Investigation: Narrative team - Halo 5

Community Halo Universe
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Because these people are fundamental to all things story-related in Halo 5 (and beyond) I wanted to keep track of 343’s narrative team as of now.

Let’s start with the team responsible for Halo 4’s narrative - according to the Halo 4 credits:

Halo 4

NARRATIVE DESIGN
Narrative Director
Armando Troisi
Narrative Designers
Christopher Schlerf
Lindsay Lockhart (Insight Global)
Nathan Moller (Insight Global)

Interestingly Reed is listed under ‘franchise developement’:

FRANCHISE DEVELOPMENT
Lead Producer
Kevin Grace
Team
Tyler Jeffers
Jeremy Patenaude
Brian Reed
Corrinne Robinson

So let’s have a look what I found regarding Halo 5…

Halo 5

Let’s start with the people responsible for Halo 4 (see above):

What we know is that Brian Reed is currently ‘lead writer’ for Halo 5 according to his own Twitter account.
Experience: Comic book writer Marvel Comics, writer Halo: Fall of Reach [Comic], lead writer of Spartan Ops, writer Halo: Initiation, writer Halo: Escalation (issues 7-10)

Armando Troisi
Narrative director at 343 from July 2011 - April 2013. Left 343 to work for Black Tusk, now at Fathom Interactive.

Christopher Schlerf
Senior writer at 343, created the original draft of the Halo 4’s script. Also writer for Halo: Escalation (issues 1-6).
Left 343 in November 2013.

Lindsay Morgan Lockhart
Narrative designer for H4 (contract) - according to her Linkedin profile still working for 343.
Experience: Worked for Sony Online Entertainment / Sigil Games Online, social flash MMO City of Eternals, story lead Rift

Nathan Moller
Narrative designer for H4 (contract) - according to his Linkedin profile after one year pause again working for 343 (rejoined team in January 2014.
Experience: Cinematic, Narrative and Level Design duties for Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Star Wars: Old Republic and Scribblenauts

Based on my little investigation it’s safe to assume that there has been a lot of change to the narrative team since H4. Both the narrative director and the guy responsible for the H4 script left.

I digged a little deeper found new faces:

Guillaume Colomb (Linkedin)
Narrative Designer for ‘the next Halo’.
Experience: Trion Worlds (Defiance), Ubisoft (Ghost Recon), Eden Games (Alone in the Dark 5)

Patrick Downs (Linkedin)
Narrative Designer für H5 ‘as well as another unannounced project’.
Experience: Avalanche Studio (unannounced AAA action-adventrue sandbox game), Gameloft (Avatar, Chuck Norris, CSI: Miami, Spider-Man), short film Broken

Caleb Doughty (Linkedin)
Narrative Designer at 343.
Experience: Cinematic/Level Designer for diverse mobile and handheld-games

What makes me really crazy is that I read some time ago that a woman who previously worked for Bioshock: Infinite as a co-writer now also works as a writer for Halo 5. I know I visited her Twitter account but I just can’t remember her name.
Probably someone can help me?

Would be happy for any additions and/or corrections! :slight_smile:

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Kristina Drzaic

That’s the only female name in the credits attributed to writing Bioshock Infinite

Edit confirmed, she is a writer for Halo 5

https://twitter.com/PoniesPonies

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If she did narrative for Bioshock Infinite then Halo 5’s story will probably be really good and may go over my head.

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> If she did narrative for Bioshock Infinite then Halo 5’s story will probably be really good and may go over my head.

Lol. I was grinning with joy when I read that she’ll be working on Halo 5.

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Why is Brian Reed on italics?

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> Kristina Drzaic
>
> That’s the only female name in the credits attributed to writing Bioshock Infinite
>
> Edit confirmed, she is a writer for Halo 5
>
> https://twitter.com/PoniesPonies

YES, that’s her :slight_smile:

You know what?
As you can read above there are a lot of writers for Halo 5 - however Drzaic is ‘Lead Narrative’ according to her Linkedin-profile which makes me really hopeful…

So what’s interesting now is that Reed is calling himself ‘lead writer’ while Drzaic is calling herself ‘lead narrative’.

What does that mean?
And who’s ‘Narrative Director’ i.e. the person responsible for the whole writing team?
We also don’t know who’s responsible for the core script for Halo 5.

> Lol. I was grinning with joy when I read that she’ll be working on Halo 5.

Yeah, all Bioshocks were pretty great story-wise. We’ll just have to keep in mind that Drzaic was just one writer - not the lead writer for Bioshock Infinite.

But it’s great news for sure.

> Why is Brian Reed on italics?

Because I did so :wink: Was talking about him in the sentence above.

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> > Kristina Drzaic
> >
> > That’s the only female name in the credits attributed to writing Bioshock Infinite
> >
> > Edit confirmed, she is a writer for Halo 5
> >
> > https://twitter.com/PoniesPonies
>
> YES, that’s her :slight_smile:
>
> You know what?
> As you can read above there are a lot of writers for Halo 5 - however Drzaic is ‘Lead Narrative’ according to her Linkedin-profile which makes me really hopeful…
>
> So what’s interesting now is that Reed is calling himself ‘lead writer’ while Drzaic is calling herself ‘lead narrative’.
>
> What does that mean?
> And who’s ‘Narrative Director’ i.e. the person responsible for the whole writing team?
> We also don’t know who’s responsible for the core script for Halo 5.
>
>
>
> > Lol. I was grinning with joy when I read that she’ll be working on Halo 5.
>
> Yeah, all Bioshocks were pretty great story-wise. We’ll just have to keep in mind that Drzaic was just one writer - not the lead writer for Bioshock Infinite.
>
> But it’s great news for sure.
>
>
>
> > Why is Brian Reed on italics?
>
> Because I did so :wink: Was talking about him in the sentence above.

Lead writer would be the guy who writes the most of the story down, narrative director is the person responsible for, well, directing the narrative, IE which direction it’ll go in, how it happens, plot, characters, etc. That’s my interpretation anyway. My only concern was that Bioshock Infinite wasn’t exactly subtle, but I’m sure it’ll be good.

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> Lead writer would be the guy who writes the most of the story down, narrative director is the person responsible for, well, directing the narrative, IE which direction it’ll go in, how it happens, plot, characters, etc. That’s my interpretation anyway. My only concern was that Bioshock Infinite wasn’t exactly subtle, but I’m sure it’ll be good.

To be fair, the Halo games have never been masters of subtlety either.

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> > Lead writer would be the guy who writes the most of the story down, narrative director is the person responsible for, well, directing the narrative, IE which direction it’ll go in, how it happens, plot, characters, etc. That’s my interpretation anyway. My only concern was that Bioshock Infinite wasn’t exactly subtle, but I’m sure it’ll be good.
>
> To be fair, the Halo games have never been masters of subtlety either.

Should read Chronarch and Gojira’s analyses of Halo 4, particularly on the final scene between Chief and Cortana. Halo can get quite subtle as you’ll read about, while Bioshock Infinite was pretty…well, pretentious. But I don’t see that being Kristina’s fault, more Ken Levine’s, and all told Infinite was still very good despite its pretense.