Sunday, September 29, 2013

Halo 4: Game Modes Concepts

Lots of work goes into the design of our multiplayer game modes. Extraction and Dominion were more complex than the standard objective games, from Halo 3 and Reach, but we had great designers and lots of experience, so 343 trusted us with quite a bit of freedom on that front. Of course, that meant hundreds of revisions and testing every day. As we tried ideas and re-worked the games until they felt right, the elements of the visual design had to complement and communicate to the players. These are some of the ideas and finished concepts.
The completed concept for the extraction beacon and crates. These are part of the experience you see as you try to secure resources for your team. The Forerunner-tech adopted by humans was a good fictional basis for the design and let us get a really satisfying light show when you score a goal.

Some early designs for the extraction beacons and devices.

Early designs for the hand-held Extraction device.

The final device concept. Something like Black & Decker meets Forerunner, with a coating of military utilitarian mixed in.

Early concepts for the base antennas in Dominion game type.

Concept for one the antennas that "wakes up" as you upgrade a base in Dominion.

Pop-up generator idea for Dominion.

Internal screens and banners would reinforce the ownership and activity within the bases.

More screens and active elements to show you who owns what.

The Dominion Terminals were initially designed as a three-stage element, for different types of base. The idea was scrapped later, but we held to a similar version.

Previous iterations for the Dominion base terminal.

The nasty auto-turrets that wake up from the tops of bases.

We tried out several designs on these, including ones that were more energy-based, anti-aircraft only, and EMP based that would knock out shields.

Initial ideas for the vehicle pads that would look like the shape of the vehicle produced.

More industrial-looking refined versions of the vehicle pads.

More coming soon!


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