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The Making Of Halo Illuminated
Thanks to Gamesradar for their Edge-reprinted feature on the making of Bungie's seminal Xbox FPS, Halo. According to a Bungie producer, the team "...decided they wanted to go back to the roots of a game like Marathon, combining it with some of the things we learnt from Myth." Other topics include the originally impossible tutorial level ("I actually had several play testers decide they wanted to quit playing the game and go home, rather than go through the opening level"), and the relative disappointment of The Library level ("A lot of the little things like that added up to make the Library a lot less than what we wanted it to be.")
Halo wasn't original, it was a 'slightly' modified Larry Niven set with a terrible storyline and repetative, boring, levels. If it's seminal because they stole Niven's (admittedly cool) idea, or because they wrote a graphics engine that delivers lower fps at lower effects levels than more modern games on hardware that didn't even exist back then!
If it had come out 3 years ago I would have been impressed with the graphics, but even then... 'eh'.
Half Life was a better game. More variety, better action. I don't think the bots were as good (they seemed indecisive at times), but overall it was a much more enjoyable experience.
Yes, I was dissapointed with Halo. Maybe that's an appropriate name. You get everything at the edge, NOTHING in the core.