I’ve stepped through the video frame-by-frame and came up with the following observations:

• 00:13 – 00:15 From the Loadouts bit, I think it’s clear that jetpacks, active camo, and sprint are all armour abilities.
• Also looks like the radar shows you the name of the area you’re in e.g. “Slipway” (00:15) , “Yard” (00:21) – should help with team communication
• 00:22 The bit where the Spartan survives the Ghost ram, looks to me like the Spartan does some kind of power punch to the ground or something that kills the Ghost? As kidtsunami points out on the HBO Forum the movement of the Spartan is very reminiscent of the action in the Halo 3 CGI trailer where Master Chief triggers the bubble shield
• The Covenant weapon at 00:48 looks like a plasma grenade launcher or rocket launcher with tracking projectiles
• Human grenade launcher at 1:03.
• You can see the armour ability icon “recharging” the jetpack ability at 1:05 – a small circle around the icon.
• 1:09/1:10 some kind of new gametype where you have to blow up the generators? It’s marked with a “C”, and it’s definitely called a “Generator” in the text that comes up when you blow it up. A Territories variant?
• 1:12/1:13 – Phantom airstrike taking out the tank?
• 1:16 is definitely some kind of Covenant equivalent of the Spartan Laser.
• 1:17 you can see “Revenge” come up as he headshots the guy – is this a new medal?
• 1:20 – DMR looks like one head shot kills.
• Looks like the Covenant Laser is back at 1:23 (top-left, targeting the tank).
• 1:24 Guy that lands beside the “May 3, 2010″ shoots the human grenade launcher towards the camera

Conversation about the video is progressing in this thread on the HBO Forums

A new challenge

The words that sum up ODST for me are “enjoyable”, “entertaining”, and “satisfying”. I enjoyed finishing the campaign on Heroic, wandering around the darkened streets of New Mombassa hunting for the audio clips of Sadie’s story, and fighting off hordes of Covenant in several rounds of Firefight. It’s a very good iteration of the Halo series, returning somewhat to its roots with no dual wielding, a powerful pistol, and health packs – and yet it stands its own ground, adding innovations like VISR mode, open world exploration, non-linear story-telling, and succeeding in adding a more human perspective to the Halo story.

That said, it’s not perfect by any means. For example, the campaign on Heroic could have been more challenging – though I have yet to see what Legendary is like. My initial caution after popping the hatch of the drop pod as the Rookie faded soon enough – though Hunters still make me pause. Brute Chieftains seem less of a threat than in Halo 3, but perhaps that’s an adjustment made for game balance reasons – the chieftains that I came up against as Master Chief would splatter an ODST without a moment’s thought, and a sniper rifle barrel wouldn’t have done anything to protect from one of their hammer blows.

I didn’t come across any encounters like the one against the Brute pack in the Crow’s Nest level in Halo 3, or the hangar room in Truth and Reconciliation in the original Halo with the gold Elites – encounters that are just hard enough, where you die many times trying to get past them, but not too hard that you get frustrated and give up. I think as an ODST I almost feel more of an unstoppable force than as Master Chief.

Now, maybe that’s because I’ve had to adapt my playing style, using cover more, watching my health and actively withdrawing from combat to find health packs – whose location I tend to make note of when entering a new area. As Master Chief I would tend to rush into combat more, and die more often as a result. So, from that point of view, Bungie have clearly done a good job in shaping my playing style to suit the changed combat experience, so that I enjoy the game more. However to me Heroic in ODST feels easier than Heroic in Halo 3. I may revise my opinion once I give Legendary a try though.

The length of the campaign has drawn some criticism, and it is certainly shorter than the previous Halo games. I didn’t find that a problem though to be honest, since there’s a good bit of replayability with completing the campaign on all difficulties, searching the city for the audio clips of Sadie’s story, and the Vidmaster achievements on the road to Recon. Plus there’s Firefight, but more on that later…

The campaign story

The campaign story is told well through the flashback sequences, and there is some attempt to make each of the characters in the squad stand out. This works best for Buck who has the face of, and is voiced by, Nathan Fillion – he seems to carry most of the storyline. But attempts to differentiate Romeo and Mickey as the sniper and heavy weapons specialists really just end up as flashback missions with different weapons having the focus – I didn’t feel much of a connection to those characters.

When we turn to Dare and her relationship with Buck, there is something missing – perhaps just a lack of chemistry between them. Their conversations give you some idea of Buck’s motivation for why he goes back into the city for her, but it doesn’t resonate for me – especially compared to Master Chief going back for Cortana. The part in Halo 3 when you finally reach Cortana in the depths of High Charity and keep your promise to her was for me the emotional high point of Halo 3.

Part of the problem is that Buck is allowed to show his emotions and let them drive his actions, while Dare follows her orders, keeps ONI’s secrets even from the person closest to her, and keeps her emotions in check because her mission has to take priority over her feelings for Buck. Because of this she comes across less sympathetic than Buck, who is much more likeable, and I found it hard to empathise with her. The kiss between them at the end is too abrupt of a change in behaviour from Dare, we have no real build up to it – though it clearly shows that she does have feelings for Buck and once the mission is complete she can let herself relax and express her true feelings for him.

But I think my problem is actually with Dare’s character model itself. I am a massive Battlestar Galactica fan, so Tricia Helfer’s face is one I’m very familiar with, along with her voice. The character model for Dare is good, but not to my eye a close enough representation of Tricia Helfer’s face – my mind won’t accept that combination of voice and face as Tricia Helfer, so whenever Dare is on screen she just looks wrong somehow. On top of that I think Nathan Fillion has better lines for Buck, but does deliver them better too. I don’t have the same problem with Buck’s character model since I’ve only seen Nathan Fillion in Serenity, and that was a while ago, but maybe avid Firefly fans have the same problem with him as I do with Dare. These are minor quibbles to be honest, but for me it breaks the suspension of disbelief necessary to be fully engaged with the story.

Where the story telling works really well however is Sadie’s story and the Superintendent. As you roam around New Mombassa as the Rookie, the Superintendent offers you unobtrusive assistance which you can happily ignore. He gives you hints about alternative routes you can take to avoid some direct encounters, but also guides you to the sound clips that make up Sadie’s story. Having completed the campaign, but not yet retrieved all the clips, I wonder what else will be revealed, but what I’ve heard so far makes me reconsider my initial impressions of the help the Superintendent gives you.

I wonder to what extent it’s actually the Engineers helping you, through the Superintendent, since he has been rebuilt by them. After all, the ultimate objective of the mission turns out to be to save the one Engineer that has all the information from the Superintendent, the same Engineer we learn through the audio clips for whom six other Engineers gave their lives to free their colleague from the explosive harness forced on each of them by the Brutes. By guiding the Rookie to the audio clips they help you understand that they are enslaved and are not the enemy, preparing you to trust Dare and to help rescue that Engineer, and not just because it’s an information asset.

The other thing that makes me think the Engineers are trying to help you is the glyphs scattered around the city that only become visible in VISR mode. These glyphs are found around the locations where you do the flashback scenarios, and the Superintendent caches, but also in the very dark sector of the city – and these lead you to the bodies of dead Elites. These glyphs are created by the Engineers, so it’s like they are commemorating the fallen dead of other members of the Covenant – perhaps those who treated them better than the Brutes are doing now? With the change in the power relationships in the Covenant, the rise of the Brutes and the fall from favour of the Elites, the Engineers may feel threatened, and are seeking what help they can.

In any case, Sadie’s story helps make the Halo story more real and immediate. It’s not a grand space opera spanning the galaxy, it’s about a young woman battling through a city in chaos as the Covenant invade, struggling to get to her father, and finding the enemies are sometimes human too. Her bravery, and those of the ODSTs, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, are perhaps the key emotional message from the story. It is about the concern for individuals, what we will do to help those closest to us, whether that is our family, our squad mates, or our lover who has rejected us. How the true heroes are the ones who do what is the right thing to do, regardless of how difficult that may seem.

Multiplayer

Of course Halo 3: ODST is more than just the single-player campaign. I haven’t played any co-op campaign, but I have had several Firefight sessions, each of which have been great fun. While lack of matchmaking in this mode will reduce the opportunities to play it, having a bunch of friends together probably helps the teamwork, and you do need to communicate and work together to make progress. I prefer the Lost Platoon map so far, mainly because of the ability to use Choppers – infinite ammo and rolling death are great allies when you’re trying to fight off the endless waves of Covenant. The skulls help mix it up, forcing you to get up close and personal to get your health back when the Black Eye skull is on for example. And then there’s the bonus round – I never laughed so much than when I first experienced the Grunts raining down from the Phantom dropships, fodder for my willing cannon!

I haven’t played any of the new Halo 3 multiplayer maps yet, but I’m looking forward to checking them out. Having all the maps and a standalone copy of the Halo 3 multiplayer engine is handy. I’ll check them out soon, looking for skulls to complete my collection and make some more progress on the road to Recon.

Technical details

From a technical perspective Bungie have delivered to their usual high quality in my opinion. The new VISR mode is more than just a gimmick, and works well. They have also created a city that has distinct landmarks and districts, and which is very atmospheric at night. The flashback missions give you different perspectives on the same places, and help you link the events to the places when you are exploring as the Rookie. As usual the music is excellent, really setting the mood well, and I’ve already added the soundtrack to my CD collection.

One technical gripe I have is with the Checkpoint and Saving system. As you reach checkpoints in the game your progress is saved, and if you die you come back to the last checkpoint. However, these checkpoints do not persist between gaming sessions unless you select the Save and Quit option from the pause menu. So that’s OK up to a point, but if you quit out to the dashboard without saving, or if you complete the campaign, then your checkpoints are not actually saved. This may be the same in Halo 3, but I never remember it being an issue. I wonder how hard it would be to have an option to automatically do a persistent save of your checkpoints if you want that – the data could be streamed in the background in the same way as game assets can be streamed from the disk or hard drive so it doesn’t interrupt your session perhaps. An enhancement for Halo: Reach maybe?

In terms of the sandbox as it is called – the weapons, vehicles, and how you interact with them and the world – it’s mostly the same as Halo 3, with the exception that there’s no dual wielding, and the health system is back again. I didn’t miss dual wielding at all – the action was more about the “pure” Halo experience of a gun, grenades, and melee. The new silenced pistol is implemented well, being reasonably well balanced. It is maybe slightly too powerful in terms of stopping power at range and clip size, compared with the carbine for example, but it’s certainly not the pistol from Halo: Combat Evolved. It’s perfect for taking out Grunts with headshots, and for finishing off larger foes.

The silenced and scoped SMG is good too – great for taking down the armour of a Brute and for dealing with swarms of Drones, but not really designed for longer range sniping. The assault rifle seemed to be boosted in power a little, being surprisingly effective, fitting nicely between the pistol and the SMG. The other weapons feel pretty much the same as in Halo 3, though due to lack of ammo you do find yourself working with whatever comes to hand and managing your resources more – I started using melee attacks more to conserve ammo.

Conclusions

Overall, Halo 3: ODST is a success. It’s fun to play, fairly challenging, atmospheric with an interesting storyline, and nicely complements the other Halo games. It feels like Bungie have tried to make it a bit more accessible compared to the more hardcore previous games, and they’ve used the non-linear storytelling approach to good effect. It has its flaws all right, but then which games – or any artistic endeavour for that matter – have none? As a first attempt at leveraging the investment Bungie have made in their game engine I think it works well, and this approach to making further games such as Halo: Reach will be interesting to follow. I do wonder though what else they have up their sleves, and I’m keen to see what their talented team can deliver from outside the Halo universe.

I’m not going to go into the progress so far in detail here, but it started with the appearance of AdjutantReflex on the Bungie.net Halo 3 forum, and links to www.halo3.com/comic, which in turn led to http://www.societyoftheancients.com and a countdown site at 206.16.223.65. The countdown finished abruptly as AdjutantReflex was destroyed/asimilated by something older, more powerful, and now you are redirected to 206.16.223.61 where there’s one of the “servers” that are referred to on the www.halo3.com site.

Clicking on certain glyphs on the rotating machine provides several files to download, and also plays a movie. I’ve managed to re-encode the movie as a Quicktime Movie. You can download it by right-clicking here and chosing Save Target As… or whatever is equivalent in your browser. It looks like this ARG will give us more info on the Forerunner and the background to why they did what they did 100,000 years ago. I’m eager to find out more, but hopefully it will involve more puzzles and less just waiting around for the next thing to be revealed

Thankfully for me the biggest problem was to decide what to delete to make room for the download. I’m considering getting the 120GB drive when it comes out later this year. The game appeared in the “Demos and More” section, and started up no problem – with a simple loading screen that said “Loading”, “Halo 3 Beta”, and “Love, Bungie”

Once the Beta loads, there’s the familiar Bungie logo screen, then a very simple main menu that allows you to jump into Matchmaking, View Saved Films, and Quit to the Dashboard. The background is a fly-through of Valhalla, one of the three maps included in the Beta. The music is typical Marty fare, with the same music as Halo 2 , but with bits from the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer too.

Personalisation and Settings

The first thing I did was hit the Start button to go into my profile and change my appearance and controls. The options for your appearance now include a greater range of colours, as well as a tertiary colour on your armour for further personalisation. The emblems seem to be the same set as Halo 2, but I didn’t really go through them all to be sure. For the Beta you can only be a Spartan, but the implication is that other character models will be available, such as the Elite from Halo 2. I hope that the full set of characters will be available in the final game.

The other way you personalise your character is with a three character callsign, which is made up of a letter and two digits. This shorthand notation is used in team games particularly, with each team-mates callsign shown hovering over their character in the game. As you get closer to players, including opponents, their Gamertag is shown. The idea of the callsign is to make it easier for team mates to identify each other and issue commands/request help/etc. It’s not clear how the game will handle duplicate callsigns – perhaps this will feed into matchmaking and automatically exclude players with identical callsigns?

The options for the controls are pretty much as found in Halo 2, with presets such as Southpaw, Boxer, and Green Thumb available. I’m currently using Green Thumb, since I have the tendency when going head to head with someone in close combat to press in the right thumbstick by accident, so I’d rather accidentally melee them than accidentally zoom in Plus it means I can keep pointing at my opponent as I attempt to melee them, which gives me a better chance of hitting them than taking my thumb off the thumbstick to hit B – during which time they’ve moved away from directly in front of me. This also fits my preference for close combat over ranged, though I think that’s because it’s easier to actually hit the person when closer I think I need to improve my accuracy at distance, since I don’t believe I actually am significantly better at close range!

Controls

The control system itself is mostly the same as Halo 2, but the XBox 360 controller’s bumper buttons introduce some changes. They are used to reload your left and right weapons independantly when dual-wielding. When holding one weapon, the left bumper cycles through your grenades. You now can carry only two of each type of grenade, though there are now three types with the addition of the Brute Spike grenade. The right bumper is held down to perform actions such as picking up weapons, getting into vehicles, and opening doors, while a quick press performs a reload. This frees up the X button, which is now used to deploy pieces of equipment such as the Bubble Shield. Apart from that it’s pretty much the same, though there is now an option to toggle crouching on and off with the left thumbstick instead of having to keep it pressed in to crouch. That should make it easier to crouch-walk.

Now that the dates are official, I’ve updated my countdown timers on My Halo News and Halo Screen Saver.com. I’ve also put the countdown timer into the sidebar here.

For some reason a lot of French gaming sites picked up on the original date I used (07/07/07) and thought it was official because there was a news post up on Bungie.net about my updated screen saver. Well, now they would be right

Roll on September!

I can’t wait to get home and start enjoying the Halo 3 goodness! I’m going to make the most of the next three weeks. See you all online!

Known more readily as just “Hawk” the Sparrowhawk is a formidable air to ground armor busting support aerodyne. The Hawk is still being assessed by command before full production starts while engineers are still working on an experimental propulsion system that has led to failures in the field making the future of this vehicle uncertain. The Hawk first saw actual combat against the Covenant on the surface of Harvest in the final months of that campaign.

For those of you (like me) that don’t know what an “aerodyne” is, Wikipedia defines it as:

An aerodyne is a heavier-than-air aircraft which derives lift from motion, as opposed to an aerostat which uses buoyancy (such as a balloon) to fly.

So, it’s a fancy word for plane, then

There’s also a new desktop version of the image available here in various resolutions. From this it’s clearer that what I thought were rocket pods are more like missiles or bombs.

This looks like a relative of the Pelican but designed more for offensive duties – a bit like a futuristic Apache helicopter. In the image you can see that the vehicle has a chin-mounted gun, two double-barrelled cannons on wing mounts, and three rocket pods under each wing too. It’s not clear how much elevation these vehicles can get – perhaps they’ll hover more than fly.

I’m beginning to really look forward to Halo Wars. I like RTS games, and had a great time with Age of Empires, which Ensemble also made. There’s no release date mentioned yet for it, but it sounds like they’re making good progress.