One advantage of having a two and a half hour drive home is I had plenty of time to organize my thoughts. Whether I am too tired to actually translate that into coherent sentences has yet to be seen.
Travel and Audience (Skip to next section if you just want to read about what they showed.)
I'm in St. Helens, Oregon which makes for a
pretty meaty drive to Seattle. But I'd stocked up on munchies and caffeinated beverages and a stack of CDs, and was able to blaze there in two and a half hours flat. I went a bit faster at the end because all those beverages wanted very much to bid me farewell after a couple hours, but I wasn't about to stop until I got there.
I arrived around 9:00 headed over to the back of the line - which was simply epic. It ran for a good 200 feet or so, three wide. I give Luke a call on cell and he directs me to a delightful young woman who hands me my Golden Ticket. I am pleased that the crowd did not tear me limb from limb as I step in through the front entrance just as they let people in.
We waited about 45 minutes in the hall outside the theater, and it was a party atmosphere. Two guys had paper signs around their necks that said, "Please help, my 360 RROD". The guy in front of me had a Mister Chief t-shirt on, the one behind one that said "I see dead people", and featured a Spartan holding a rocket launcher while looking at four player indicators with red X's under them. A boisterous round guy had brought in a couple cases of Game Fuel and was handing out cans to thirsty fans (I spotted someone from Bungie sign the case while in line - cool). I chatted up D3vious (I think that's how he spells it); nice guy. About half of everyone had some kind of Halo shirt (I was in the Halo 3 Beta one myself), and there was a wild energy to everyone. Whoops and hollers when up when they let us in.
The theater was even crazier. We walk in, and on screen is the Campaign lobby. The Chief and Arbiter are on the right, in an idle animation with the custom options set up - Tsavo Highway, Heroic. Luke was controlling the action via a dev kit hooked to a monitor inside the entrance. As people got settled, he would tinker with the options, which elicited various very loud crowd responses. Setting the difficulty to Easy = loud booing. (All I can remember from the descriptions was Heroic ended with, "This is how Halo is meant to be played.") He showed the Skulls selection screen and a few other options, all met with cheers. He played the crowd like a
piano. :lol
Overview
They did three demos of about 10-12 minutes each: Two player co-op on Tsavo Highway, Forge on High Ground, and a Saved Film from the E3 build, set on Sandtrap. It looked like the Epsilon build, from the maps and options available.
I'll do this in two parts - some larger, sweeping observations, and then a list of cool details I noticed. I think that will be better than excess blocks of exposition (sorry, Voc!).
Tsavo Highway
My take on Tsavo Highway is that it's essentially Halo, but with of the best design elements of the series and none of the poor ones, and taken up
several notches. Luke, Frank and a large pack of Marines pile into a convoy of Warthogs and head out of an underground bunker into a long cave, which transitions outside. What follows reminded me of a combination of the outdoor section of Assault on the Control Room from Halo 1 and the vehicle sections on the beach of Outskirts from Halo 2. The level design pushed you forward like AoTC, but was very wide and had lots of small splits and elevations to allow for different approaches to the various encounters. Vehicles abounded on both sides of the fighting, mixed with a
lot of ground troops.
Simply put, the fighting in Halo 3 is on the kind of scale that I wanted in the first two games. Even in vehicles, there were enough ground troops to overwhelm if Luke and Frank got careless - easily more than a dozen at one point, and that's not including the guys hammering them from turrets, snipers taking pot shots and the multiple vehicles cruising around all at once. All of this takes place in some good sized battle fields (still enclosed a bit, ala AotCR) with some epic, sweeping views of mountains, plains and the Ark site from the announcement trailer. The sense of scale that Frank has talked up is there. I'll write about the cool details that I saw here at the end. Visually, the game is STUNNING. More importantly, smart design choices abound and the combat just kept throwing one cool thing after another out there. It was unpredictable and thrilling. Frank and Luke both died.
Lots.
Brutes are formidable. They deploy equipment pretty frequently. The first was a Flare pitched at Frank from a good distance. I thought it was a Fuel Rod shot at first, then it arced over to him and he screen went white, except for the HUD. He avoided ownage by running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. It dissipated after about five seconds. Several times, he'd start to pepper a Brute from mid-range only to have them throw down personal shields and force a change in tactics. Once I saw a Brute throw down a Bubble Shield - but not for itself. It was protecting a pack of Grunts getting mauled by Luke. Really, really cool that they actually protect other troops from fire. Luke got booted off the gunner seat of a warthog by a Brute once, to my surprise. They're very aggressive. Oh, and they sound terrifying. Remember how the sounds in the Beta had that nice, deep oomph to them, like the frag grenade explosions? Take that kind of impact and add it to the snarling of a Brute - they're terrifying to hear charging you.
Forge
From the Campaign Lobby is an option to Change Lobby, so the party can move to Custom Games, Forge, the film theater and matchmaking all from there together. Forge on High Ground was next. They start as a Spartan and with the click of a button turn into a Monitor, which you control from first person with a unique HUD. While a Monitor you can pick up the objects that are on the map and drag them around through the air - rocket launcher, turret, Mongoose.
Frank pulled up the objects menu that appeared on the right hand side of the screen (small enough that it only took up about 1/5 of the view) and there was a budget in dollars, which started around $170. There were seven categories of objects to place, the first of which were weapons, which cost $2 each. Next up was vehicles, which had higher costs - a Scorpion was $20 (which Frank dropped on Luke, who was busy building a pile of fusion cores), smaller vehicles cost less. He spawned a large box (Urk's dream) and demonstrated the physics of it by having Luke stand on top, and then lifting them both into the air. Luke was dumped off it when Frank rotated the box forward.
After that they screwed around a little - Luke destroyed Frank's Monitor with a Spartan Laser, blew up a big pile of fusion cores (the sound was simply
thunderous), and then Frank grabbed the Gravity Hammer.
Ho. Ly. SHIT.
Frank demonstrated it by swatting a parked Mongoose, which blew up and flew 20 feet away, crashing into the rock wall. One smart, subtle design decision: the explosion came a moment after it was swatted, so he wasn't harmed by it. If it blew right away, you could kill yourself by swatting vehicles. It was simply awesome, and will change multiplayer quite a bit - you'll have to look to see if that guy you're about to run down is toting one before heading their way.
After that, it was on to Saved Films. AKA, my new favorite feature in Halo 3 (sorry, online co-op!).
Saved Film
It's one of those things I thought would be okay until I saw it. Frank replayed a fight on Sandtrap (probably the one they showed at E3, since it was the now-ancient E3 build). A few great moments captured:
1) Freeze-frame the moment a lone gunner on a warthog had the 'hog blown out from under him by a Spartan Laser. The 'hog few out from underneath, and he flew back from the explosion. Catching the contorting corpse and zooming in on the explosion Matrix-like was simply awesome.
2) Following a group of vehicles chase-cam style as they raced around the map towards an intersection - then pausing and swinging the camera around to spot three other vehicles coming in from the other side. Demolition derby ensues. (Red team = owned.)
3) The sound effects pause. So zooming in on a rocket flying through the air brings the whoosh of the rocket to the fore. Ditto the energy drain, an explosion, and more. It's a subtle and
brilliant touch.
I will probably spend at least as much time on Saved Films as actual multiplayer. So. Awesome.
Okay, that's the overview. Probably not very well written. Lots of bullet points to come - all the cool details I can remember.
