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Posted 5 days ago - By Jeffrey Kanjanapangka
If you're excited about the upcoming, collaborative animation project, Halo Legends, check this out. Warner Bros. has released a near 2 minute clip of "The Babysitter", the episode from Japanese animation house Studio 4°C (Lunar Knights, Rogue Galaxy, Linkin Park - "Breaking the Habit", The Animatrix - "Beyond"). This along with 6 other short films are looking to make any Halo fan craving more, jovial.
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Posted January 21, 2010 - By Patrick Klepek
Starting with Halo 2, the complicated mythology took hold of the story in Halo games. Bungie, in my eyes, successfully reigned in the problems with that path in Halo 3: ODST, which allowed you to enjoy a Halo story without being left out because you haven't read a Halo encyclopedia, too. According to Bungie, that's going to be the approach for the upcoming Halo: Reach, too.
"Reach will continue that, because it doesn't have the burden of continuing a story like Halo 2 and Halo 3 had to carry," said creative director Marcus Lehto to Edge. "It was a true burden for us when we were making those games, because we sometimes wanted to do something but couldn't because the story wouldn't let us, or we had to support this giant steamroller of a story. Reach allowed us to start afresh."
The Halo mythology is full of interesting characters and stories, but, for example, I couldn't tell you what the hell the Gravemind from Halo 2 was. There was too much to follow, too much that required outside research to enjoy. No doubt, Halo: Reach will have plenty for the hardcore to chew on, but if Halo: Reach can make the story a little more accessible for the rest of us, I'm game.
Source: Edge
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If you want to kill some time before Reach comes out, check out Red vs. Blue's new PSA: http://www.gamestop.com/gs/lan ding/odstpsa/
Posted: January 22, 2010 by LeslieLu
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Posted December 8, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
The internal Microsoft division handling the future of the Halo franchise, 343 Industries, has picked up another employee from Kojima Productions: Sotaro Tojima, last seen working as the sound director on the PlayStation 3 exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
343 Industries announced the news through their Twitter account.
Tojima marks the second employee 343 Industries has plucked from the Kojima Productions ranks. Early on, 343 Industries brought on Ryan Payton as creative director. Previously, Payton was an assistant producer working alongside designer Hideo Kojima at his Konami studio.
It's widely rumored 343 Industries is working on the Halo title to follow Halo: Reach. 343 Industries has also overseen the launch of Halo Waypoint and other extensions of the brand.
Have something to share? Have a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.well i really wish microsoft would leave hideo kojima productions alone... they are my favorite!
Posted: December 21, 2009 by StillWind
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Posted December 8, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
Halo 3: ODST may have been mostly a success for Bungie, but there haven't been many indications the developer is interested in making the adventures of the ODST a regular occurrence. It was a spin-off, a one-time thing. But that doesn't mean we've seen the last of the cast of characters Bungie introduced in Halo 3: ODST. At the end of our post-release interview with Bungie, writer and creative director Joseph Statten dropped a hint about Buck, voiced by Firefly actor Nathan Fillion.
"I can’t comment on any future plans for our ODSTs," said Statten, crushing hopes. "But it would be a shame if we made a game about the planet Reach -- a place where Buck, the ODST’s squad leader, was known to be -- and not have him appear in some way shape or form…"
Sounds like a classic class of a non-confirmation confirmation. In other words, Fillion should have a role in Halo: Reach, though it's impossible to say whether it will actually be substantial.
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*Headshot* "Heheh, nice catch with your face!" I lol'd every time.
Posted: December 10, 2009 by Camrock
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Posted December 7, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
A constant source of criticism for Halo 3: ODST has been the lack of matchmaking for the popular Firefight mode. You can't jump into a random Firefight game; matches must be coordinated with friends. Since it's a cooperative-dependent mode, most people would want to partner up with friends anyway, but the lack of a randomized option was clearly a sore spot that's haunted the game.
As it turns out, Bungie wanted matchmaking in Firefight, too. Bungie recently revealed why matchmaking didn't make it into Halo 3: ODST's Firefight in a post-release interview with G4.
well I for one think we need more firefight! more waves of covenant blasting madness!
the only thing I would change is the pacing, over two hours per match kinda wears you down a bit.
Posted: December 8, 2009 by Mancer1516
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Posted December 7, 2009 - By Andrew Pfister
It's difficult to manage expectations, especially in this age of downloadable content, expanded universes, and cost-conscious (and tempermental) audiences who love you one minute and write snarky things about you on the Internet the next. Few development studios know this like Bungie, who when developing Halo 3: ODST made the bold decision to bench their All-Star character and start a team of rookies. But did that really hurt them in the long run? Is there value in making something in just over a year, even with the Halo name cranking up the pressure cooker? Are there lessons to be learned going into Halo: Reach? We asked the always-affable guys at Bungie these questions (and more). Providing the answers are:
G4: What did the omission of Master Chief give you the freedom to do in ODST?
Lars Bakken: It really opened up the storytelling in a way that we hadn't been able to do before. We didn't have to tell the epic universe-saving story of the last Spartan rescuing the entire human race. We could tell a more intimate story, with more realistic characters.
Joseph Staten: The Halo universe isn’t all ancient ring artifacts and parasitic plagues. Sure, it’s a universe that’s gripped by war. But not all of the human characters are focused on Saving the Human Race. Most of them are fighting for the man (or woman) standing next to them, which is to say they’re fighting for their own, personal reasons. It was really refreshing to let players experience Halo from these kinds of characters’ points-of-view. And even better: not all of these characters are soldiers e.g., Sadie and the Superintendent.
G4: How many gamers have e-mailed you asking..."where the heck is Master Chief?" Has the backlash -- or lack thereof, if that's the case -- been about what you expected from Halo fans?
How many years has it been since gamers were satisfied with a multiplayer game being released with no matchmaking? At full price?
In my opinion, it would have to be pre-counterstrike. I enjoyed Halo 3 but returned ODST.
Posted: December 14, 2009 by GristleG
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Posted November 10, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
"Significantly less" than 1% of Halo players have managed to unlock every achievement across every Halo game, according to the developers of the recently launched Halo hub Halo Waypoint. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the Halo devoted is picking up all the Halo Wars achievements -- specifically, the "Generals" multiplayer achievement, requiring a significant time investment.
I was contacted by one excited reader who'd claimed to have mastered all of the Halo achievements, a man by the gamertag of Ghosty Taco. Upon further inspection, however, I realized he didn't have the "Generals" achievement. I tasked him with fixing this and come back to me when the job was done.
He did.
One of you has managed to rack up all 3,950 achievements for the Halo series. He might be slightly insane. You can verify Ghosty Taco's achievements for yourself on his Xbox Live profile.
So, how'd he do it? A tried and true tradition, of course: Exploiting "noobs."
"I got stuck with some noobs," said Ghosty Taco, "with this map that has flood doors and he kept sending units at me while i keep opening the doors and i kept doing it for every noob i meet on that map because it gives me a totaty of 33600 points every match :D"
Bravo, Ghosty Taco. Bravo.
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Posted November 4, 2009 - By Brian Leahy
UPDATE: Only 4 days left to submit your Sarkathlon 4 run! Details below...
X-Play's Mr Sark has a history of dropping some amazing Halo 3 prizes on the winner of the Sarkathlon, a contest storied in legend and history, appearing only a few times to the chosen few... or whenever new Halo 3 multiplayer maps are available.
Previously, Mr Sark has bestowed the coveted Recon armor on winners, but with the release of Halo 3: ODST, that isn't so special anymore, right? You're absolutely correct. That's why Mr Sark and Bungie are going to be giving the winner of Sarkathlon 4...
Bungie Exclusive Flaming Armor!
To compete, you'll need to acquire a copy of Halo 3: ODST because this content takes place on the map Longshore. Once you have ODST loaded up, you'll need to download the map and gametype for Sarkathlon 4 from Mr Sark's Bungie.net file share. After that, load it up, find all 8 grenades, and cross the finish line faster than anyone else. Simple, right?
Sarkathlon 4 ends at Sunday, November 8th at Midnight! Save a full replay of your run and put it on your Bungie.net file share. Then, email mrsark@g4tv.com with a link to your replay to enter the contest!
Before you get started, however, hit the break for an extended interview with Mr Sark for a behind-the-scenes look at Sarkathlon 4 and some tips to help you shave valuable seconds off of your time.
Wow. This is just plain stupid.
I mean they at least could have mead the entire armor on fire, instead of hastily adding a fire model under the helmet model, and making it clip through the head. I want a whole flaming, demonic looking suit of armor, make it look like it's actually supposed to be on fire, not just a head that makes me look really, really angry.
Posted: November 15, 2009 by 04_Leonhardt
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Posted October 28, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
Not many people have earned all the achievements possible from Halo 3, Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST, as evidenced by the statistics Microsoft dug up while developing Halo Waypoint. "Significantly less" than 1% of players have unlocked all the achievements. Based on readers comments and e-mails I received, the biggest stumbling block for Halo fans is a top-tier achievement tucked away in Halo Wars, the non-Bungie developed real-time-strategy take on the Halo universe.
Specifically, several readers cited the "General" achievement as the most difficult to obtain. The "General" achievement is obtained by acquiring 2,400,000 experience points across multiplayer sessions. According to players, garnering that many points takes a long, long time.
"I am missing one single achievement in Halo Wars...the achievement for obtaining a General Rank over XBL," one reader wrote me over e-mail, echoing the feelings of several others I heard from. "So of all three games I have all but one single achievement. This won't put me into that 1%, but I should come darn close. Honestly I would have this achievement as well if the population for Halo Wars was not so small and the amount of XP needed to gain that rank so high. I am simply not a huge RTS fan, and while I enjoy Halo Wars I am a fangirl because of the FPS parts of the Halo universe. At the moment games of Halo Wars feel more like grinding than fun."
After my story was published, community manager Duncan “Aloysius” Stanley at Robot Entertainment, the studio that spun-off from the now-closed Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios that assumed post-release Halo Ward duties, released some additional statistics to fans on the Halo Wars message boards. Not surprising, the "General" rank was listed.
"Less than half a of percent of players have the General rank on Xbox Live," said Stanley.
"So little [users] with General, yet so many threads about them...," remarked one user in response.
Some users estimated it could take hundreds of hours to unlock the "General" achievement. At that point, is such an achievement just for the hardcore or simply poorly designed?
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LoL. and guess what. i have obtained enough points in Halo Wars to have double the amount required for the General Achievement. I have over 4.5 million score. Most of it was accuired while i didnt work full time. the time between graduating and getting a job, which was long thanks to the economy. but u really just got to win a lot and get a good kill ratio. thats the key.
but i havent got 100% for all the achievments because im not much of single player guy. i love online.
shoot i...
Posted: November 11, 2009 by DudeinCA
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Posted October 27, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
Halo fans are notoriously hardcore, but even in the Halo community, there are only a hardened few who are willing to attempt the seemingly impossible: unlocking every achievement in each Halo game (that has achievements and includes map packs) so far. That includes Halo 3, Halo Wars and the recently released Halo 3: ODST. According to Halo Waypoint creative director Jason Pace, the number of people who've achieved that feat is less than 1%. Significantly less, actually.
"When we did our high-level analysis…it's less than 1% of players who will come in with everything, it's actually significantly less than 1%," said Pace in a wide-ranging interview about the upcoming Halo hub for Xbox Live, Halo Waypoint, from a few weeks back.
This information was very important to Pace, as Halo Waypoint's meta ranking system is based on the achievements players have and haven't unlocked in the Halo games on Xbox 360. Eventually Halo Waypoint will include challenges not tied to existing achievements, but for the near future, that's the system in place, which makes the less-than-1% scenario a good one.
"There will certainly be some uber-hardcore players with pretty much everything maxed out," he said, "but the vast majority of the Halo audience, even the hardcore fanbase, will find themselves not maxed out in either the career milestones or the rewards."
Pace's analysis actually found Halo players falling into two camps: single-player or multiplayer.
"It's interesting when you take a look at the player profiles and distribution of achievements," he noted. "You would frequently assume that hardcore multiplayer folks wouldn't be the people who generally have the most achievements. That is not always the case. There are a lot of multiplayer folks who doesn't focus on, for example, on getting a lot of the single-player campaign achievements. The average person, the average sort of regular Halo player, should probably come in somewhere in the middle of the milestone range."
What kind of Halo player are you? If you're someone who actually has unlocked every possible achievement across Halo 3, Halo Wars and Halo 3: ODST, get in touch with me.
Have something to share? Have a news tip? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.
I got them ALL!!! gamertag: InhumaneMastro Go look 4 urself.
Posted: December 27, 2009 by Inhumanemastro
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Posted October 22, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
Next month, Microsoft will launch Halo Waypoint, a hub for all things Halo accessed through the Xbox 360 itself. During a phone interview this week about the project, I asked Jason Pace, creative director behind Halo Waypoint, to summarize why people should care:
"Waypoint is a place where we want Halo fans, when they're sitting at the console and actually interacting with their Xbox, to go and be able to have an experience that transcends each individual game and sort of wraps together everything at the entire Halo experience level," said Pace. "It's a single point of contact where you can go to establish your player identity across all of the different Halo games and feel like you have a single identity in that universe and then also experience all different kinds of content, from fiction to community content to interesting stuff -- like strategy guides -- that some of our partners put up. I would describe it as a central hub for the Halo experience."
But Halo Waypoint is a little more nuanced than that.
Halo is and always will be bad.
K, thx, bai.
Posted: October 24, 2009 by Cyph3r05
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Posted October 20, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
I spent a little time this afternoon on the phone with Jason Pace, the talkative creative director on the upcoming Halo Waypoint, a hub for all things Halo being added to Xbox Live as part of the next update. Pace told me about his grand ambitions for Halo Waypoint -- which you'll hear about soon -- but one part of our conversation stuck out. "Waypoint" is not the name of a new initiative for Xbox Live, with Halo Waypoint leading the way for a series of game-specific hubs.
"Waypoint is very much part of the Halo universe," said Pace, carefully choosing his next words, "and so as time goes on, we'll reveal a little bit more of the back story of what Waypoint is and where it fits into the canon."
Pace had to stop talking about what that means just as soon as it came up. Since I know very little about the Halo story outside of what's been revealed in the games, I did ask for some clarity.
"The only think I can tell you is that it's a secret," he said, laughing. "You'll find out more about it in the future, that's what I can say."
I could pretty much visualize him smiling over the phone.
You guys probably know more than me. What's "Waypoint"?
probably like Reach and Harvest they were both glassed by the covenent but Reach had probably every spartan (including the Master cheif) there when it was glassed but the master cheif escaped on the phillar of autum and was the only one to survive the attack then halo CE comes in so if u played all the halo games u know the rest of the story but the upcomming game Reach will be either a flashback of what happened or its when we get back to the master cheif and cortona and we got cut off in...
Posted: November 13, 2009 by gamedude360
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Posted October 7, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
I don't know what your expectations were for Halo 3 ODST, but I wasn't expecting much. Bungie seems to have been playing down the significance of its latest entry in the Halo series, following year-long back-and-forth contradictions about what exactly Halo 3 ODST even is. Such issues didn't inspire much confidence, but it's a new Halo game, right? Of course I'm going to play it.
But while I'm sure to have any number of memorable gaming experiences before this year is up, I'm convinced Halo 3 ODST will stick with me. Halo 3 ODST is important. It's a game worth putting on a pedestal, pointing to the rest of the industry and demanding many more games like this.
I happily enjoyed ODST. Before getting the game I went back and finished my Halo playthrough and also went through the Halo 2 campaign. I skipped Halo 3 since that was most recent and still in my head but Halo 3 ODST felt fresh and familiar to me. I enjoyed the campaign, the characters, the different perspectives you experienced, it basically was the format of a good book to read.
Posted: October 11, 2009 by Spybreak
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Posted October 7, 2009 - By Patrick Klepek
Halo developer Bungie Studios has talked about developing downloadable games over the years, but Halo 3 ODST's the closest it's come to creating something small. Perhaps that approach is why Bungie veterans Michel Bastien, Damian Isla and Rob Stokes (alongside Seattle artist Mike McCain) have formed Moonshot Games, a studio strictly focused on "high-quality downloadable games," according to the company.
"The details of Moonshot's first mission will remain top secret until the craft makes moonfall," reads a note on Moonshot's website. "However, all the necessary research, planning, and prototyping are already well underway. Stand by for mission updates."
At Bungie, Bastien was a producer on Halo PC, producer on Halo 2 and lead producer on Halo 3. Isla was the AI and gameplay engineering lead, which had him crafting the enemy AI Halo's so known for. Stokes was a designer and writer on Halo, Halo 2 before becoming design lead for Halo 3.
"The Moonshot team firmly believes that the stars need not be limited to multimillion-dollar projects supported by armies of ground crew," reads the company's announcement release. "There is a place in history for that small, nimble craft, built smartly on a modest budget, and piloted by expert hands."
Sounds very different from Bungie.
Sounds great, Shadow Complex is an awsome downloadable game. More like that would be just fine.
Posted: October 11, 2009 by revivedflash
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Posted September 23, 2009 - By Patrick Roche-Sowa
I know you're all busy playing Firefight right now, but it's that time of week to sit down and take a minute to listen to the pearls of wisdom spit by The Sess. Adam sits down to discuss Halo 3: ODST and its strangely muted presence in this year's list of big game releases. Does ODST not need a bit marketing push because it's a part of the Halo franchise that always sells well? Or is there another reason? Find out what Sessler thinks, and tell us your thoughts in the comments section.
Subscribe to G4's Sessler's Soapbox Podcast by clicking your preferred service:
I kind of liked ODST and I liked the other HALO games as well. But many people are bashing the game because they are playing the game like a previous HALO game and not learning from their mistake. And then they judge it on the "HALO rating rubric" instead of looking at it as a different type of game.
Posted: November 3, 2009 by G4_Junky
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These have all been up on youtube for over a month.
Posted: 4 days ago by Aerindel_Prime
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