Student Rant

Friday, October 27, 2006

The latest scoop on Halo3 : New pictures, map information, levels, weapons

This article is being posted from AskStudent. Check out the original article here

Bungie announced the release of Halo3, the third and final game in the Halo Trilogy that it will be released for Microsoft's XBOX 360 sometime in 2007. The game was revealed to the world at the Microsoft press conference at Grauman's Chinese Theater, in Hollywood,CA on May 9th 2006. Since then, besides the trailer, Bungie has not been forthcoming with a whole lot of information about the most anticipated game ever. Gears of War and Halo Wars trailer are doing their best to prepare us for next year's release for Halo3. Read on for all you have been waiting for since summer, information about new levels, maps, weapons, vehicles... and more

Fortunately for the rest of us who can't wait to lap up more information about Halo 3, a Swedish games magazine released some pictures and more details. Watch the slideshow at the end of this article.

New Levels
There are three different multi player levels and none of them will be limited by walls. If the player goes too far from the center of the map he will be attacked by some kind of automatic defense. The text doesn't specify what the real point of this freedom is supposed to be.

- One of the levels is "snowbound". It's a battlefield in a winterlandscape with large covenantbases. On the map there are bunkers protected by energy shields. They can't be penetrated by bullets or grenades, but players will be able to go through them.
- Another one is called "highground", which is made for teamwork and reminds of Halo 2:s "zanzibar". One team defends a base on the top of a slope. The other team begins on a beach below the base and their objective is to attack the base. Inside the base you can open a big door that will allow a warthog from the beach to drive inside the base.
-The third is called "valhalla" and has a forest and mountains on the horizon. It's a large map made for vehicles, and has two bases.

New Vehicles
- One new vehicle will be the "moongoose". It's smaller than a warthog and only has place for two persons. It's used mostly for transport. Also, it does not have any weapons but players can fire while in it.
- The other vehicle is "man cannon" which as the name explains is a human cannon launching you in the air. Remember jump pads from Quake. It also means you are a potential weapon if you collide with someone physically.

New weapons
When it comes to weapons there has happened quite a lot. Bungie has listened on the critique from Halo 2, that mostly concerned that it was so important to use two weapons at the same time, aka dual wield. Now they have made the standard assault rifle a bit more powerful, but it is still inferior to a lot of the other weapons in the game.All the weapong the players carry aroung will be vizualised in game. Ie you will see if an enemy carries around a shotgun on his back.
- One new weapon will be the “Spartan Laser”. It's made for destroying vehicles, and even if it takes a long time to use and isn't hard to evade it deals out massive damage. You don't want to let your vehicle be hit by it's glowing red beam.
- Another new weapon is brutes “spiker”. It's a one hand shotgun that shoots sharp nails.
- Bungie has also thrown in a new "nail grenade". It detonates it's payload of nails in one direction and can be placed on walls or the ground

New control
The controls are somewhat new: RB and LB will be used to reload weapons. RT and LT fires them. So if our have two weapons you will reload them using the corresponding buttons.The x-button will be used to do something that will supposedly “change the entire game” but Bungie isn't ready to say more about that at this time.

Legendary edition
Bungie will release Halo 3 in a “ Legendary edition” that looks like the Master chiefs head. It will contain four dvds. One with the game, one with a documentary and a comments-track, one contains spin-off materials like “Red vs Blue” and “Spark of Life”, and the last one with movie sequences from the game series in a chronological order.

Credits
1. Thanks to Bungie and Microsoft for Halo3. You guys rock!! All images and videos shown in this article are copyright Bungie and Electronic Gaming Monthly. For EGM, head over here to check out their magazine to subscribe and view the original content
2. Translated from http://www.level7.nu/texter/read.php?id=115814
3. Thanks to AskStudent