HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
To put things in perspective, we should look back to the relatively small boat that began Halo 1's development journey. The original team began with only three programmers, and by the game's release, grew to eight. As for the artists, they originally numbered 12, and by shipping time increased a bit more considerably. Regardless, the fact that such a conservatively sized group of people was behind one of the most well-known videogames of this generation is impressive; that said game was developed for Xbox in just a little over six months is even more so.

Did You Notice? Following are several of Halo 1's graphics glitches ultimately caused by Bungie's limited development time. The Particle System "Crap," says Perez. As with Halo 1's graphics engine, the particle system was designed for the TNT2 chipset, which caused particles to flicker in and out when they weren't supposed to. The problem couldn't be fixed in time, but Halo 2's particles will come from a completely redesigned system that will be leagues better than anything we can imagine. Cortana's Crisis Being a transparent hologram is tough. Poor Cortana would suffer layering problems when she appeared in front of other transparent objects such as windows. Parts of her body, such as her hair, would appear behind the window instead of in front. That Loading Screen A "steaming pile of shit" that would haunt Bungie with every localization, particularly Korea's. While localizing, the "worst 2000 lines of code ever made" would constantly break down. Why? There was only one day to make the loading screen's code. Makes you grateful that Halo 2 will be "done when it's done," eh?

Surely, the smaller pool of employees and the tight, if not rushed, delivery schedule detrimentally affected Halo 1. For one thing, it caused the game world to appear slightly monotonous in design. In fact, the level "Silent Cartographer" wasn't even supposed to be in the game-- it was merely a testing area filled with varied environments that ended up being decent enough that the storyline was altered to squeeze it in and offer a little more game length. Yet for all that was squeezed into Halo 1, much had to be left out.

Everything from weapons to levels were cut to meet the Xbox launch delivery date. Character models featured only 1,000 - 3,000 polygons each, with only four texture layers. An attempt to use the maximum potential of the Xbox's native Nvidia GPU-- the only launch title to do so-- even ended up falling short. In fact, the major rasterizer for the game's graphic engine-- a module that adds special effects such as bumps and shading to an in-game object-- was developed not only under truncated schedules but lack of final specs on or development libraries for Xbox.

The development libraries used weren't even strong enough to take full use of the Nvidia GPU, but rest assured the APIs behind Halo 2 will. To provide some perspective, Tecmo's game designer cum Xbox evangelist Itagaki's Dead or Alive 3 used the same APIs as Halo 1, and the Tecmo title is often referred to as the graphics pinnacle from Xbox's launch-- next to Halo 1, of course. After seeing the amazing advancements in Halo 2's superior Master Chief model, which has advanced bump mapping and actually fewer polygons, we can only imagine what Itagaki will do with his next Xbox-exclusive titles. Inevitably, Xbox owners are assured amazing looking games from Bungie and Tecmo alike.

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