According to the latest issue of Game Informer, Halo 3 Recon will have an open-world environment to explore. Your character is a faceless orbital drop shock trooper who was part of a five man team now lost in New Mombasa. You will be able to explore the city in an attempt to find your lost comrades. Upon finding the last known location of each of your teammates you will be put into a flashback sequence and relive what that ODST has experienced through a more linear gameplay style.
Of course playing as an ODST is going to be much unlike Master Chief. Your enemies may seem the same but you will not have the pure physical ability and size that Master Chief had. This will offer a completely different gameplay experience not seen in any other Halo game.
[Via CVG]
Skimming through the Bungie Weekly Update this week there was a neat tidbit of information. This is not just the usual talk about the banhammer or updates to bungie.net. They were willing to confirm the existence of a mysterious book listed on Amazon.com for a little while now. Titled The Art of Halo 3: Prima Official Art Book, it is set to release November 11th, 2008 with 168 pages of hardcover goodness filled with Halo 3 concept art. The book will also contain commentary from Bungie artists and an exclusive interview with toymaker Todd McFarlane.
It is kind of reminiscent of the Halo Graphic Novel that was released way back in 2006. All of this is very good news for the kids out there who just can’t get enough Halo in their lives. Don’t worry, you are not alone.
As all of you Halo fans know by now, the second title update for Halo 3 went live a little while back. There have been some technical behind-the-scenes tweaks that none of us need to know about, so we can just take Bungie’s word for it. They have also added new Achievements for everyone to fanatically go fire up some Social Slayer and take the easy road to get. Aside from all of that, we would like to break down the most interesting change: the addition of playlist specific experience points and military rankings.
Basically, what Bungie has done was add experience points and military rankings to each of the game’s playlists. Nothing is being taken away or reset, so there is no need to fret, folks. Each playlist will have a military ranking based purely on experience points instead of a Trueskill rating. So, let’s say you have a Colonel rank in the global ranking system with “X” number of experience points. Now, you enter into your Lone Wolves playlist for the first time and place in the top half. That will gain one experience point for that playlist and one for your global experience along with the normal military ranking.
In the end, each playlist has it’s own experience point and military ranking, it’s that simple! If you don’t believe us, just go check out bungie.net for a much more in depth explanation. In the meantime, I am going to go work on my Lightswitch Achievement.
Now that all the smoke has cleared, it’s time to find out what Halo 3: Recon is really about. Here are direct words taken from Luke Smith and Brian Jerrard of Bungie on some of the more broader and pertinent details of the upcoming game.
- “It will be a standalone disc sold in stores in boxes next Fall. It’s also going to include some multiplayer maps.”
- “It is a first-person shooter still … It’s not a squad-based shooter.”
- “As an ODST, compared to playing as in invulnerable Spartan, you are going to have to sort of pick and choose your encounters a little bit differently.”
- “It is going to very much feel like Halo. Full feature parity.”
The next question is, how much will this cost? Probably around $40 is my guess. Full price would be a complete rip off and $20 would be unreasonable considering the time it takes to develop this. More news is coming as soon as we get it.
TGS2008 is by far the most important gaming show in Asia and since E3 has become rife with disappointment, maybe the most important in the industry. Microsoft is making their keynote tomorrow called, A Canvas for the World, which will have to do with the inevitable update coming to Xbox Live Marketplace. Bungie has confirmed that they will also be making an announcement. Bungie has been silent until their recent “Keep it Clean” trailer that has everyone anticipating exactly what it means. No word on what the announcement will be, but here is hoping that its for a new game and that is actually happens.
By now you have seen the Halo 3 Teaser Trailer for a new game or an expansion or who knows. The point is that in the trailer, the words can be seen, “Maddie, where are you?” So what, right? As it turns out, this is eerily similar to the campaign to find a missing British toddler, Madeline McCann who was taken from a Portuguese resort last year. The case garnered international attention after a worldwide search for the girl was undertaken. Slogans like “Find Maddie” and “Where’s Maddie” were banner headlines on newspapers around Europe.
Bungie has denied any intent to create publicity by exploiting the McCann disappearance, with a representative claiming “This is both an unfortunate and unintended coincidence” on the official Halo forum.
Any remote fan of anything Halo knows a new game is coming. We got a glimpse today of a teaser trailer on Bungie about the new game. It looks to be official and not a ruse or red herring. Furthermore, this is most likely what was delayed from the prior countdown around E3 or at least directly related to it. We at Loot Ninja are huge fans of not just the Halo games, but the Halo canon as well.
The trailer is for a new game and will be a parallel story to that of Halo 3. Anyone who reads the books knows that there is a lot more going on in the war against the Covenant besides what the Master Chief is up to. Furthermore, the UNSC army has other meaningful parts outside of the Spartans. It is known that a major developer for the GRAW series is now working with Bungie and new IPs.
The game that we think is being displayed here will be a third-person squad like shooter that involves the ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers). These were considered the vey best in the UNSC outside of the limited Spartans. The teaser says, Prepare to Drop. This fits almost too perfectly. The game will expand the canon (storylines) further than just what we see in the games. We do not believe that this will be Master Chief type stuff because most people assume they are saving that for a Halo 4 launch with Xbox 720. The plot will run parallel to that of Halo 3 and I am sure that we will see some overlap in both plots because they eventually converge to the final ending. LucasArts has done this time and again; they use smaller characters to help grow a massive story with cameos of the larger and more well known to make the story worthwhile to hardcore fans.
What do you guys think? I have read every Halo related novel and feel that this is at least a plausible explanation. Above is an screen shot taken of what might be the release date. Thoughts?
Image Courtesy of Xbox360 Fanboy.
I checked back at Bungie to see if anything new was written about the Title Update#2 which was expected to be released at 2am PCT. It turns out that there is much ado at the 7th Column. At the homepage, you are greeted by The Superintendent, which seems like an automated distress signal or possibly a corrupted AI. Its evident that something is happening there and someone is trying to have someone remain calm. My guess… its a Covenant Invasion. We have all been thinking that a 3rd Person Shooter is a possibility because they are so many interesting characters in the Haloverse outside of Master Chief. The game could be revealed this week, some say as soon as today. Stay Tuned.
It is hard to believe that Halo 3 is almost one year old. I remember it like yesterday as MS shut down 5th avenue and grown men missed days of work go home and finish the fight. I just got mine the next day during lunch from Target. The new title update will gives us major, and I mean major changes to the game. Playlists are being modified or deleted altogether and the ranking system will be revamped completely. Here is all ye need to know about what goes down as the update will be ready on Sept 23 with all new achievements enabled except for the special birthday achievement. Get ready finish the fight again.
We saw some screen pics from PAX showing new achievements for Halo 3 and Bungie has been tight lipped ever since. Until now. In their weekly update, they confirm that a title update coming later this month will add 10 achievements for an additional 250 Gamerscore points. You can see them all after the jump.
However, the achievements they list aren’t all the ones we saw at PAX, and Bungie confirmed that more are coming, but who knows when. No word yet on when the new Assembly map will be released or what the whole Mythic stuff is all about. Only time will tell, since Bungie keeps everything close to their vest.
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