We’re very excited to show off the second part of our Halo 3 image branding. This one is known colloquially as “Emotion” and it’s just a lovely, stirring piece that speaks to both the fiction and the atmosphere of the new game. The more you look at it, the more you get from it. The Chief model was built and posed from the game, and rendered out in this mixed media piece, which is part CG, part painting and a healthy dose of Photoshop thrown in for good measure. The background holds some interesting atmosphere, from the skeletal wreckage of the fallen Mombasa space tether, to those hauntingly familiar eyes in the background. Anyway, that’s enough talk – here’s a pic. This one will be appearing soon enough, in various locations in both landscape and portrait orientations.

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You’ll also be pleased to hear that split-screen will be an option, although limited to two people in the Public Beta. We’ve also done something cool with the splitscreen display for HD monitors – instead of stretching the horizontal or vertical axes into big, scary too wide or too tall horrors, we’ve sensibly windowed the action, maintaining lots of screen real estate, but preserving a proper, playable aspect ratio.

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No, this feature we’re testing is for the moment, just a fun addition, that’s planned to grow into something pretty amazing by launch, and that feature is Saved Films. The version you’ll try in the Beta, is very, very, very limited. We just want you to play around with the general concept. You’ll be reading more about this in the gaming press in the next month or two, and of course you can try it out for yourselves in less than a month.

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Perhaps more enticing is the mention of a VERY large map that went from being just about the most empty, soulless placeholder geometry in the entire game, to one of the moodiest, most atmospheric and beautiful maps we’ve ever made. It’s also the single largest multiplayer map. You pretty much need a vehicle to get around in it, so luckily, destroyed vehicles respawn super-fast.

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May 11th was mentioned in a San Jose Mercury News blog as an “unveiling” date for Halo 3. Of course Halo 3 was in fact “unveiled” at E3 a year ago. The May 11th date simply refers to a Public Beta preview for the press so they can get their stories done for the real Public Beta launch a few days later.

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Wired Magazine’s editor in chief, Chris Anderson, revealed in his blog a couple of pages of script dialog that he’d recorded. Interweb sleuths thought they’d discovered some plot points. Sad to say that other than the dialog itself and the names of the characters on those script pages, just about everything else is a red herring. So don’t read too much into it.

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The X-button is second nature. You’ll know when you’re carrying equipment – it’ll appear in your HUD, and all you do to use it is press X. On that note, I saw another meme pop up, and not an unreasonable one at that: You might be able to drop a shield on a vehicle and then drive around shielded. Well, nope. Cool as that might look, it would probably make a vehicle way too powerful. You should try playing around with what you can and can’t do with shields (and whatever else you find) in the Beta. It’s a blast.

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Tieno said:

Marty O'Donnell is jesus.

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The X-button is second nature. You’ll know when you’re carrying equipment – it’ll appear in your HUD, and all you do to use it is press X. On that note, I saw another meme pop up, and not an unreasonable one at that: You might be able to drop a shield on a vehicle and then drive around shielded. Well, nope. Cool as that might look, it would probably make a vehicle way too powerful. You should try playing around with what you can and can’t do with shields (and whatever else you find) in the Beta. It’s a blast.

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Diablohead said:

Looks like I got a new pc wallpaper for a few weeks

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Kevar said:

*fap fap fap*

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Wario64 said:

And a new X360 dashboard wallpaper.

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GhaleonEB said:

The introduction of Cortana as a forboding figure, even a little frightening, is pretty significant in terms of the where the fiction is heading.

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Smokey Bones said:

1080p or bust Bungie sorry

Spoiler

So is he basically debunking the 1080p rumor?

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The strangest rumor of all was that MS was “forcing” Bungie to make Halo 3 60 fps at 1080p. Um, it was one thing to see that on a forum, but it was strange to see it on regular news site.

1080p at 60 fps is awesome for fighting games and barely a stretch for Live Arcade games. But if you want epic battles, dozens of bad guys, huge vistas and colossal structures, with advanced AI, HDR lighting and explosive physics, then you’re not getting those at 1080p at 60fps. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate – Halo 3 will display at 1080p through the Xbox Elite with its scaler and HDMI port, but not natively. We’ve seen it do just that and it looks utterly lovely. So if you have a 1080p TV, enjoy it yourself in a few weeks. Most people, and I mean the VAST majority of people don’t have a 1080p TV, so it would be foolish to sacrifice even a single feature for a bullet point number on the back of a box.

The only number we’re committing to is that our number one priority is to make Halo 3 look awesome, smooth, detailed and innovative, no matter what resolution you run it at. Although that said, it does look significantly better in HD, so maybe you should convince the powers that be, that now is the time for a set upgrade?

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Tieno said:

Master Chief is jesus.
Wallpaper
2258p: http://www.bungie.net/images/Games/Halo3/Wallpapers/H3_Emotion-H_Landscape.jpg

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GhaleonEB said:

And just like that, I've got new wallpaper.

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The strangest rumor of all was that MS was “forcing” Bungie to make Halo 3 60 fps at 1080p. Um, it was one thing to see that on a forum, but it was strange to see it on regular news site.

1080p at 60 fps is awesome for fighting games and barely a stretch for Live Arcade games. But if you want epic battles, dozens of bad guys, huge vistas and colossal structures, with advanced AI, HDR lighting and explosive physics, then you’re not getting those at 1080p at 60fps. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate – Halo 3 will display at 1080p through the Xbox Elite with its scaler and HDMI port, but not natively. We’ve seen it do just that and it looks utterly lovely. So if you have a 1080p TV, enjoy it yourself in a few weeks. Most people, and I mean the VAST majority of people don’t have a 1080p TV, so it would be foolish to sacrifice even a single feature for a bullet point number on the back of a box.

The only number we’re committing to is that our number one priority is to make Halo 3 look awesome, smooth, detailed and innovative, no matter what resolution you run it at. Although that said, it does look significantly better in HD, so maybe you should convince the powers that be, that now is the time for a set upgrade?

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GhaleonEB said:

The introduction of Cortana as a forboding figure, even a little frightening, is pretty significant in terms of the where the fiction is heading.

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Although that said, it does look significantly better in HD, so maybe you should convince the powers that be, that now is the time for a set upgrade?

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op_ivy said:

the first vidoc hinted at that as well

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GhaleonEB said:

On that note, I've just gotten approval to buy an HDTV with my mid-year bonus after an extensive lobbying effort. The bonus hits in August, just in time for the September release.

Believe.


True, but it was more vauge hinting. This artwork is downright frightening, much darker in tone than anything in the Halo trilogy so far. The sun is setting on earth, and Cortana's rising.

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TemplaerDude said:

please update on whether the game is good, thanks.

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Smokey Bones said:

Get out thanks

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TemplaerDude said:

please refer me to any part where i may have mentioned any other bungie game being "bad", which is what i'm pretty sure you're referring to. my suggestion to you is to "chill the **** out".

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GhaleonEB said:

True, but it was more vauge hinting. This artwork is downright frightening, much darker in tone than anything in the Halo trilogy so far. The sun is setting on earth, and Cortana's rising.

And after looking at that artwork, you know what else is rising?

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Smokey Bones said:

My suggestion to you is get the sand outta your vagina.

And then calm down.

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GhaleonEB said:

The introduction of Cortana as a forboding figure, even a little frightening, is pretty significant in terms of the where the fiction is heading.

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Sai said:

So, I know the control scheme isn't final, but I'm going to bring it up anyways:

Is the X Button only used for depoying the equipment at the moment? Will we be given the choice to pick up, drop, or exchange the equipment by holding it?

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TemplaerDude said:

i'm not the one with my panties in a twist because someone made a joke.

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op_ivy said:

vauge? i dunno about that...

"cortana is in trouble"

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"in the clutches of the gravemind..."

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"we dont know whats happened to her since then... we dont know its cortana... it could be any sort of bizarre, almost satanic voice"

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"something seems wrong"

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Djungelfrukt said:

Fall 2007, does that mean that we won't be seeing a november-release? September maybe?

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Stinkles said:

Halo 3 is still a 16-player game, and the reality is that most people prefer smaller games than that

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Smokey Bones said:

Moving right along has it been confirmed what weapons will be in the beta, or maybe all of them will?

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the disgruntled gamer said:

Well yeah, put also in terms of gameplay it makes you wonder who will be the new "voice in your head." One of the things that has always helped Halo not seem like you're just wandering around is Cortana, so with her gone you have to wonder who will take her place.

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raYne said:

It's pretty final. At this point they've been testing/using it for a while, so I wouldn't expect any changes.

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X is to pick up, deploy and swap equipment.

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Dropping an item/weapon wasn't in the previous games and since it was never spoken of or hinted at, I'd expect it to be the same here.

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