by:	May 19, 2006

While sitting in the audience at the Microsoft press briefing in Hollywood last wee, my heart began to race as Peter Moore pulled up his first sleeve to reveal his Halo 2 tattoo he adorned back at E3 2004. Once he raised the sleeve of his other arm to reveal GTAIV I had a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, but was still surprised all the same. As the show came to the close, Bill Gates pulled a “Steve Jobs” along with Xbox head-honcho Peter Moore to reveal the two-minutes of fun known as the Halo 3 trailer.

I am a grown man, and while I personally told this to a few Bungie employees and even Peter Moore that the trailer made me want to nearly cry, I was saying so in a joking manner to them. In all seriousness though, it did choke me up, and it was incredibly powerful. In the trailer, you hear Cortana say “I have defied Gods and Demons.” a line actually being transmitted through her by Gravemind, the leader of the Flood that you encounter in Halo 2. She is in fact in control, and may double-cross Master Chief, only to reveal to Gravemind she had control the entire time, being a bad AI-construct in the first place. Another possible scenario is that she could act as if though she is against Chief, and he would have known the entire time only to destroy Gravemind, the Flood, and whatever other evil forces there are.

You will also notice that the assault rifle from Halo 1 is back, at least in the trailer, suggesting far more variety of weapons. The trailer reveals nothing about the gameplay, but Bungie has said in the past that the AI gives truly different experiences to the user depending on how you play. Through the week of E3, I had the chance to talk to some Bungie employees all of which find it hilarious what people will get out of a two minute trailer, and all of which have said the trailer only scratches the surface. Perhaps the best explanation is the trailer was not to have any profound impact, but rather let people know that it is coming. If the Halo 3 trailer was to powerful it could in fact push other fantastic Xbox 360 games out of the limelight, which are coming out this year, when in fact Halo 3 doesn’t come out until next year. The question on everyone’s mind though is if it will in fact come out in 2007, and straight from a Bungie employee, “If we give a date in writing that you can quote us on then yeah you sure as hell can bet we will have it out that date.” I also found out that Halo 3 has in fact been in full development at the end of 2004 up until now. The game's story, and other elements were plotted out even before Halo 2 came out giving some proof to the rumors that Halo 3 and Halo 2 were being developed at the same time.



Visuals
I will be the first to admit that the Halo 3 trailer doesn’t make quite the visual impact that Halo 2 made when it was first seen way back in 2002, but it still is a fantastic looking title. With that said, everything you see within the trailer is done in real time. Bungie has said there is parallax-mapping, HDR lighting, self-shadowing, a particle system, and more. The entire thing is completely real-time, and Bungie hints that it could end up looking much better than this. Bungie has said that the trailer took much less time to create than say Halo 2 trailers, and didn’t impact development of the actual game much at all. In fact the trailer is left very barren to give more impact to Master Chief, the Forerunner construct, and the fleet of Covenant ships.

The game was shown to people across the street at the Roosevelt Hotel after the Microsoft conference, simply to show that it was in realtime. I was actually fooled by a MS rep, which said “Did you know Hlao 3 is playable?” When I questioned him further he meant to say that Bungie was showing it off to a few press (and E3 judges) to prove the trailer was in-game visuals.

Sound
Probably the most profound thing about the trailer wasn’t the visuals, but the incredible sound and music. The simple boom of a piano, to give the sense of loneliness and uncertainty starts the trailer out, followed by the howl of Cortana. It isn’t until you finally see Master Chief that the familiar themes of the Halo series begin to show up in the music, then within a instance the music crescendos to an amazing over-the-top loudness which matches up with the awe-inspiring sight of the Covenant fleet inching towards the Forerunner construct.

To create the incredible music a 60 piece orchestra and a 24 piece choir was used to record the trailer music. "I want the viewer to have a feeling of anticipation and wonder for the first fifty seconds or so, up until Master Chief is revealed and they realize that it’s Cortana trying to tell them something," says Marty O’Donnel ?Marty's music was designed from the ground up to lull the listener into a sense of doubt, then wonder. "I want them to feel pride and longing the moment Master Chief walks out of the smoke," says Marty. "I want them to get excited and perhaps even froth at the mouth when they see the Covenant Capital ship and then the incredible buried artifact. I want them to be left with that, 'I can hardly wait to play this game' feeling by the end with a slight, 'I wonder what she meant by that' aftertaste."