Bungie only took a little over a year to complete development on Halo 3 ODST, which was completed back in May. The game has been both feature and bug fix complete for almost 4 months now, being held back for the Holiday season to garner bigger sales. The news was revealed by Brian Jarrard, Community Director at Bungie, on a recent episode of GameTrailers Bonus Round recorded at PAX.
The Halo team at Bungie moved over to Halo: Reach back in May to develop a completely new game engine, meaning Halo: Reach will be that true next generation of Halo that gamers have been wanting. Halo 3 ODST will run on the same engine developed for Halo 3.
Personally, I can’t wait for both games. I’m a big fan of the Halo universe, so I’m excited to see how Bungie will bring these games into the fold, especially Halo: Reach.
How short is too short? I’m not referring to wangs this time, but campaign length. Gamers flew through the single player campaign in Halo 3. People had beaten the game by the time I woke up to go to work the day after launch. All sauced up on Mtn. Dew Game Fuel, gamers bought the game at midnight, and had beaten it before McDonald’s opened for breakfast. As you all can attest to, beating Halo 3 on Normal and Legendary are two completely different animals. Running and gunning on the highest difficulty setting will leave you fragged, tagged and tea bagged. With Halo 3: ODST only mere months away, (fuck yes) gamers are getting the impression of a short campaign and they are none too pleased, especially with the “expansion” now garnering a $60 price tag.
Here is a recent interview with the developers giving insight to the campaign. I think the real issue is that no matter how long the campaign, there will be complaints of it being too easy and too short. The problem Bungie faces is that gamers are just way too fucking good at Halo. Take a look at World of Warcraft. The expansion pack was supposed to take months to complete. It took super guilds less than a weekend. Hopefully the landscape of playing as a normal soldier will add some depth and the new Firefight and multiplayer modes will keep us playing until Halo: Reach comes out a year later.
At Bungie, July 7th is basically Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Guy Fawkes all rolled into one for fans of its games, specifically Halo. New maps for Halo 3: ODST have been revealed. They look pretty awesome and I cannot wait until September to stomp some Covenant ass. The maps are after the jump with a short description of each.
Hit the jump for more »
There are few games that transcend the industry as Halo 3 has. Love it or hate it, Halo 3 sold a ton of copies and people still play it everyday as religiously as ever. Now what happens when a game of Halo 3’s stature exceeds its life cycle? Furthermore, when will there be no more Halo 3 updates? Our question has been answered:
“Halo 3 took two and a half years to make, and we’re still working on it,” producer Allen Murray said. “We’ll probably be working on it for two more years.”
With Halo 3: ODST coming and most likely several more title updates and at least one more map pack, gamers can expect to be playing fresh Halo 3 content through the end of this decade.
Halo 3 fans have been waiting for the release of the Mythic Map Pack. Unless you got your hands on the Halo Wars LE, you have been outside a very exclusive club. There has not been any concrete word on when the pack will be made available, but there may be a hint. This is taken from the end of Bungie’s last weekly update:
Looks like we’re ready to wrap up yet another week. If you’re heading off to GDC, we hope to see you there. Step on up, shake our hands, but please, no creepy stuff. There’s only so much antibacterial to go around at a conference of this size.
If we don’t see you there, feel free to hang out around Bungie.net. We’ll make sure the standard routine stays in check. You make sure you stay safe and Stay Tuned.
P.S. 04/09/09
See you online April 9, 2009 it looks like.
Three new Halo maps have been in the works for sometime and we were teased with title updates containing achievements that could not be achieved. This drove gamers nuts. Now, if you have bought the Halo Wars CE, like us, you can get cracking on the new maps. I’ll give you a brief description of each and what kind of battles you can expect.
Hit the jump for more »
Yes, that is billion with a B. Halo 3, love it or hate it, has hosted one billion multilplayer matches as of yesterday. It may seem like a lot, but Bungie was nice enough to put it into perspective for us.
If each game of Halo 3 lasted only three minutes and nineteen seconds, mirroring the Infection game outlined above, the total amount of time played would eclipse sixty-three centuries. For those looking for more granularity, that’s roughly 630 decades, 6,300 years, or 2,300,000 days.
That is an unfathomable amount of time. The game is so insanely popular with such a loyal fan base, it has reached magnitudes of the ninth order. Until Halo 4 comes out, whenever that may be, expect the Halo 3 number to grow exponentially.
No, it’s not for an upcoming Halo 3 update. Bungie has responded to the folks who had noticed the upgraded SMG located in previous Halo 3: ODST concept art. This concept art shows us the new M7 SMG that should be an ODST’s weapon of choice. It is equipped with a silencer, reflex site and even a smart-linked scope to allow for even more precision.
Bungie is quick to point out however that this is still the same SMG we all know and love.
“That doesn’t mean the custom SMG operates as a Battle Rifle clone – it’s still most effective in CQB scenarios, doing its dirty work up close and personal, but it is much more effective at midrange than ever before. Buggers beware.”
Bungie has always been about secrecy and releasing information in small quantities so expect these tidbits of information to keep trickling in until we are much closer to the fall release date. I hate playing the waiting game.
As always, check out the Bungie Weekly Update for even more information regarding everything Halo.
[Via Bungie.net]
Bungie is already making moves on there anticipated standalone expnasion to Halo 3. Halo 3: Recon will now be called Halo 3:ODST. In case you are out of the story loop, ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. These are the best the UNSC has to offer outside of the few Spartans that remain in service. They will be the protagonist here and expect to hear a lot more about the Helljumpers as next year draws closer.
The NXE dropped today. If you weren’t aware, welcome to the future. One of the big features is the ability to install full retail games to your hard drive. I’ve been using this for a couple weeks with Rock Band 2 and Gears of War 2 and love it. Not only does it speed up loading times in some cases, but it reduced the wear on your DVD drive and makes the Xbox 360 a whole lot quieter.
However, not all games are created equal. Trying to run Halo 3 from your Xbox 360 hard drive will actually increase loading times. Ouch. Here’s the quick and dirty: Halo 3 caches maps to the hard drive in the “utility partition” of the hard drive. This was used to speed loading times from the DVD. Even if you install to the hard drive, the game still goes through this caching procedure. Now here’s where it gets tricky. When playing from disc, you’re loading from both the hard drive and the DVD. When playing from the hard drive, you’re trying to read from two locations on a single source. You can only do so much from the hard drive at once, which leads to slower load times.
Don’t expect Bungie to patch Halo 3 to make it work better from the hard drive. There would be a whole lot involved and it’s just not worth their time. So, Halo players, stick with running the game from the disc. It’s not all that bad to save on the hard drive space, anyway.
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