{"id":23104,"date":"2015-09-21T21:20:12","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T02:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/halofanforlife.com\/?p=23104"},"modified":"2015-12-23T20:35:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T01:35:45","slug":"canon-fodder-whats-urs-is-ours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/halofanforlife.com\/?p=23104","title":{"rendered":"Canon Fodder: What’s URS’ is Ours"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a reblog from halo Waypoint:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By GrimBrotherOne:
\nIssue 42<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"canonfodder-9-18-15-f19a97031d9e4929809afdff908a22ca\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Greetings narrative-knowers! Welcome back to another issue of Canon Fodder. It\u2019s been an exciting past several days in the ever-marching lead up to\u00a0Halo 5: Guardians<\/em>. Earlier this week we released new gameplay from the campaign mission \u201cSwords of Sanghelios,\u201d which contains quite a few interesting little tidbits that fans have already started picking up on. With the Elite homeworld looming in our headspace this week, I thought it might be fun to talk with one of the unsung heroes of bringing the\u00a0Halo 5: Guardians\u00a0<\/em>campaign to life. You might have already seen her pop up in everything from our Halo story panel at SDCC 2015 to our recent \u201cA Hero Reborn\u201d ViDoc (both available on the Halo Channel!), but rest assured, in just a few short weeks you\u2019ll be benefiting from 343 Industries Narrative Designer Morgan Lockhart\u2019s hard work as you explore the upcoming campaign. Morgan was kind enough to sit down with us and share some pretty cool insight to the integration of story and narrative throughout every possible campaign corner. Here\u2019s what she had to say!<\/p>\n

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LOCKHART & LOADED<\/h2>\n

GrimBrother One: Okay, so, let\u2019s talk a bit first just about you. What\u2019s your background in storytelling in general, and what\u2019s your history with Halo specifically, including the role you find yourself in now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Morgan Lockhart:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019ve been storytelling in a professional or semi-professional capacity since I was sixteen. As a teenager, I wrote serial novels for Teen People Online for an audience of other teens. It was totally unpaid, but it was great to have an audience and be held accountable to put out content regularly and maintain quality. I got my first job in games my last year of college, working as an editor and game designer on the MMO\u00a0Vanguard: Saga of Heroes<\/em>\u00a0and after that continued working on various fantasy MMOs (most notably\u00a0Everquest 2<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Rift<\/em>) before knowing I needed a change. I joined the Halo team as a narrative designer in February 2012 to launch\u00a0Halo 4<\/em>and stayed on for the development of\u00a0Halo 5: Guardians<\/em>.<\/p>\n

My specific role is a \u201cnarrative designer.\u201d That means different things to different teams, but at 343, it\u2019s not synonymous with a writer. The writers are in charge of \u2018what\u2019 and I\u2019m in charge of \u2018how\u2019 and that means driving forward not only what our stories are but how we tell them.\u00a0 In the early phases of our games, we all work together to develop the characters and story, but I also design and prototype gameplay systems related to narrative and work on improvements to our storytelling pipelines. Then, as we go forward, I write VO for my missions, but I also implement game design elements related to the narrative and work with mission designers, sound designers, VFX artists, environment artists, etc (everyone) to nail down how well tell the story outside of the VO and cinematics.<\/p>\n

GRIM: Do you have any favorite corners of the narrative in particular? Are you more \u201chead in the clouds\u201d or \u201cboots on the ground\u201d when it comes to the stories you love to tell and\/or experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>When I\u2019m working on a game, I\u2019m definitely the boots on the ground sort of person. While I do love the imagining part (and would say I prefer it when writing a project on my own), when I enter a collaborative environment, I immediately become the problem solver. It probably has something to do with the fact that before\u00a0Halo 5<\/em>, I had always come into a project after it had started and either drove it toward completion (in the best cases) or tried to fix it (in the not so best cases). It\u2019s the first game I\u2019ve worked on from the very start to the very finish in almost ten years of game development.<\/p>\n

In story meetings, I often hang back at first, and then come in to the pitches that are out there and show what is wrong or missing and then offer complimentary ideas to drive the idea toward completion. As a narrative designer, it\u2019s really my job to think about how a story is going to work in the context of the game experience, so I also own the process of making it actually happen within the framework of the gameplay and I think that makes me inclined to always have that approach to the story.<\/p>\n

GRIM: Any interesting or fun stories to tell from behind the curtain of\u00a0Halo 5: Guardians<\/em>\u2019 development? What is your take on the process of helping craft such a narrative?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Basically every story meeting ends with members of the story team riffing on what would happen if we introduced grunts into (insert whatever we are talking about at the time.) Tim Longo usually lets out a sigh at that point because he knows we\u2019re out of useful ideas. While it\u2019s all mostly just good fun (though we might really write that hard boiled \u2018grunt cop\u2019 noir one day), the team\u2019s love of grunts is also pretty unabashed. We all have a favorite funny grunt moment we crafted somewhere in the game. Finding humor in even the most serious of stories is important, and returning the comedy of the grunts to Halo (not to mention Buck\u2019s smart ass remarks and the occasional quip from the other members of Osiris and Blue Team) has been a real delight.<\/p>\n

GRIM: I can personally vouch to such epic derailings, and they are indeed magnificent. So other than Unggoy, do you have a favorite character in the Halo universe?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Dr. Halsey. I\u2019m always drawn to characters that not everyone likes and who are difficult to nail down. She\u2019s a very flawed, layered person and having her as part of a story immediately makes it that much more interesting. You can debate her, and that makes her fun to me.<\/p>\n

GRIM: Totally agree there, and debate we certainly do!<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Also, I love the Huragok and their absolute science fiction strangeness, and love all the Huragok characters we have featured. The relationship with Lucy and Prone to Drift is one of my favorite storylines in our extended fiction. I know that\u2019s a funny thing to answer when I say that I also love Halsey, but characters I enjoy being in conflict with another is totally necessary.<\/p>\n

GRIM: How about a favorite\u00a0non<\/em>-Halo story or character? Anything in particular that has inspired you throughout your creative days?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>This is not an original answer for a geeky writer, but I\u2019m am definitely a big fan of Joss Whedon, and since I was exposed to his work as a teen, it\u2019s been a big influence on me. He is exceptionally talented at taking characters on arcs and letting characters you like do things you don\u2019t like (and characters you don\u2019t like do things you like). If I had a particular favorite character of his, I\u2019d probably say Anya. She\u2019s another character who, while often likeable, had moments where you could question her and her motives. The moment in the seminal episode \u201cThe Body\u201d where she expresses frustration over not understanding death is one I refer to a lot when thinking about how to write characters who are \u201cothers\u201d and may do a good job of seeming human but really are not.<\/p>\n

GRIM: So, shifting towards\u00a0Halo 5: Guardians\u00a0<\/em>specifically, this week, we revealed new gameplay of the \u201cSwords of Sanghelios\u201d mission from the upcoming campaign. Can you talk a little bit about the political climate of the Sangheili homeworld and what it\u2019s like to help finally give Halo fans a chance to experience a place they\u2019ve heard so much about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>It has been incredibly fun to go to Sanghelios. I\u2019m a big fan of\u00a0Halo 2<\/em>\u00a0and the Arbiter and of the Sangheili in general \u2013 I tend to be drawn to the alien cultures and alien characters in science fiction universes, as I find that exploration to be one of the most fun parts of the genre. (If you give me a choice, I will always play an alien character.)<\/p>\n

The climate there is definitely, well, rocky. An animal is most dangerous when you back it into a corner and it knows it\u2019s fighting for its last shot at survival, and that\u2019s essentially what the Arbiter has done to the last of the Covenant when we reach Sanghelios. They\u2019re going down, but they\u2019re giving hell as they do. The fact that Locke waltzes in at such a heated time needing the Arbiter\u2019s help in finding Master Chief and that Arbiter deigns to assist Osiris is a testament to the Arbiter\u2019s character, because he really does have better things to do.<\/p>\n

GRIM: You\u2019ve been particularly instrumental in helping bring the story to life throughout pages upon pages (upon pages) of in-gameplay dialogue. Can you talk to both the advantages and challenges of revealing aspects of the narrative through vignettes and combat dialogue within the gameplay itself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>Success with in-game storytelling is really what makes video game storytelling special. Game players don\u2019t just want to see a story, they want to experience it, and that means marrying gameplay and narrative as closely as possible. Success with that level of interactive experience means you can engage people on a deep level because it makes everything that happens personal.<\/p>\n

Now, the challenges. There\u2019s a lot. A game needs to serve a lot of different purposes, and the narrative is only one, and teams have finite resources and finite time. You set out with an idea of what you want to accomplish, and along the way dozens (hundreds, really) of things have to go, or have to change, and you stay on your toes to keep it all serving the narrative as well as possible. You\u2019re always shooting toward a moving target.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge posed by this game was the co-op nature of the gameplay. You have to build a game\u2019s story to be reactive to a player \u2013 understanding that outside of cinematics you can\u2019t completely author any given narrative experience completely and respecting\/taking advantage of that \u2013 but the challenge is magnified when you try to account for four players and you set out to have the characters played by all four players as active participants in the story. We couldn\u2019t always trust that Locke would be right out in front, so all four characters had to be able to react, for example, to anything contextually significant that happens. We also couldn\u2019t trust that all four players\/characters would see every in-game event and that required narrative tricks accounting for a potential lack of knowledge on one or more characters\u2019 part. So, we ended up with narrative that was pretty close to four times as much work as one would expect, but it has been very rewarding.<\/p>\n

GRIM: So lastly, what are your hopes and thoughts as we hurtle towards the launch of\u00a0Halo 5: Guardians<\/em>? What would you love for fans to come away thinking when the credits finally roll?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MORGAN:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0There\u2019s always a point in a game\u2019s development, hopefully toward the very end, where you as a creator start to go a little cross-eyed when you look at. It\u2019s difficult to look at it for what it is and not see the things that got cut, that you couldn\u2019t fix, that didn\u2019t turn out quite how you wanted. This dissatisfaction is key to keep driving toward quality, but it also makes it hard to really stand back and see what you did do well and enjoy it. I\u2019m very much looking forward to the day it\u2019s out there and hopefully the fans are loving it and getting to see it through all of their eyes. I truly hope people enjoy what we have done, and also that, in particular, they love the new characters on Osiris as much as we do.<\/p>\n

GRIM: Thanks so much for joining us today, and for all the passion you and your team pour into the story!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

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SANGHELIOS & OTHER S-WORDS<\/h2>\n