Halo: Reach

[RedMaster11]

Halo fans, say goodbye to your life.

[Astrex]

Halo needs a ranking system like Call of Duty, I actually remember not playing Halo2 online because I didn't want my rank to go down 

[GamerMan316]

Halo: Reach Will Raise the Bar for Animation, says Bungie

Halo 3: ODST left many reviewers divided over the game's additions to the franchise, though one area that was readily apparent to everyone was how the game looked. Running at a sub-720p native resolution and having animation and facial detail that was roughly unchanged since Halo 3, the game was not as visually appealing as certain other titles that released in 2009. Bungie community manager Brian Jarrard was aware of the various complaints, and he talked with  IndustryGamers during GDC about how Bungie plans to improve Halo  in the graphics and animation department.

"We've definitely heard [from them] and taken it on the chin a little bit in the past," said Jarrard. "For our team, we've built massive, simulated living breathing worlds with open-ended sandbox-like encounters and unscripted elements, but with that, we've made trade offs between things like framerate or even resolution in some cases and, while I feel like every Halo game's been a beautiful artistic endeavor, for Reach we definitely we went back and overhauled all of our tech to make something that could hold up this holiday compared to other titles that we really did feel like would raise the bar on the visual side and certainly, to be more specific, for animation."

"I think our team would agree that, from each title to the next, animation is the one area where we haven't really continued to improve and iterate," added Jarrard. "Not that it's bad by any means, but for Reach we've got the whole system from scratch. We've hired a lot of great people now, we're utilizing a mo-cap facility with some hand animation on top of it, we're really doing a lot more technical stuff to sell this goal of a more character driven story with human characters that give believable performances. Our old tech just wouldn't allow us to do that, and it's everything from our lip-synching to our facial tech, all those things that I would say have been one of the weaker sides of the Halo series, and that was from the beginning something that we put a lot of investment into."

Bungie recently announced a partnership with Image Metrics for their Faceware animation technology.

[Failed]

supposedly after they overhauled the engine, they can add 10 times more polygons to a character.... atleast i think that's what he was saying in gameo speak, it's on one of those ViDocs

[nCogNeato]

supposedly after they overhauled the engine, they can add 10 times more polygons to a character.... atleast i think that's what he was saying in gameo speak, it's on one of those ViDocs

I heard a similar discussion on G4's Feedback.  Halo Reach is sort of a testing ground for this new engine that will be the future of Bungie (non-Halo) games.

[Failed]

supposedly after they overhauled the engine, they can add 10 times more polygons to a character.... atleast i think that's what he was saying in gameo speak, it's on one of those ViDocs

I heard a similar discussion on G4's Feedback.  Halo Reach is sort of a testing ground for this new engine that will be the future of Bungie (non-Halo) games.

so they're testing it on something they know will sell anyway, unlike making a brand new game that could suck and not sell at all... clever

[nCogNeato]

supposedly after they overhauled the engine, they can add 10 times more polygons to a character.... atleast i think that's what he was saying in gameo speak, it's on one of those ViDocs

I heard a similar discussion on G4's Feedback.  Halo Reach is sort of a testing ground for this new engine that will be the future of Bungie (non-Halo) games.

so they're testing it on something they know will sell anyway, unlike making a brand new game that could suck and not sell at all... clever

Yep.  And bonus, they can advertise the new game as "Uses the same game engine as Halo: Reach", given Reach is a critical success.

[CRracer_912]

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=HaloReach_X10

Beta begins in May

[GamerMan316]

Halo: Reach Character Customisation Details Revealed



Bungie has unveiled new details on the character customisation for Halo: Reach, or what has been dubbed the 'Player Investment System'.

As the name suggests, the idea is to keep the player invested in the game, with your very own custom character that will remain persistent across both single and multiplayer, appearing in cutscenes and earning you credits (cR) for completing a variety of tasks.

Credits can be used to buy new pieces of armour, as Bungie's player investment designer, Luke Smith told G4, "Whatever you enjoy doing in multiplayer, we're gonna find a way to reward you. Through the Player Investment system, you're going to be building an identity for the first time in a Halo game."

Newly acquired armour pieces won't give you special perks or attributes though says Smith, "There are no in-game benefits to Spartan armor. It would definitely make Halo something different than what Halo is."

Daily and weekly challenges will also be created by Bungie, enabling you to collect even more credits and keep you hooked with new goals that could be anything, though Smith uses aggregate actions like, "kill X dudes, help kill X dudes today," as an example.

Finally, 'Commendations' can also be earned for the way you play the game, which award medals, rewarding players for actions like driving vehicles or killing a certain number of enemies with certain weapons and so on.

Bungie will also be releasing more details like these every Friday from today until the multiplayer Beta kicks off on May 3rd.

[Failed]

interesting. I'm gonna save up and buy a lush helmet .... with feathers!

[NeuroticSarge]

interesting. I'm gonna save up and buy a lush helmet .... with feathers!

Yours just dosn't quite cut it eh?

[Failed]

interesting. I'm gonna save up and buy a lush helmet .... with feathers!

Yours just dosn't quite cut it eh?

not without feathers, no

[GamerMan316]

Brand New Halo:Reach MP Details

Bungie's latest podcast is up on the Bnet and with it latest details and changes to Halo:Reach. All you halo aficionados get ready for some juicy Halo:Reach info after the jump.

1. The FOV is 78 degrees in Reach, Halo 3 was about 60 degrees.
2. At the basic level, you move slower than the Chief (not including Sprint).
3. Jump heights are "a little more realistic." It's a little more grounded.
4. Lunge range is shorter than it was in Halo 3, but it's not really noticeable.
5. It takes two melees to kill a player: one to take down the shields, the other to kill.
6. You are not invulnerable when carrying out an assassination animation - you can still be killed.
7. Five headshots to kill someone with the DMR, five headshots to kill someone with the magnum. Differences between the guns are mainly rate of fire, accuracy, and range. The DMR fires more slowly but it can reach you from farther away. The range of the magnum "plays right outside ideally AR range": magnum a very skilled user can take down a guy with an AR.
8. Frags are more dangerous in Reach, they're more scattered on the map. Less grenade spam than in Halo 3. Larger blast radius.
9. As others have mentioned, you can shoot grenades and have them explode.
10. The grenade arc in Reach is different from Halo 3. It's not that much of a difference, but "you're going to have to relearn some stuff." If you're sprinting and you throw a grenade, you'll throw it farther.
11. Secondary fire on the grenade launcher
12. You "gotta be trying to hurt yourself" to receive fall damage in Reach. The stun is back if you hit the ground hard.
13. For health and shields, it'll take a longer time than in Halo 3 for them to recharge. Health also recharges, but it recharges "at thresholds." If you're about to die, your health is going to regenerate so that a single scratch is not going to kill you, but you'll still have to go out and search for health packs.
14. Health and shields on Elites and Spartans are different. Elites are larger, so they have more health and more shields. The time it takes to kill an Elite with the AR on the open battlefield is very close to that of a Spartan. It takes 6 DMR headshots to kill an Elite.
15. The beta will only feature on Spartan Spartan whereas the final product may feature on Elite Elite as well.
16. Player encounters in REACH will be longer than it was in Halo 3.
17. Almost everything that is coming back from Halo 3 has been tweaked in some way.
18. There have been changes made to the sword combat.
19. In regards to sandbox changes, there is no "uber weapon." There is no particular load-out that dominates all the rest.
20. As I suspected, there are no Spikers or SMGs in Reach.
21. Aim Assist is on a "for weapon setting."
22. Sniper is "even more of a weapon for adults."

A new Vidoc is also coming very soon! Thanks to Dax01 at Neogaf for the information

[GamerMan316]

Bungie talks Halo: Reach armor, weapons and jet packs



It probably won't surprise you to learn that Halo: Reach will offer its players a wide assortment of methods of brutalizing one another. These methods were recently revealed in the latest Bungie update, which heated anticipators of the upcoming shooter should go read immediately.

Said update reveals a new "Armor Abilities" system, in which temporary bonuses which used to appear on the battleground are now ingrained into pre-fabricated loadouts. For instance, the Active Camo power-up is now tied to a load-out. An Ability called "Armor Lock" makes you temporarily invincible (and stationary), deflecting any shots, and wrecking the shop of any vehicle attempting to run you over. Also, our beloved jet pack falls into this category, rendering all other Armor Abilities completely meaningless.

Also revealed in the update is a handful of new weapons and intriguing new gameplay mechanics -- including the announcement that the Covenant Elite is physically superior to the Spartan, which will prevent them from playing against one another in some gametypes. That's ... that's speciesist, Bungie.

[GamerMan316]

Halo: Reach beta maps revealed, detailed



If you haven't been following along with the minutiae Halo: Reach development over at Bungie's website, you probably didn't know that the upcoming beta will feature four maps from the final product's full list. Today we finally got a look at what those maps will be -- "Swordbase" and "Powerhouse" (intended for "party game types"), "Overlook" (featuring the "Generator Defense" game type), and the sparsely detailed sandbox design of "Boneyard" (intended for the "Invasion" game type) -- as well as a smattering of new deets on the jetpack-enhanced  Halo game.

For instance, we probably won't be finding out too many major campaign secrets during the beta that we didn't already know. The devs at Bungie have only included human-themed maps in the beta as to ensure the secrecy of plot points, actually. "Several of the other maps have different themes that I think are really cool [outside of the beta]," says Bungie's Chris Carney. "I don't really want to talk about them because it would talk about things that are happening in the single-player story." There's a ton more really, really specific stuff (as well as several new screens) over on IGN, if you're into that kind of thing (and let's be honest, if you've made it this far in the post, you probably are).