Halo 3's Save Films nearly dropped

Oct 23, 2007

Save Films, one of Halo 3's most popular features, was nearly sliced from the game's development because there were doubts about gamer interest.

The feature allows gamers to record sessions or take highly-polished screenshots of the action on screen - and has produced some truly stunning images, as you've probably seen in our two recent huge features.

But, listing the 'Top 10 things heard during the development of Halo 3' for Bungie's weekly update, designer Bob Glessner recalls that someone once proclaimed:

"No one will use screen shots, cut it."

Above: Without Bungie's stubborn hard work, we'd have never seen amazing shots like these

We'd already been told that the feature meant Bungie's developers were busier than ever when we chatted with the devs at a Halo 3 party:

"Save Films were truly a labour of love at Bungie," producer Joseph Tungexplained. "There were multiple points in the process where the feature could have gotten cut and all the guys involved were like 'We want to make this feature happen'. And they worked really long, extra hours..."

The moral of the story? Bungie really know what its fans want. Surprise!

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.