Halo Infinite: Cortana Dungeon Blockout
This was one of the very first dungeon spaces I made for Halo Infinite when I joined the team back in 2019.
The goal was to have a short 10-15 min experience from start to finish. Worked with Narrative to align on gameplay/narrative beats and establish pacing. The gameplay experience was meant to be mild and more a “haunted house” explorative feel with a focus on narrative.
I went on to make several more “Cortana Dungeons” afterwards which ended up being cut do to scoping for the project.
The team learned a ton from this demo space and a lot of the layouts, gameplay experience would go on to make it into the final levels I made for Halo Infinite.
The initial space for the dungeon was meant to be a sort of Forerunner Teleportation room. Took inspiration from the mission Two Betrayals in Halo CE, where the player has to disable the pulse generators/gets teleported afterwards. For Halo Infinite the player would get teleported back to the start of the dungeon in order to exit.
This layout/room was meant to serve as the first arena space with a center catwalk cutting through the center space. Sentinel launchers on the walls to give the player some foreshadowing. Leaning into the columns to provide cover for the player as well as full cover height prop placements.
The red blocks used here are “cheat blocks” which basically allowed the level design team to create a unique one-off piece that would later be called out in documentation for art to provide special treatment. The idea in this case would be a Forerunner cradle that houses the puzzle item to draw attention from the player to check out.
Each socket powered would provide a new narrative beat followed shortly by enemy waves. The idea was to place emphasis on the players actions that what the player was doing is causing the Forerunner space to react.
The red ball here was meant to be a placeholder for the narrative team. Just to call out where in the space we would need a hologram and just to make sure its in a good spot for them.
Combat beats with verticality.
Large Vista beat. The player gets a preview of the space beyond and where they will eventually end up. Also meant to build tension with all the Sentinel Launchers stretching into the distance. There was meant to be Sentinels in a stasis mode/contained behind energy fields in the pods and at some point would be alerted to the players presence.
Another large arena combat beat with narrative inbetween waves. After several iterations this particular space would go on into the final game in the mission “The Nexus”
Playing with Negative space here
The Sentinel Highway. The idea is the player would hopefully connect the dots from the large vista shot and notice they are finally here. Large droves of sentinels flying by and coming over to confront the player. Gave a huge space to allow for giant Cortana.
The Final room that offered the player their reward for completing the dungeon and would teleport them to the beginning “Teleporter Room”
This space would be repurposed and used in the final game in the mission “Foundation”
Heading back towards the elevator transition/exit to the open world.