'Red vs. Blue' Jumps Into 'Halo 3: ODST'

"Red vs. Blue" was one of the earliest and most popular machinima series on the web. Using in-game assets from the original "Halo," the series creator, Burnie Burns (who voices Church), Matt Hullum (who plays Sarge), along with a handful of their friends, created a story around a bunch of bumbling soldiers killing time in a box canyon. The rest, as they say, is history.

GameStop has commissioned the crew, known as Rooster Teeth, to create "Halo 3: ODST"-themed episodes featuring the "Red vs. Blue" characters. I spoke to Burns and Hullum about the project, as well as their early roots.

Burns started by talking about the early days of "Red vs. Blue":

"We started the main series in 2003 and they just got really popular and Microsoft gave us a call. Of course when the phone rang and it was Microsoft on the line we thought, "Well, that that was a good run!" But they really liked it…I think the quote was 'We really like it, we just want to make sure you guys can continue to make it.' So they walked us through the legal process, straightening everything else out."

From there the team snagged their first paying job. Says Burns, "They actually gave us our first paying job, making videos for the kiosks that you see in like GameStop and other retailers."

Even though things have expanded vastly in terms of popularity, Burns says that the process of creating the shows hasn't changed too much...save for one element:

"We do a few more visual effects than we used to do. We've been writing feature-length scripts now for the last seven years, and you only have seven verbs you can use. If it's on the controller, they can do it. They can jump or they can crouch. Reload is a big verb for us. So we started doing a little bit more visual effects, but nothing that tries to make it look like something else that's in the game.

"We try to keep it as close to the actual retail version as possible, especially the early stuff. If you picked up a copy of 'Halo' on the shelves you could do everything that we were doing. You just had to write some funny scripts."

As for this latest project, GameStop seemed particularly eager to get Rooster Teeth involved in the promotion of what could potentially be one of their best selling titles of the holiday season. Burns talked about how it all went down:

"[Gamestop] came to us and said they were looking for a cool way to tell people about 'ODST' and they thought 'Red vs. Blue' would be a good way to do it…They came to us and asked if we'd like to take some of the 'RvB' guys and show off the features of Firefight mode. Basically that meant we got to play 'ODST' a month early, and we're never gonna pass that up."

He went on to talk about some of the plans looking forward:

"We're finishing up our summer series, which is called 'Red vs. Blue: Recreation.' And then we have a summer series next summer, and we'll see from there. We'll be scouring all the press releases from 'Reach' as they announce more and more. And 'ODST' will open up a lot more sets to us as well…it opens up a whole new world."

But Hullum seems enthusiastic about delving into other franchises beyond "Halo." "I would like to do something dark and edgy for "Viva Pinata.' I think there's a darker side that hasn't been explored yet."

Check out the first episode of the "Halo 3: ODST" series from "Red vs. Blue" below. More should be coming as we near the "ODST" release date later this month.

Tags bungie, halo, halo 3, halo 3: odst, microsoft game studios