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  • Subject: Halo 2 to have 20,000 lines of dialogue
Subject: Halo 2 to have 20,000 lines of dialogue
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Just thought you guys wanted to know this... found it over at talkxbox (fairly old but still first time i found about this news)...


Waiting game: 'Halo 2' among top MIA titles

By Paul Hyman

"Halo 2"
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Gamers may have had visions of sugarplums and three much-anticipated video games showing up in their stockings this past Christmas. But here it is late January and, for various reasons, "Halo 2," "Half-Life 2" and "James Bond 007: Everything Or Nothing" still haven't even made it onto store shelves.

These days, video games are more likely to slip past their scheduled release dates than ever before. Blame the complexity of the technology; blame how high great titles have raised the bar on gamers' expectations. You can even blame game publishers' willingness to accept delays if it means a better product and, therefore, heftier sales.

Case in point: "Halo 2," the sequel to the Xbox launch title and that console system's top seller. "Halo 2's" developer, Microsoft's Bungie Studios, will swear up and down that the scheduled release date is and always has been "whenever it's ready," but the first-person shooter was originally listed on the Microsoft site as a Christmas 2003 release. Then it was pushed back to March 2004. And, at this month's Consumer Electronics Show, chief Xbox wrangler Robbie Bach said, "We're going to ship it when it's ready. That might be the first half of 2004, it might not." Indeed, the Xbox product catalog on the Microsoft site has now substituted "TBA" for the former "spring release."

Pity the poor marketing director who has to take aim at this moving target and make it a roaring success. In this case, that's Beth Featherstone, senior director of marketing for Microsoft games.

"Lucky for us, "Halo 2" isn't a game that has to come out at Christmas," she said. "For many games -- for 75% of them -- coming out at Christmas is really critical. That's when consumers are in the stores and when gift-buying happens. But "Halo 2" will have big sales regardless of when it's released."

According to Featherstone, "Halo 2" just happens to be one huge game, with 20,000 lines of dialogue in it. "And that's just one illustration of its size," she said. "Bungie is a perfectionist and wants it as polished as it can be. If a game is innovative, if it pushes the technical limitations of the platform, then it puts risk into your schedule. But because we know we can ship at any time and will do really well sales-wise, we'll take our time and get it to be the game we want it to be. It's the most important title on the Xbox platform and it needs to be right."

Bungie may want to keep polishing, but surely there will come a time when enough's enough. Featherstone says that time hasn't come yet, but it will.

" 'Halo 2' impacts the other games in the Xbox portfolio," she explained. "Nobody wants to ship just before it or in its shadow; they want to give each game some breathing room."

So, at some undetermined point, Microsoft will pick a date and tell Bungie that the game needs to be good enough to ship on that date. Period.



This could be a very good oportunity for Bungie to put in a very strong prolouge for the few of us who have read the Halo books, mainly First Strike it could very well explain the main points in First Strike itself.
ie. Remaining Spartans Will, Fred and Linda
Sargeant Johnson's survival
How they came into ownership of The Ghettysburg
Bungie could make this very, very well done with either a voice over of Cortona telling us the events as the opening video with flashbacks of blurry events that had happend in First Strike. Anyways sorry if this is old new... peace

  • 04.20.2004 6:05 PM PDT
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Thats a lot of grunty comments to come

  • 04.20.2004 6:06 PM PDT
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Yea I remember reading that; that's just amazing

And it's always good to hear that Bungie, as a group, are perfectionists; people wonder why they're taking so long, well the reason is is that the game is going to be perfect

  • 04.20.2004 6:07 PM PDT
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maka is a hippy

  • 04.20.2004 6:14 PM PDT
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Posted by: The Almighty J R
maka is a hippy


Maka will kick your ass :)

  • 04.20.2004 6:17 PM PDT
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Yeah, really. They need to answer these questions somewhere during the game. With the amount of time they have let alone, until they've officially completed Halo 2. I hope they included all this stuff since from what it seems they're near finished, but then theres the removal of bugs, finishing touches, etc. With E3 right around the corner, I'm looking forward to Bungie finally rewarding us with a release date, hopefully late August, depending on how much they get done at the beginning and middle of the summer or beginning of September at the latest.

  • 04.20.2004 6:24 PM PDT
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could live up to KOTOR for dialogue

  • 04.20.2004 6:25 PM PDT
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If i remember correctly, KOTOR had something like 15000 - 17000 lines of dialogue. So, if Halo 2 has 20,000, well, thats a LOT of talking.

  • 04.20.2004 6:39 PM PDT
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20,000 lines, interesting. Sounds like we'll get a nice, fleshed out story. Just for comparison, though, anyone know how many lines of dialogue were in Halo? I'd like to know just how much more Halo 2 will have for dialogue.

  • 04.20.2004 6:45 PM PDT
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Hell yeah, go 20,000 lines of dialogue! Halo, hell man.. Probably not that much.

  • 04.20.2004 6:48 PM PDT
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I like the fact that Frankie stated Halo 2 will be way more dramatic than the first game. I love the storyline.

  • 04.20.2004 6:52 PM PDT
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well with 3 books you're gonna know that the story will kick ass more than even the graphics and that stuff

  • 04.20.2004 6:54 PM PDT
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Yeah, seriously. I'm really not gonna know what to do the day it comes out, shall I play Multiplayer and check out the whole thing and play Single Player later or start Single Player learn about any new changes to the controls, etc. and have an enjoyable game experience THEN go Multiplayer it up. Decisions, decisions.

  • 04.20.2004 6:55 PM PDT
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Seriously...when Halo 2 comes out, NOONE will see me for a long time. I'm probably going to play Halo 2 for a week STRAIGHT, only stopping for food, bathroom breaks, and showers when I begin to smell.

Halo 2 will OWN me...in a good way!

  • 04.20.2004 7:02 PM PDT
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Man, I hope I'm still on freaking summer vacation when it comes out, depending on whether it releases in August, this has to do with how much they complete during the summer, and it'd only be late August in the end, or something like that. Either way, damn straight, in my room for two weeks straight.

  • 04.20.2004 7:08 PM PDT
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Man that Paul Hyman is an idiot. Just because moneysoft was stupid and said christmas 2003 is no reason to consider Halo 2 a MIA. If the developers of a game are saying it'll be released when it's done, go by that. Publishers aren't any different than these EB and Gamestop folks who are just trying to get sales by telling us it'll be out by a certain date, especially M$. I've will never count what a publisher says is an expected release date unless the developer is saying it also. Also, to me a MIA is a title that has completely flown off the face of the earth, like Duke Nukem Forevor, that's a MIA game. Halo 2 just hasn't been released when we would have liked it too, but I've never even heard of Bungie saying Christmas 2003, or any other dates or seasons other than Fall 2004. And for his BS line at the end about M$ picking a date and that Bungie needs to be done by that point, period. I doubt it, if that was true it would have been released by now and Halo 2 would not be near as good as it will be. I'd put money down that when Bungie agreed to be bought out by M$ that it's in there contracts that any game they make will be released when they finish itt, and that M$ can't tell them that a game has to be completed by any certain dates.

The 20K lines of dialog would be pretty cool though, and as much as Bungie is emphasizing the storyline it wouldn't surprize me at all, but coming from a M$ marketing director, probably the same person that put a release date down, I'll take her information with a grain of salt. Until I see it from Bungie, and maybe they've already said it somewhere and I missed it, or until I read it on the box for Halo 2, I'm not going to anticipate it having 20K lines of dialog.

  • 04.20.2004 7:24 PM PDT