An 8v8 symmetrical BTB map inspired by Longbow from Halo 4.

The Fated Fire, Community Forger

With Recurve, I took the original Longbow design back to the drawing board and vastly reimagined the map—literally recurving the bow-shaped design in the other direction. My aim was reimagination through implementation of arena-based design philosophies, ultimately resulting in a much smaller scaled, faster paced, and more CTF-focused level design than the original. I focused on designing heroism and big-play opportunities through movement, verticality, overlap, and the simultaneous empowerment of both the individual and the team—thus allowing players to make huge plays very quickly off spawn. I love creating huge skill gaps on maps by rewarding players who possess extensive gun game mastery, movement mechanic mastery, and map knowledge, and it was an awesome challenge to develop a Big Team Battle map like Recurve with that philosophy as a core design pillar.

I developed a modular design mass-out that allowed for rapid iteration and evolution by the 343 Multiplayer Team once I left. It has been a great pleasure collaborating with Multiplayer Level Designer Adrian Bedoya throughout the continued design and development process of the map over the past few months. The design process is flexible like a bow and, although the reimagination has significantly changed since I passed the design off, I have high hopes Recurve will evolve into a super memorable, competitive, and iconic Big Team Battle CTF experience. I hope this recurved bow shoots a fiery arrow through your heart when you get to play the map this week!

Adrian Bedoya, MP Level Designer

Collaborating on the BTB maps with the Forgers has been a great experience. It’s incredible to see the passion that they have for Forge, Halo, and map design. Like seasoned professionals, they brought in ideas on paper, or simple roughs in Sketchup. Once at the studio, they hit the ground running, and Kyle (The Fated Fire) was started work on a spiritual successor to the Halo 4 fan favorite Longbow

His work incorporated the base design of two opposing bases with a central structure from Longbow, while also taking some of his own personal design ideas. The layout he crafted was a good base to continue play-testing and iteration on the design. After the Forgers left, we worked tirelessly to bring the maps to completion. We treated the levels as we would any regular internally developed level. We tuned and iterated on weapon, objective, spawn and respawn placements.

We hope that the massive depth, scope and speed of what users are able to achieve within the new Forge tools inspires new and old Forgers to bring their creations to life.