Last week, Bungie Studios announced that they had shown early builds of Halo 3 to various gaming publications. Today, those publications are hitting shelves and scans of the preview from Swedish magazine LEVEL are now online. Plenty of juicy details were mentioned, including blurbs about plot twists, graphics, multiplayer, new weapons and general tweaks to the Halo formula.
As stated by Jamie Griesemer, designer for Bungie Studios, Halo 3 will contain plenty of plot twists. Speaking about the visuals, Brian Jarrard of Bungie Studios stated that the build shown to the public was still in alpha stage, "A lot is still missing in this build. Weather and water effects are missing, and most of our HDR isn’t in there yet… but when everything is in place, Halo 3 will be the best X360 has to offer."
Talking about multiplayer, there will be no bots in Halo 3. Griesemer discussed why bots won’t be implemented, "In short, to create bots for Halo would be an immense undertaking, and we rather put that time into making new levels, weapons and netcode."
So far, three new weapons were revealed: the Spiker, used by brutes, the Spartan Laser, an anti-vehicle laser weapon and the Nail Grenade, which is self-explanatory. A new vehicle was shown, the Mongoose, which was originally set for Halo 2. Before you get your bloomers in a bunch, know that the Mongoose is little more than a two-man transporter.
As for general tweaks to the game, the secondary weapon will be visible at all times on the back of characters, and the X-button will no longer serve as the reload button. Instead the two bumper buttons on the top of the controller will reload each weapon independently. Lastly, there will be a transport system in multiplayer called a Man Cannon, which will transport players across maps. Players can be shot at while they’re flying through the air, and flying players can return fire.
Halo 3 will be available in a new flavor at retail dubbed the "Legendary Edition". Housed in a replica of Master Chief’s helmet, the four-disc DVD set will include the game, documentaries and developer comments, spin-off materials (like Red vs. Blue) and a collection of cutscenes in HD from the whole Halo series.
Halo 3 is set for release on the Xbox 360 sometime in 2007.
