsulation of what the series is supposed to be.
“I’m still enormously proud of our work on Halo,” Stokes tells us. “We were also amazingly fortunate to work on such a talented team with Microsoft largely staying hands off (tattoos notwithstanding). They let us cook, and I think we produced some amazing games as a result. And with the Master Chief Collection, people got to experience them with a badly-needed glow-up.
“I’ve worked a lot of places since then. Also great teams. But there was something special about those years at Bungie. Yes, there was crunch and burn-out. And yes, it was a total frat house atmosphere that was wrong on so many levels. None of that would fly today, and for good reason. But from that crucible we did what feels impossible these days. We made magic.”
