According to Master Chief’s creator, the towering figure we all know and love had a much skinnier, anime-influenced design at one point.
In this month’s IGN Unfiltered, Ryan McCaffrey sat down with Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto to discuss the origins of one of the most iconic figures in modern gaming, his advice for up-and-coming game designers, his new real-time tactical game, Disintegration, and much more.
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“When I first moved out and joined Bungie, and started working there, on-site, it was just Jason [Jones] and myself working on the very origins of it… the strategy game that was skinned with a sci-fi theme,” Lehto said. “Even at that time, there was a character that we called “The Super-Soldier” and that super soldier was, in all honestly, the very root of what became the Master Chief.
“It was an armored character. The very first iteration of that thing, I think it was all of 400 polygons. It was this teeny little thing that would stand next to this tank and would run alongside the tank.”
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“Then we built this vehicle that would ultimately become the Warthog, that the character could also jump into and drive around. These early versions of that universe, we were exploring some of the tech, of course… but I was responsible for looking at what this universe really was: how it was functioning, what it was made of, how it was going to be built.”
“The Master Chief, ultimately, was born from that very first model, as it evolved several times… We spent our time going back and forth, making sure we were exploring territory… something we thought would work cohesively together.”
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“…we all got excited about [the addition of physics to controlling the Warthog] and we decided… we’re going to change this to this third-person [camera] game and see how this action plays out. Through that time frame, of course, the Master Chief continued to turn from… this really, really simple block model to something that started to look more like this armored, true ‘Super Soldier,’ [which is what] we continued to call him at that time.”
“It wasn’t until we got closer to the Macworld demo that… [the first, Super Soldier version of Master Chief] had existed simultaneously with another version of the Chief. One of our concept artists at that time, whose name’s Shi Kai Wang, who is a fantastic, great, talented person… had worked on some early concepts that were more anime-inspired, for the Master Chief. We built that character, and it was much more slender and agile-looking, at that time. That’s the character that we showcased in the Macworld demo.”
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“It was shortly after that… I felt pretty strongly that the Master Chief, and who the Master Chief really is, needed to embody something that more physically connected with his character.”
“As we started writing the character… the actual story for Halo… and as we started writing who the Master Chief is… this empty vessel that the character would really take the reins with… that the slender character wasn’t the right kind of feel for the Master Chief. He needed to look like a tank that could take on an entire army. That’s when I had gone back to some of my original designs for it, and continued to iterate on the final designs for the Master Chief… as we would see in Halo: Combat Evolved.”
For more on the best, brightest, most interesting minds in the games industry, be sure to check out every episode of Unfiltered, which includes interviews with 343’s Bonnie Ross, Valve’s Robin Walker and Chris Remo, Respawn’s Stig Asmussen, and many, many more.
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Brian Barnett writes features, wiki guides, & more for IGN. Check out his Final Fantasy VII Remake walkthrough, and get your fix of Brian’s antics on Twitter and Instagram (@Ribnax).
Source: IGN.com Master Chief’s Creator Talks About the Origins of the Iconic Character