Halo 3 - Theater Mode
I love Halo 3’s theater mode. I can’t think of any other videogame that so gleefully invites you to meticulously examine the game from every possible angle and location. I was overjoyed to discover that theater mode is not just reserved for multiplayer, but every single game experience that you have is available for potentially painstaking examination. You can pause the action, slow motion cool scenes, have your camera follow the game character or the character of any other person you are playing with, you can even setup fixed camera locations and watch the action unfold.
That last bit is particularly fun. Rather than constraining the graphics and focus to the player-character, the creators of Halo 3 allow you to move the camera with an amazing amount of freedom. I spent ten minutes following one of my AI marines around until his bitter death at the hands of a grunt. The sheer amount of detail that my camera exposed was astonishing. Completely separated from the player/character the marine chattered with his, also AI, squad. When the marine’s leg was speared by four 2” spikes he grimaced in pain, fell back, and then struggled to fight on before finally falling to a brute’s attack.
Halo 3 is simply brimming over with this massive level of detail. Donald and I played two co-op game sessions last night that lasted about an hour each. I could easily spend three or four hours on each in theater mode and still not see everything. At one point in the game the player/character is riding up an elevator hearing about a Covenant attack over the radio. In theater mode you can actually see the attack taking place by flying the camera up ahead of the character. Where most (all?) gaming companies would justifiably only worry about detail immediately surrounding the character, Bungie has created a wealth of detail then gleefully given us gamers the tools to peruse it.
This isn’t to say that theater mode doesn’t expose the ‘game’ itself. There are the sudden pop-in and pop-outs of sets and props if you move the camera extremely distant from the player. Rather than hide this, Bungie simply accepts it as a consequence of giving the player complete freedom with the lens.
As I watched Donald and I kick Covenant ass I found myself moving the camera in and around the battles like a photographer, which is handy because it’s actually possible to take screenshots and share them with the world.
Awesome? I sure think so.
donald said
Sep 27, 2007 @ 05:26 PM
You should post the video of me nudging you with the brute crawler and then driving off the cliff. That was teh funny.
Stephen said
Sep 28, 2007 @ 04:05 PM
Yeah, hilarious instant karma. :-)
I’ll get on that posting, but unfortunately only people with Halo 3 will be able to watch it. Although you can, if you own Halo 3, conveniently download the video to your gamertag via the Bungie website.