Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
84 M PS E . O R G unbelievably important in film and television, which is the mix. Doing the final mix is the climax of any film work or TV work. That's when everybody shows up and listens to the final thing. In the game world, nobody even knew what a final mix was. So, I would have to say, "Guys, you gotta give me time to do a final mix." Bringing all these elements together and knowing that they actually are balanced the right way, that the voice is up front when it needs to be, and the sound effects are here or there, or the music is swelling when it needs to be. That final mix was not easy to do because in order to do the final mix, you actually are physically playing a game and trying to make changes to what we call "sound tags," or the sound files and the volume of the sound, how they're played back, and how they're mixed was such a panic. I felt like I needed another month on Halo. I was so depressed when we shipped it because I felt, "Oh, it's so far from being polished." We had no time. But when I actually played the shipped version of the game, I wasn't so close to it anymore. I suddenly heard the actual retail version of the game in my home theater at my house, and I'm like, "This isn't too bad. This actually sounds more polished than I remember." That was a pretty amazing feeling. This is going to be hard to believe, but one of the things that we didn't get around to doing because we couldn't, were all the cinematics. There were 33 cinematics in the game, which were these scripted moments like this last one we're watching, that the technology of making those custom animations, custom scripting to make the cinematics do what it needs to do—the camera cuts here on the close-up of Master Chief, then a shot of the outside and all that stuff. We had proven that we could do all that, but we didn't have it. It wasn't working yet in-engine. We had storyboards. We knew what was probably coming down the pipe, but we as audio guys couldn't do anything in sync to it because it wasn't working in the engine yet. It finally started with Joseph Staten, who was in charge of scripting the cinematic moments at Bungie. He was also the writer of the game. He said, "Okay, all the cinematics are in and they're ready to go!"—and at that point, we had three days to do all the scoring, Foley, sound design and mix for the cinematics. If you want to know what my most memorable moment is on Halo: Combat Evolved, it was that we had three days to work on all the cinematics. A war unfolds ahead on the beach in Halo: Combat Evolved.