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Now I must kill you.
Posted By: deanero	Date: 9/10/04 8:21 a.m.
In Response To: Drat, I've been spotted! (mnemesis) Awesome. Guess it's time for another "Pre Halo 2 Party". Oh, and hi everybody! :) : I suppose some of you had seen earlier that I had been one of the lucky few : to be invited to play Halo 2 up in Redmond a few weeks ago. Well, what : with the embargo on information from that date being lifted this morning, : I figured I should kick back whatever info my tired, old brain can dredge : up to anyone who might be interested. Let the reader beware: This is just : my recollection of the game I played then. It was too hard to tear : ourselves away each night, and I was pretty much living off of MnM's, : Brisk Tea, and no sleep by the time we left, so forgive me if everything's : not as detailed and/or comprehensive as one would hope. ;-) : I should mention a couple of things right off, though. The first is that the : people at Bungie are absolutely the coolest bunch of gaming freaks : anywhere in any reasonably civilized section of the galaxy. We were there : for two nights, both times until way after midnight, and both times the : place was full of people, painstakingly slaving over the final details of : the game. Artwork, netcode, UI, multiplayer, graphics rendering, whatever. : All of it being tweaked this way and that, by people who obviously were : loving it, and wanted to make as sure as possible that we'd all love it, : too. And nice, too. Different people kept coming by the room that we were : all set up in to hang out, talk, and usually jump in to whatever game was : going at the time. And always with a friendly comment as they smeared my : corpse across the map again and again and again. : The second thing is that the game I describe (and most especially, the : different aspects of it seen in the images from the French Halo site and : hopefully here sometime today) is still in flux, still being adjusted, : tweaked, shaded, painted, optimized, and otherwise manipulated. Nothing is : set in stone, nothing is final. All this is to provide a sample of what : the game probably will be like come November, but not definitely will : be like. For that, we're all just going to have to wait to find out : ourselves. ;-) : We played over an internal Xbox Live network, accessible only to the : thousands of Microsoft employees who are in on the beta. The choices were : one-on-one or Optimatch - small team and large team. Since those were the : only options available in that version of the beta, we couldn't set up a : dedicated game for those of us in the room. Instead, we would form teams : using our friends list, then jump into Optimatch at the same time, trying : to get the Live system to see us as obvious matches. It actually worked, a : couple of times. :-) We also had a bit of time on a set of dev kits with a : slightly different build of the game that were all networked, so that we : could all play a more traditional-Halo-LAN game or two. I'd tell you a bit : about the various setup menus and whatnot, but at one point, Dave Candland : (Evil Otto) wandered in and after a few minutes said something along the : lines of, "Isn't that UI great? Yeah, well, it's all different now. I : changed the entire thing." In a nutshell, from that faked flash menu : a few weeks ago to the screenshots seen at Halo.fr, everything's been : re-designed. We'll all have to wait to see the final UI design until : November. Then we can all heap withering scorn on Otto when we see him on : Live. : One of the few things I made sure to jot down were the blurbs on the splash : screens for the different maps available to us. Here they are, along with : some brief thoughts on the levels themselves: Midships : "The Begotten Angel may not be the most agile command cruiser in the : Covenant fleet, but it is certainly the most luxurious."   : This was all reflective purples and blues, circular paths, fairly easy jumps : up and down from the upper levels to the lower ones, with the energy sword : up on the top on a kind of see-saw platform.  The platform was pretty : cool. If you stood on one end of it, it slowly dropped, raising the other : side, until you fell off of it. One of my favorite games we played was : shotgun ctf on that map with sixteen people.  It's a bit small, so there : was no end of carnage and mayhem.  :-) If anything, this game served to : remind me, and hopefully anyone from Bungie who was watching, that small : maps with constant carnage can be fun, fun, fun. ;-) : Lockout : "Some believe this remote facility was once used to study the Flood.  : But few clues remain amidst the snow and ice."   : This one is kind of smallish, very tight (as in "economical use of : space," not "cramped") with a high, exterior base and a : low, interior one. It's all attached to a cliff face (at least it looked : like one, as I fell from it enough times) in a frozen landscape.  Lots of : ramps up and down, back and forth and around the bases and a central : platform area.  This was the one I most wanted to find a way to get : "on top of", but didn't due to time and my general suckiness at : that sort of thing.  ;-) : Zanzibar : I foolishly didn't get the blurb from this screen.  You've seen this one : already all over the place anyway, though.  There are a surprising number : of places to check out, paths to take, and possible strategies with this : one.  I'd like to note that the actual map is way more intricate than : the concept drawing that's been seen lately. We ended up playing it a lot, : since the Optimatch system kept picking it.  Although it's not too big, : vehicles are surprisingly useful and entertaining. This reminds me of one : particular favorite aspect of the new game:  Ghosts that have been mostly : destroyed will make this cool "wind-up-reactor-exploding" sound : just before they finally detonate.  If you manage to get a really disabled : one near someone and it goes off, it's quite satisfactory.  :-) : Ivory Tower : "Once home to famous socialite Lance O'Donnell, the top floor of this : building is now a public park."   : This was pretty big, and had  three or four large "zones" that : everybody would end up one or the other of.  There was the interior : "park" area, the lower base, a circular overhead path around the : park, and some upper gallery areas overlooking the whole thing. The : carbine and/or the Covenant sniper were here, but my total awareness of : them is limited to, "What's that? Ooh! I wonder how it w-BLAM!" : Waterworks : "While the Forerunners excelled at mimicking natural beauty, the : machinery in this cavern exemplifies their true genius."   : Big, freakin' huge indoor cavern space.  We played a number of games on it : (This was the map we played mostly on the networked dev kits). One thing I : hope stays in through the final: I kept hearing people saying : "Stalactite!" and hearing these huge explosions, before finally : seeing Max shooting towards the ceiling.  I looked up and saw these : massive pillars hanging up there, which you could shoot off (it took a lot : of shots to accomplish this though) and crush people under.  Woo!  The : tank was available here, and the controls were different somehow, but I : didn't get enough time in one to figure out what it was.  Damn things kept : exploding with me in them.  Banshees too, now that I think of it. I did : manage to roll one over while flying, but I'd be lying if I said I knew : how it was done. ;-) : As far as controls were concerned, we were stuck with one control scheme for : everybody, and it wasn't Boxer :-(.  I got used to it pretty quickly, but : I hardly ever dual wielded, melee'd, or threw grenades to test things out. : Usually when I tried I just blew myself up. ;-P As with a few others I saw : here recently, I'm also hoping that there's an elegant : dual-wield/grenade/melee solution for us Boxer folks in the final. : A couple of last things: There was a "Films" option on one of the : UI screens, but i heard that that was most probably cut.  :-(  Also, I saw : an "Allow Observers" option on a "Create Game" screen, : which would be very interesting.  A lot of other stuff is bound to be : mentioned over the next few days, so whatever I missed should be covered : somewhere. : Gah! Back to the HSP closet!

Message Index

Drat, I've been spotted!	mnemesis	9/10/04 2:25 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted! *NM*	Schedonnardus	9/10/04 2:33 a.m.
Cool!! *NM*	Schedonnardus	9/10/04 2:34 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	GRAHAMN8R	9/14/04 5:49 p.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Devin Olsen	9/10/04 2:36 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Gil27	9/10/04 2:38 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Devin Olsen	9/10/04 2:39 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Gil27	9/10/04 2:40 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	mnemesis	9/10/04 2:40 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Pico	9/10/04 3:50 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Hawk7886	9/10/04 4:19 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Louis Wu	9/10/04 8:40 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Sep7imus [subnova]	9/10/04 9:23 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	KP	9/10/04 5:35 p.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Louis Wu	9/10/04 5:39 p.m.
Cross-Continent	Rampant Cowboy	9/10/04 5:42 p.m.
Re: Cross-Continent	Louis Wu	9/10/04 6:03 p.m.
Dude, try optimatch on MotoGP 2.	Blitzwolf	9/10/04 8:45 p.m.
Told you guys	Pballwizard	9/10/04 6:27 a.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	BOLL	9/10/04 7:47 a.m.
Re: And the award for "Most Expressive use of...	Sep7imus [subnova]	9/10/04 8:24 a.m.
Now I must kill you.	deanero	9/10/04 8:21 a.m.
Re: Now I must kill you.	CYBRFRK	9/10/04 10:10 a.m.
No films... :(	Finn	9/10/04 10:15 a.m.
Wow... a double post...	Finn	9/10/04 10:25 a.m.
Only you can appreciate this...	deanero	9/10/04 10:57 a.m.
Re: Only you can appreciate this...	Miguel Chavez	9/10/04 1:47 p.m.
Family, Halo 2, AND an 04 GSXR... OT	Finn	9/10/04 2:11 p.m.
Re: Only you can appreciate this...	deanero	9/10/04 4:12 p.m.
Re: Only you can appreciate this...	Louis Wu	9/10/04 4:14 p.m.
lol :) *NM*	Finn	9/10/04 4:20 p.m.
Re: Only you can appreciate this...	mnemesis	9/10/04 5:19 p.m.
Thanks mnem...	Alex Cross	9/10/04 11:28 a.m.
Quick Question for those who played Halo 2...	Alexis	9/10/04 2:39 p.m.
Re: Quick Question for those who played Halo 2...	Louis Wu	9/10/04 3:01 p.m.
If memory serves me correct...	TheUnknown	9/11/04 11:21 p.m.
Re: If memory serves me correct...	Alex Cross	9/12/04 3:30 p.m.
Re: If memory serves me correct...	Xavier	9/12/04 3:35 p.m.
:) *NM*	Jamirus99	9/10/04 4:36 p.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	mrsmiley	9/10/04 9:10 p.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	Miguel Chavez	9/10/04 11:11 p.m.
Re: Drat, I've been spotted!	mnemesis	9/11/04 12:15 a.m.
can my body hurt others by flighing in to them or	kenshin	9/13/04 10:55 p.m.
Re: can my body hurt others by flighing in to them	Ain Soph Aur	9/14/04 4:41 a.m.
Re: can my body hurt others-maybe?	vshields ash	9/14/04 4:44 a.m.
HMMM...........	Andrew Gehrig	9/14/04 11:15 a.m.
Re: HMMM...........	Ross Mills [subnova]	9/14/04 11:19 a.m.
Re: HMMM...........	Matthew C.	9/14/04 6:09 p.m.