As we’ve discussed before, encounters are at the heart of Halo’s campaign experience and it could easily be argued that they are the best part of that experience.

Unlike other gaming conventions such as story, character development, art style and visual/audio fidelity, an encounter deals with the core gameplay experience in a way which is unparalleled. It is the very soul of a game – not always the reason a player picks up the controller, but inevitably the reason they refuse to put it down – and here the Halo trilogy shines gloriously.

Understanding this success has been the purpose of The Architecture of War; our detailed examination of the three primary components found in any effective encounter. The environment and the sandbox were the first two ingredients and our coverage of them can be found here. As we’ve discussed previously, these two components are crucial elements for an encounter to materialize and perpetuate effectively.

But what about the third? What about the enemy? Is this element as critical as the others?

Absolutely, and in many ways it is the most critical.

Without enemies, the battleground and tool set are in and of themselves inert. An opposing force creates conflict and fuels the combat which ultimately defines the encounter as a whole. In this way, the enemy is perhaps the most significant of all three elements – and the most necessary.

Fortunately, for its fans, the Halo series has an extremely rich tapestry of enemies, all playing unique roles within the context of each and every encounter. And since Halo’s encounters are masterfully fashioned, the DNA of that system relies heavily on a powerful and compelling set of enemies.

But what makes Halo’s enemies unique against those of other games? And why are Halo’s encounters so entertaining because of them?

We believe there are three main factors which dictate this:

• Their history as communicated by their physical attributes.
• The manner they are distributed on the battlefield.
• Their intelligence and authenticity.

Let’s take a closer look at each one…

Form Becomes Function

The historical relevance and story of each set and subset of enemies, as depicted by their physical appearance and interaction, helps the player to not only enjoy the experience’s immersion, but it allows them to perform differently based solely on those factors.

In the Halo trilogy, there are three distinct classes of enemies. At the forefront, we’re introduced to the Covenant, a diverse war machine composed of various alien races and united under the banner of humanity’s destruction. Later, we come in contact with two other enemies; one is the sinister parasite known as the Flood and the other is the Forerunner technology created to contain it.

The Flood were discovered about half-way through the first game’s campaign and in that moment completely changed the player’s understanding of enemies throughout the remainder of the trilogy.

Visually, the physical differences across these three classes are quite obvious to anyone who has played the games, but how does the look and context of an enemy impact an encounter?

The physical characteristics of these enemies and the history they designate separate every single one into a complex system of possibilities and potential. For example, we know that a Brute, driven by rage, will often charge the player if fired on repeatedly, but a Jackal, typically prone to cowardice in close-quarters, never will. We know that an Elite typically attempts to gain cover when its shields are down, but an armored Flood combat form, even if it was once Sangheili in flesh and blood, will do no such thing.

Why is this?

Well, Brutes will obviously charge because aggressive and barbaric violence is in their nature – as implied by their physical attributes and reiterated by their history. Jackals, on the other hand, have the frail and sinewy makings of a craven creature; when they’re overpowered, they will almost always duck and run. The elegant warrior Elite, seasoned by decades of combat as we have come to learn, knows the significance of his armor’s shielding, but all strategic rules of combat are thrown out of the window as soon as the alien is infected by the parasite. When that occurs, it becomes mere cannon fodder for the Gravemind and will charge without hesitation.

Because of these disparate characteristics and the variety of animations which are presented by them, players can face every individual encounter differently, honing their methods as they uncover more about the individual behaviors of each of their enemies.

The site of the first Scarab battle in Halo 3, the single largest enemy in the trilogy.

Of course enemies respond differently – one might say this is common knowledge, but what about the player? Do they respond differently against various enemies from an emotional standpoint?

Certainly, they do.

This occurs at high concept levels like the difference between a chuckle the player will utter when a single Grunt is deployed on the field, armed only with a plasma pistol, and the desperate gasp the same player might release when a Scarab crawls over a five-story warehouse toward them, carrying enough fire power to level an entire city. It can also occur on an acute scale, like the differences one would feel from an encounter against an Elite Minor (Blue) and that of a Major (Red) – it’s a meager difference, but still prevalent within the scope of combat and something which can dictate the course of an encounter if taken into account by the player. Every hostile entity in the trilogy arouses some emotional provocation – feelings which can be displayed as anything from horror to defiance – from laughter to terror.

The most common of these emotions is clearly fear. Walking down the dimly-lit corridors of the Flood containment bunker in Halo: Combat Evolved’s 343 Guilty Spark mission, for example, elicits a considerable amount of anxiety and dread. The player constantly finds themselves peering around corners and down darkened hallways, their shotgun ready to fire at the drop of a hat.

But fear is not the only emotion which is evoked from an enemy in Halo. Recalling Jaimie Griesemer during the “Et Tu, Brute” ViDoc, we see another inevitable player response:

I think that the Brutes bring out the sort of the indignant, self righteous aspect of a lot of players. So I’m hoping to hear a lot of, ‘Take that!’ and ‘I can’t believe that you have invaded my planet and I’m going to throw you off!’ and we hope to really bring people into the character and the drama of the situation by putting them up against these really brutal characters.

When you first break into the barracks on Halo 3’s Crow’s Nest, you’ve already been informed that the Brutes are planning to devour the Marines held captive inside. So when you finally arrive, midway through the mission, you’re well and ready to unleash reciprocal destruction on them. The passion to save fellow Marines coupled with a slowly-developed hatred for the Brutes throughout Halo 2 and the beginning of Halo 3, allows players to participate in the encounter from an emotional perspective if they allow themselves to.

The barracks sequence in Halo 3’s The Storm is particularly evocative thanks to the sinister and evil Jiralhanae culture and their predilection for human flesh.

Essentially, the context of enemies operates hand in hand with not only with the way the enemies perform on the field, but also the varied emotional responses players have from the enemies themselves. And while this might only be superficially important to establishing the role of enemies during encounters, it is a key ingredient in making an encounter immersive and compelling.

Battle Wagons

Distribution, being the second element of this equation, pertains to how and when enemies are deployed during the course of an encounter. This application directly controls the pacing of an encounter from its anxious beginning to its explosive conclusion.

There are a variety of manners in which this can occur – some were innovated directly by Bungie and others have evolved from successes found in other titles. All of them, however, are performed with amazing deft and versatility within the Halo trilogy.

The first and most obvious of these methods are the infamous corridor to corridor fracases, which are common with most shooters. Halo has these in spades, whether you’re aboard The Pillar of Autumn staving off a Covenant invasion, whether you’re battling through the Flood on a Forerunner gas mine or whether you’ve found yourself plunging into the depths of the Ark’s cartographer in search of a map room – all of these follow the same basic formula. This is extrapolated on a broader scale when players travel from within the confines of an interior environment out into the vast exterior sites which frequent the Halo franchise. Moving from canyon to canyon with heavy vehicle interplay and large-scale warfare takes the same concept of steady progression from room to room and multiplies its intensity and size exponentially.

A hallmark of Halo encounters are those which support the player defending a key location from wave after wave of enemy. Sometimes the aggressors infiltrate the player’s position on foot and sometimes in a cache of vehicles, but often Halo employs the use of dropships – unloading a bevy of infantry (and sometimes even vehicles) simultaneously by an aerial vehicle. There have been other variants of this same concept, like Halo: Combat Evolved’s energy lift at the base of Truth and Reconciliation or the Elite’s drop pods in Halo 2’s Delta Halo – almost overwhelmingly, the use of the dropship technique represents a classic Halo approach to the “player defend” method of enemy distribution.

During this system, players are initially pushed back by the dropship’s turret and are forced to take cover. When they have secured their position, they then try to find a strategic high ground or choke point to use against their enemies and an effective implement to eliminate the incoming threat. Instinctively, players may try to neutralize the enemies the moment they hit the ground, but Halo 3 has upped the ante in this regard, offering players the rewarding opportunity of destroying a dropship before it can even unload its troops.

Then there’s the Scarab, a dramatic variant of the dropship concept where the player has to defend their location by physically assaulting the insect-like behemoth covered in Covenant infantry. In this example, we can easily see how Halo took a basic convention of a dropship unloading troops and turned it on its head, forcing the player to stop an infiltrating group of enemies by infiltrating their own position.

The wide variety of enemy phenotypes are apparent, even within the Covenant stable, as seen here between a Grunt firing the turret and its Brute Chieftain.

Easily the most entertaining distribution method for enemies is that of the assault, where a player is forced to enter a fortified location and take it back from hostile occupants. The most emblematic display of this particular method are the various “tank runs” found throughout the trilogy. Halo 2’s Metropolis, as we’ve previously depicted, partook in this system when the player crossed the bridge from the outskirts of the city into the heart of Mombasa. And while there are plenty of other textbook examples of this method of distribution, the one which is typically considered the most impressive in the franchise, is the epic and protracted tank run in the sand-ridden canyons of Halo 3’s immense mission, The Ark.

During any given assault, including the dramatic one depicted in our opening intro, the design scheme is very straightforward. The player must move from one location to another on a path which is dominated by heavily-entrenched enemies. This isn’t the standard campaign progression which we described initially, where pacing is tedious, but rather a method in which the player is constantly moving forward though large lines of opposition, eventually arriving at a fortified position which they must then overtake.

While other methods can sometimes become exercises in frustration, the assault formula never fails to deliver an intense experience. This is likely due to the marked success of gaining physical real estate against the enemy and, for Halo in particular, the high quality of vehicle interplay which is frequently utilized in this manner. Although an assault encounter can be done on foot, like the scaling of the ziggurat at the end of Assault on the Control Room, the most established and exhilarating ones are typically executed by way of vehicles and armored caravans.

There are other methods of enemy distribution but these few represent the core ones within Halo’s encounter system. When this design element is executed effectively, it creates a powerful dynamic which guides the flow and pacing of the encounters throughout the course of a mission. Understanding how to distribute enemies in the field has always been important to Halo and the compelling results of the proper execution of this system are quite evident throughout the trilogy.

The Mind of the Beast

The third attribute of an enemy which impacts an encounter experience is the most important by far:

Believability.

No, we’re not talking about how realistic enemies look or sound, but rather, how realistic they interact with the environment, with the player and with other enemies. In the industry, this is referred to as artificial intelligence or AI and it speaks to the routines and programs which control an enemy (or collection of enemies) at any unscripted point in the game. Although many games offer some initial potential with regard to enemy intelligence, the single most prevalent attribute which evades most action titles is continually and persistently clever AI.

In this regard, Halo continues to impress.

While predictability is important in some aspects of game design, where it should sometimes be disregarded is in the architecture of AI for enemies. The player’s opposition must be free to think outside the realm of predictability in order to be believable – but must also be grounded to some degree, giving the player an opportunity to out-think them. There are a handful of franchises within the industry which sport AI that functions in an authentic and rewarding manner and the Halo trilogy is definitely one of them.

Within the franchise, Halo 3 is the title which stands head and shoulders above the others. Every single attempt has been made to close the gap between that which requires a suspension of belief (the fiction) and that which should not (how an NPC interacts in a real situation). Because of the complex AI, every single encounter plays differently than the previous one and every single encounter replays itself differently than it did the last time you played it.

Dropships like this Spirit and the popular Phantom are part of a prominent and successful enemy distribution method which has appeared significantly throughout the trilogy.

For example, the Traxus shore side warehouse in Halo 3’s The Storm has a significant amount of both interior and exterior encounters nestled in between the mission’s Scarab battle and the player’s assault on the anti-aircraft weapon emplacement adjacent to the Forerunner artifact. Here, the Brutes work together in packs, first attacking warehouse employees and then turning their attention to the player and their allies.

Every time these sequences are played, although some scripting introduction occurs initially, the AI pathways which materialize afterward are wholly distinct and different. Sometimes the Brutes will take cover, sometimes they’ll attack and yet other times they’ll deploy equipment to frustrate any of the player’s efforts – all the meanwhile dealing with warehouse employees and Marines, while simultaneously engaged with the environment and the player.

Halo 3’s enemies are smart. Very smart. They will scale their environment for higher ground when they catch wind of your approach. They’ll look for you when you attempt to hide and hide from you when they’re at risk of death. They work as a team, sending in the fodder of their front lines in hopes to beat down your shields for their attack moments later. They flank the player when necessary and use fall back positions when they see fit.

These elements of functionality are key to understanding why Halo’s AI works proficiently and why the game’s encounters play so organically no matter how many times you’ve experienced them before. The enemy AI in Halo 3 represents the pinnacle of the trilogy, where Bungie has weeded out previous issues and threaded the characters with incredibly lifelike animations and behaviors. AI, more than any other aspect about an enemy’s role in the encounter, is critical in dictating the plausibility of each given encounter. Thankfully, Bungie’s team recognizes this and the trilogy exemplifies their recognition.

Nemesis, Catalyst

Together, these three faculties – context, distribution and AI – create an enemy force that is believable, engaging and evocative. It requires the players to think outside of the box and respond in real time, rather than follow their hand down a “point-shoot-kill” rail toward the inevitable and predictable conclusion.

Players are sometimes thrown into circumstances which force them to hold down the fort while other times, they’re forced into scenarios which require them to storm it – both dynamics merged with an incredibly articulate AI, show just how powerfully engaging the enemies of Halo are and how important they are to the series as a whole.

Proper use of enemies, environment and sandbox create scenarios such as this, where an enemy boards the player’s vehicle and forcibly removes them in real time.

Over the course of these three articles, we’ve talked about the environment, the sandbox and the enemies of the Halo trilogy. These are the core components of an encounter and encounters are a big part of what make Halo’s three titles the games that they are. While there are those who might take issue with trilogy’s story, its characters, its art style and other elements which have been criticized over time, one item which bears little, if any, fault is that of the encounter.

The masterful hand of Bungie’s software masons have created a powerful beast, evolving from its meager but impressive beginnings in Halo: Combat Evolved, then broadening its boundaries in Halo 2 and finally, becoming the amazing experience piece we call Halo 3. While Bungie is not blameless and perfect in all of their design decisions, with regard to encounters, they are largely without fail.

/vociferous

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