Halo: Reach Central

Halo: Reach beta maps have been revealed.

There’s Swordbase and Powerhouse, two maps that will feature “party” game types like Headhunter and Slayer in the Beta. Backing them up is Overlook, a space pulled from the campaign that will feature the Generator Defense test situation. And then there’s Boneyard, a map that Bungie is staying relatively quiet about for now.

Boneyard

Powerhouse

Overlook

Swordbase

Bungie has released information and a few screens on some of the new Halo: Reach weapons! Obliterating alien scum from planet to planet is always fun, and in Halo: Reach, a few new weapons have been added to make it all the more fun!

Magnum

“The Magnum gets squirrely if you go all out and squeeze off rounds as fast as you possibly can. Real squirrely.” said Bungie. What can we expect from this gun? Well it’s definitely for close range, and will be most effective at either short range or mid range. Besides, squirrely long range doesn’t sound good at all!

Plasma Repeater

“It’s a bit different that the Plasma Rifle you’ve become accustomed to. It still sends out a steady stream of bright blue plasma bolts, but the cadence will taper off as the weapon overheats. And while you’ll never need to worry about it rendering the weapon useless as it cools, you’ll need to vent it out if you want to run it at full speed using the reload button.” – Bungie

Dual wielding has been removed in Halo: Reach, and so this weapons purpose seems to be to create a suitable replacement for dual wielding. The Repeater is a counterpart to the Assault Rifle basically.

Plasma Launcher

“The Plasma Launcher can send a volley of one to four plasma explosives toward your opponent, depending on how long you keep your finger on the trigger. How many rounds you’re prepping is communicated to you through a nifty combination of visual and audio cues. And when you see and hear it coming your way, you need to find some cover. Fast.” – Bungie

The rounds are tracked by both infantry and vehicles, and the gun has a magnetism that is more so similar to the Needler than the Missle Pod. Vehicles are easily hit with this gun due to their size, but if you’ve got good aim this gun could be used on a ground enemy, which if they’re coming your way may not be the best idea, but we won’t know that until we try.

Focus Rifle

“The Focus Rifle takes the Sentinel Beam and the Beam Rifle and combines the two weapon’s traits for some deliciously deadly peanut butter and chocolate type death dealing action. Zoom in and hold the focused beam on your opponent and you’ll tear through their shields and take out their health pretty quickly. Even if you don’t kill your enemy, you can bet they’ll be encouraged to give up their ground and get behind something that doesn’t smell like burning.” – Bungie

This gun sounds very interesting. I think most peoples initial perception of it (if not well acquainted with the Sentinel Beam and Beam Rifle) will be something to the likes of a flamthrower, one that can be as straight as a laser.

Grenade Launcher or, “Pro Pipe”

“If you point and shoot with a single pull of the trigger, you’ll send an explosive round out into the world. If it hits your target dead on, it will explode. If it bounces, it’ll arm much like a frag and explode after a short spell. But if you hold the trigger after you fire, the round will not detonate until you release your death grip. If you let the round come to rest, it’ll remain in play until you decide that it’s your opportunity to blow. And if you want to arc it and time the detonation mid air using the same method, you can do that, too. The round itself will do impact damage to an opponent even if you don’t detonate it, much like frag grenades now will, and when it does explode it also produces a fairly sizable EMP blast that will damage and deactivate the type of stuff you would expect it too.” – Bungie

Deadly gun, anyone? This gun basically gives you a controller for your grenade, which is great, especially for those grenades that thing they are boomerangs.

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Bungie has trotted out even more tantalising details for the Halo: Reach Beta, confirming that Armour Lock definitely wasn’t an April Fool, some lovely visual upgrades will feature and a selection of weapon loadouts will be available at the beginning of each multiplayer round.

For instance, the Air Assault loadout gives you an assault rifle, magnum and jetpack to start off with, whereas Operator will give you a shotgun, Expert Marksman starts you with the deadly scoped DMR and Grenadier puts a grenade launcher in your hands from the off.

In the same list of updates over on Bungie.net, the differences between the Elites and Spartans are also detailed, and the Elites are much more fearsome than they previously have been in past Halo titles: “We’ve already said that the Elites found in Halo: Reach were never meant to conform to the noble notion of equality. For far too long, our Sangheili brothers have been leashed – their very backs burdened by the weight of multiplayer parity. They hunched, bent to the whims of human anatomy,” runs the description on the site, meaning that the Elites will be somewhat tougher than their Spartan counterparts.

They’re bigger, faster and possess superior shield technology to the Spartans, able to move at a similar rate to a Spartan in full sprint, and they’re also able to evade, making them incredibly agile. Their health also recharges fully rather than in sections like the Spartans, and their shields also recharge significantly faster. Surely this will make things severely unbalanced though, won’t it Bungie?

Over to Bungie’s explanation: “So, how are we gonna work them into multiplayer? Well, in a number of ways. In some circumstances, like Arena, you’ll only square off Spartan vs. Spartan or Elite vs. Elite. In others, well…stay tuned.”

Looks like we’ll have to wait to find out more about how Bungie plans to handle Spartan vs. Elite battles.

Halo: Reach’s multiplayer Beta begins on May 3rd, as if you didn’t already know.

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With a franchise as popular as the Halo series, leading up to a launch there are a ton of questions about the game. Questions from all over the place, regarding specifics for the title, some with strong implications as to the tone of the game, and others that are just personal questions that gamers feel they need answered. With about a month to go before the public beta begins, we decided to do a search to drum up the most popular questions that still haven’t been answered regarding the details of Halo Reach.

1) Will Halo Reach have a public Matchmaking option for campaign?

One of the biggest complaints about Halo 3 and Halo ODST was the limitations that it put on players when searching for partners to play the game with in the campaign modes. While this transcended to the Firefight mode in ODST, Bungie hasn’t felt it necessary to incorporate Matchmaking into the cooperative campaign modes of their games. This cut the life out of ODST, and Halo fans everywhere are wondering what fixes Bungie plans to implement if any.

2) Will Halo Reach feature Firefight?

There has actually been some speculation that Firefight has been named something else and we have already seen it on the Multiplayer Trailer that was released a few weeks back. As of yet, nothing has been confirmed as to it’s inclusion.

3) Will ODST be the only way to access the public beta which begins May 3rd?

Bungie’s Marcus Lehto was recently quoted in an interview with Joystiq at X10, and said: “ODST is the way in” but then again was asked if this was the only way in and he answered “Currently, Yes” Causing some confusion for players that don’t have ODST but still want access to the beta.

4) Forge Confirmation

Forge: It’s as close as you can get to modding on the Xbox 360. Well it at one time was as close as you can get to modding on the Xbox 360, pre-jtag. A large majority of the Halo community loves Forge and it’s ability to expand the already robust multiplayer component to a Halo title. It’s inclusion is assumed, yet not confirmed.

5) Will Halo Reach be a multi-disc title like ODST? Will any installation be mandatory to include all of the content?

We recently have seen many games on the Xbox 360 requiring that two (or more) discs are needed to include the ever increasing amounts of content. With a game as big and as hyped as Reach, is it safe to assume that a disk swap will be necessary?

6) Bungie you’re leaving us without telling us what happened to Master Chief? What gives?

Many fans are confused as to why Bungie aren’t the ones that will finish what they started in Halo: Combat Evolved. Being the last game in the series that the beloved developers are doing, they have instead taken us full circle. It could always have some sort of dream sequence at the end, where we get the conclusion we have all been patiently playing on for, for seven years.

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From the Halo: Reach dev blog…

Today was a good day to see a bunch of amazing things coming together in the campaign.

The AI took some fantastic strides forward and are now fully utilizing some of their brand new capabilities. They are now looking more believable than ever.

We’ve also been building a bunch of what we’re calling “mega ambient moments” throughout the campaign. Sounds grandiose, I know, but some of them really do live up to the title. In the past games, we’ve been able to cram a few of these kind of moments in, but we went all out for Reach and have far more than before. They will really help make the campaign a richer experience.

Just saw some new assassination animations as well. Unbelievable. We may have to tone some of them back a bit, since I don’t really promote gratuitous violence, and we don’t want to get banned in some countries, hah! But, the variety we so far exhibit some that are strong and powerful and some that are hilarious – which is always fun.

-Marcus

Bungie is making some important and dramatic changes to multiplayer matchmaking in Halo: Reach, with a revamped set of online options that cater to the hardcore (see Arena mode) and new social settings that improve everyone else’s experience.

Shacknews has a comprehensive look at Halo: Reach’s multiplayer side, which includes “Arena Playlists” targeted at the hardest of hardcore Halo players. Players competing in Slayer and Team Slayer playlists in the Arena will be ranked and placed in monthly skill divisions, a chance to compete with the best but still find matches at your level.

New Features:

Active Roster – This is a throwback to Halo 2. When you boot up Reach, right at the main menu or lobby, you’ll see a list of what your Xbox Live friends are doing within Reach. You’ll get detailed information about any friends playing Reach including who they are partied with, what game they are in (plus score and remaining time), and more.

Basically, Bungie wants to make it so that you do not have to utilize the Xbox Live Guide to find out what your buddies are doing in Reach.

Queue-Joining – In Halo 3, it was difficult to join friends that were already playing in a match. You had to wait until they were finished. If you started a game while you waited, they would then have to wait for you. Instead of going back and forth, Reach will support queue-joining. Simply put, Reach will automatically join up as soon as your friends are joinable.

Improved Voting System – Halo: Reach will utilize a new voting system, which Bungie described as “Veto 2.0″. Each playlist will provide players with four options. The first will be a combination of map and gametype, much like you would see in Halo 3. The other three options will offer players additional choices to vote on. Thankfully, you’ll know up front what your four options are so you no longer have to risk voting down a favored map, but unfavored gametype and getting an unfavored combination.

Behind-the-scenes, a lot of work has been done to give more flexibility to the playlist designers. A designer could, for example, ensure that the first choice is always Team Slayer on a set of 3 popular maps, but offer different gametypes in the additional choices.

Arena Playlists – Possibly the largest change coming in Halo: Reach is the Arena. This is a Slayer and Team Slayer set of playlists entirely geared toward the hardcore. If that wasn’t enough, players will be rated and placed into skill divisions in month-long seasons.

The rating system is smart enough to realize that kills aren’t the only determining factor behind skill. This is especially true for team games where assists play a huge roll. Similarly, players that have a greater kill/death ratio (had more kills than deaths) will rank higher than players that die as much as they kill.

The divisions are Onyx, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Steel. It is possible to move up or down within a single season. To qualify for ranking, players will have to play a certain number of games a day to gain a “Daily Ranking”, which will be an average of a player’s best games from the day. To get a divisional ranking and compete in a season, players will need a certain number of Daily Rankings.

Casual gametypes will not appear in Arena playlists. You won’t be seeing Rocket Race or Fiesta here.

Even though Arena is geared toward top-level players, it should help less skilled players avoid being matched up against people they have no chance of winning against.

Ranked and Social Combined – Since the hardcore will be in the Arena, Bungie doesn’t want to further splinter the community. In Halo 3, Ranked and Social playlists served two different purposes. Ranked games were generally of a higher quality, while social games were more casual.

In Reach, the playlists will be smart enough to put you and your party in the proper match based upon how many players you have. Say you’re looking for a game in a four-on-four playlist. If you bring four people, Reach will attempt to match your team against another group of four at a similar skill level. If you go in with more than four, it will properly split your party across the teams and fill in the blanks with additional players.

Streamlined Party-Up – After a Halo 3 match, players were presented with the option to “Party Up” and merge lobbies with all willing players. In Reach, it will be an opt-out system. After a match, players will be kept together and it will automatically roll into looking for the next match. The system is flexible enough to allow Bungie to determine, per playlist, whether to keep a team together and find a new set of opponents or keep an entire game together and move onto the next map.

Matchmaking Connection Options – The options for finding games in matchmaking will be more open to the player, if they so choose. If you only ever want to play in games with a good connection, that can be set in the options. If you only ever want to play against players of a similar skill, that can be set. The same goes for finding players that speak to same language.

Social Settings – In addition to these connection options, players can rate themselves along four axes to add another layer of criteria to the matchmaking. These won’t trump anything else, but it will help Bungie build better teams. Players will define their playstyle in the following four categories:

* Teamwork – Team Player vs. Lone Wolf
* Motivation – Winning vs. Having Fun
* Chattiness – Chatty vs. Quiet
* Tone – Polite vs. Rowdy

These new features are a huge part of Halo: Reach and should help foster a better community than Halo 3 or Halo 2. Personally, I’m extremely excited about the Arena system. I’ve been having a lot of fun in the StarCraft II beta test with Blizzard’s Leagues & Ladders system. Arena is the same concept.

It should also help alleviate the epidemic of smurfing (creating new Xbox Live accounts) to give maxed out players something to do in Halo 3. Instead of starting over, destroying noobs and reclimbing the skill charts, these top-level players will be encouraged to play season-after-season in the Arena and be meaningfully compared to each other. It’s a system that has been a long-time-coming to a first-person shooter.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/62865

How best to exit the series which catapulted you into the league of the greatest development studios in the world? Bungie’s answer is to go full circle, by setting its last Halo game before the events of the first.

In fact, in Reach, you will be directly paving the way for the events of 2001’s Combat Evolved, fighting to ensure that Master Chief can escape the synonymous planet which will be entirely destroyed by the game’s end, and discover the first Halo ring world in order to go on and save humanity.

Reach’s story is about honour and sacrifice rather than victorious heroics, and it means you’re not playing the part of Master Chief any more. You’re not even as strong as him; though you’re not a puny ODST, you’re only a Spartan-III. In the Halo universe, version numbers aren’t necessarily a sign of absolute improvement – Spartan-IIIs are the cheaper-to-produce successors to the Spartan-II programme which spawned Master Chief.

Drawn from a wider pool of subjects and wearing less effective armour than his MJOLNIR Mark IV set, they’re more numerous and used as a ‘fire-and-forget’ military solution – expected to get the job done, but not come back.

Reach opens with the recruitment of your character into Noble Team, a six-strong squad of Spartans. Hardly a rookie, your character has been working alone for Oni, the UNSC’s intelligence branch, and he doesn’t have the individualism of his new warrior friends. Contrasting with Master Chief’s faceless all-rounder killing-machine persona, Noble Team not only show their faces but also exhibit a wide range of different specialisations, from sniper Jun’s ghillie-lite gear to heavy-weapon-guy Jorge’s blast armour. And you’ll be given the chance to customise your appearance, which will be consistent over single-player, co-op and in multiplayer. It’s finally time, therefore, to get to know the Spartans.

“It’s very important for us to connect with the human under the armour, to show that these Spartan- IIIs are vulnerable; they’re not just superhumans capable of doing anything,” explains Reach’s creative director, Marcus Lehto, who art directed all previous Halos except ODST.

“Due to their tenacity and tactics they’ve been able to adapt to the environment and survive, but they are human to the core and they suffer the same things that humans do. This is something about the Spartans we wanted to get into to make the story a lot deeper and richer.”

But don’t think of Reach as a game that’s based on squad tactics. Noble Team will be autonomous, acting around you, much as the Arbiter and the other ODSTs did in previous games. Executive producer Joseph Tung fires up the first level, which has Noble Team being dropped on a rugged highland hillside. A communications array has gone offline and the team of marines sent to investigate has gone silent. Oni and the Spartans suspect local insurrectionists, but we know better.

Twisted trees and torn stone jut from thin grass on the wide channel that leads to a smoking homestead. Even in these first moments, Reach’s higher levels of detail – clumps of grass and rocks, and more sharply defined environments – are evident. The team fans out, chattering over the radio, independently of Tung, who’s left to explore the area at his own rate.

The team stops to plan its approach – a scripted moment that Tung can either choose to observe or ignore. But the buildings, which are far more plausible domestic spaces than we’ve seen in previous Halo games, are completely deserted – whatever caused the damage has now gone.

The level moves on through another homestead, where we find the bloody remains of some unlucky troopers, and soon after, their terrified officer on the upper floor, looking out over a courtyard and scrubby pasture beyond. And, with a burst of green plasma fire and the appearance of a new enemy, the first battle begins.

The attackers are Skirmishers, small and fast, with a similar birdlike countenance to the Jackal but with a ruff of feathers and a far more aggressive disposition. Tung shoots back with his assault rifle, but they’re too fast for him to drop a single one before they make it inside the building.

For a game’s first battle, the encounter is intense, and it’s not just down to the Skirmishers’ speed and ferocity. The newly beefed-up sound effects for the weaponry provide an additional visceral punch over previous Halos – not that the assault rifle’s satisfying chatter used to be a problem, but now it sounds like it’d really tear through flesh. The plasma pistol, too, has received a power-up – its charged shots now explode in a much angrier flash of fizzing energy.

SHOCK TACTICS
It’s all part of another ambition Bungie has for Reach – giving it a more sombre and serious tone than its forebears. “We wanted to reintroduce a more terrifying Covenant,” says Tung. The Grunts won’t squeal comically any more, and the only English you’ll hear from your enemies will be jeers and insults. Though Covenant style is as colourful as ever, it’s intended to emphasise its alien nature.

“We wanted, especially with Covenant weaponry, something much more violent and visceral,” continues Lehto. And then there’s the triumphant reappearance of the Elites, who (this is a prequel to Combat Evolved, remember), will reintroduce a certain class and finesse to the battles that the thuggishness of Halo 2 and 3’s Brutes had eroded.

But if you’re fearing the loss of the classic Halo combat – of flowing assault and retreat, that special balance of gunmanship and grenades, of an open warriors’ playground – you’ve absolutely nothing to fear. As Tung finally makes his way outside, a Spirit dropship – the one seen in Combat Evolved, which Bungie affectionately calls the ‘tuning fork’ – appears and unloads a cohort of Grunts while its turret rains purple fire on him. As he works his way between cover in the form of the large strewn boulders studding the wide pasture, it’s clear that Bungie hasn’t changed anything about that core, essential Halo experience.

Oh, except one significant thing. Though each of the fights in the two missions we see – the first and third of the game – feature the numbers of enemies we’re used to, other battles will be much, much larger. Bungie’s plucky engineers have doubled the number of enemies and allies that can be active at any time, from Halo 3’s 20 to around 40. And that’s not counting some tweaks to the engine which will allow the game to simulate distant battles that are taking place.

As you near them, the characters will switch from scripted behaviours into fully active AI. According to the campaign’s lead designer, Chris Opdahl, “It does feel like there’s this world on fire, and that you’re part of the battle.” An idea of what we can expect is presented by the end of the first mission, an extended raid by the Covenant on a military base.

It’s so fierce that Noble Team is forced to retreat into the building, with Tung furiously fighting the attackers back until his squadmates can get the blast doors closed.
Another benefit to Reach’s new tech is larger levels – not so much in sheer real estate but in scope. The first mission isn’t the wide corridor on which later Halo games have been based – Opdahl and his team have looked back to Combat Evolved and the epic breadth offered by such classics as Silent Cartographer, in which objectives were set off branches from its wide, sandy beach, and the immense size of Flawless Cowboy. Mission one’s homesteads are set on a simple network of mountain paths which you can explore in the order you wish – it’s even up to you whether you want to scour each building.

The scale of the levels will also allow co-op to be more flexible and fun. The teleporting, which would keep players close together in all the earlier games, will be far less strict. This, combined with some exceptionally long vistas, means you’ll be able to see your friends battle across the map while you can take your own foes on.

MIXING IT UP
The level designers have also looked to Silent Cartographer’s flowing mix of vehicle and on-foot action. “I think the strongest missions in all three Halo games have been the ones where you’re on foot, then you find a vehicle and then there’s some reason to get out and do something new before returning to it,” says Opdahl. “We’ve embraced that – get a vehicle, waste as many enemies as possible, and then more tense on-foot close combat sections.”

The technology which has enabled all of this is also behind the much more elaborately detailed environments and character models, which will feature more variety than ever seen before. It extends from your colourful Spartan friends to the Marines who will be fighting alongside you (“The Halo 3 Marine was nothing to write home about, so that was a serious kick in our pants to do something better,” admits Lehto), and the various castes and creeds of enemies. The fast pace means it’ll take Theater Mode to appreciate it, but it’s always good to know it’s there.

Not that Reach won’t allow you to get up close and personal with the Covenant, as shown by the second mission we see. The third mission of the game, it takes place on a rainy night with just Tung and Jun, the sniper, raiding a Covenant-occupied human base in order to assess the extent of the invasion. With Jun taking position on a rocky outcrop overlooking the level, Tung works his way in, showing off Reach’s new assassination move – an animation that snaps the view into third-person when you hold the melee button behind an enemy so you can see your Spartan smoothly take them down. Though Bungie’s not fixed on it, it’s quite likely this will replace the standard melee in both single- and multiplayer.

The level also demonstrates a major tweak the team has made to Halo 3’s equipment. Knowing that players tended to horde equipment like the active camo and bubble shield because they were one-off use only, armour abilities – as they’re now called – will allow you to use them as many times as you like, with each use separated by a brief cooldown period. The first we see during the first mission is dash, a sprint that lasts a few seconds. The second, useful for Tung’s stealthy approach to mission three, is active camo, which allows him to take out a patrol before melting away to take on another on the other side of the base. In multiplayer, the camo will also deaden sounds (good for snipers) and cause red dots to appear on nearby players’ radars. Though they’ll have a hard time tracking you, they’ll also know you’re around…

WORLDS APART
Bungie is keen to impress upon us that Reach is not Halo 4. It’s not a continuation of its story; setting it before Combat Evolved has actually given Bungie much freedom to chop and change weaponry and war materials with the excuse that it was superseded by more advanced models later on. It could also introduce such new enemies as Skirmishers and fit them into Halo’s lore with the explanation that the vast extent of the battle and destruction of the planet caused their extinction.

As such, Reach has style and poise that’s very much its own. But it’s also the direct result of all the studio’s work on the series. “Halo Reach is probably the most powerful title we’ve built to date with regards to story, character, new gameplay features we’re throwing at the player, and new experiences overall,” Lehto is keen to stress.

Though the screenshots all look unmistakably Halo-like, the smart refinements Bungie has so far revealed for its exit from Halo means it’s more than likely that Reach will be the best game it’s released yet. How is Bungie ending its work on the series? By going full circle, it’s ensuring it’s going out with the biggest bang.

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Armor Abilities are a refined version of Halo 3’s Equipment feature, where instead of being used once, each ability will be reusable, with a cool down time between uses. It is unknown whether these may be picked up and traded, or earned and equipped like armor permutations.

Sprint
Allows the player to move at increased speed for a certain length of time.

Active Camouflage
Provides players the ability to have Active Camouflage for a period of time.

Jetpack
The Jet Pack ability allows players to fly upwards and maneuver in mid-air.

Overshield
Increases your shield by 200% allowing you to take more damage.

Hologram
The hologram is used to distract or confuse enemies during combat.

Radar Cloak
This ability will make you invisible in the enemies radar when activated.

Leap
Used to evade incoming fire and move faster.

The Halo Reach alpha has a bug which stops players from ‘teabagging’ eachothers’ corpses. Breaking news, folks.

“The respawn camera flies back to the spawn location immediately after dying, so your opponents can’t teabag / shoot / melee your body and have a possibility of you seeing it,” reads a troubleshooting e-mail the developer shared on its website.

“As with previous Halos, players should have a couple seconds to look around and locate where they were shot from,” it explains. “The fringe benefit of this is that the enemy that killed you (or the nearest passerby) can ravish your helpless corpse as you bear witness from beyond the veil.

“Ultimately, the Alpha experience will help make your Beta run that much better, so if you’re envious over the prospect of some folks getting in on the action a little bit early, keep in mind that they’re doing it all for you,” it adds. “At least they can’t teabag each other.”

The Halo Reach multiplayer beta is set to be made available to owners of Halo 3: ODST – teabagging and all – on May 3.

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This article was written by SouthernGamer.net. All credit belongs to them.

The internet has been salivating over the new Halo Reach Multiplayer video for over a full day now, and although I’m sure there are plenty of in-depth examinations out there, I wanted to give it a rundown myself – pointing out things I found interesting and/or exciting. Pictures with observations are in the full article below.

The clip begins with this shot of an Elite using the gunner-seat of a Scorpion tank. Nothing really out of the ordinary (for multiplayer at least), right? Well, throughout the video, I never saw Elites and Spartans sporting the same color, i.e. on the same team. Since at this point in the Halo lore, Elites are still enemies, does this preclude the possibility of mixed-race teams (or is it mixed-species? Need to be politically correct for the aliens, ya know…) More on this later.

Here is an example of one of the new fluid melee moves in the game which will replace the old bland canned-animations of the past three Halo games. It looks as if these will be quick enough not to impact gameplay that heavily, although I would welcome a second or so of animation for a melee attack. Perhaps that would cause players to commit to their attacks a little more instead of running around swinging their weapons like excited puppies with cerebral palsy, hopped up on caffeine. Notice the motion-blur too! (This may be a combination of a new visual effect and playback in Quicktime though.)

This Elite is in the middle of a rolling dive off of this elevated beam. Later on in the video, another elite is shown using this same move to dodge some incoming fire. As far as I can tell, these players did not have any special armor-kits, so this move may be a more broad change to the gameplay mechanics. Sprinting has been confirmed by Bungie via an armor item though, so I may be wrong here. It would have to be awfully useful for someone to choose this over some of the more exciting items (i.e. active camo, jetpack, etc.)

And here are a few examples of those loadout kits mentioned above. You can clearly see three Spartans here each with different kits. Clockwise left to right, we see active camouflage , a jetpack, and the third player looks to be sprinting – notice how his shoulders are lowered and the speed with which he moves past the edge of the screen (well, in the video… not this picture obviously.)

This picture doesn’t reveal anything radically new, I just thought the level of detail in the textures and geometry were impressive. If this is how they look in Bungie’s release candidate, imagine how sweet the final game will look. I wonder if the 360 is getting pushed to (or near) its final limit with Reach.

ZOMG! Jetpacks! Tribes! Although, I doubt the jetpacks will have the range of the aforementioned beloved game, I can already see the epic air battles (and specific gametypes) that will ensue. Imagine the possibilities in Forge as well – first person platformer deathmatch anyone?)

This text is blurred out, and I’m not sure why. The top line seems to say that someone was stuck (by a plasma grenade, but I can’t even begin to decipher the bottom line. Anybody out there with some forensic photoshop skills want to try parsing this out? Also, notice the icon on top of the radar – that appears to be the loadout/deployable item, and it seems this particular one (jetpack?) is still about 3/4 away from becoming active again.

In these two images, you can see a Spartan with a heavy backpack being rammed by a Ghost, but in the last millisecond before his shields are gone, the camera quickly pans back to show him pound his fist (or perhaps an item) into the ground, creating a vicious shockwave that flips and destroys the Ghost – its function simulating the Trip-mine, only with more immediacy. It reminded me of the Halo 3 teaser where Master Chief deployed the Bubble Shield by slamming it into the ground, so perhaps that will be the default animation for the ground based deployables, which is definitely better than the sissy underhand toss the Spartans employed in the last game.

The pistol is back baby! From what I’ve read thus far, it’s not overpowered like the Halo 1 pistol, but is still a force to be reckoned with. In this scene it displayed pinpoint accuracy and major stopping power, taking out the jetpackin’ Spartan with a quick headshot.

In some of the early Halo 3 multiplayer screens, they showed Spartans with different colored armor sections, while the final game (and even the beta) only allowed the secondary stripe and helmet-section color. It looks like they may try again with Halo Reach as is evidenced by the orange-headed and -torsoed Spartan with green arms and legs. Another thing I noticed in this trailer is that all of the Spartans seem to have the same helmet as Noble 6. I’m sure the other variants from Halo 3 will make it back, but I’m also pretty sure there will be all new ones as well, but Bungie is playing that very close to the chest. I wouldn’t be surprised if the beta only has this (Mark IV or modified Mark V?) helmet.

As I mentioned before, there are new melee and assassination animations. This time they just chose to put a flashy 3D title in the scene to really drive the point home.

These two images show an assassination in progress, but what puzzles me is the blur hovering over the Spartan’s head. At first I thought it was censoring something on the Elite, but it follows the Spartan’s head. I’m not sure what would be so small or important that it need to be blurred, so I’m chalking this one up to a texture/animation bug.

I’m guessing that the Invasion gametype will be a further refinement of Infection from Halo 3 (which was built off of a popular honor-based Zombie gametype created by fans in Halo 2). It looks like this one will feature Elites as the “infecting” class, gradually growing in numbers as they take down teams of Spartans. Another possibility is that it could be an iteration of Firefight from ODST, with A.I. controlled Covenant swarming in continously against human players.

Above is the new Grenade launcher, which I’m assuming will be the Human answer to the Brute-shot (but will Brutes even be in Reach?)

This weapon looks like a cross between a Fuel-rod cannon and Missle launcher. Notice how the reticule shows that it is locked on to the Warthog below. Immediately after this image, the gun looses three homing plasma streams that impact very quickly.

Here’s what appears to be another new gametype, probably akin to something like Juggernaut where one player is hunted by the others – of course, I’m sure there will be more of a twist to it than that, aside from the flaming skulls that flow like a fountain from the killed player.

Active Roster – what could this mean? I’m assuming this is a synonym for some sort of clan support that was sorely missed in Halo 3 (which I realize was more of an issue with Xbox Live than Halo, but now that almost all original Xboxes are off LIVE and/or won’t be supported soon, I’m guessing we could see some sort of service-wide clan system, perhaps one that could even span multiple games. I’m also overly optimistic when it comes to these things though.)

Does this ‘Spartans vs. Elites’ title simply mean that multiplayer matches will consist of a player-model choice (as in the past two Halo games), or is this a hint at something larger, like a full on multiplayer mode that could be more canonical and/or lore-infused? (Since having Spartans and Elites team up breaks that sort of thing, at least in this era of the story.)

Here we see two players about to be double-killed by the third Spartan aiming a rocket launcher in their, and a generator’s, direction. Immediately after this some game text appears that says, “Generator destoryed,” so once again, I’m assuming this is a new gametype where players build and defend generators while others try to destroy them.

Finally, Bungie throws something at us on which I can’t even begin to make predictions. What is ‘The Arena’? You got me.

And of course, we end with the date in which the Multiplayer beta will begin, which cannot get here soon enough, especially after the sweet-sauce Bungie so lovingly sprayed at us with this teaser video.

And that’s it. Feel free to post comments.

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