( MORE: Halo 4 Director: Halo Could Continue Without Master Chief) And yet if we don’t have him speak at all, there’s no way to really understand his mind and you can’t chart his growth as a character - he becomes dull and one-dimensional. If he speaks too much, it goes against his innate persona. And also, just from the standpoint of personality, Chief is a stoic character. There has to be enough space within the character for you to feel you can inhabit it as a player. What we were striving for with Master Chief in Halo 4 was right in the middle, and I describe it as a marriage of player and protagonist. On the other side of the spectrum you have a very well-defined character, say Nathan Drake from Uncharted who has a complete developed personality of his own and is extremely expressive in every scene throughout the game. There’s the pure empty vessel at one side of the spectrum, say Gordon Freeman, who never speaks and you know very little about him whatsoever in terms of backstory. So it’s a fine line you’re walking, and the way that I described it to the team with Halo, I think there’s a spectrum. Then you have the people who feel that when a character speaks too much and is speaking for them, that destroys their connection. It’s a really controversial topic when it comes to first-person games, because there are probably as many people who feel exactly the way you do, where the silent protagonist starts to destroy that sense of immersion and takes away from the storytelling. I’ve never been a fan of the empty vessel approach, so I’m curious what drove the design choice here. Why the shift to a more conversational Chief in Halo 4? Master Chief talks considerably more in Halo 4 than in prior games, which is interesting, because he’s traditionally this stoic, faceless protagonist - the “empty vessel” into which you’re supposed to pour yourself.
#HALO 4 CONCEPT ART MASTER CHIEF SERIES#
Until then, the safest way is still to get the art book, the ortho views can provide a good start for freehanding or for a 3D modeler to modify the existing files.Follow my three-part interview series with Josh Holmes, Halo 4‘s creative director, we delve into why the traditionally taciturn Master Chief is suddenly so chatty, the similarities between Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved, the refined, almost artful look of the game and the influence of Fumito Ueda’s contemplative puzzler Ico on the Chief-Cortana dynamic. It's been two months since the release - but the Didact stuff has only been posted this week, so there's still hope that some ortho images will surface eventually. If any official images are to appear, they'll surely be posted here. Oh and this is the gallery of the artist who designed the armor: The currently available pep files are about, say, 70% accurate - the general proportions and the details are both wrong here and there. Other than that, it's hard to find precise references for scale and general shapes. The rest of the images are about the development of the suit, showing various ideas that have been abandoned.Īlso, there are a few high res shots released by the marketing dept, like these: A coworker bought the art book and it only has a double page on the final Chief design it is however an orthographic front view and I think a side view as well.