We've just gotten the word from an MS PR representative that in recent playtesting the Halo team has decided to simplify some aspects of Halo. He specifically points to weapons balance as one of their key issues:
Halo is going to have a more simplified weapons arrangement in order to take better advantage of the Xbox's superior capabilities. We feel that a three-tiered approach is appropriate. Players will spawn holding the lower tier, handgun-type weapons and be able to obtain better weapons via crates that have been placed by a mysterious intelligence at locations throughout the Halo. Weapons won't actually look like guns, however, in order to be sensitive to the needs of the mainstream consumer market and curb recent trends towards violence.
Second tier-weapons include the assault rifle we showed you in earlier Gamestock footage and a somewhat similar Covenant rifle. The Human AR will need to be reloaded after approximately three shots, to show support for newer get tough gun control laws which limit magazine sizes in the United States, while the Covenant rifle's operating system will crash and require rebooting from the heat generated by too-frequent firing. The blue screen of death really will be the blue screen of death. Never before has a game had this much realism!
Third-tier weapons will include the Human BFBG (Big Frogblast Gun) and Covenant Smiter. (A directed FUD-field generator capable of projecting instant death from one inner surface of the Halo to the other!) Obtaining these weapons will only require you to register with Microsoft, providing a few minute details and updating on an annual or as-changed basis. This will facilitate balanced gaming for both hard-core Haloists who need to have the best of the best, and also for more passive gamers who make up a larger portion of the population, while remaining true to the spirit of Jason Jones' original genius. Speaking of Jones' original idea, don't be too concerned about later ports. Both the Mac and PC version will retain more than three weapons for each side, and their FMV interface will be far superior to anything you have yet seen. This is a very exciting time for the gaming world.
Given recent events we're still very excited to play Halo... on Mac and PC most of all, because the system requirements won't be as high as we might have thought. However, we're also going to be expanding our interests to focus on similar work. Unreal 2 appears quite interesting, and so you may expect some changes around here. We'll still be the same rampant bunch, however, catering to the old-school Bungie fan as we always have.