Hello everyone, and welcome to Halo Spotlight. This is the first ever Forge Creation feature, which focuses on a specific Forge Creation.
In this piece, we’re showing off a map created by Danger Tanner named Waking Ruins. I spoke to Danger Tanner about Waking Ruins and he was kind enough to give us some insight about the map.
We also got to play on the map for the first ever Halo Spotlight game night, so please do check that video out on our YouTube channel or at the end of this piece. As for the questions and answers, please enjoy them below.
Question: To give people some background about the map, what is it inspired by?
This map is inspired by Destiny 1, or Destiny (the game). It’s from the Vault Of Glass raid. It’s a recreation of the first section of the raid which was called Waking Ruins.
In the raid, you fight Vex enemies for control of sync plates. When you hold enough of them, a tower forms, and it opens the door to the raid. That’s the whole map that’s recreated from Destiny, Waking ruins. That’s the name of the area in Destiny and the name of the map in Halo 5.
Question: Why, out of all the raids in Destiny history, did you end up choosing the Vault of Glass as inspiration, and what challenges did recreating it bring?
Well the Vault of Glass is iconic. It’s the first raid from the first game. Nobody really knew what to expect and there was hype around it. Ever since it came out, it’s been totally awesome and has been beloved by Destiny players. That’s kind of why it popped into my head as something I thought would be fun.
There’s a lot of overlap between Destiny players and Halo players, with Bungie being the creator of both franchises. I definitely felt that a lot of people from both games would really enjoy seeing it brought to life in Halo.
I’ve seen multiplayer maps from Destiny remade in Halo 5 but I haven’t seen the Vault of Glass. I know Ascend Hyperion made a raid, and there’s other things that look like Destiny, but there was never anything specifically from that raid, so that’s one of the reasons I made it.
There definitely were some challenges when making the map. First of all when you’re forging something from a different game, it’s impossible to get it 100% exact and flawless, so you kind of have to accept that and focus on capturing on “the feel”, which is what I’m proud of.
I think that map (Waking Ruins) has the Destiny feel and people see it and think “This looks and feels like Destiny even though everything’s not totally exactly the way it is in the game (Destiny).”
The only other challenge would be the gameplay. You’ve gotta keep in mind that I’m taking an area designed for PvE (Player Vs Environment) and I’m making it PvP (Player vs Player), there’s some gameplay balancing things you have to consider.
I had to blow some walls out on the ground level to make room for people to spawn, and add pathways. There’s teleport gates that enemies come out of on Destiny, and I just made them connect to each to try to give the map a little bit of flow. That was some of the gameplay challenges.
Question: After the overwhelmingly positive reception to the map on Reddit and from 343I members like Jerry Hook, did you want to make more Destiny inspired maps?
That was super cool seeing the positivity and recognition from all sorts of people. Twitter had hundreds of likes and Reddit had over 2000. Guys like Jerry Hook and 343I employees were retweeting it so that was really cool. I was like “oh wow people are liking this”.
I already have made different Destiny themed stuff. There’s another map called Time Sieve that I have on my content browser that’s kinda Vex themed. I’m working on something right now that’s sort of Hive themed and that might be out in the near future.
Question: If people want to find your map and play it with their friends, where can they do so?
You can check out my Halo 5 content browser by searching my gamertag which is ‘Danger Tanner’. You can do that in game or you can do that on the Halo Waypoint website and do it there.
I do recommend going to Forgehub and checking it out there. I have a profile there under Danger Tanner. There’s lots of other cool content, lots of creators and lots of maps. There’s a lot going on at Forgehub so if you’re not joined you should check it out.
I’d also like to really thank my buddy All Seeing Sage for scripting the energy grid around the tower. It’s a big visual focal point and really ties the map together. I also gotta thank Alex from Infinite Forges and Valiant Wolf for some terrain and atmosphere advice.
A huge thank you to Danger Tanner for taking the time to show off Waking Ruins and to have a chat with The Writing Spartan.
If you want to see the gameplay from the gameplay session and listen to the full audio version of the Q&A, you can do so in the video below.
For more awesome fan made Halo creations, do be sure to check out our new spotlights section of the site. You can also check our Twitter account and Facebook Page for updates relating to the site, our Instagram account for some awesome Halo artwork, and our YouTube channel for the latest Q&As and videos.
Want to see your Halo content or creation on the site? Check out the post submissions section, which outlines what you’ll need to do to get your piece in front of the spotlight. That’s all for now folks, so I’ll see you all next time.