New Halo 4 Screenshots

Waypoint just released some more Halo 4 Screenshots (wich can be viewed here). They look fantastic.

Campaign 

Click pictures to enlarge.

Dawn

Halo 4 Weaponry

Here are all three different kinds of Weaponry in Halo 4.

UNSC Weaponry

Non Wub Wub >Here<

Halo Bulletin on UNSC Weaponry >Here<

Covenant Weaponry

Non Wub Wub >Here< 

Halo Bulletin on Covenant Weaponry >Here<

Promethean Weaponry

Non Wub Wub >Here<

Halo Bulletin on Promethean Weaponry >Here<

Halo Bulletin Promethean Weapons

The newest Bulletin talks about all the brand new Promethean Weapons. You can read about the Promethean Weapons down below and/or read the full Bulletin on Waypoint. >here<

Halo 4’s Promethean Weapons

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Lately we’ve been focusing on the weapons in Halo 4. We’ve covered both the UNSC and Covenant arsenals, and today we are featuring the Forerunner side of things. In total, there are seven Forerunner weapons, including the Pulse Grenade. One of the best components of Halo has always been the combat sandbox, so it was both scary and challenging to create a whole new suite of weapons from scratch that were interesting, unique and balanced with the rest of the offerings.

Before settling on the final list, the team made concepts for approximately two hundred weapons. One of the biggest struggles was figuring out the high level vision and what made these alien weapons different from the Covenant and Brute weapons seen in past games. The vision we had for the Forerunner weapons was that they should feel technologically superior while still maintaining mechanical elements that made them visceral and relatable. We wanted them to evoke a sense of wonder and awe in the hands of players, similar to how you feel when you encounter Forerunner structures in the game. We also wanted them to be adaptive – both to the user and with regard to how they can be used.

The Scattershot was the first Forerunner weapon where everything started to click. Originally codenamed the “Spread Gun”, the Scattershot started off life as a rapid-fire shotgun that fired off a barrage of five projectiles in a symmetrical diamond pattern. The team started experimenting with having the weapon form around the player using it. We tried a couple different things, but ultimately, the concept of having the weapon assemble upon pick-up really resonated with the team. It also helped solve some other design issues we had around the drastically different Forerunner character models and how they would utilize the same guns that the player would eventually be able to use. For example, in the case of the Scattershot, the gun forms slightly differently to accommodate the Knight arms in that it actually attaches to the end of their forearm. We also started experimenting with adding more grounded elements to the weapons so that there was a unique juxtaposition of “super sci-fi futuristic” with components that were relatable to modern day weaponry. In the case of the Scattershot, that included trying out a hinge-action reloading animation and using more traditional individual cartridges that mimic how a traditional shotgun works.

On the gameplay side, we took a high level abstract concept of “adaptive weaponry”, considered how we could apply that to the gameplay itself, and started posing the question, “How can we extend the functionality of a shotgun and give it some added gameplay depth?” This is ultimately what led to the bouncing projectiles. In addition to functioning like a normal shotgun, it also had the expanded capability of allowing players to ricochet shots in tight spaces and use the weapon in a way that is distinct from the UNSC shotgun. You can see this theme infused in some of the other Forerunner weapons as well – the Bolt Shot and LightRifle both have dual firing modes, and the Pulse Grenade can be used tactically in several different ways.

The final component that really helped pull everything together with the Forerunner weapon subset was the work that the Audio and Visual FX teams did. We had a concept of “hard light” tech that powered the Forerunner weapons, but this meant different things to different members of the team. Originally, this concept was meant to be used as a kick-off point for the projectiles themselves but as the FX guys played around with it more, they came up with things like the animating light panels on the sides of guns. The Scattershot was pretty impressive prior to this – it had the bouncing projectiles, the really cool animations on the gun, and the satisfying gameplay, but the light panels really pulled everything together and made it stand out that much more from the other weapons. The other big “a-ha” moment involved the incineration effect that was being developed for the Knights death effect. We started integrating a similar effect into the weapon gameplay to add one final piece of flair, and that is a large part of what makes the Scattershot, Binary Rifle, and Incineration Cannon so satisfying to use.

Take a look at the seven Forerunner weapons in action by watching the following (new and wubby!) video, which features a sample from the 14-track remix album (not the original soundtrack).

If you’d like to hear the Forerunner weapon sound effects in all their otherworldly glory, here is the same video without the music.

Halo 4 Campaign Footage B-Roll

Courtesy of MixMaker1

New Halo 4 Renders

Here are some new renders from Halo 4 found on Halo Waypoint (link here), and I have got to say some of these look real, they look like they should be played on a next gen console. So shout out to 343  for their awesome work on Halo 4!

 Character and Enemy Renders
Click on pictures to enlarge them.

Master Chief

Cortana

Commander Palmer

Captain Del Rio

Commander Lasky

Halo 4 Technology

Halo 4 Armory, Loadouts, and Armor Abilities

INFO OVERLOAD

Be sure to check out all the links in his description, there is a lot of great stuff there.

NEW Halo 4 Map, Mode, Pictures and more.

Here are links to all the news that has came out today. It is incredible go check out all of this crazy awesome new Halo 4 info! (The ones with multiple links are basically the same info but from different people with different opinions and commentary). Be sure to check out all the links!

New Halo 4 Campaign Images and Footage
  http://www.littleenglishhaloblog.com/2012/09/loads-of-new-campaign-images-released.html
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNiTaB2cEDE


New Game-type: Dominion
  http://www.littleenglishhaloblog.com/2012/09/new-halo-4-gametype-announced-dominion.html
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVjuDnOILA


New War Games Map: Solace
  http://www.littleenglishhaloblog.com/2012/09/gameplay-video-on-new-map-solace.html
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPi9BoOxIz4
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS0AQxIgaZE


Infection Mode - Flood Mode
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPeYfKxjqf4

Spartan Ops Gameplay
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIrVzr2lO1s

Halo 4 Kill Cams and Victory Cams
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkHRVcXZo34

New Halo 4 Game-type: Dominion

The new game-type that was released today is basically the successor to Invasion, but way cooler.

Halo 4 New Legendary Logo

IGN just released a video and in that video it shows the new Legendary Logo for Halo 4.

Halo Bulletin 9.19.12 Covenant Weapons

This weeks bulletin is all about the Covenant Weapons it also contains some info on the different Editions of Halo 4. You can read it on Halo Waypoint here.

Halo 4’s Covenant Weapons

The Covenant weapons in Halo 4 presented us with an interesting design challenge. Traditionally, they haven’t been as popular as their UNSC counterparts, and they get much less use across the board. From a high level, we still wanted them to feel alien, futuristic, and technologically advanced (or at the very least, foreign) when compared to human weaponry, but we also wanted them to be equally viable choices.This was not an easy problem to solve.

There are a lot of gameplay specific reasons why Covenant weapons function the way they do. The blue/purple/pink color schemes and higher-pitched sound effects are intended to contrast the UNSC weapons and make enemy fire stand out. The projectiles are intentionally slower so that when fighting AI, the player is able to react and dodge them. They also tend to drain shields faster than armor health because it adds tension and creates situations where the player feels like they are escaping a fire fight by the skin of their teeth. In short, the weapons were designed to be fun to fight against, and some of these properties work against making them fun to use.

So how did we resolve these issues? On the aesthetics side, we felt like the shiny textures, bright colors, and flawless models of the past made them read a bit too toy-like, so we tried to make everything slightly more grounded. We did that by showing more wear and tear (such as scuffs and imperfections) and using new textures that made the guns look like they were created from hard metallic alloys (instead of plastic). The audio for all Covenant weapons went through several iterations until they felt a bit more punchy and visceral, while still sounding alien. As far as gameplay goes, we changed the weapon properties to make them better equivalents to UNSC weaponry. For example, the projectile speeds are drastically increased when the player uses them so that they are easier to hit targets but when AI fires them at the player, they are slower so that they are still fun to dodge. Finally, we spent a lot of time on the interface components. Two such examples are the zoom scopes, which were made to have a much more alien feel when using the guns, and the digital displays and reticles use of a similar alien language.

Halo 4 features nine Covenant weapons, with a mix of old and new. Take a look at them in action by watching the following (brand new!) video, and then we’ll chat a bit about how they feel when you’re using them on Halo 4’s virtual battlefields.

Halo Bulletin 9.12.12 All About the Prometheans

This is a great Bulletin it talks about the Forerunners (The Prometheans) and how 343i made them. In this great Bulletin we get another Making Halo 4 Vid-doc this time its about The Return of The Forerunners! Dont forget to read the full Halo Bulletin over on Waypoint. 

The Return of the Forerunners

As soon as we started concept work on Halo 4, we started looking at potential big pillar features. One of the things that came up early on was a good way to refresh the overall campaign experience, so we decided to create a new enemy race, applying the fundamentals of what makes Halo work to them. While we understand the importance of the Covenant’s role in the game for continuity purposes, we didn’t want to focus solely on those particular species. Thus, the idea for the Prometheans was born.

There were a bunch of initial ideas the team had come up with, but the real spark of where they’re at today came around discussions we had about if the sandbox is ultimately what differentiates Halo from every other FPS, then what does it mean to the way the legacy AI works and how can we make that better? That very quickly evolved into a theme of adaptive AI.

Our goal was to design a type of enemy that is highly adaptive from a tactical standpoint, basically transforming the player’s idea of how the world and combat works in order to try and gain the upper hand. If these are advanced beings, it seems like they would be intimately connected with the world they made, so the Prometheans can manipulate their environment and themselves in a way that makes them part of it. That is where you get to the final end result of Forerunners being able to spawn in and out of the world, spawn other creatures, phase back and forth, and environments moving around. They are able to manipulate things in a way we haven’t seen before, and they complement existing mechanics and change the way the player engages in the combat encounter.

According to Scott Warner, Lead Designer on Halo 4, creating an entire new enemy class was a daunting task. We started with, for all intents and purposes, a blank canvas where anything could happen. There was a super-brief glimpse of Forerunners in Halo Legends, but we wanted to do something different from that so we took as much as we could from already established Forerunner language and put it on the Prometheans. For instance, when you see a Knight idle, there are small and large bits attached at the elbows that are not physically connected but linked in a different way. They have a mystique, a gravity-defying look, similar to Forerunner structures.

Halo 4 Videos (More footage from PAX)

Here are a few more videos, make sure to subscribe to these channels for more awesome content!

PAX Prime Halo 4 Videos

 Here are a bunch of  videos from various Youtubers (for example Greenskull, minolta1034, ducain23, Nak3dHalo, BravoMLG, etc.). If you have not seen these yet you definitely should watch them because there is some amazing stuff in them. This not all the footage from PAX so be sure to check out these channels for more great Halo news and cool videos!