Developer 343 Industries iterates on multiplayer maps for thousands of man-hours before it lands on a design that feels endlessly repayable. This means that even the slightest details of a map are scrutinized under a magnifying glass. In order to get a better understanding of Fathom’s ins-and-outs we asked multiplayer designer Quinn DelHoyo to give us a detailed tour of this new arena map.
Narrative Background: UNSC Fathom is a research base buried deep below an ocean world called Beta Gabriel. During the Covenant War, a team of Spartan-IIs were tasked with infiltrating a Sangheili carrier and retrieving the plans for a new Sangheili weapon rumored to be so powerful that it would render the Covenant’s glassing cannons obsolete. The details of the mission were classified, but we know that it was not successful, and both the Sangheili carrier and the Spartan’s own vessel sank into the oceans of Beta Gabriel. The Fathom research station was built in an effort to mine the Covenant ship for any surviving details about this super weapon, and the ship’s remains can be seen through Fathom’s various portholes.
Two different space whales can be see swimming around outside the base. The team refers to one as Timmy the Whale, which was named after creative lead Tim Longo.
“We did some theming of the location," DelHoyo says. "The coloration is more blue on one side and red on the other. We do that kind of heavy-handed on our arena maps, so we can get that sporty, team feel – almost like a homage to old Quake games. That’s why we call our multiplayer mode arena. It’s not some marketing term, it’s because multiplayer shooters of old were arena shooters, and that’s what we're trying to get back to.”
Developer 343 Industries strives for balancing to make sure that each side of the map feels balanced. In addition to the colors, each side is labeled with giant letters to help teams communicate with each other.
“We took the starting load out seriously,” DelHoyo says. “We didn’t want people to start out with something lame so they couldn’t defend themselves, but we didn’t want them to be super powerful either. The assault rifle and magnum have been especially scrutinized. Our magnum has received a buff since the beta. The rate of fire has gone down, but the damage has gone up. If you miss a shot, you’re penalized a little bit, so we’re hoping that it will appeal to the skilled crowd. Meanwhile, the assault rifle has been given four extra rounds to each magazine, and those four bullets make a big difference in getting kills. So those two weapons have been super-tuned, and we feel like we have a load out that will be used by both the pro scene and the casual player.”
The Halo arsenal has been broken into three tiers. Common weapons like the magnum, assault rifle, and the battle rifle spawn in fairly specific spots across the map, and a fresh weapon will respawn only 20 seconds after a player picks one up. “We didn’t like old classic Halo, where you would spawn with an SMG – and the old SMG wasn’t very good – so you’d have to go on a scavenger hunt for maybe 30 seconds to find another weapon before you could fight anyone,” DelHoyo says. Guardians' new weapon-spawning system seems to help mitigate some of these classic problems.
Next up: A deeper look at heavy weapons and how players will be able to manipulate Halo 5's environments.