Sentinels (Halo) - Development - Weapons and Vehicles

Weapons and Vehicles

Due to Halo being a first-person shooter, significant emphasis was put into the design of human weaponry. The chief designer for human weapons was Robt McLees, who at the time of Combat Evolved's development was the only staff member at Bungie with knowledge of firearms; McLees wanted to make sure that the weapons looked "cool", but were also grounded by real-world physics and considerations. The game designers also wanted items that would be recognizable to players, yet futuristic-looking enough to plausibly exist in Halo's 2552. In an interview, McLees noted that after human weapons had been vetted and the rough design worked out, "I went ahead and built the highest-res LOD (level of detail) – and this is where I get "bogged down" with all of the stuff that "nobody cares about" like correct barrel diameter, placement of safeties, sights, magazine release buttons, and making sure that the magazines are actually large enough to hold all the bullets they're supposed to, that they would feed correctly and that the casings eject out of the correct side of the gun." Occasionally, technical restraints forced design changes; the submachine gun introduced in Halo 2 originally featured a transparent magazine which allowed players to see the caseless ammo feed into the gun, but it proved too ambitious given the time and hardware available.

Vehicles play an important role in the Halo games, and so vehicles were also given a long development stage. The UNSC's vehicles were designed by Marcus Lehto, Eric Arroyo, and Eddie Smith, and were designed to be functional and utilitarian. Their use of wheels also led many players to feel that they were more fun to drive. The addition of the Mongoose ATV made headlines, after being cut from Halo 2. The original Warthog was considered a fan favorite.

Paul Russel is considered the architect of the Forerunner's design. In an interview, Russel stated that creating the Forerunner's "visual language" was a tough process which only came together "like five months away" from the game's completion; much of the design was finalized on a single level, "The Silent Cartographer", which features both exterior Forerunner structures as well as deep interior chasms. Concept artist Eddie Smith is also credited with helping hone the Forerunner's direction, and said that he started work by reading the game's mission synopsis. "I knew what human and Covenant architecture looked like, so I tried to make the Forerunner concepts different," Smith said. The result was a sleek angular design which was distinct from the curves of the Covenant's architecture and the functional human designs. For Halo 2, designers wanted to refine and elaborate on the Forerunner design, without abandoning the style set by Russel; environment artist Frank Capezzuto found that looking at the Forerunner structures as sculptures rather than buildings helped to drive the designs for Halo 2.

The Flood were added early in the game development stage of Halo: Combat Evolved, and life of Halo was specifically tailored to increasing the surprise of the Flood's sudden appearance, halfway through the first game. At one point, Halo featured large numbers of terrestrial dinosaur-like creatures, but Bungie felt the presence of other native species would dilute the impact of the Flood and removed them.

Covenant technology, architecture, and design continually changed throughout development, occasionally for practical reasons as well as aesthetics; one piece of alien technology, a "gravity lift", was created so that a Covenant ship's low-resolution textures were not so obvious. In comparison to the other factions, Covenant architecture is smooth and organic, with the use of purple or blue tones throughout.