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Once infrequently referred to as "O.K.
Corral," Ghost Town (pictured throughout
this story) is the first map from the upcoming Legendary Map
Pack, the second injection of downloadable content coming
to Halo 3 later this Spring. Artists Vic DeLeon and Cameron
Pinard and designer Lars Bakken answered a few quick questions
to give readers more information about this abandoned shell
in Africa.
Q: What did each of you do
on Ghost Town?
Vic: We split the
map up into so many tasks that it became more of a collaborative
effort than anything else either of us had ever worked on.
It’s a small map comparatively speaking, so there were
some challenging aspects- like who’s working on those
polys over there? And hey I want to do that little part here!
There are very few things that either of us can’t do,
but we resolved to go with the idiom that I would direct the
artistic direction and Cameron would take charge of the layout.
Cameron’s heaviest influence was designing the blue
base, the greenhouse building, and all that beautiful rebar.
I worked on modeling the main areas around and inside the
central building, the debris and damage everywhere, and placing
all the vegetation throughout the map. We took turns modeling,
painting, and detailing the terrain and the cliff walls.
Q: What’s the fictional
premise behind Ghost Town?
Vic: Ghost Town is
the fragmented ruins of a small 24th century water purification
complex that geographically lies just North and West of the
jungle foothills hydroelectric facility from the Sierra 117
mission. The well-protected facility built into a shallow
ravine was once home to the Global Water Campaign, where the
still somewhat-pure Kilimanjaro meltwater was transported
via pipelines from the river and directed to this small outpost
where it became further purified, and then transported via
GWC trans-African pipelines along the Tsavo Highway for distribution
throughout the entire continent.
Q: What were some of the artistic
inspirations for Ghost Town?
Vic: We had both worked
on the Sierra 117 level from the singleplayer campaign and
we wanted to make something work within that environment because
we are crazy like that. We knew Jungle would be hard to pull
off in multiplayer, but noooo… we wanted to go further
and add the elements of abandon and destruction. Cue the amazing
work that Stan Winston and his team of artists made for the
Halo 3 “Believe” commercials. That diorama of
the huge battle with the destroyed buildings and debris everywhere
was insanely cool and, well you know, we had to try it.
Cameron: The abandoned
temples of Angkor Wat were always part of the early discussions
but as Vic points out, we were so impressed with the diorama
work from the “Believe” campaign that we looked
to incorporate some of the ruined aspects into Ghost Town.
Q: Was there a hook that led
to the map’s initial creation?
Vic: Yes and no. Steve Cotton started
out with a very rough mass of spaces that were insanely fun
to play in, and then Cameron and I were left with our imaginations
running wild and our spirits ablaze, only to find ourselves
pounding our heads against large heavy things. There was blood.
When we got started on the map it was literally a group of
boxes posing as buildings and feeling like swiss cheese. Some
of the guys during our early playtests (not sure who) started
calling it “The Ghost Town Map” and it totally
stuck, even after a brief effort to rename it Mortar. is this
something I should mention? how about "Some of us were
affectionately calling it the Counter-Strike map."
Q: From beginning to end how
long did Ghost Town take to complete?
Vic: The first massed
out models were created in mid-September of 2007 so it’s
been about 4-5 months.
Q: What's the nuts and bolts
premise behind Ghost Town in terms of gameplay?
Cameron: Essentially
Ghost Town is an asymmetric map designed for 4v4 encounters,
it’s meant to be a strong infantry map where you get
a nice range of close combat and longer range. The spaces
are set up to allow two to three person squads a good bit
of operating room and several tactical options.
Q: What gametypes is the map
designed for?
Cameron: As an asymmetric
map it’s designed for things like One Bomb, and One
Flag, it also creates a great environment for FFA and team
slayer. Overall though, the map is more general purpose and
of course balancing is done with an eye towards our more popular
game types.
Q: How has the map layout evolved
over time with Ghost Town? Have different configurations resulted
in a map that plays different?
Cameron: The core
layout has actually been fairly constant throughout development,
while a few areas have been added, for the most part it follows
the original layout. Over time the map become more and more
porous, we also worked on funneling action into more interesting
areas of the map. I’d have to defer to Lars on most
of the design changes over time.
Lars: Like Cameron
said the core layout hasn’t changed much. For a time
we had the “bases” switched, in terms of gameplay.
The fortified building used to be the attacker spawn in objective
games and the open cave spawn used to be the defender base.
We made some changes to the building (added another way in),
and then switched to its current configuration. Other subtle
(or not so subtle, heh) changes were swapping the Spartan
Laser for the Rocket Launcher, and removing the Regenerator
for the Grav Lift. This one was actually pretty cool, because
it allows players to enter into the second floor of the center
building now without taking the normal routes in.
Q: It’s a brand new map,
but does Ghost Town remind you of any Halo CE, Halo 2 or other
Halo 3 maps?
Cameron: From the earliest iterations it
had some elements that reminded me vaguely of Lockout, visually
it has some elements similar to Warlock and Sanctuary, and
it also pulls from Sierra 117 and Crow’s Nest from the
singleplayer. Overall we really wanted to define a distinctive
look for Ghost Town that strays outside of somewhat more traditional
Halo environments.
Vic: It reminds me
a little of the destroyed stuff I did on Warlock for Halo
2 - That’s still one of my most favorite maps, at least
ones that I’ve worked on. I cannot deny that there’s
a little bit o’ Warlock in Ghost Town, I just won’t
say what or where. And no, there are no bats in it.
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