The Beta-Gazing Begins
Here's a quick run-down on some sites with impressions of the Halo 3 Public Beta:
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Here's a quick run-down on some sites with impressions of the Halo 3 Public Beta:
With the Public Beta fast approaching, there's even more Halo-related news spiraling out of Bungie and the community.
The Year We Make Contact
Ducain wrote to alert me of an update at Certain Affinity's site, and it's good news all around.
First off, they're passing around the news that Frankie at Bungie.net says the map downloading problems have been fixed.
In 2004, before the release of Halo 2, a website separate from Bungie.net, Halo2.com, went live, with information about the units, vehicles, and weapons in the game, laid out as if from the perspective of a Covenant intelligence agency. Similarly, Halo3.com launched late last month, largely from the perspective of UNSC intelligence-gathering, with information on Halo 3.
GamePro.com has put together the list of the 52 "most important" video games of all time. Because it's a list done according to importance, it means that games that were significant, even if they were bad, are on the list. One assumes that's not why Halo is on it in position #45, which won a spot for "scores of subtle gameplay refinements", or why Halo 2 clocks in at #20 for its innovative matchmaking model.
Kotaku says they've received word of a big Halo 3 media event on May 11, just prior to the start of the public beta on May 16.
Frankie at Bungie.net writes that the planned playlist update is being delayed until next week (probably) while they continue to investigate the problems some users are having in downloading Halo 2 maps.
Wired blogger Chris "GeekDad" Anderson recounts what little of his recent Bungie Studios visit that his NDA will allow. What he can say is that he recorded about thirty lines of Marine dialogue for a character that apparently becomes Flood infected. The process apparently involves "screaming like a girl".
He's put up all the lines he was asked to read in his blog, so head over and check them out.
Only a year ago, Bungie finally admitted they were, in fact, working on Halo 3, and had been for over a year.
Now, with the release of that game still, in all likelihood, more than half a year away, rumors of sequels, "true sequels", expansion packs and secret features are circulating through the labyrinthine tubes of the Internet.
PlayThree is citing unconfirmed, unidentified "sources close to Bungie" that state the following:
RUMOR: Halo 3 will run at 1080p, 60fps. MS apparently wants this to one-up ths PS3's claim to being the only "true 1080p" console. Bungie is supposedly testing this internally now.
UPDATE: Frankie, aka Stinkles, has smacked this report down hard in the NeoGAF forum. His response? BS. Confidently written BS, but still BS. Thanks KP at HBO for the notice.
REACTION: One can see why Microsoft would want this, but the record for past Halo games is that they will lock at 30fps and walk the line where textures and effects are more important than resolution or high framerates. That the rumor specifies that the Beta won't be 1080p is just a hedge, meaning this rumor gets to survive past that point, whereas otherwise people might assume that if the beta isn't 1080p, the game won't be. After all, Halo 3 has had a lot of work done to it so far: geometry, textures, effects. If it wasn't all done with 1080p in mind from the start, can this be changed so late in the process? And if so, why doesn't it apply to the beta?
RUMOR: Bungie is striving to make Halo 3 compatible with Xbox 360 Cores, but may have to drop to 30fps in some cases.
REACTION: That makes little sense. A hard drive is of use for caching content, reducing load times. How it affects framerate is difficult to see. Why Microsoft would want to make part of their installed base feel like they are getting a crippled version of a flagship title just for the "1080p 60fps" on the back of the box is beyond me. People who want Halo 3 will buy it regardless of those numbers.
RUMOR: Halo 4 will be a launch title for the next next-generation Xbox in 2011.
REACTION: Doesn't Bungie want to do something else for a change? Isn't the whole idea in letting Ensemble and Wingnut work in the Halo universe to give Bungie a break, so they can move on from Halo?
Not an entire day has passed since the release of Tombstone, Certain Affinity's Halo 2 homage to the Halo 1 favorite Hang 'Em High, along with Desolation, their remake of Derelict, before the first cracks are being found.
Doing one of my regular turns around gaming news sites, I came across an interview with John Romero, of Doom and, dare I say it, Daikatana fame, now Founder/President of Slipgate Ironworks. You can find it over at Adrenaline Vault. Slipgate is supposedly working on a new MMO for the PC.
What I found interesting is this particular exchange:
3. Where is it all going? What do you see happening in the next five years and beyond?
JR: Right now MMOs, mobile and PC episodic are really polarizing into the newest most important segments in gaming. Next-gen console is big but its future isn’t too bright with the emergence of cheap PC multi-core processors and the big change the PC industry will go through during the next 5 years to accommodate the new multi-core-centric hardware designs. My prediction is that the game console in the vein of the PS3 and XBOX 360 is going to either undergo a massive rethink or go away altogether. The Wii has the perfect design for a console that doesn’t pretend to be a PC and is geared more toward casual gamers than hardcore gamers. The hardcore gamers are going to either be playing on their PCs or a new PC-like platform that sits in the living room but still serves the whole house over wifi, even the video signal.
This answer struck me as wrong in almost every important respect possible. Where it isn't wrong, it's self-contradictory. Let's take a closer look.
Louis Wu at HBO has put up an extensive roundup of analyses, commentaries and transcripts on yesterday's Bungie VIDOC. To complement them, I've put together an annotated gallery of screenshots from the VIDOC, pointing out major features.
Of course, you didn't think Bungie would just shovel the Multiplayer Public Beta date at you on a post-it note and call it done? No, of course not. So while Bungie.net now has a story that leads with this ultra-salient fact:
The Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta will go live on May 16th at 12:00 AM PDT and run through June 6 th at 11:59 PM PDT.
Surprise, surprise-- the new Halo 2 maps by Certain Affinity apparently won't be only for the Xbox 360, but will also run on the original console. Hang 'em High and Derelict are coming to the new engine as Tombstone and Desolation.
Louis Wu says this article is supposed to have three parts, so I guess this is the end. Weapons? Covered. Characters? Covered. NPC behaviors? Covered. Cover? Covered. What's left? Oh, right. Story.
Plot Holes You Could Drive A Warthog Through
Normally, when one is talking about plot holes, one is referring to elements of a work of fiction that cause the audience to lose suspension of disbelief: characters acting contrary to their nature, unlikely and unexpected events, strange conspiracies of circumstance and coincidence. Things that make you want to lean over to your neighbor and say, "that would never happen in real life".
Works of fiction in fantasy and science fiction universes have a lot of different ways to conceal those flaws: magical mysteries and high-tech mumbo jumbo. Wizards are people who can summon fireballs from thin air, and the Enterprise is a ship which, by very definition, travels faster than the speed of light. All that remains is for these fictional universes to remain self-consistent. Which they sometimes do.
Gears of War, though, has some plot holes. They're different kinds of holes. Most of the time, characters in Gears are fairly easy to understand, and act in accordance with our expectations. Since most of the time we expect them to be either kicking ass or taking names, we are not confounded when these things occur. So when something happens that does seem unexplained, it stands out. Some sharp readers already pointed out a few, but I'll try and start from the beginning.