Winding down now from a week in Japan.  I spent a few hours today watching the Halo Wars cinematics being localized and met the Japanese Serina, Cutter, Forge and Anders.  The actor who plays Forge is a huge Halo fan, which is kind of rare for Japan, and was REALLY excited to be in Halo Wars.  I asked if Serina was still funny in Japanese and was assured that she was.  The translator said that she had spent a long time making sure that Serina was still Serina, but that Forge was her favorite character.

The keynote went well apparently.  We landed on Tuesday and I was quite jet lagged (14 hour time difference) and even by Wednesday when we had our rehearsal I was still really tired.

We were booked into the “New Otani”, which is the hotel right next to the convention center.  What we didn’t know is that there are TWO New Otani hotels and the one we were booked into was an hour away from the convention center.

On Wednesday evening we had a rehearsal walkthrough for the keynote address.  Both Bill and I were pretty jet lagged but it was good to catch up with some friends.  One cool thing was that we got to see he full “Halo Recon” trailer before anyone else!

We had one more run through the next morning, and then I had until 11:45am on my own.  Bill had to sit and watch the previous keynote from 10am on so he could see the Microsoft address.  I sat outside for a while with Peter Molyneux, whose sage advice was “well, the worst thing that can happen is someone will rush the stage with a knife and kill you.”  That made me feel better.

At 11:45am I was outside the stage entrance standing with our marketing rep Chris Lee and the group that was accompanying John Schappert (XBOX Live VP, also the person doing the keynote).  I waited, went on stage, did the demo, and walked off.  I think it was the first time the audience applauded during the keynote and applause is apparently pretty rare in Japan at events like this.  I have no real memory of it – it was a little nerve wracking.

After that it was two days of press demos and interviews.  Basically it could have been anywhere in the world, it was a hotel room, a bunch of chairs, our build, our PR “handler” and Bill and I.  We demoed our hearts out and I have to say that this build, the first time we’ve shown the campaign to the press, KICKED ASS.  Easily the best response I’ve had to any demo we’ve done over the year.

There is quite a bit of concern regarding how we’re going to fit the Flood into our game and keep it in canon which surprised me, but I promised them all that the Halo 1 canon is intact and that they would have to wait and see how we integrate the Flood.  People wondered how long the campaign will be, were amazed at the cinematics (and the fact that they covered the level loading), and it was good to be able to move on from the “we have the controls right” message to talking about the story, game campaign and overall game.  Most people seemed happily convinced we have controls that work well, a lot of the same press we demoed to at E3 (and where we let them play the game) was here in Japan.

The air conditioning in our demo hotel room did not work.  That is not a happy situation.  We would run between demos into the bedroom part of the room suite, where the A/C was working, and cooled off.  Fortunately Japan is also the land of vending machines and we had a steady supply of cola and water.

Friday at lunch we had a free half hour(!) so we ran over to the show floor and looked around.  The XBOX 360 booth was showing the Halo Wars “5 Long Years” trailer and attracting a big crowd.  The show itself isn’t too big, certainly not as big as E3 when it was “the” event, but the money and electricity being spent per square foot is easily 10x that of anything else on the planet.

Friday afternoon we had a visit from an American teenager whom had been ill, and through the “make a wish” foundation was flying out to Tokyo Game Show and sat in with us for a while.  It was obvious by his expert questions that he is a big Halo geek (and so was his Father) and really enjoyed the demo, we loaded him up with a Halo Wars t-shirt.

We fly home tomorrow!  I just broke 100,000 flying miles for the year on the way out to Tokyo.  Yowzer.

Graeme.