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If you've only played the original installment of the Halo series, Halo: Battle Evolution, there's a good chance you'll think the series's protagonist, the Sergeant Major, is very flat. From the beginning, the sergeant major was a typical elite soldier.
But if you dig deeper, you'll find a series of anecdotes about the Sergeant Major, both in the game and in related spin-offs. It is this depth of character that makes the Sergeant Major a leading and popular protagonist in the game world, and his image is constantly evolving, and 343 Studios, which is now in charge of the development of the Halo series, said that the image of the Sergeant Major is still a priority in the game development process.
The development of the original Halo went through many variables. The game had names such as "The Santa Machine", "The Crystal Palace", and "Hard Vacuum", and finally decided to be called Halo (and the subtitle of the original work: Battle Evolution, which was added later), and officially announced under this name at the 1999 Digital World Exposition. Although the Sergeant Major had already appeared at this time, the role was not introduced much.
All we know is that he was dressed in green armor and was highly respected by his comrades (on one occasion, when the non-commissioned officer ran past a group of marines, they all nodded their heads and seemed to treat the non-commissioned officer as a superior), and there was no other information about the non-commissioned officer. In later games, the character and characteristics of the sergeant major were described, and the character of the sergeant major was given more scenes in the plot than in the original plan.
A year and a half later, Microsoft acquired Bungie and acquired the rights to the series from Apple. Bungie, who joined Microsoft, stopped making games on Macs and began developing them only for Microsoft. According to many reports, Steve Jobs was so angry that Microsoft poached such a big IP that he specifically complained to Steve Ballmer, then CEO of Microsoft.
In a 2010 interview with Develop, Ed Fryes, a former vice president of Microsoft's games division, said: "Jobs was furious with Ballmer, and he called angrily to express his anger at Ballmer's acquisition of the largest Mac game developer and their creation of Xbox games."
Over the next year and a half, Bungie worked closely with Microsoft to develop Halo: Battle Evolution, a game built for Microsoft's new console, though the Sergeant Major's image remained little changed. In the game, he is a tough and unhesitating character, but his personality traits are hardly revealed. The sergeant major at this time had no deep emotions, no secret motives, and no interpersonal relationships worth talking about. The main difference between the game when it was released and released was from a third-person to a first-person shooter.
Marcus Lehto, the creator of the Sergeant Major role, said in an interview with IGN: "When I first joined Bungie to start working, there was an early project involving only jason and me (Jason was one of Bungie's co-founders), which was a sci-fi-themed strategy game. At that time, there was a character in the game that we called "Super Soldier," and that character was the prototype for the Sergeant Major."
The character of the Sergeant Major was originally created, but the character's personality and manner of conduct were later supplemented. Halo is the product of a series of evolutionary iterations, a game that combines the understanding of first-person shooters in the game world at the time with the novel ideas in Bungie's mind. The era of popularity in games such as Doom and Wehrmacht headquarters is over, replaced by Halo with a revertable shield, sci-fi themes, and exploration of the future of gameplay, and the era it ushered in. At this time, the sergeant major was more of a symbol of the hope of the people around him, and rarely showed an independent personality, but he also gave insights into the shortcomings of the military government and the endless war.
Throughout the Halo series, the Sergeant Major developed a fairly close relationship with his AI partner, Cortana, which has been influencing the Sergeant Major throughout the series' plot. The two men had equal status—even seeing each other as confidants—and the sergeant major did not often have such a relationship with people. We also began to see the inner side of the Sergeant Major, and found that he was not an emotionless robot, and this relationship became the focus of 343 Studios when it first took over the development of the series and took over the production of Halo 4.
Fans are not only interested in their relationship because of the way the duo communicates, but also attracted by the new character and characteristics that the two show because of each other. As Halo: Infinity publicized the story of the Sergeant Major's search for Cortana as the focus of the campaign plot, the relationship between the two received more attention. The information that can be seen in the game is only the tip of the iceberg, and the Halo series also has a large number of novels of the same name, all set in the same worldview as the main story, some of which add some new qualities and depth to the personality of the master sergeant, allowing him to show an image that we have never seen in the game. In the novel, there is even a setting in which the forerunner likes hats, which everyone knows for the first time.
The protagonist of infinite evolution
After Bungie decided to move on to a new project, Studio 343 took over the Halo series in 2009, followed by their first work in 2012: Halo 4. Today, when Halo: Infinity is already in place, the series' past works are still providing inspiration for Studio 343.
Paul Crocker, the studio's associate creative director, told Fanbyte: "In my opinion, the Sergeant Major is an unstoppable builder of hope. When we developed Halo: Infinity, the internal concept was "Super Soldier Base Commando", which included my understanding of the role of the Sergeant Major, and we also used this concept to create scenes that only the Sergeant Major could handle. As a hero, he was sometimes silent and sometimes talkative. For people, the sergeant major represents an infinite number of images, and different people will see different things in him."
To Crocker and the members of 343 Studios, the Sergeant Major represents many things, but not all of their interpretations are shared by the player community. Over the years, we've seen the Sergeant Major's personality change and the characteristics it manifests, and 343 Studios recognizes that they have to attract veteran players in a creative way. Because fans were disappointed by the new attempts that followed, the goal of Halo: Infinity was to bring in the non-commissioned officer that everyone had known since childhood.
Crocker said, "We decided to make some changes to the Sergeant Major's image in Halo 4 and Halo 5 to bring him closer to what he looked like in the original trilogy. The player will be wearing his armor as a sergeant major, and I personally don't think we should tell them how they should feel about it, because some people in this armor will simply feel that they are a fierce character, while others will feel that they are heroes who bring hope to the universe. You'll be immersed in the game in just a few minutes."
When discussing everyone's personal understanding of the Sergeant Major, we have to talk about the fact that in the more than 20 years of the Halo series, you have never seen the character as it really is (after completing Halo 4 with legendary difficulty, you can see the Sergeant Major's sunken eyes in an additional cutscene, but still can't see his face). Crocker knew that not everyone wanted to see the Sergeant Major. He said that whenever people think of Halo, they think of the legendary armor of the Sergeant Major, which evokes a deep sense of nostalgia, which is exactly what they want to reproduce in Halo: Infinity.
Crocker explains, "Rekindling players' feelings for the series over the past 20 years has always been one of halos: Infinite's goals. This means that there will be a lot of elements in this game, but most importantly, the game has the aura you remember. It's not just the master sergeant who evokes memories, but also the gameplay and experience of the game."
Halo: Infinity has a slow-hot opening, with Crocker explaining that this is because 343 Studios wanted to create an incredibly desperate world, thus showing that the arrival of the Sergeant Major was "extremely important".
Crocker said: "When we saw the trailer that was later shown in the summer, the Sergeant Major moved through space and collected weapons, it was as if something was really touched in my heart, and it felt like this image was the essence of the character."
In today's gaming world, there are no such stories as the Sergeant Major. Many games will be given extra depth after the characters have appeared, such as the character in the Resident Evil series, Leon Lee. Kennedy is a success story. Whether it's Bungie or 343 Studios, they'll give the characters a deeper level of image development in each generation of Halo. The sergeant major is the only living fossil in the game industry, a representative figure who has witnessed a critical period in the game industry, and is far from coming to an end on the road of image iteration.
Translated by 丨 Liu Sheng Non-Love Sword
Edit 丨 Tonkotsu Ramen
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