CAMPAIGN
And before we know it, we're back in the familiar instinctive, free-flowing combat that makes the Halo series so distinct among firstperson shooters. But though it feels familiar, it's not the same. The enviroments are more expansive than ever before, and they're spanned by fighting enemies and allied forces. The scale is immediately evident, and remarkable. Design Lead Jamie Greisemer "In Halo 1 and 2 you'd have to spawn a load of guys at the front, and once the player has killed those guys, you'd spawn some guys behind a rock and so the entire battle would sort of play out the same way, but now we spawn a whole battlefield full of guys and have fun. If you want to engage these guys right up front, you can. If you want to stand up on a ridge, they'll start shooting back."
The end result is more variety. Encounters have even greater fluidity than before. Its common to push forward too quickly and find yourself attacked from all sides, so apart from managing your weaponry, its now important to tactically manage your troops. Its often wise to hang back and give support, allowing them to clean up less powerful enemies, and protect them by carefully taking out threats. In the same spirit, AI is the same, but more. There's plenty of opportunity to explore the enviroment away from that central stream, too. On the scarab "Its the biggest character we've ever done", unlike the scripted Halo 2 original, this scarab is AI controlled. "We don't want to do boss battles its just another part of the sandbox." "People here talk about Halo 3 being the Halo game they always wanted to make. We want it to be the definitive experience the guys here always had in their heads."
Halo 3 will be a game of depth and scale, of mechanics, of appeal and of ambition. Its meticulously focused, yet radiant with expansive possibilty. And with two months of obsessive polishing to go, its already one of the most supremely confident games we've ever seen. "We always joke that at some point someone will have to come along and prise the code out of our hands because we will tweak and tune right up till the final second. And each day it just gets more fun to play."
Edge Magazine.
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