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Squad Patrol in Halo 3 ODST: Populating a Hub World with Enemy Forces

Alex J. Champandard

Halo 3: ODST made numerous bold design changes compared to its predecessors, in particular its open hub-world that's populated with enemy NPCs. During the promotion of the game, Bungie released a video documentary with insights from behind the scenes. For approximately 30 seconds during the video, you can see footage of the AI technology applied to this large city. And, yes, some of the debug rendering for the waypoints seems to be pink!

In particular, during that short section, Bungie designer Alex Pfeiffer talks about the squad patrol behaviors that are used to bring life to the city. Since Halo 3: ODST is a partly open-world game, new technology was needed to make sure there's always enemy presence within the hub — which could be adjusted up and down by the designers. You can watch the AI patrolling in the highlight below...



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