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Every so often a game comes along that changes everything. Games like Doom, Super Mario Brothers and Half-Life aren't just incredible games in their own right - they helped shape the gaming industry as a whole. Halo: Combat Evolved is one such title. As a game, Halo evolved and refined the first person shooter, making it work on a console like never before. As a product, it helped define the first generation Xbox and help Microsoft become the juggernaut of today and, as a project, it lifted its creator, Bungie, into the history books as one of the most revered developers of all time. At the time of release Halo was cutting edge not just in terms of game design but also in terms of technology, storytelling and features. But the path to release was a long one fraught with challenges and changes that resulted in a product very different from what was first envisioned. To understand its beginnings we need to jump all the way back to 1998 - following the release of Myth: The Fallen Lords, development of a secret project got underway while the rest of the studio toiled on Myth II: Soulblighter. This project was first known as 'Monkey Nuts' but Jason Jones, one of Bungie's co-founders, decided that he wouldn't be too keen on explaining this title to his mother thus it was changed to Blam! - with an exclamation point, of course.
Blam! Started life not as a shooter, rather, as a semi-sequel to Myth - an overhead real-time strategy game focused on tactics as opposed to action. Unlike Myth, however, the engine had evolved to the point where it was possible to utilise fully 3D polygonal models. As detail was added, it became clear that the engine could support more than a simple overhead view, inspiring the team to begin experimenting with third-person shooting.
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