This is one of those weeks. We're not exactly dark, but we're definitely more dimly lit than you’ve become accustomed to. I'm sure you understand.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of coal being shoveled into the studio engine this week. The Noble Map Pack has been powering through the requisite polish and bug fixing phases and the team is ultra close to sealing the deal and shipping the new maps out the door. Right now, we’re prepping a trailer and small batch of multimedia aimed at getting you acclimated to the new spaces before you're forced to fight for purchase. The trailer is scheduled to arrive early next week. (Like really early next week if all goes to plan.)



Outside of the sweet visuals the Noble Map Pack puts on display, the trailer also contains a unique piece of music that seamlessly blends tracks from Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo: Reach into one beautifully orchestrated score. Marty, Jay, and C Paul have been hinting that they’d like to make it available as a standalone download soon after the trailer drops. Keep your fingers crossed for a Friday deployment next week.



No promises.





Take a Synthy Tour of Tempest!





Okay, so maybe I was totally wrong about this week's update. Bam! Hopefully, this Photosynth of Tempest ties you over until next week. Now, let's get some housekeeping out of the way.



Arena Alterations

On the playlist front, we’re currently testing out some totally radar-less Arena action. Aside from the obvious impact this will have on the playlist as a whole, it will also sound the death knell for the Active Camo Armor Ability in this particular playlist format, as there’s literally no downside to getting your cloak on when radar isn’t in play.

If all goes to plan, expect to see this change hit the Arena at the beginning of next month, just in time for Season Numero 3. We’ll supply you with some more fleshed out bullet points as the November playlist update becomes more and more solidified in the days ahead. As with all early news, details are always subject to change.





Forging Ahead

This week we’re also neck deep in Forge Map Variant submissions for our official Forgetacular contest. Though DLC testing has slowed the pace of our official evaluation process, it moves ever onward, and even outside of the auspices of Forgetacular’s winning entries, we’re still looking to deploy more community variants into matchmaking.



More Like Forgecrapular!



To aid you in your quest, Carney tells me he’s nearly finished hammering out the curriculum for the first semester of his official Design 101 correspondence course. Personally, I’ve been hammering through some of the hundreds of Forgetacular submissions we’ve already been blessed with, and I have some words of wisdom I’d love to hammer home myself. While we wait for Carney to deliver the real goods, check out my crash course!




Mo Money, Mo Problems



First things first, you are not required to utilize the entire budget when you set out to build your sweet new map. This is not how you win Forge. In fact, if you’ve whittled down all the credits in your Forge wallet to make an amazing Race map, and you don’t have enough bucks left to splurge on a single solitary Mongoose, you just might have yourself a little bit of a problem. If I can’t race on your race map, you lose! You should resolve this minor error before you submit your map, speed racer.



Objectify My Love



On a related note, you should also be paying close attention to “object density” as you build your masterpiece. Though the Forge will allow you to phase several objects into one another, it is not recommended that you stack as many objects as possible into a small amount of real estate simply for aesthetic effect. You can and will go overboard.







In these shots, there are 100 blocks piled into one single floating heap. Players tend to phase a lot of objects together in order to create fine details not possible with the available set of Forge pieces. I’ve seen a player merge more than a dozen objects into a single light to create a rather ornate and spectacular chandelier. While it may look visually impressive, functionally it operates more like a Forge black hole, requiring players to render an absurd amount of objects for what amounts to a small piece of visual flair. When I removed all of the superfluous pieces from the beautiful fixture in question, the base map was left largely unchanged and the overall performance increased dramatically.



Eye of the Beholder



Of course, that doesn’t mean you should pay no mind to how your map looks, especially when thinking about how players will orient themselves. It’s a good idea to use existing visual cues to allow players to ground themselves quickly on your map. Atom is a great example. Each side features distinct “Team” colors, both red and blue, to help your eye pick up on your spawning location instantly. It also uses colors in other key spaces to highlight areas of interest to great and inexpensive effect. The map itself is nestled in the Quarry, giving Atom a rock face on three sides and a distinct open view on the fourth.



None of these design cues required any additional objects. And it’s a certified fact that each and every one of you loves Atom.



And the Sky is Grey



One sure fire way to keep your players dazed and confused is to stuff them inside a giant grey box that offers little in the way of visual distinction.







The walls are in my face.





While the Forge palette relies heavily on the metallic Forerunner aesthetic, Forge World itself offers plenty of scenery that stands in stark contrast. Utilize it free of charge.
























…performance is not a concern and you should feel free to place objects wherever you damn well please.



Nobody Puts Baby in a Box!



But maybe you should. The Coliseum might seem small, but trust me, it’s really big! And the walls each feature distinct elements that make them stand out from one another.





It also gives you six planes to work from right from the start. While it might not make for a great Big Team Battle space unless you extend the playable space out over the water, it’s easily big enough to contain some expertly crafted Slayer and Objective spaces, especially if you build in layers.





Spartometer Challenge Tracker

And we’re off! As of right now, the front page has been updated to display your current community Challenge progress. Keep on keepin’ on and the carnage will automatically update until we blow the top off, unlocking access to new ranks and armor.







It's gonna be a blood bath!





Oh, and nope, we're not at zero. The circular reservoir at the bottom of the thermometer represents the millions of challenges you've already completed.



Pimp My Spartan…Now!

Of course, we’re aware that the Bungie.net version of your Spartan armor isn’t currently updating. We don’t have an ETA for a resolution, but rest assured that we’ll deploy the fix as soon as we can. The backend systems that power your Spartan’s online presentation are linked to other critical systems related to our online and matchmaking experiences, and we are, as you would expect, incredibly thorough with any testing and deployments that could impact those systems.







Crying Face





We’ll update you when we’re ready for you to ogle your online persona again. Until then, you’ll have to make do with your in game model. Please pardon our dust.





Blame Stosh

Stosh spent a good amount of time this week building the aforementioned Spartometer to track your challenges, but he also dedicated some spare cycles to dig up this sweet clip.







When good Rod goes wrong.



And that’s a wrap for this week. Stop back next week. We'll make it worth your while.

Beyond the Ring: Bungie's Renegade Development of Halo's Fiction

An auditorium full of people sit at the Microsoft E3 press conference in 2006, all waiting for the same thing. It's just seven months since the Xbox 360 successfully launched, but Microsoft's big gun has yet to show for the new system. The audience expects that to change, and they're right. The giant screen goes white, and a single piano note signals the debut of Halo 3. As the camera pans across a blasted desert road, the AI Cortana speaks.







"I am your shield. I am your sword."



While everyone else is hanging on the edge of their seat to see what happens next, some hardcore fans of the Halo series hear something familiar in Cortana's cryptic message.



"I know you. Your past. Your future."



"This is the way the world ends."



The audience applauds and gaming sites report on the expected release date, but elsewhere, on forums, Bungie devotees are buzzing about something else. Conversations spring up about a series of letters seven years old, letters largely forgotten from a time before the 24-hour gaming news cycle. Why? Because by now, Halo fans know that they're as likely to learn about Halo's sweeping fiction outside of the game as they are in it. After a number of New York Times bestselling novels and arguably the first massive, mainstream Alternate Reality Game in the form of the "I <3 bees" campaign they're well trained.



Over the course of its 10-year lifespan, Halo has managed to build up a wealth of story spanning hundreds of thousands of years and numerous star systems, a story of politics and civil unrest in addition to a genocidal war waged by an interstellar religious armada against the human race. Halo's fiction is arguably among the most expansive that gaming has ever seen -- impressive, given the perceived limitations of first-person shooters.



Where shooters like Half-Life 2 have found success through an incidental, found story peppered throughout their world as well as direct narrative, Bungie has taken a different path, going outside of their games in ways both traditional and radically different. In the process, Bungie and their now former partners at Microsoft created a uniquely successful combination of merchandising, marketing, and storytelling to explore the world of Halo in a deeper way than they originally thought possible.

Halo Reach Has Changed From The Beta

When you bring 3 million people into a multiplayer beta, you expect to get some good info out of it. In this case, that holds true. We already saw the beta help Bungie sort out some server issues, and convince them that they could handle the load of a Firefight Versus mode. Further, we've already seen some preliminary gameplay tweaks that came about from beta feedback.

But that was many weeks ago, and a lot has changed in Halo Reach since then. In addition to the obvious additions like new maps and new game modes, Bungie has made another round of gameplay tweaks based on feedback from the beta.

Here's a list of some of the changes. Some of them are a few weeks old, and some of them are brand spanking new.

* Increased run speed
* Increased jump height
* Grenades nerfed; smaller damage, smaller radius, smaller visual impact
* Spamming of armor lock removed
* Armor lock will no longer drain an opponents shield when they melee you
* Shield recharge time lengthened
* Encounter time increased
* Head shot characteristics of weapons altered
* Elites were overpowered; their shield recharge time has been increased.
* Invasion mode is now two rounds, one as Spartan and one as Elite


Thank god for the mitigation of the power of the grenade. Seriously, one grenade could kill you in the Beta with full shields. As for the run speed, diggs to that. In the Beta the Spartans were too slow and the Elites were like Zombies with swords flying everywhere. Overall, these changes were made to make the game more fair and more genuine of a playing experience and I think these were the right moves to make. If you haven't salvaged your copy Of Halo Reach yet do so below and receive a $20.00 Amazon Gift Card:

Get Halo Reach With Free Shipping Here

Firefight

IGN Xbox 360 had a chance to go all out in Halo: Reach’s improved firefight mode and they bring us some new details about the enhancements along with the first ever game-play videos. For the uninformed ‘Firefight’ pits anywhere between 1 -4 Spartans in Combat against computer controlled Covenant enemies. These enemies arrive via drop-ships and are rolled out in waves. In Halo 3:ODST players could expect 5 rounds featuring increasing difficulties plus bonus ‘reinforcement’ drop-ships between rounds.



One of the biggest improvements being introduced in Reach is the ability for Firefight matchmaking. Similar to how the multiplayer system works. Players will be able to connect to Xbox Live and find partners to assist in their covenant slaying. It is unknown at this time if this feature will be available in the single player co-op campaign but it would be nice.

Bungie is also allowing players to control the individual parameters of a Firefight match. No longer are players subject to five or six rounds that can take upwards of half an hour per round. Now the host can chose a time limit, limit the skulls that have been activated and the number of rounds until the end of the game. Players can also expect to create their own custom sets of equipments – called load-outs – for their entire party to enjoy. Bungie has also coded in a default time limit – 10 minutes.



Individual expression also plays a huge role in the next installment of the Halo franchise. Players who took part in the beta already know that they will be able to create a custom Spartan that will appear in multiplayer and campaign. This Spartan will also carry over to the firefight mode both offline and online. It was not mentioned by Bungie whether or not the map editing ability of Forge will be available. As soon as more details turn up we will be sure to bring them to you.


So Firefight is the most anticipated element of halo reach.Is all this hype just speculation or is firefight as awesome as it sounds. Trust me, this is the coolest element of Halo Reach and takes the cake in the master of gametypes. Firefight features Spartans Vs Elites on forge world and is great for multiplayer play or especially when you just receive the game and want to get used to the controls. Firefight combines Forge world with campaign , in a way, and unleashes the most premier game-play you;ll get, except for on Xbox live.

Halo Reach: Paving The Way For A New Chapter In Gaming

The year is 2552. Humanity is locked in a war with the alien Covenant and it's up to Noble 6, a member of an elite super-soldier squad, to defend the human planet known as Reach.


The New Weapons In Halo Reach, as long as the new enemies, vehicles, and personnel, all are really innovative and cool-looking. The graphics in Reach are nothing short of amazing and there is a lot more detail and 3-d like scenery and personnel from what I've been able to see.  The huge difference between Halo 3 and Reach is that in Halo Reach you get to choose your load-out[starting attributes or power ups before you start the game. Not only does this mean you have to choose those attributes according to what map you're playing, but also brings in a need to communicate to  prepare the best strategy for the specific maps. Now, here's the official Bungie  Team explaining the coolest elements of Halo Reach. You can tell, this game is going to be tone of the best of all time. So, Why wait? I ordered mine already. If you wait then come September 14, you'll be trying to hide your jealousy when all of your friends have Reach, and your watching Sportscenter. The longer you wait, the more time you have to wait on the mailing list when they start shipping copies. Get Yours here, for the lowest price on the web, guaranteed!








Here Is a complete List Of The Weapons, Personnel, Vehicles, and Weapon Sounds:





As we all know Halo Reach Has dramatically Changed from Halo 3. Some might compare the look and vibe to Gears Of War. Now, I personally , despite all of the crying about the weapons/power-ups being powerful for example, the rocket launcher can practically blow up the whole room, you can get automatic grenade kills by chucking them around, Elites have the Camouflage  power-up combo with the energy sword or assassination that can kill you instantly out of nowhere, and the  power-ups can sometimes be impenetrable. all of this rigmarole is all BS!! I mean. Americans don't do aptly  with change[just look at the baby-boomers and their adjustment to cellphones, email ,and computers] and just because Bungie is revolutionizing the gaming industry and making it more tactical, less repetitive, and providing a more enigmatic, multifarious gameplay for gamers. This is like a whole new generation of Gaming starting with Call Of Duty Black Ops and Halo Reach and to continue with future multi-element  games. So, all of the nerds [myself being one] who can't stomach the thought of starting a new chapter in awesome gameplay with endless possibilities you are being so twentieth century. The more technical and thinking involved in a game the longer life, better experience, and more areas of expertise will develop. In Halo 3, everyone [Elites, Spartans] wasn't on a level playing ground, but in Halo Reach, the Elites And Spartans have their own respectable  unique techniques and abilities that make the game more epic and proportional. You have to give yourself time to adjust and consummate the controls and maps of Halo Reach Before you start blogging about the dramatic changes and how you can't handle such a complicated, bulky game. With time, we all of the controls, tendencies, weapon locations, and  best strategies will develop just like they did in the previous Halo Games. Well, Here's a professionally narrated piece about the huge differences between Halo 3 and Halo Reach:




For a complete overview of the essential elements of Halo Reach, watch this video:





Now, From my experience of the previous halo games, there has always been a lack of versatility and  elements but in Reach they redefined the whole game. Some might say that Halo Reach Is not Halo at all, this is due to a mesh of Bungle Developers from the combined team of Halo 1, Halo 2, and Halo 3. This made a rush of ideas that have meshed somewhat coherently but people might disagree with this. Now, Halo Reach is not like the other Halo games it is completely different. You get to choose your starting power-ups and choose your game strategy. Halo Reach is introducing versatility and explosiveness like never before, it has taken regular elements of Halo and transformed them into the utmost extremes in some situations. Sprint, Elites can wield an energy sword and practically rampage around the map looking for victims.  Halo Gamers no longer can think in the same way while playing the game. The main wining component in Halo 3 was stealth and teamwork. Now, In Halo Reach the components are to the utmost extreme being ability to specialize in a certain area of combat or weapon, or ability to survive and think for yourself. The team dynamic has changed considerably to a larger increase of attention on what weapons and skills you can master. Halo Reach is trying to bring in a whole new crowd of gamers while still keeping the popular Halo plot. Yes, I do believe Halo Reach is completely different than the previous Halo Games as far as strategy and main components[no longer is the Battle Rifle, IE BMR the main weapon, but perhaps melee weapons, assault rifles, and sniper weapons.]. After three successful Halo Games Bungie has truly created a masterpiece that will commence a whole new era in gaming, outranking the PS3, because of the newly introduced versatility and attention all of the new elements are gathering. People who have never played halo can now start playing the game and be on level playing-field with the pros and exerts of Halo 3 IE Me].Here's a cool video showing you how much Halo Has really changed:



The only element of Halo Reach that seems controversial to me is the ability of the Elites to skip around the map with their rolls, evades, and camo




Halo Reach Maps are very different. Unlike in Halo 3, the maps are very more enclosed designed for melee and mid-range combat. Vehicles are specifically designed for use in only one map. Here are the Maps: