Halo 4 E3 Announcement

Last time we saw Master Chief  (Apart from the easter eggs in Halo Reach) was at the end of Halo 3, the secret ending that you had to complete the game on the Legendary difficulty to see. It showed Master Chief on the  Forward Unto Dawn frigate, just after witnessing the Arbiter make it safely back to Earth, it appeared as though Master Chief had died, as the other half of the Forward Unto Dawn had been completely ripped away. After the credits if you played the game on Legendary, you see Master Chief climb into a cryochamber, he asks Cortana to tell him if she needed help, and then he closes the chamber and the game ends there.

But it appears that whole cryochamber thing is actually going somewhere, Halo 4 is the next installment to the Halo franchise, unfortunately this Halo game will be produced by 343 Industries just like Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, we’ll find out if this is actually a good thing once the games come out, at this stage though many are incredibly skeptical.

Image from http://halo.wikia.com/

Halo 4 will be coming out by the end of 2012 . . . maybe this is what the end of the world prophecy means . . . but because Halo 4 is coming out at this time it’s most likely that will not be coming out on the Xbox 360, by then the next Xbox console would have come out, and what a game to ship with the all new hardware. The bonus with this is, the graphics may actually be pretty intense, but the problem is, it’s going to take forever before we get to play it . . .

Now there’s a lot that’s unknown about Halo 4, as 343 Industries only gave us this short film clip . . . a teaser . . . dammit

There’s heaps going on in the few seconds of footage, we see that Cortana is waking John (Master Chief) up, and we also see that out of nowhere Master Chief has obtained a jetpack, he’s been in a cryochamber for crying out lout, where on earth did he get it from? We can also see that he must have been in there for a considerable amount of time, as there is snow building up beneath the other chambers.

We then see at  the end, that the Master Chief is heading towards a large vessel, most likely a Covenant ship of some sort, and we can all but assume that this Covenant ship isn’t filled with the lovely, friendly Elites we all met in Halo 3 . . .

From now til 2012, 343 Industries will no doubt let out more teasers, secrets and images. Until these teasers come out we can expect that the game play will be similar to Halo Reach, and the graphics will completely kick a____

Here’s some of the images we’ve been able to get our hands on so far of Halo 4.

Nothing there

By the way, you will notice that I haven’t categorised the Halo 4 and the Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary post under “Xbox 360”, this is because these games may not come out on the Xbox 360, at this point I’m almost certain Halo 4 will come out on the next Xbox console, as of the Halo Combat Evolved remake it will most likely be an Xbox 360 release, but at this point I’ll leave it…

 

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

Well for those that don’t know, the E3 gaming event is an annual convention for the announcements of new gaming technologies, this year it’s held on the 7th of June right through til the 9th, and already what’s been released/announced has been pretty exciting.

343 Industries, the company that is now responsible for the Halo franchise after Microsoft put an end to Bungie Studios, has announced the release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on the 15th November 2011. This ‘new’ Halo title is a complete remake of the first ever Halo game released, just with revamped graphics, high def-audio and it also looks as though there will also be the assassination abilities from the most recent Halo title Halo Reach. In my opinion though . . . it doesn’t actually look that better.

Here’s my first complaint for 343 Industries . . . WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MASTER CHIEF? As you can see above, the original Master Chief kicks the remake’s ass. The new armour looks ridiculous, his helmet just doesn’t look the part, now that 343 Industries has taken control are we playing Halo anymore? Or some try hard echo of what Halo use to be?

Anyways, the campaign has been completely reworked, as you can see I’ve laid out the original, followed by the remake for reference. You can definitely see the Halo Reach engine coming into play, especially with the one below, which has gone from a block-like . . . block . . . to the sleek-shiny metal that we’ve seen in Halo 3 and Halo Reach.

My major problem with what they’re doing, is the fact that they’re remaking  a historic landmark, not that it’s a bad thing, but when you try and do a remake of a legacy there’s a huge expectation. Yeah doing up all the graphics is good, but the legacy is what it is, because of . . . what it is. At the end of the day, people will still go back and play the original Halo Combat Evolved because it was the first Halo game, the sole reason, is because it’s the first Halo game, they want to go back and play it old-school and see where the franchise all started. It’s like all us gaming-geeks that still have the Duke Nukem and Legend Of Zelda games, we play them because they’re classics.

Screenshots (Click to enlarge)

 

A familiar level? Is it not?

This is the all new look of the level “The Silent Cartographer.”

The maps appear to have been revamped pretty well, the campaign has been completely regenerated, along with all of the multiplayer maps.

Well, that’s a little round-up on the E3 announcement of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Stick around for my other posts, I’ve got Halo 4 to talk about, which is the other announcement from 343 Industries. If you’re interested you can get a better glimpse of what the new game will involve by watching the E3 trailer below: