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Tag: 343 Industries

  • Halo 4 Trailer Released For New Map Pack

    Halo 4 Trailer Released For New Map Pack

    Though it’s often baffling that the shooter genre has spawned the most successful console franchises, a little observations could reveal why. Game franchises such as Call of Duty and Borderlands are well-supported by their developers and new content is being released for the titles on a nearly bi-monthly basis. Now, this could be a chicken-and-the-egg problem of which came first, but new, quality DLC certainly has helped shooter titles emerge as the most popular video games of this console generation.

    Today, 343 Studios detailed its new multiplayer map pack for Halo 4. The “Majestic Map Pack” will launch next week, on Monday, February 25. Instead of the sprawling vehicle-filled maps Halo players got with the last map pack, these new maps will be “small to medium sized.” The pack will also come with new multiplayer playlists and the new “Infinity Rumble” game type.

    The “Landfall” map will be set in the ruins of Tribute’s capital city and encourages close-range combat while providing plenty of “jump routes.”

    The “Monolith” map features man-cannons and “open sightlines” that 343 states “harkens back to more classic Halo arana-based maps.”

    The “Skyline” map is a small rooftop arena that offers lots of cover, but also has “explosive fuel cells” that can be exploited.

  • Halo 4 Spartan Ops Resumes in January

    Microsoft today revealed the future of Halo 4 for the next couple of months. Of particular note is that Halo 4‘s Spartan Ops mode is going on hiatus until January. The first five interactive episodes of Spartan Ops, comprising the first half of “season 1” have already aired. All five episodes will all be re-entered into Matchmaking, one per week, from December 17 to January 14. A “first-look” at the second half of Spartan Ops season 2 will appear during the Spike TV 10th Annual Video Game Awards on December 7.

    In lieu of new Spartan Ops episodes, Microsoft will be holding a contest, the “Halo 4 Infinity Challenge.” The contest is a tournament that will track gamers’ personal score in War Games or the number of Spartan Ops chapters they complete. Microsoft is bragging that players of all skill levels have a shot at winning one of over 2,800 prizes. The grand prize for the War Games leaderboard winner is a UNSC-themed 2013 Ford F-150 truck. The Spartan Ops grand prize winner will win an appearance in two-minute appearance in Halo 5.

    The contest begins on December 17, but players can sign up starting today. From December 17 until January 10, players will compete in a qualifier phase, after which players will be tiered into three groups for the finals.

    Before the contest even begins, however, 343 Industries and Microsoft are releasing 3 new multiplayer maps through the “Crimson Map Pack” DLC. The content will be available on December 10 and a preview of the maps can be seen here.

  • Halo 4 Crimson Map Pack Coming December 10

    343 Industries is certainly determined to support the Halo 4 multiplayer community. In addition to the weekly updates and story videos that accompany the game’s Spartan Ops mode, it appears that map packs for more standard multiplayer modes are coming as scheduled.

    Today 343 and Microsoft announced that the first Halo 4 map pack, Crimson, will be launching on December 10. The DLC will cose 800 Microsoft Points and contains three new maps: Wreckage, Harvest, and Shatter. Those who purchased the Halo 4 map pass or purchased the Limited Edition version of the game will be able to download the DLC as soon as it is available. Two more map packs will be released in February and April.

    Wreckage is a medium-sized, asymmetrical map created for objective gameplay. It’s styled as a crash site, with debris littering the landscape.

    Harvest is a small to medium sized map created for Capture the Flag gameplay. Its name comes from Halo backstory as the planet where humans made first contact with the Covenant.

    Shatter is a large, symmetrical map made for tooling around on vehicles. The UNSC mining facility it is set in allows up to 16 players to compete in Infinity Slayer.

    Shatter was also created with a new multiplayer mode, Extraction, in mind. The new mode features two teams of 5 players racing to plant a beacon and protect it for a certain amount of time. Extraction will show up in Halo 4 matchmaking alongside the Crimson map pack on December 10.

  • New Halo 4 Trailer Details the Promethean Weapons

    The last of the Halo 4 montages showing off each species’ weaponry has finally hit Halo Waypoint. We’ve already seen the UNSC weapons and the Covenant weapons in previous trailers. This week, players get a glimpse at what the new Promethean race brings to the Halo 4 arsenal.

    The Promethean weapons are where much of 343 industries’ design philosophy will be able to shine through. As the weapons did not exist in previous Halo games, the developers were free to create them without any prior designs to hem them in. The weapons have a “disconnected” look about them when they are reloaded, and seem to construct themselves around the player’s arm when they are equipped.

    Though the look of the guns may be new and unique, the types of guns are fairly standard. The trailer shows off six guns: the lightrifle, scattershot, suppressor, boltshot, incineration cannon, binary rifle. These roughly correlate to other Halo weapons, in order: the battle rifle, shotgun, assault rifle, magnum, rocket launcher, and sniper rifle.

    The first trailer below is the Promethean weapons preview with the now-obligatory dubstep playing loudly over everything. The one below it is the same trailer without the music, which allows viewers to actually hear how the weapons sound during combat.

  • Halo 4 Producer Talks About How 343 Has Changed Halo

    When Bungie completed its Halo trilogy, many gamers assumed that would be the end of the Master Chief Halo games. Sure, Bungie filled out some of the franchise’s backstory with Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach, but the developer was determined to let the Chief rest in peace for a while.

    So, when Halo 4 was announced, the reaction from Halo fans was understandably mixed. On one hand, it’s always nice to see favorite characters and settings return in an updated form. On the other, a new developer might stray too far from Bungie’s vision, creating a first person shooter that was Halo only in name.

    It’s good, then that 343 industries has been surprisingly open about the development of Halo 4, including their design philosophies and how much pressure they put on themselves to please Halo fans. A new video today shows Halo 4 Executive Producer Kiki Wolfkill (has there ever been a cooler name?) and Creative Director Josh Holmes discussing how 343 has managed to move the franchise forward and make Halo 4 their own, while staying true to Halo‘s themes and gameplay.

  • New Halo 4 Trailer Shows Redesigned Covenant Weapons

    Today, a new Halo 4 trailer highlighting the Covenant weapons featured in Halo 4 was released. Despite their civil war and the destruction visited upon them by Master Chief in previous Halo games, the religious aliens will be back to serve as more cannon fodder for Halo 4.

    A similar trailer (featuring a similar dubstep score) was released more than a month ago that features the UNSC weapons in Halo 4. And though the specific weapons of the new vilains, the Prometheans, haven’t gotten their own trailer yet, a bit of their technology was revealed in a video documentary about them.

    One major change to the Covenant arsenal is that the plasma rifle has been replaced with the new Storm Rifle. Other than that, several classic covenant guns have gotten a revamped design. Halo fans will instantly recognize slightly modified versions of the Covenant Carbine, Beam Rifle, Concussion Rifle, Fuel Rod Cannon, Needler, Energy Sword, Plasma Pistol, and Gravity Hammer.

    Speaking of gravity hammer, it was revealed at Pax Prime a few weeks ago that Grifball, the football/soccer-inspired Halo eSport, will be a multiplayer mode available at launch.

  • New Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn “Joyride” Preview Released

    343 Industries, the developer behind Halo 4, today released the newest preview for its upcoming web series, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. The series is a prequel to the Halo videogames, and depicts UNSC recruits as they train at a military academy. The story of the series will lead into that of Halo 4, depicting how a leader on the UNSC Infinity was once inspired by Master Chief.

    The latest Forward Unto Dawn trailer, seen below, is called “Joyride,” and depicts the first-person view of a trainee who hops into a Warthog for a short-lived joyride.

    The previous Forward Unto Dawn trailer showed a more experienced recruit comforting her roommate about his upcoming cryo-training by poetically describing cryo-sleep as similar to a dreamless death. The one before that had recruits giving an inner monologue about their motivations in joining the UNSC while having their heads shorn.

    The web series will premiere on October 5th on Machinima Prime and Halo Waypoint. The five-episode series will air every Friday, leading up to the release of Halo 4 on November 6th.

  • New Halo 4 Video Documentary Reveals the Prometheans

    Between the trailers, live-action webseries previews, and developer documentary shorts, its hard to keep up with all the recent Halo 4 information coming out of Microsoft and 343 Industries.

    This week, the developers at 343 Industries preview the concepts behind, and the work that went into, creating the newest Halo baddies. Dubbed the Prometheans, they will use their bionic abilities to put the hurt on Master Chief. One interesting tidbit revealed in the documentary short below is that the different Promethean enemy types will work together based on their abilities, making Halo 4 combat more tactical than past Halo games. The developers state that the “knight” Promethean starts out more powerful than a Covenant Elite.

    Also, though the redesigned UNSC weapons were shown off in a trailer one month ago, the futuristic Forerunner weapons are detailed by developers in the latest documentary short, seen below.

  • New Halo 4 Trailer Shows Behind-the-Scenes Footage

    Many gamers are trepidatious about one of the biggest video game franchises changing developers, but Microsoft is out to convince everyone that Halo is in good hands.

    Halo 4 is the most anticipated Xbox 360 game of 2012, and many details about the game are already known. A live-action web series called Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn will build a small preface to the game’s story. All that’s left is for the developers behind the game to be showcased.

    This weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo, Microsoft revealed a new trailer that showcases the people who have worked on Halo 4. As shown below, it appears that the developers are passionate about the Halo series, That will be a welcome relief to gamers, since Microsoft could have just slapped together a terrible Halo sequel and made money.