Halo co-creator built Master Chief 9 times before finalizing iconic Combat Evolved style

Original Halo co-creator and Bungie alumni Marcus Lehto takes fans back to the past to the early days of Halo CE, briefly touching on the design process for one of the most recognized protagonists in gaming history.

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How do you create a media icon? By going through tons of iterations. That's the core message behind Marcus Lehto's advice to Kent State University students. Lehto went to Kent State before moving on to Bungie and creating Halo and the Master Chief, the latter of which he designed. That process was grueling, though, and didn't come easy.

"The creation of the Master Chief is something that I went through so many ringers to try to find the right look, the right feel, the right stature for such a character," Lehto told Kent State University in a recent alumni interview. "I built the Master Chief nine times before I finally got to the version that I liked for Halo Combat Evolved, the first installation of Halo."

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Lehto will occasionally share early Halo footage, concept art and sketches on his Twitter page, and recently he posted the earliest known sketch of Master Chief Spartan 117 (see above).

There's also the more tribal iteration of Master Chief that was originally scrapped, featuring more smooth bone-like armor.

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In the interview, Lehto says that Master Chief's design was a mix of what was popular in the late 90s--BMX was huge, hence John-117's iconic helmet bill--and the instantly recognizable golden visor was a nod to the space race era of the 1960s.

Check below for a quick transcript of what Lehto said in the interview:

"That character is something that I started to pull from elements that are really critical to that character; pieces of an M1 Abrams tank or an Apache helicopter to bring in the military-tough feel; the gold visor to look like he's part astronaut; the forked brim on his helmet that was like a BMX helmet at the time, to bring some of that fun and excitement into that character. And to make him feel like an empty vessel, that I believe that I could be that character.

"It took forever, but I wasn't going to stop because I had learned through the program here at Kent State, that you don't stop when you're just on your first iteration. You have to go through lots of sketches to find the thing that's going to work.

"When I got to the point when I knew that Master Chief was finally done for Halo Combat Evolved, it's when I had heard some other folks say 'that's one of the coolest characters I've ever seen in a game! That's really neat, I love that!'

"I was like 'Finally, I did it!' It took forever, a really long time, and it took a lot of perseverance to get right."