Halo 3′s saved film feature in-depth

By Dan Zuccarelli . July 27, 2007 . 10:49am

The single player campaign wasn’t the only thing about Halo 3 that was shown off in the behind closed doors meeting I was in earlier. I was also able to check out for the 1st time the feature they were calling “Saved Films”. This is going to be a godsend to the huge multiplayer fans out there that want to be able to re-trace past matches.

I can see this feature taking off amongst the pro-level players as a way for groups to study their opponents like an NFL team studies tape of upcoming teams. However, an NFL coach would kill to have something as extensible as what’s being offered here.

First I need to point out that these files are tiny, the 5 minute match we were shown was contained in a single 5meg file. It's not saved as video, but as data. It's similar to a Midi file containing data for music notes, and not the notes themselves.

The match took place on a new multiplayer map called Sand Trap that was downright huge and built for vehicle on vehicle combat, which I’m pretty sure is the first Halo map designed to be vehicle driven. So when the match started we were following a single Spartan just like if we were watching ourselves. But then the action was paused and the camera detached and spun up and around and moved across the battlefield to see where the enemy was. You started to get an idea of the possibilities here.

The action played out with the camera moving back and forth across the battlefield which we watched Warthogs race, shoot and get destroyed. Using a TiVO like interface we were able to jump back and re-watch missed kills or see what was going over on the other side of the battlefield.

Finding a fantastic moment where a Warthog got caught on the wrong end of a Spartan Laser the movie was paused, and using a simple popup interface a screenshot was taken and saved to the 360 hard drive. From there it could be sent to Bungie.net or to people on your friends list. It’ll be a fun way to rub your friends nose in it.

Also able to be shared over Live or Bungie.net are the movies themselves.

It’s not a game play element, and won’t really add anything to the experience while you play it, but they’re spent a lot of time on it and it shows. When you pause the playback the sound stays on, so if you get close to an explosion you'll still hear it.

It’ll be fun for the more amateur of us out there to laugh at ourselves standing still while someone saunters up behind us with an energy sword. And for the pros can study the tactics of their opponents. Make no mistake about it, it never seems to get old to make things blow up and watch friends (or enemies) go flying.