Halo 4

[EpicGingy]

Re: Halo 4 trailer....

This new info has soozed me down. 343i really have me confident that Halo 4 will be the best Halo yet They're actually making changes to the formula, and increased amount of weapons will be interesting.

[thaima1shu]

Re: Halo 4 trailer....

I am kind of burnt out on Halo, but if they have something different and interesting I'll bite.

I'm feeling the same way. Loved all the previous games, but I'm starting to get tired of it. I'm sure I'll end up picking it up and playing it, just probably not gonna get too into multiplayer again.

[Steel5]

Re: Halo 4 trailer....

That new info has me excited again. Still wondering why they have the DMR, BR, and Carbine though. Even though it sounds like they are differentiating them I feel at least one of them will be redundant.

Those weapons all exist because with custom loadouts in this game, they can afford to have a larger number of starting weapons because people are going to be able to choose their starting weapons.

[UnLeadedApe]

Re: Halo 4 trailer....

I think 343 can deliver a good game!

[Candyman5]

Re: Halo 4 trailer....

That new info has me excited again. Still wondering why they have the DMR, BR, and Carbine though. Even though it sounds like they are differentiating them I feel at least one of them will be redundant.

According to the Video the DMR will be better suited toward longer ranges while the BR is mainly for medium/close distances because of the spread. The carbine hasn't really been shown but I'm sure they will make it different then the BR and DMR whether by a whole lot or a little.

[EpicGingy]

Re: Halo 4 trailer....

Carbine will probably be a happy medium that could be better at draining shields.

[Flawless]

Re: Halo 4

NY Daily News

The difference between Halo 4 and Halo Reach (the final Bungie title) is stark. Halo 4 will take place on a far darker color palette, and it will feature the most robust engine in the series' long history.

The relationship between the series' two pivotal characters seems set to evolve in this new era of Halo. Cortana's voice seems tinged with emotion throughout the brief level, and they banter back and forth more than ever, a constant reminder that this game has evolved into more than some first-person shooter. A deep mythology, forged by four previous titles and a series of books, underlies everything, but O'Connor promises that newbies will feel right at home in Halo 4.

The halls are dark, and lights and shadows glance off Master Chief's standard rifle. Dust particles float throughout the air, and everything from rifle to Grunts to Elite has been dramatically redone.

Weapons, which once had a distinctly sci-fi sound, now fire with stronger audio impact; your rocket launcher's missiles finally reverberate, and even your rifle shots have a greater amount of pop.

The entire game has visuals that rival — perhaps even exceed — the vast abilities of EA's Frostbite 2 engine.

"Reach looked really good, but we've had the benefit of hindsight, and the benefit of time," O'Connor says. "We had a little bit of luxury in that we weren't churning through consecutive game project after consecutive game project. We had about a year to just do some prototyping. And it's really paid off well."

Gamespot

We changed the HUD and we also added a sense of immersion--you can hear your breath as it sounds inside the helmet," said Frank O'Connor.

"It's definitely at a higher fidelity at this point. Our facial animation and motion capture technology are all going to make it look better."

Spartan Ops mode.

With this mode, players will engage in a co-op story with other Spartan trainees, not unlike the co-op of Portal 2. The difference with Halo 4 is that this story is episodic, with new missions being released each week. O'Connor said, "It's about the same amount of story as [a traditional] campaign stretched over weeks."

Besides giving players more bang for their buck, the Spartan Ops mode was created for another practical reason. Despite what a glance at the leaderboards seems to tell you, Halo players really don't play online. "Most people actually play campaign and don't play competitive. It's because the competitive landscape is really intimidating for people. So they prefer to play at their own pace," said O'Connor.

The Spartan Ops story will stretch out for several weeks, but not months, according to O'Connor. And beyond that? "Season one comes free with the game. If we did another season we would be building that from scratch. Maybe that will be DLC; maybe it goes in the next game. We are still tinkering with that."

"We are not supporting 3D TVs or Kinect for Halo 4," said O'Connor.

343 is already giving Halo 4 the largest levels the series has ever seen, the most feature-intense multiplayer yet, and a new online co-op campaign in Spartan Ops--not to mention richer sound and visuals. "We are still pushing more and more of the graphics. We had one guy at the showcase who thought this was the next-gen preview. I wouldn't go that far, but it does look good. There is still more and more to be squeezed out of the box," said O'Connor.

[DickDalewood]

Re: Halo 4

The upgraded visuals sound great... much need IMO for this series, which just hasn't really been up to standard of other shooters in recent years.

[Flawless]

Re: Halo 4

Reach is more impressive than it gets credit for, and I would argue the Halo games do more than most shooters and rely on less smoke and mirrors. However, Bungie has never struck me as a savvy graphics tech studio, while 343 has poached some of the best from Corrine Yu to VFX people and animators from Pixar and ILM. Ultimately art is king at the end of the day. You can have all the fancy tech in the world, but good art is what's going to make the difference. That's not to say the previous Halo games don't have good art, I just think their inconsistent and some character designs look like something you would see in the Power Ranger universe (hello, Brutes). I like the vision I'm seeing from longtime id Software Art Director Kenneth Scott (who's the AD at 343). Everything I've seen of H4 looks more mature.

Cortana:



vs




Grunts actually look menacing and closer to what their described like in the books.



vs



...

Looking forward to seeing these environments:

[CaptainZombie]

Re: Halo 4

WOW! Flawless, Halo 4 is shaping up to be rather sweet looking. I also received by GI mag today and some very nice screenshots.

[EpicGingy]

Re: Halo 4

Those visuals were amazing. Thank you, Flawless, for getting all this info, because every post you make I just get more excited Cortana's new look is way better than what Bungie had. Looks more human, and the darker blue makes it seem less... sort of cartoonish in my eyes. Now we just gotta wait to see what the hell the main enemy after the Covenant is.

So far, though, 343i seems to be taking this series places it could never had gone with Bungie. They never took enough big risks.

[EpicGingy]

Re: Halo 4

I was invited by Frankie to get my hands on Halo 4 last night in NYC. Microsoft was holding a very exclusive party with some football players that were here for the NFL draft and some press (tv shows and magazine mostly it seemed). There were a couple of community guys there as well.

The multiplayer was setup for 4v4 and 8-player FFA. We played 2 Maps back and forth. Wraparound and Warhouse. Both of these Maps have been seen in the various videos and images on the web. Wraparound had a center platform that was connected via bridges and air lifts with a circular exterior. Warhouse was a multi-level structure with a few outer rooms and hallways. Both Maps were fairly small in size and played TS and FFA very well.

We were allowed to select from some different pre-set loadouts, but could not customize them. Loadouts were selected very similar to the way they were in Reach with armor abilities. Select at the start of the game or press X when you die to change your loadout. In the menu, you can edit the loadouts (we were not able to in this build). The loadouts had a mixture of the following things (anything not listed here I was not able to play with):

BR
DMR
AR
Plasma Pistol
Magnum
Frag Grenades
Plasma Grenades
Hologram
Promethean Vision

There were no power weapons on the Maps and I didn't see the weapon drop pods. Can't answer any questions about anything other than what is listed above.

I played with default controls that had Sprint mapped to clicking in the left joystick and crouch being the B button. It made crouching difficult, but using sprint, abilities, and everything else really easy. I didn’t take any time to flip through the different controls. Sprint felt less clunky than Halo Reach’s sprint, but overall was similar. You do run out of sprint in which felt about the same amount of time you’d run out of sprint in Reach.

I was explicitly told that weapon tuning is still being refined. This is a very very early build of the game and all the weapons are still being tuned. I'm only writing about what I actually played with.

On Twitter, a ton of people asked BR or DMR. I started playing with the BR for a while. There is no bloom and all 3 bullets are very accurate, but there was some small bullet spread. Also, there is some recoil. After shooting a clip at the wall to test the bullet spread, my reticule was fairly higher than where I started shooting. The DMR was single shot with bloom. However, the bloom reset much faster than the DMR in Halo Reach. I didn't have to pace my shots much at all. Both the DMR and BR were 5-shot weapons in this build. At the end of the night, I preferred the DMR. It shot faster than the BR, took the same amount of shots to kill, and I didn't feel like the bloom made me miss shots all that often.

Promethean Vision is the new see-through-walls ability. When you hit it, a wave of heat-mapping goes out across the screen and shows you nearby enemies. It does not show you all the way across the Map, just fairly close proximity. The enemies are also alerted when you do it. It reminded me a bit of Enhanced Vision from Shadowrun, but not as powerful. Offensively, I would ping the vision before entering a room and then charge in knowing which person to pick off first or whether I should not charge in.

Hologram was very similar to the hologram from Halo Reach. Not much to say here.

Magnum also had bloom and was very similar to Halo Reach. It could be shot very fast, but the bloom would make it very inaccurate. It had 8 bullets in the clip and was a 6-shot kill. The Plasma Pistol shoots a little bit slower now when rapidly pressing the trigger, but each shot seemed to do more damage. The homing mechanism on a charged shot seemed to be toned down quite a bit.

Press X to spawn was in the games I played. However, since they were FFA and TS game types, I didn't notice it much. Not sure if that feature will appear in objective game modes or not.

In the end, the game looks and sounds amazing. At its core, it's the Halo everyone knows and loves. Movement felt great and I had a really great time playing it for the short amount of time I had. Hopefully 343 will invite us to a longer test session with more features available where we can provide feedback.

This came from a dude on the MLG website, and in the comments I saw so many people rampaging about bloom, sprint, AA, 5 shot BR, from a game they haven't played, in an Alpha stage. I know this isn't the same community, and it is for the most part smarter, but I'm hoping people won't be as bashful.

Personally, most of this doesn't surprise me. Frankie did say he knew how to fix bloom, and until I get my hands on this I'll reserve my judgement. I'm hoping in the final stage the amount of shots for BR will be increased, 5 shot isn't the BR I know and love. Seeing as how I'm mostly a campaign person (due to no small part to my lack of XBL, although I do regularly play with friends in FFA and on XBL), it doesn't affect me as much. Campaign artwork looks amazing, sounds like Master Chief and Cortana are WAY better characters this time around.

My status as a fan of Halo is unchanged, looking forward to seeing what changes they've made next time around.

[TracerBullet]

Re: Halo 4

A look at the UNSC Weapons

RAILGUN
DESIGNATION: Asymmetric Recoilless Carbine-920
MANUFACTURER: Acheron Security
The ARC-920 Railgun is a compact-channel linear accelerator that fires a high-explosive round at incredible speed, delivering both kinetic and explosive force to both hard and soft targets alike.

[EpicGingy]

Re: Halo 4

New power weapon, nice

[EpicGingy]

Re: Halo 4







I'm liking the lighting effects and the details of the Chiefs armour. Looks better with every new picture I see.