by BMX helmets. Story writer Joseph Staten recalled that early on in Halos development, they had not considered how to engage players in the world, and Master Chief's character was what drew people in. The Chief was always intended to be a soldier in the last part of a long and bitter war. For much of the game's development, the character had no name, and early on was referred to as "Future Soldier" or "The Cyborg". Eric Nylund established the character's forename as "John" in the tie-novel Halo: The Fall of Reach, but Bungie did not want to use that in the game itself, instead looking to military ranks. Naval ranks grabbed them as "different" from ones the developers had heard of before. McLees, insisting on accuracy, wanted to make sure the character still had a plausible rank for his role. "Master Chief" was the highest non-commissioned rank where the character would still be considered "expendable"; McLees felt the shortened "Chief" sounded more colloquial and less like a modern military designation. Though the name was not universally liked and intended to be a placeholder, it ended up sticking. After the success of Halo, Bungie began developing a sequel. According to Mclees, the developers wanted to "tone down" the look from Halo. In the story, Master Chief's armor receives an upgrade, and the character received a new look he sported for Halo 2 and Halo 3, with added damage and wear and tear included in the high-definition graphics of Halo3. For Halo 4, 343 Industries took over development duties after Bungie spun off from Microsoft as an independent company. Halo4 made extensive use of motion capture for character animation, shooting in a studio that allowed multiple actors to interact. 343 looked for an actor to portray the Master Chief's physicality, while still conveying the emotions of the character. Bruce Thomas portrayed the Master Chief for motion capture sessions, focusing on giving the Master Chief a personality through actions that would be applied to the three-dimensional model; though his face and voice never appear in the final product, Creative director Josh Holmes credited Thomas with strongly influencing all the other performers for the game. The Master Chief's armor was redesigned with the aim of making the player feel like they were inhabiting a character wearing hundreds of pounds of futuristic armor; art director Kenneth Scott emphasized finding a "sweet spot" where the