Halo, Starring The Keyes Blob

It may be possible to take small items from Halo and Halo 2 and extrapolate on whether or not they might be more, or less, important than they seem. Many fans took note of the "Keyes Blob" in the first Halo to be something worthy of attention. It was the only Flood unit that did not fit into any of the known forms: carrier, combat form, infection form. I think they were right to note this. In Halo 2, we are introduced to the character Gravemind-- which also is the only known form in the published games that is not a carrier, combat, or infection form. It seems able to contain or absorb the bodies of the dead in a way that is different than other forms do; Gravemind does this to the Prophet of Regret. One might interpret the Keyes Blob's absorption of Captain Keyes as a foreshadowing of this, and thus conclude that Installation 04 does not, at the time of the game, have a Gravemind entity, and that possibly the Keyes Blob is the beginning of the formation of same.

This is, of course, speculative. If anything I am persuaded to believe it is likely there is a connection between the two because I believe that the presence of a unique item in the story such as the Keyes Blob is meant to suggest something to the audience, and the existence of some Flood unit with more significance (and perhaps intelligence) than the other forms is also suggested by 343 Guilty Spark's comments about Flood behavior. That we see this suggestion take form in Gravemind during Halo 2 seems to me no mere coincidence. I believe Bungie deliberately foreshadowed the existence of Gravemind with its presentation of the Keyes Blob.

To that end, I would argue that the entire mission of the level, Keyes, is completely symbolic. That, in fact, the entire purpose of that level is to reveal the Keyes Blob to the player, and that for the purpose of the story, nothing else is necessary. And when trying to construct other reasons for the player to go through that level, Bungie unwittingly tips the player off that the mission is symbolic.

Doing A 360

If Bungie's new title is for the Xbox 360, then it is reasonable to assume that the development cycle will be as long or longer as for the previous two games, for a number of reasons. One is the new console's minimum 720p resolution requirement. Both previous Halo games render at 480p maximum when running in real-time on an Xbox at thirty frames per second. It is still unclear whether Halo 2 actually renders in a larger framebuffer when running in emulation on the Xbox 360 or if it is simply performing upscaling of the 480p image.

If what Bungie is working on now is indeed Halo 3, then it is a sequel, developed for on a single platform, presumably using a similar engine; although I would certainly expect that Bungie would make significant changes to the Halo 2 engine to take advantage of the Xbox 360's improved graphics capabilities.

Any release of a Bungie game prior to November 9, 2007, would represent a decrease in the time required to develop Halo 2 and, depending on when you start counting from, perhaps compared to the time required to develop Halo 1 as well.

[image:10099 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] I'm so thoroughly convinced now that Halo 3 is actually being made that I've had the Halo 3 logo tattooed on my own baby-soft flesh, an experience I can assure you is not entirely unlike enduring plasma weapons fire.

WARNING: This article contains spoilers not only for the Halo games but also the Half-Life games, so beware!

I'm not writing about Halo 3 this week.

Really, I'm not. Instead, I'm taking a side-by-side look at two of the biggest FPS games today: Halo and Half-Life.

Before anyone had ever heard of Halo, I was already cursing the luck that put all the games I wanted to play onto hardware I didn't own: namely, the PC of a good friend, where I got to see the original Half-Life and play a bit of it. I was immediately reminded of the first Unreal game as well as Marathon. It seemed to be a game that, while it was a first-person shooter, was unlike most of the games in that genre that were popular at the time: twitch games where character and story took a back seat to action and colored lighting.