Halo 4 live-action Launch Trailer is being executive produced by David Fincher.

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Microsoft has hired some top Hollywood talent to bring Halo 4’s live-action launch trailer to life, including Fight Club and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo director David Fincher and the visuals effects lead from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

The launch trailer promises to deliver “an emotionally-charged look at the backstory of Halo’s iconic hero, the Master Chief.” It will premier during Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in America on 18th October and no doubt be all over the internet shortly after.

Called Scanned and filmed in Prague, the trailer is a two minute long live-action affair that “continues the franchise’s tradition of expanding the universe through award-winning live-action stories, adding to the lore and anticipation for the next chapter in the landmark franchise that has sold more than 43 million game copies worldwide and generated more than $3 billion in franchise sales.”

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’s visual effects leader Tim Miller directs. He says, “I’m excited about the opportunity to direct the ‘Halo 4’ launch trailer in creative partnership with 343 Industries and David Fincher.”

“Halo is one of the most iconic sci-fi universes, with a depth that allows for amazingly cinematic and emotionally riveting stories. The chance to tell a story that explores never-before-seen facets of Master Chief’s journey is an honor.

“Our goal is to deliver a blockbuster, Hollywood-quality trailer that raises the bar for the award-winning legacy of live-action Halo storytelling and gets fans stoked for the return of Master Chief.”

David Fincher executive produces. He says, “I enjoy collaborating with Tim Miller, who is at the visual and technical forefront of hybridised live-action/CGI – not only pushing the boundary but defining it.”

And finally, 343 Industries’ franchise development director Frank O’Connor gushed, “As a studio, we’re incredibly excited to be working with one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed directors and one of its top visual effects leads to bring our creative vision for the launch trailer to life.

“Their involvement is a testament to the significance of ‘Halo’ as a pop culture touchstone, and we think fans are going to be blown away when they see the final piece.”

Halo 4 is out November 6th. The first still from the trailer is below.

Tour Info:

Gamerbase in association with Microsoft are proud to bring you the Halo 4 Preview Tour! Halo 4 is set to hit our shelves on 6th November and we are going to give you a chance to play the game between 23rd and 26th October. Microsoft will be bringing the game to all 4 gamerbase superstores and letting you try out the game completely free of charge!

Halo 4 is likely to be one of the biggest selling games of the year, continuing the Halo story we all love. Read on for details of how you can play it!

Dates:

To find out more details on this event and register your interest head over to our facebook pages from the links below, and say you are coming! Thats it! You can just turn up on the day, but to help us with scheduling, we'd appreciate your notice!:

Warning Spoilers Below

One of the terminals that will feature in Halo 4 has been released on Waypoint. This terminal focues on the storm covenant and it's leader Jul 'Mdanma. Again I will state that this is a spoiler so do not watch if you don't was to see anything.

Click link to view terminal.

https://halo.xbox.co...e1-2a363af4094d

"Create beautiful maps almost by accident in Halo 4's overhauled Forge mode. Kynan Pearson and Lori Zawada walk us through the improvements to Forge."

Source: http://www.gamespot....iveHalo4ForgeMo

A new 10+ minute long Halo 4 Forge video showcasing a new amazing Forge environment and a lot more. Check it out right now!

Insane stuff!

Halo 4 lead multiplayer map designer Kynan Pearson takes us on a tour of the "Adrift" map.

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Hey everyone! Today we have guess what- That's right, a Limited Edition Console Set Unboxing!

If you do not wish to see the contents of the set, I strongly suggest you fight those urges and navigate away from the video.

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Thanks for watching and hope you enjoyed!

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You will not see Master Chief's face in upcoming FPS Halo 4. 343 Industries, the game's creator, says it is not ready yet for the biggest reveal in gaming since it turned out Samus was a woman.

"It's funny we don't then show his face," Frank O'Connor, Franchise Development Director for Halo, said. "But that's a device to keep the player invested in the character and keep the player from constantly being reminded that they're not a hero or that they have to be a boy or they have to be a girl, or whatever that is."

While casual players might think there's no way to know what Master Chief looks like, the hardcore have an idea. The Fall of Reach, a 2001 Halo-based novel written by Eric Nylund, provides a pretty in-depth description of the face underneath Chief's helmet. It's under the "Read More" tag.

Here's how Frank O'Connor described Master Chief's visage, in an interview with

"If you went down into that line and found a nerd with a deep canon Halo t-shirt and said describe the Master Chief to this police sketch artist, that police sketch artist would then produce a perfectly accurate rendering of an older man, almost painfully pale, almost albino white, with pale blue eyes, reddish hair, close cropped to a skin head, and maybe the last remnants of freckles he had when he was a kid."

The Sources opinion on this: "I don't want to see Master Chief's face. It would ruin the mystery, and if he's just a dude with red hair and pale skin, won't that be sort of a let-down?"

Little English Halo Blog reader Dimic just went from reader to contributor when he forwarded over his video from EB Expo in Australia. It includes gameplay footage from an Infinity Slayer game on Complex, as well as Dimic giving his thoughts. Well worth a watch!

Read below for more details

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Video contains language.

"Hey guys, this video is showing off some of the Halo 4 gameplay from the "EB Games Expo Sydney 2012"

Filmed my friends playing some infinty slayer on the multiplayer map complex & talking with one of the guys working at the booth."

"Actual gameplay starts around

An interview with Frank O'connor on Halo 4 and the Newly released Forward Unto Dawn series from

Chris:So Frank, you are Franchise Development Director at 343. What is a normal day like for you and what does that role entail?

Frankie:There isn’t a normal day, because it entails so many different things. Last week I was in most countries in Europe doing a press tour showing off the game and just being a spokesperson. But most of my real proper job is crafting stories and a universe in and around the Halo game franchise. That can be anything from, in the case of Forward Unto Dawn sort of the inception and creation of that product and the story, all the way to working with our writers and narrative director on our video game. Of course the extended franchise: the action figures, and skateboards, and you name. It is all a business that all has to be run and all has to be appropriately and correctly tied into the rest of the universe all in the service of the game.

What was your specific involvement with Forward Unto Dawn?

Helping craft the idea in the first place with Matt McCloskey, one of our business directors, and helping to coalesce a small kernel of team for the thing to snowball around. It had been 5 years since the last numbered Halo game, and you know, that’s most of the life of a new hardware platform, the 360 in this case. We knew there were a lot of people curious about the Halo universe, and were going to be curious about it, and we wanted to give them a piece of fiction and a piece of story that could tell them a little bit about the Halo universe without being intimating and without being too gamey. The 2nd half of it was kind of an organic evolution of conversations that we’d had about our live action TV commercials for the big game launches. The fans love those. We made some shorts with Neil Blomkamp and fans loved seeing the Halo universe brought to life. Those two ideas sort of met in the middle and we decided to make a TV show. It was as vague and organic sounding as that sounded.

After production of Forward Unto Dawn was complete, what was your first reaction to seeing the Halo universe brought to life in such a cinematic way?

I mean, we had seen it a little bit with working with Neil Blomkamp on the shorts with Peter Jackson back in the day before the movie kind of went away. So I’ve seen this stuff lots and lots of times and it never ceases to amaze me. I think the really interesting thing about this product is that we’ve done all these vignettes and they never had any real narrative content, they were moments. It was like, this is an action moment in the life of a Spartan, or this in action moment in the life of the Warthog as it were. That’s cool and its great to see that stuff, but its not satisfying in terms of having an actual narrative arc. So the exciting for me was really the first day of work with Todd and Aaron Helping, the screenwriters, as we modeled through what the story was going to be and what these characters were going to be, and we started to realize we had this germ of a really amazing story.

Obviously fans have been hoping for a full length feature Halo film, and Forward Unto Dawn seems like it will certainly scratch that itch, but do you think this will be as close as we will ever get to a full length studio Halo movie?

No, we obviously own the full rights to Halo as a franchise. There’s really nothing stopping us from doing that other than bandwidth and timing. One day if all the stars align and the right script and the right director and everything is there, then sure we’d absolutely love to do it, but there’s no plans at this time.

Spartan Ops has been likened to a TV series. It sounds really unique and exciting. Has it been difficult to approach and plan missions for it that could have possibly been saved for Halo 5 and 6?

No, in fact one of the really cool things about Spartan Ops is that, you know when you are playing the main Halo campaign, let’s say it takes a player 10 hours to go through, we can’t control the pace of either the narrative or the gameplay experience because 10 hours is too much to expect most people, and there will be people that do it, but you can’t expect most people to sit down and play it for 10 hours. So you can’t really predict the holistic experience, whereas if you are making a movie or TV show, a movie is an easier metaphor, if you are making a movie and its an hour and 45 minutes, you know where the beginning the middle and the end is you can really kind of use music and drama and story to manipulate the viewer’s experience, right? With a video game you can’t really control it to that discreet level of detail. This actually gives us the ability to do that both with the episodes of story that accompany Spartan Ops, but actually also the missions. We knew that we could make a mission, let’s say 15 or 20 minutes long, we know where the lows and highs are going to be in that and we can craft, actually a fairly different type of campaign experience even though its similar to the co-op campaign in the main game, we can actually control the pacing in a much more accurate way. So it does have a really different feel to it

Let’s talk a little bit about multiplayer. Last week Ragnarok, which is a remake of the fan favorite Valhalla from Halo 3, was revealed. Why was this map chosen and what was the process like for recreating it?

Valhalla was obviously a fan favorite. It was really suitable for a lot of different elements of the whole Halo sandbox and that’s obviously true of Halo 4. One of the main reasons to pick Valhalla this time was because of the way the Spartans move in Halo 4. Its not a big deal for players in most other video games, but its a big deal for Halo players, is that now every single Spartan has sprint. The weird thing about Valhalla is that even though its quite a long map, once you have sprint it meant we were able to make it really really multipurpose. It totally worked for vehicles, but now it actually works for on-foot combat as well. Of all the remakes that we could have considered it gave us the most flexibility for the most different types of gameplay and that’s the reason it was picked.

Nice, I’m really excited for it. Another exciting thing on Ragnarok is the mech, Mantis. How does that work?

Its very powerful. Its very slow. Like everything in the Halo sandbox its about sort of empowering the player, but keeping things nice and balanced. It is armed with a machine gun, a missile launcher, and a stomp move where you can basically run up to Spartan or a vehicle and stamp on it and destroy it. Of course that’s balanced with it being a lumbering, noisy, mechanical object so its not horrifically overpowered. In fact one of the most satisfying things to do in the game is to carjack the Mantis and yank the occupant out of the little pilot’s wheelhouse.

When you stomp a vehicle or a Spartan is there a medal you get specifically for that?

I believe there is actually. I think that we will be revealing the medals in the upcoming weeks, but yeah I believe there is a special something for proficient Mantis users.

Awesome. Tuesday morning Ryan over at IGN and 343’s Kynan Pearson revealed a new multiplayer map called Abandon. What can you tell us about the map’s location and unique look?

Oh my god, I do not have a good time on that map at all. Its definitely one my weak points. When maps have a lot of verticality my 42-year-old twitch reflexes get killed. Its like most of the maps set on obviously an alien world. Its overgrown and in ruins. Actually its funny, a lot of the maps that we have in Halo 4 are very new, sterile, clean spaces because its this living Forerunner world so this is one of the rare instances were you are going to things that are really overgrown and sort of decrepit.

Yeah its got a really unique look from what we’ve seen.

Yeah and it works really well for close quarters combat so if you are using things like the Scattershot, there’s loads of ways to surprise people. Its got lots of sort of honeytraps where you think “I’m going to go there” and people can lay in wait for you.

You may not be able to answer this yet, but what new additions and improvements can we look forward to in Halo 4 and Halo Waypoint in terms of stats tracking and will there be a developer API?

We aren’t going to expose a developer API at least in the immediate term or at launch. Its definitely something we think about for the future. There will be significant upgrades to all of Waypoint’s current functionality in time for launch and a little bit before.

My group of friends and fellow bots here at Big Shiny Robot really got into Bungie Pro and rendering film clips to show off cool things we did. Can we expect a similar feature?

We will have more information about video rendering and other features of that kind closer to launch. Sorry, I know you hate those kind of answers.

Can you tell us about a key moment during development that you thought was really cool or interesting?

You know, its not really a moment, but there was a point where there were literally 9 members of 343 Industries and we were being tasked with taking over the entire Halo universe, we suddenly had this realization that we were going to have to grow from 9 people to almost 300 by the time we shipped. It was sort of terrifying, but maybe in the first couple of interview loops we started to realize something which was that every single person that came to interview for the job was a Halo fan. Of course it makes logical sense, but its not something you are thinking about when you are trying to poach people form AAA studios and trying to bring them to Seattle from different parts of the world. That turned out to not only one of the easiest parts of that challenge, and it wasn’t easy at all let me be clear about that, but it actually gave us some of the best opportunities because for all the people who were Halo fans and knew what made Halo cool and knew what was special about Halo, they had all these techniques and perspectives and abilities that they were able to bring from the other studios and from the projects that actually helped us grow and evolve the game.

So Halo 4 went gold about a week or so ago, congrats on that by the way, what does it feel like at 343 and how is the team reacting?

Thank ya. Its weird because there’s a few more parking spaces and people are of course off crunch more or less, but there’s still little segments of team. I mean to your point earlier the Waypoint guys are working on getting the website and the backend stuff ready for launch. We’re still working on Forward Unto Dawn doing final color correction and VFX for the last couple of episodes. We’re doing all of this launch activity and marketing stuff and for some of us we just keep going. I’d like to say there’s a huge sense of relief but not for me, not quite yet. I think the team is really, I think they’re really elated about the project, I think they are rightfully proud of the game. I think that they are really sort of pleased and proud at how they’ve come together as a team and as a family. To grow that quickly, to grow from 9 people to 300 people in 3 years and build a game and come out of that process with what we hope is a great game and a really sort of happy, successful, collaborative culture is way more than we could ever have hoped for when we started this.

The sense of camaraderie and team spirit that is gathered from places like Twitter and forums is just really awesome. It seems like everyone is really tight tight-knit there.

Yeah. I think that was part of the process of having to grow so quickly I think actually worked in our favor because you know we had this shared passion and it was all Halo, Halo, Halo. Then of course you get to know each other as colleagues and friends and it seems artificial from the outside but from the inside it felt, it really did feel like family.

One more question then Arse-bot has one. As a fan of Halo what are you most excited for?

I honestly, this is no word of a lie, every day I go back to my house and I have a recumbent bike in my basement gym, which is all creepy, and I get on the bike and I play Reach every single night. I play various multiplayer modes. So I’m excited just as I was to move from Halo 3 to Halo: Reach, I’m excited to move from Halo: Reach to Halo 4, and to just get a fresh new multiplayer experience for my workouts. I always burn more calories when I’m losing, because I can’t rage quit really, because I’m on a bike, so the worse I do the more calories I burn, and luckily I’m very bad at the game.

Tyson: You had kind of touched on this a little bit when we were talking about the map Abandon. My friends which includes Chris who is conducting the interview, and some of the other guys who run our site, we get together, we played Halo: Reach, we played Halo 3, we’re big into hopping online, getting a squad together, and just trying to tear things up. We all have a different style of play. I’m kind of the running gun type, we’ve got friends who hang back and snipe, we’ve got the guys who go for the vehicles. Could you describe your play style? How do you play the game and how would you describe your Halo style?

So you actually brought up a really brilliant point about Halo, which is that its not monolithic. I mean obviously you have role players in Counter Strike, but my experience in Counter Strike is that everyone is some sort of genius at killing me. Its a very sort of specific game and game style that you play depending on the mode obviously but there’s always the same feel. Halo players are really not monolithic. They do tend to be role players. I’m great at, I’m not great at a lot of things, but I’m a good driver, and I’m excellent at sneaking and getting flags. Right? I can’t hold a territory, but I can get a flag when a good team is otherwise occupied. Those are my skills. One of the cool things about Halo 4, and I think that people tend to think of the career progression as a way to get more power, but it doesn’t really empower you, what it does is it empowers you to create a player that maps to your style. A good vehicle specialist for example is going to be able to customize his character to be not only better at driving, but to be rewarded for being a good driver. That’s what its really about. Its about customizing your character to suit your style of play, rather than to simply make your character more and more and more powerful as you grow. Its more about about giving your more fine tuned controls over doing the kinds of things that you like to do and we hope that that promotes really interesting dynamic and teamwork. Other than that I’m a pretty decent SWAT player. That’s about it.

*Laughs*

Again I’m 42 and often we’ll go play MLG players and I think they expect because I work on the game that I’m going to be good, not great, but at least good, and they’re very pleasantly surprised when they absolutely destroy me.

Tyson: Well you know, we’ve had discussions too about its not always about the win necessarily. Obviously we all love to win, and there’s always some friendly trash talking going on, but sometimes its just about how close the game is. We’ve had talks about this with some of the other first person shooter games how it seems to be really off balance, but with Halo it seems like you guys have really been able to fine tune it to where even if you are losing, you get matched up with a group where its like “Gah, you know we lost but that was an awesome match.”

Its a combination of the way the game’s interior systems work and TrueSkill and obviously the way matchmaking playlists are split up. But you are right in Halo it tends to never be a complete blowout unless someone on your team quits and that’s one of the reasons we added join-in-progress is to ameliorate that problem and keep those games balanced. You’re absolutely right, I don’t feel bad if we lose 50 to 48, in fact I feel pretty good about that. That’s one of the hard things in game design is that for competitive play to be satisfying, you can’t always win and you can’t always lose so it should really be about how you performed on that day and that moment and that should be where the satisfaction comes in.

Tyson: I can tell you right now we get a lot of satisfaction from Halo games, and we are huge fans, and we appreciate all the work that you and everyone at 343 has put in. We’re really excited for Halo 4 and we’re looking forward to Forward Unto Dawn as well. We appreciate you taking time out of what I’m sure is a busy schedule to talk to us today.

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By: Dan Webb

"In a month's time, literally, 343 Industries' debut Halo outing hits the Xbox 360... and by debut, we mean proper debut.

HD remakes don't count. Really."

"We caught up with 343's Franchise Development Director, Frank O'Connor, when he was in London recently to talk all things Halo, including the passing of the torch - or the Halo bible, as it's known - the future of triple-A titles, how 343 are keeping the franchise fresh, Spartan Ops and we even touch upon the new bad guy, very briefly. That's not it of course, if we were to sit here and name every talking point, by the time we finish a real-life Halo would probably exist."

Halo 4 is out November 6th worldwide... except Japan, where the game comes out November 8th.

Video: http://www.viddler.c...secret=54974750

Gameinformer inverviewing Stewart Hendler; the Director for Halo: Forward Unto Dawn.

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Do you consider yourself a gamer?

I’ve always been a gamer for Halo. I’m sort of a partisan gamer in that sense. I would be completely lying to you if I said that I was good at anything beyond that. The way that I discovered Halo was that my roommates in college were huge gamers and I really wasn’t. When they got Halo for the first time, that was the one property that kind of sucked me in, and I felt myself spending a lot more time on the couch than with any other ones. So it’s always been my favorite franchise. Over the years I’ve sort of drifted in and out of playing other stuff, but always kept up with Halo, and always kept up with the story world of Halo, which is what I’ve always loved about it. So Halo is my main game.

Working on the Halo series must be a dream come true.

Oh dude, yeah, for sure. I actually got an e-mail from the producer on the show who was an exec at Warner Bros. when I did my last project over there. And she basically said, “Hey, I’m doing another web series, it’s for one of the major game franchises. It’s sort of the vein of…” and she listed some of Halo’s direct competitors. “Would you be interested?” I wrote back, “You know, probably not my thing. If you were to say Halo, that would be a different story. Thanks anyway.” And so the phone rang thirty seconds later and she told me what it was. And of course, I dropped everything.

So you really like Halo. If it were any other video game franchise would you probably have just passed on it?

Yeah. Never say never, but I was just coming out of H+, which is a different web series with Warner Bros. Web series are so much fun to direct but they’re a hell of a lot of work. It’s kind of like guerilla film-making. You’re wearing a lot more hats. So I was at the peak of exhaustion from that when she called, and I was like “Oh dear god, no.” And of course, the magic word came out, and I said “Okay, yeah, for sure.”

This is the first time you’re working with a license. Was it intimidating to create something based on a franchise that people already know and love?

Yes and no. In some ways working within that world is super exciting, because it’s built so you can come play in a sandbox that has so much depth and rich characters already established in it. On the flip side of that, there’s a reason why it’s such a big franchise, and that’s because it’s beloved by millions of people. But we also felt a huge sense of responsibility coming into that space and being the first long form live-action to try and bring this stuff to life. So yeah, absolutely, it’s super intimidating and exciting, all rolled up into one.

How familiar are you with the expanded universe of Halo with the novels, comics, anime, etc.?

I dabbled in some of it before I got this job. Obviously, now I’m way more caught up than any human being should be. But I had read a couple, and I definitely had the encyclopedia, all that nerdy stuff. The amazing thing about the Halo universe is that it’s so big that I don’t know if there’s ever a limit to what you can find if you want to explore it. They’ve done so much with graphic novels and anime that it’s just immense. They brought me in and they didn’t really have a sense of story, so it was funny because where do you even start in a world that has a timeline that’s like more than 100,000 years long, already filled out? It’s also been horrifying trying to figure out which corner of that universe to focus on and bring to life.

How different is working on an online web series from working with film or television?

Some stuff is obviously the same. You work with actors, you work with gear, and you put shots together in a certain order, that’s what it is. But the infrastructure and mechanics of the big studios that come with a feature just haven’t been built in a web series yet. So everybody is trying to figure out what the right way to do it is, and there’s a different sense of experimentation and adventure and freedom within the web series space. So from a director’s standpoint you spend a lot of time on a studio feature just managing the machinery of the studio, and dealing with the mechanics it takes to make a movie that big, which are very well entrenched. In a web series, there’s a totally different vibe. From a director’s standpoint, anything goes. You can pitch anything; no idea is too crazy. The sky is the limit, creatively. It’s also tempered with the fact that web series don’t have the budget that movies do yet. It’s a balance, but from my point of view, I’ve spent the last two years doing it, and I’ve had a blast being in this space.

Read on for Hendler's thought's on 3D, which one of the Halo games is his favorite, and how much freedom he was allowed with the Halo universe.

How much freedom were you allowed within the Halo universe? Were there very rigid guidelines for production?

It cuts in two directions, because on one hand, the Halo universe is very established and specific. Our task and oath was to uphold all of that, so we wanted to make sure that every detail that already existed in the Halo world was realized as accurately as possible. The Microsoft guys and girls were really cool because they spent a lot of time figuring out who they want to work with and who they want to bring on the team, but once you’re on the team, they put a ton of trust on you. That seems to go down the line through the entire studio on the game side and at that point it belongs on our side. So basically, their edict to us was, “Look, as long as you don’t contradict anything that exists in the universe, you can have a lot of freedom, you can do whatever you want to expand the world outward.” Granted, we were super reverential in making sure that they were happy with everything, but I was frankly shocked. By comparison to working with a studio, here you go in and pitch them an idea or send them a photo saying “Here’s why I love this!” and they say “Yeah! Do it!” It was awesome; it was a really fun experience. On the flip side, we had an entire staff position whose only job was to make sure that everything was authentic. Literally, 12 hours a day for three months, they were just checking and approving that the armor, guns, lore, and dates were all dead-on.

You guys had to deal with plasma blasts and crazy alien vehicles. Were there any production challenges in replicating the visual style of a science fiction video game?

The cool thing about the Halo world is it’s epic, it’s huge, it’s grand, it’s everything you’d ever want. The thing that we went into this knowing is that we needed to focus on what live action can do that the game has a harder time doing. The 343 folks and us agreed that live action has the power to connect you to real human faces and to tell stories about characters. So everybody wanted to make sure that that was up front. We definitely delivered on all of the action and pyrotechnics that are required in the Halo world, but we never lost sight of the fact that if we didn’t use this other way to tell a great story and connect people to the characters, then we weren’t doing our job right. So we came in with that vibe, which is really cool. Right off the bat, I pitched them the idea that we try to tell as realistic and authentic a Halo world as possible to counter the fantastic sci-fi of it all. They were awesome about it not having any need for it to look like the game. They didn’t want us to replicate the game experience. They wanted this to be its own thing and to make people feel like they were standing in the room with these characters.

So from an aesthetics standpoint, that’s what we went in with, that kind of District 9 pseudo-documentary vibe in some ways. But we pretty quickly identified the places where we really needed to focus our resources and absolutely do up to the level of a 100-million-dollar-budget movie. That was definitely the visual effects, the Chief’s suit and the gear of it all. By comparison to our overall budget, we spent a much higher percentage of those elements that we would have otherwise. But in other areas we really tried to be guerilla. The Chief’s suit was done by Legacy down in L.A., which is the top of the top. These guys are the ones who did all of the Avengers suits and Terminator 2. Every cool creature or suit you’ve seen in a movie, those are the guys. This was Master Chief. We wanted to get the best possible thing. For the visual effects, we’re going to top out at just under 500 effect shots. These include fully-realized CG Covenant. Five hundred is a number that’s highly unusual for a web series. A gigantic blockbuster movie would be between 1,500 and 2,000. We’re not there, but we’re creeping up towards a really big show, and we felt like that was important. We actually literally got the last 17 shots in today. It’s definitely been a big part of where our priorities were - to make that stuff look awesome. The live-action stuff shot before this was pretty amazing, so we came in knowing the bar was already set, and that we could at least match it. Hopefully, we sort of took the next step and show people something else.

Did you make sure to demand an early copy of Halo 4 for research?

I’ve gotten to play it a couple of times. I’m kind of torn on it, because I love the anticipation of waiting and not knowing what I’m going to get when it comes in the mail. I’ve read the script, and I know exactly what happens in it, and we’ve tied our characters into it. On the one hand, I’m like, “this is the coolest job in the world!” and then in the background I’m a little bit sad that I don’t get the surprise of playing the game for the first time. But it’s okay. I do think they’re going to give me a copy though.

Which Halo is your favorite of the ones that have released?

I like the first one and I like ODST. They’re different, but I just like the look and vibe of ODST, the certain noir vibe of it all. I don’t know; the first one will always kind of have my heart.

This doesn’t have anything to do with Halo, but in the field of film, how do you feel about 3D? Do you like it?

That’s an interesting question. I’m not a huge advocate of 3D. I think it’s interesting. There are very few movies I’ve gone to in 3D that I feel are better for it. I guess I get frustrated because I see a lot of decisions being made from a financial standpoint within the industry based on 3D, and not necessarily based on what’s better for the material at hand. I think I have a pre-loaded knee jerk against it in some ways. When it’s used beautifully like in Avatar or Prometheus, I think it’s cool. But it has to be in the right filmmaker’s hands and it has to suit the material.

Be sure to keep an eye out as Forward Unto Dawn’s new episodes release week to week for interviews with Daniel Cudmore, the actor playing Master Chief, and Frank O’Connor, the curator of Halo’s universe at 343 Industries.

Today ETC talks to Stewart Hendler director of Halo Forward Unto Dawn.

Warning: Contains some language

IGN's Ryan McCaffrey and 343i's Kynan Pearson takes us through another tour of another new map "Meltdown". This map is a large map designed for vehicle gameplay and it takes place on a moon. The map has a rocky and snowy enviornment and looks incredibly fun to play.

Click the link to begin the tour

IGN doing a walkthrough the map 'Ragnarok' with 343i Kynan Pearson.

BS Angel Talking about Flood (some medals and how to obtain them in this mode), Forward Unto Dawn, the map Abandon and much more!

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486 days ago at E3 2011, we introduced Halo 4 to the world, lifting the veil on our closely-guarded secret with a heart-pounding trailer featuring the return of the Master Chief.*

Exactly 365 days later, at E3 2012, we gave media and fans alike their first true taste of the game with a Campaign demo and never-before-seen enemy face. Er, I mean race.

Now the countdown really begins, because Halo 4 launches in a mere 34 days. I measure time in Halo Bulletins and according to my calendar, there are only five left – one of which is this one. Let’s just say the number of topics still left to discuss when compared to the number of Bulletins slated to be published before launch do not match up.

Yes, there’s still a lot you don’t know. What, you didn’t think we’d tell you everything, did you?...

Speaking of things you may not know, Halo 4 recently went gold (!!1!one!!1!). Bonnie Ross, General Manager of 343 Industries to some and Lady Boss to others, wrote up her thoughts about both that particular milestone and also the evolution of our studio. You’ll get to read her part-insightful, part-reflective words later in this Bulletin but for now, how about we take a deep dive into a topic we haven’t had a chance to properly discuss yet, like Halo 4’s brand new Flood mode?

Flood

Brand spankin’ new Flood screenshot 1!

Flood is the spiritual successor to Infection, a fan-favorite game type from Halo 3 and Reach. Our goal was to recreate it and push the mode to be new and different from previous versions. As both War Games and Spartan Ops fit within the fiction of the UNSC Infinity, we wanted to use Halo fiction in this mode too, which led to us to create the Flood form in Multiplayer. Flood-converted humans are much faster and focus on melee attacks, so they were a natural fit for Infection’s successor.

Halo 4’s Flood mode is a round-based, ten-player game. It is a true asymmetric experience with the added twist of dynamic teams; this really changes things up as each game is different, especially in the incredibly intense and high-action final seconds.

At the beginning of each round, two players spawn as Flood forms and eight players spawn as Survivors. Survivors are standard Spartans equipped with shotguns and magnums, while Flood move very quickly and can only use a melee attack. When a Survivor gets killed by a Flood, the Survivor will convert and respawn as a Flood. The round ends if a Survivor makes it to 3:00 or if all players are converted to Flood.

One of the things we concentrated on for War Games was establishing player roles in Multiplayer, so we put a great deal of attention into being the King, Flag carrier, Grif, etc. Being the final Survivor is another role we focused on, and it’s a very intense experience having nine other Flood rush at you. Some (and by some, I of course mean David Ellis) would even say it’s poo-inducing.

Brand spankin’ new Flood screenshot 2!

We went through several iterations of tuning settings, mostly around getting the Flood to feel right in the sandbox and making the Flood experience noticeably different than the Survivor experience. To ensure the Flood’s gameplay had a unique feel, we honed in on the following elements:

The Flood Character Model

A unique character model for both first and third-person.

The Claw

A special melee weapon tuned just for the Flood.

Flood Armor Effect

A special effect that trails behind Flood characters.

Flood Screen Effect

A first-person screen effect that shows the haunted view of a Flood.

Dynamic Music

When playing as the Flood or final Survivor, dynamic music plays in the background to intensify the experience.

Flood Gameplay Tuning

Flood move faster, react differently to bullets, and have specially tuned armor abilities, the core of which is an enhanced Flood Thrust Pack.

The Floodsassination

How could we not?!

The biggest challenges when designing this mode were getting the Survivor vs. Flood balance just right, keeping the experience interesting and dynamic (whether it’s two Flood vs. eight Survivors or nine Flood vs. one Survivor), and building a system that made initial-round spawning more consistent. Where we landed, for the lattermost thing in particular is that players will not spawn randomly as Flood or Survivors at the beginning of a match. Instead, your initial spawn is based on previous rounds.

Flood features an exclusive set of medals that can only be earned by playing this particular game mode, and it also has its own set of custom game options. The former is detailed below.

Click here to view the medals and what you have to do to get them:

Brand spankin’ new Flood screenshot 3!

Here’s a sneak peek of our planned Flood settings for launch.

For Lead Designer Kevin Franklin, the best part of the design process has been seeing players who have never tried Infection before try out Flood. The overwhelming sentiment from those players has been that it’s a great high-action, high-intensity experience with tons of close quarter combat and close calls.

We expect you to tell us what you think, come November 6.

Abandon

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Abandon screenshot

ABANDON

DESCRIPTION: On the remote world of Erebus VII, at the very edge of human-occupied space, an ONI research facility which was once teaming with researchers now lies eerily vacant. Although the hostility of this world had been initially considered by its team leaders, it is tragically clear that a great many ‘things’ had simply not been taken into account.

Abandon is a mysteriously abandoned ONI research station on a hostile alien planet. Initial surveys of this area were bold and promising, but it quickly became clear that these reports were far more hubris than logic.

From the start, the theme for this map was constructed around the story of an ONI research team that mysteriously disappeared. We wanted to leave some story breadcrumbs that helped to imply that something dramatic occurred in this location. We wanted the map to make the player wonder, “What the hell happened here?” Unlike most Halo maps, there is a lot of overtly alien strangeness right in the player’s face. The creepiness and storytelling are simple and clear but doesn’t conflict with the game play.

Early on in the development cycle for this map, there was a diverse array of visual ideas and ways to tell the story of this ominous place. Along the way, we had to consolidate this collection into a more concise statement that not only supported the theme but also felt appropriate to the Halo franchise. There was a lot of discussion about how we wanted the environment to feel menacing and forbidding. At one point, the map was a disparate arrangement of flora and fauna and we had to ask the questions, “Does all of this work together?” and “Does all of this support Halo Multiplayer?” When the answers were no, we made the hard call to change direction. Some of our favorite organisms that didn’t make the cut were lovingly known as meat loops, muscle humps, gas sacks, smokers, and momma trees. (Don’t ask).

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Abandon concept art

Abandon had three distinct iterations. The first was the balls-to-the-wall alien greenhouse version. There was a dead monster-like creature on this map that you could use as a ramp, and there was a story that went along with it—something along the lines of: the monster attacked, killed the scientists, and then died from injuries it sustained. There were numerous subplots and supporting elements scattered around the map and in the skybox.

The next iteration featured smaller animals trapped in containers underneath the map as the reason for the science team’s ‘disappearance,’ and early concepts show that the place was pretty badly assaulted. This version represented the first paring pass that reined the environment into a simpler and more believable statement of the original theme and cropped out some of the unnecessary components (we wanted to get back to what we really liked about the original concept art).

The final iteration was an even tighter trimming of things that weren’t needed or weren’t working. The building’s interior looks relatively pristine compared to where it was originally, which is definitely to its advantage from a playability perspective, because it provides a stark difference between inside the structures and the wild flora that grows outside it.

Gameplay-wise, Abandon plays much like the visual theme: claustrophobic and frantic, with danger lurking around every corner. It is a small map with lots of close quarters fighting; however, mid-range and long-range fights can be found in select locations. If you’re a fan of mid-range engagements, stick to the natural side of the map until you pick up your initial ordnance. Then you can go in, guns blazing.

Oh, one last thing about this map. A Halo 4 concept artist wanted me to pass along his recommended strategy: Wear a diaper. Assuming you aren’t already, that is…

Halo 4 Soundtrack Remix Contest

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn

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We’ve been counting down the days to Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn with a series of short vignettes. That time is over though, because the live-action digital series that takes you back to the beginning of the human and Covenant war, leading into the events of Halo 4 starts on Friday.

Yes, I’m talking about this Friday. The Friday that is only two days away…

The first episode is just the beginning of this story and like any good story, it has to introduce the world and the characters to you in the right way before we get to the blowing shi – er stuff – up. This series is about great characters as well as great big explosions, so settle in for the whole ride…there will be plenty of all of the above to go around.

There are some hints in Part I about important ideas in Halo’s future, so if you’ve been paying attention for a while, there’s a lot in there for your eyes only. That said, this show has also been created to help introduce many fans to the fiction of the universe (there are lots of people who don’t follow every date and character detail in the books or even the main Campaign stories – blasphemy, I know) and answers to questions like “So how did this galaxy-spanning war with a mysterious alien collective kick off, anyway?”

We hope you love it, and we hope it’s as exciting a part of the big ramp-up to Halo 4 as we meant it to be!

Office of Halo Intelligence: Part 11

Bonnie Ross, General Manager for 343 Industries, has been with the studio since the beginning. Her insight, especially as it relates to the journey that was the development of Halo 4, provides a unique perspective on both the completion of our first full title and also the changes the studio has seen since its conception. Enjoy the words from someone who has an intimate relationship with both our game and the people that comprise our studio.

34(3) days… and counting

Jessica asked me to write a section about us hitting gold last week. When we all celebrated last Thursday night, there was joy, relief, and pride. There was celebratory drinking, and champagne was poured on people’s heads, but mainly there was a lot of reminiscing about the path we took over the last few years. So I figured I’d write about that journey to the gold (disc) at the end of the Halo 4 rainbow.

Along that journey, it is easy to be critical, even overly critical of every move and every mistake. When you get to the end, something washes over you (could be champagne over the head from a fellow 343er, Josh) that makes you look back at the journey with a little more forgiveness, Vaseline on the lens, maybe even a little regret that this part of our journey is over.

Year of the Forerunner: In 2008, we weren’t working on Halo 4 yet because Bungie was working on ODST and Reach. So as a small 343 team, we had the luxury of a year to just think about the universe and the technology. Where did we want to go next? We had controversial discussions about the Forerunners and their origins. Should they always be a mystery or should we open up that Pandora’s Box? As you already know, we opened that box and Frank and the team set to help define the future fiction, the Forerunner backstory and characters that would ultimately become the Prometheans, the Didact and other inhabitants of Halo 4.

While we weren’t thinking about the exact Halo 4 story back then, we were working on high-level themes for Halo 4 and the overall saga. We were thinking about Chief and Cortana, and we were thinking about new enemies and new threats, specifically Forerunner in nature. We chose the acclaimed science fiction novelist Greg Bear to write a trilogy dealing with elements of that story. As Greg’s first novel in that trilogy came out in 2010, he had a lot of questions before we had answers: what did the Prometheans look like? What did the living, breathing Forerunner civilization feel like? So between 2008 and 2010 our artists, designers, and writers met repeatedly with Bear to give him character sketches, talk about physics, shapes and characters that would ultimately take their first tentative steps in his book before coming to life on Requiem.

Ghetto Halo: In the middle of 2009, we started working on the real design of Halo 4 and the not inconsiderable task of staffing it. Our rapidly growing team was crammed in a really small section of this building in Redmond Town Center (a mall). We were sitting two to three people in closet-sized offices meant for one, or camping out on the couch in the hallway.

When people came onboard or interviewed, we would routinely get the comment, “Wow, really, this is Halo? I would think you guys would work in a better space than this.” We pretended like we wanted it to be that way – so uncool that it was cool, but in reality we were Halo wannabes and our company knew it and treated us as such. That all changed with the unsanitary sacrifice of our office savior Kenneth Scott.

Kenneth, who fell for the “this space is just temporary while our real space is under repair” line during the interview process, joined our team as the Art Director. When the reality of the bad space set in, Kenneth started doing phone interviews for potential candidates in the hallway because there were no private meeting spaces. When it got too noisy in hallway, Kenneth moved his office to the men’s bathroom instituting a do not flush policy during phone interviews. Some of our best talent was recruited from the men’s bathroom. It was my own wailing and lamentation over Kenneth’s bathroom interviews that finally got my manager to approve us moving to a new space.

When we moved into a much improved space, we started working on the Halo 4 prototype. How do you prototype Halo when you’ve never even built Halo before? Halo is already a beautifully balanced sandbox and we wanted to add more toys – and maybe some more sand. As a new team, we were in an awkward and unfortunate situation in that not only did we need to prototype how to take Halo forward; we needed to figure out how to build Halo in the first place.

Halo? In 2010 we started working on what we call “vertical slice” which is really just a representative section of how we imagine the final game will look, feel and play. Going through that prototype process, we made the obvious decision that before we could add new things to the Halo recipe, we first needed to fully understand the existing ingredients. Could we make a level that feels and plays like Halo? Could this team build Halo?

Typically with a vertical slice, you’re supposed to showcase the graphical art bar as well as a segment of gameplay. Our artists were working on a lot of art, but in 2010, David Berger and the development team were in the beginning of overhauling the engine so that in the future our artists could get their art in the game without compromising their vision.

For the vertical slice, the mission we chose to build was part of our second mission, Requiem. We submitted it to our user research testing and it tested well. Users thought it was Halo, and they liked it. We at 343, as small a step as that was, celebrated a great milestone – and a kind of game design Hippocratic Oath:“First, do no harm.”

When Kiki and the team presented the slice to the execs, it was met with straight faces with people saying this just looks like Halo, this just plays like Halo. “Yeah, I know”, I replied proudly, “Isn’t that great? 343 can build Halo, this is huge.” The execs sat with straight faces repeating, “This just plays like Halo.” I walked my team from the room. “Was that good or bad?”, Kiki asked. “Um, good. I think they ate something bad for lunch.”

To be fair to the execs, they didn’t want to see the inside of the sausage making factory, they just wanted to know this team could not only build Halo, but take Halo forward. They wanted to see the “Wow.”

It was kind of a crazy time in the studio as we had a bunch of “wow” on paper, but really nothing in the game yet. Coming out of vertical slice, the team heard the message that it wasn’t enough. While it was in the plan to take that “wow” from paper to game, we were just getting started. Bungie wasn’t built in a day, and neither was 343.

Year of the Wow: In my opinion, 2011 was our hardest year. The team might argue that 2012 was the toughest, as people put in such long days and endless weekends. But in 2012, we knew what we were building and the stress came from wondering if we would we have enough time to get everything we wanted into the game. In 2011, we knew the game we wanted to build, but the “wow” and the magic was slow in coming together. Josh and the team had their design work cut out for them. In 2011, the focus was sandbox.

As you know, Halo has had (mostly) the same enemies in the sandbox for the last 10 years. For Halo 4, we had new enemies, new weapons, and new vehicles all ready to go into the sandbox. But as you also know, Halo’s sandbox is delicately balanced, so adding new stuff while ensuring it’s fun and properly thought-out, is easier said than done.

For the first part of 2011 the fun wasn’t coming together. Then one magical day, I think it was sunny (a statistical anomaly in Seattle), Josh wandered over to me with a gleam in his eye – and explained that he’d just got done playing for a few hours and it was fun, it was really fun, and he thought we had it.

And so it happened. Over the next few months the game started to come together. Daily playtests went from Chris and the producer team begging for players to people vying for an empty seat every day at 4:00.

There is never a specific date when you exit preproduction as different areas move out of preproduction early and others later. But in Fall of 2011, every part was out of preproduction and into full production. We could play through the entire game, and for the most part it was fun. We had one mission, Dawn, where Kenneth, Neill and the art team had set their visual target and polished it to a glittering finish, and it was beautiful. The multiplayer maps were fun, the new modes were fun. Spartan Ops was starting to come together.

In Fall of 2011, we could see the light even after we recovered from our exit from preproduction party.

Year of the Dragon: 2012 was a very long work week that never ended. In January of 2012 we had all of the pieces of the game in some form of done or undone, and all that was left was the long hours to put all of the pieces together and polish the game to perfection. Or as close to it as time and physics permitted.

From February on, there would be something new to look at or play every week. The cinematics team started dropping in all of their work and the story came to life. Every time you played the game it was new, different and better. It was a pretty amazing time to be part of 343, part of Halo 4. Everyone on the team worked incredibly long hours – basically for the entire year of 2012. Phil Spencer, the VP of Microsoft Studios told me our building smelled like human. Good human, I’m sure.

In one of the take-home tests where we were supposed to play Campaign Co-op, I played the first three missions with business guy Matt. Matt wanted to explore and ensure we looked at every inch of the first three missions. It took us hours and hours to trek through three missions playing Co-op on Normal.

I’ve explored every rock, plant, structure, vehicle, and vista in the first three missions. At one point in Requiem, Matt called for me to come over and look at this amazing view (literally a Sparth concept piece brought to life), and as we stood together looking over the edge, I had flashbacks of childhood family vacation pictures at the Grand Canyon – it was that awe-inspiringly beautiful. Of course, the Grand Canyon isn’t filled with inverted megastructures made of massy hardlight, but you get the idea. In between vista viewings, we also shot a few things.

Last week before we hit gold, I was playing a Spartan Ops take-home on Legendary (so not a Legendary player, for the record). I got in a mission with Tajeen, Kiki, and artist Chris. In between expletives from getting annihilated by another pack of alien scum bearing Fuel Rod Canons, I found myself laughing giddily, waiting to respawn into some impossible new situation to “help” my team. It was fun, it was invigorating, and you could almost see the gold through the plasma mortars.

I started this journey with huge passion for Halo, and that hasn’t changed. I ended this journey with huge passion and respect for 343 and our people. Halo 4 is a result of the energy, blood, sweat, tears and the distinct human smell of the people at 343. At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of the journey, it is about the people, the team. It has been an honor to work alongside such an amazingly talented and passionate group of people.

So is this the end of the journey, or is it just the beginning? I hope it is the beginning for us at 343. I hope we did the fans proud.

No regrets, but sentimental.

There is no crying in Halo, but I dare you not to by the time the credits roll. Thank you for bearing with us. Thank you for letting us try our hardest. I hope we earn it.

b

There is no possible way I can end this on a better note than Bonnie, so I do believe that is my cue to wrap this sucker up. Try your hand at the remix contest, check out the first episode of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn this Friday, and I’ll see you here next week, same time, same place, but with new stuff to talk about. Until then…

Dan Webb gives us a hands on preview of Halo 4's campaign. Spoilers ahead, turn away now if you don't want anything revealed. Enjoy for those that do!

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(Note that i am quoting him)

Halo 4 is scheduled for a November 6th release.

Microsoft announced a competition to shape your own tracks to be judged by Neil Davidge and Sotaro Tojima.

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A cool new contest gives aspiring musicians the chance to shape their own tunes out of Halo 4’s striking new tracks.

The Halo 4 soundtrack remix contest is set to run from October 3 (today) through October 29. Participants can utilize samples from the tracks called

Submitted tracks will be judged by composer Neil Davidge, audio director Sotaro Tojima, and musicians Sander Van Doorn and CASPA, and winners will be revealed on November 16.

Prizes vary be region, but in the United States, you can look forward to potential winnings like a Samsung Series 7 laptop, a limited edition Halo 4 Xbox 360, and a complete collection of Halo soundtracks. For full details about the prizes and the wider contest, check out the