The idea for Halo was first conceived in a Catholic girl’s school in Chicago.
Halo’s very first press release in 1999 described the game as a “third-person perspective sci-fi action epic that takes place indoors, outdoors, in the sky and beneath the surface of a world of astonishing realism.” It featured both “epic single-player” and “role-based co-operative multiplayer…that is as much lived as played.” It would “release simultaneously on PC and Mac”.
Halo was originally called Solipsis, after the planet it was set on. Other oddball concept names included The Crystal Palace, Hard Vacuum, Star Maker, Star Shield and The Santa Machine.
Halo’s initial setting was a planet known as the ‘Dyson Sphere’ (built around a sun at its centre) and then a ringworld with a population that included sea monsters, dinosaurs and strange chicken-like creatures that could be captured and used for transport.
Before he was limited to only two weapons, Master Chief had a ludicrious arsenal at his disposal. This epic loadout included not only pistols and rifles but machetes, flamethrowers, spearguns, harpoon guns and even a gravity wrench.
For all it breathless hype, Halo wasn’t considered the jewel in the Xbox’s launch line up. That accolade was instead bestowed upon Oddword: Munch’s Oddysee.
During Halo’s first European press tour the demo computer blew up (literally there was smoke). Joe Staten, lead writer and cinematics director, remembers it well: “Having no computer made our first demo go, er, poorly. ‘Imagine if you will, there’s this green guy called Master Chief, and he’s fighting against some purple space aliens called The Covenant. Cool huh?’”
A huge amount of time was spent working out how to map the quintessentially PC shooter controls to the Xbox’s huge joypad. The analogue stick would never match the precision of the PC’s mouse, but auto targeting would be considered too easy, so Bungie built in a mild assist that helped the cross-hairs stay on target for an extra second.
Bungie spent the final months on Halo working until the small hours whittling down the game’s 10,000 bugs to the handful that survive today.
Halo arrived alongside the Xbox on November 15th 2001, the biggest game on Xbox and the first Microsoft title ever to carry a “Mature” rating signifying it was for adults only.
Once the Christmas season had passed Microsoft sold 1.5 million Xboxes and shipped a million copies of Halo, making it by far the biggest game on the console.
