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Halo Reach Reveal Thread - Matchmaking/Multiplayer Details Revealed

Magni

Member
Pudding Tame said:
You think the anger over English speaking Covenant was bad? Imagine how bad the uber-geek reaction against Bungie would be because they didn't come up with three separate working alien languages.

Honestly, given how long some of the Arbiter-centric cut scenes were in Halo 2, I find hard to believe people would actually want to sit through this for any reasonable amount of time.

ARBITER: Wort-wort wort wort wort wort-wort wort wort-wort-wort-wort?

TARTARUS: Rawr rawr growl rawr growl.

ARBITER: Wort-wort.

TRUTTH: OhhhhhhohhhhhhohhhhAhhhhhhhAhhhhhhAhhhhhhahhhhhh.

ARBITER: WOOOOORT!!!!!!!!!!!!

And remeber how much plot/objective in-gameplay dialog there is too. All Covenant, all the time, would not have worked.

For cutscenes, I'm alright with English. For gameplay, no. Reach is set before Halo 1. In Halo 1 the Covenant did not speak English. Why should they speak English in Reach?

I really hope Reach is a step back towards Halo 1 SP-wise, Halo 2 and 3 weren't alien enough, and were way too Hollywood-like.

Frenk said:
The alien language thing is interesting. For me that was one of the main aspects that shifted the tone of the trilogy from Alien to Star Wars. Halo CE wasn't perfect hard sci-fi, just like Alien, but Bungie made an effort to make the game look believable. The Pillar of Autumn for example didn't look like a classical pulp sci-fi spaceship.

It was a big metal hunk and it wasn't built to look pretty or majestic like the Enterprise in Star Trek. It's a functional ship, when you take your first look at it you know it's a warship with thick hull plating since there are barely any visible windows on the thing and you can see all sorts of details that hint at the military nature of the ship.

The interior was also very well done and you could pick up a lot of subtle details like the use of vectors for navigation . The Autumn had a huge hangar bay that was in some ways reminiscent of an aircraft carrier. You can imagine that at some point 500 years from now someone could build something like that.

The fact that the Marines still use machine guns that don't seem very advanced from our perspective also makes it more believable. The UNSC wasn't equipped to fight against aliens. They were fighting against rebels who had similar equipment. 500 years from now a bullet is still going to kill you. One thing that we shouldn't forget either is that the UNSC must be huge. Just imagine how big a United Earth military force must be and then multiply it a couple of times for all the colonies. How long would it take to produce a bunch of anti Covenant rayguns and equip the entire military force with them? These weapons need to be manufactured and field tested for many years (like the Battle Rifle, which was obviously not designed as a specialised anti Covenant weapon). I'd say it would take centuries to research, produce, field test and mass manufature any kind of standard beam or plasma rifle.

I imagine that the main focus was to make the equipment cheap, quick to produce and most of all to make it reliable. Of course the vehicles were designed that way too. The entire look of the UNSC in Halo CE was very functional and believable. Another example for this would be the Longsword fighter. It's huge compared to an X-Wing or a Colonial Viper. It looks comparable in size to a space shuttle or a bomber. You can imagine that it has to store a lot of ammunition, fuel and it must have huge engines to be able to navigate in space.

Well, all in all Halo CE had a hard sci-fi look going for it. There are also hardly any sound effects in outer space scenes. Even the explosion of the Halo at the end was silent.

The alien language of the Elites fit right into that picture. Yeah, it was just a bunch of reversed Johnson lines but it had the intended effect. The broken English that the Grunts speak could be explained by the use of faulty/prototype translation software. Since the cowardly Grunts are the only aliens in the Covenant who could realistically have been captured before the events of Halo it makes sense that their language was the first to be fed into the translation matrix.

Halo 2 and Halo 3 went off in a different direction. While they preserved some of the hard sci-fi qualities of Halo CE some Hollywood blockbuster cliches were added too.

I wonder whether Reach will be a return to the roots of the franchise in that regard. The low tech nature of the VTOL's in the opening teaser and the space wreckage from the original E3 teaser seem to hint at it.

This man knows what's up.


And merry Christmas/December 25th HaloGAF! =)
 
The boys over at 343 linked to an awesome piece Marvel put together:

12days.halo.mcfarlane.jpg


Kris-025 :lol - Merry Christmas guys!

Didn't want to embed their version to spare their servers, but tinypic won't give me a full size version.
 
MagniHarvald said:
For cutscenes, I'm alright with English. For gameplay, no. Reach is set before Halo 1. In Halo 1 the Covenant did not speak English. Why should they speak English in Reach?

I really hope Reach is a step back towards Halo 1 SP-wise, Halo 2 and 3 weren't alien enough, and were way too Hollywood-like.

Well, Grunts spoke English in Halo 1 (of course it turns out that they were actually speaking English, so no translation required), and in the expanded universe the ability translate the Covenant languages (some better than others) has been around for awhile.

But what's going to be the deciding factor is what Bungie feels their role will be in the story of Reach. Are they going to be regressed in the enigmatic bad guys of Halo 1 or will they be further fleshed out in a way that only having them speak English would be necessary?

I myself am kind of hoping for a best of both worlds, Elites still say Wort-Wort-Wort, then you have a Microsoft Sam type voice translating in the helmet.
 

Frenck

Banned
Pudding Tame said:
Well, Grunts spoke English in Halo 1 (of course it turns out that they were actually speaking English, so no translation required), and in the expanded universe the ability translate the Covenant languages (some better than others) has been around for awhile.

But what's going to be the deciding factor is what Bungie feels their role will be in the story of Reach. Are they going to be regressed in the enigmatic bad guys of Halo 1 or will they be further fleshed out in a way that only having them speak English would be necessary?

I myself am kind of hoping for a best of both worlds, Elites still say Wort-Wort-Wort, then you have a Microsoft Sam type voice translating in the helmet.

That would be silly if Bungie doesn't rework the language :D
 

NOKYARD

Member
11537_324536110726_540780726_9649509_6458696_n.jpg
godhandiscen said:
The second shot looks like an evolution to the needler. It would be cool if you were able to make upgrades to weapons.
Haven't figured this out yet?

My guess, it's a Needler version of the FRG which could actually be used in Matchmaking games due to lower video horsepower requirements. The larger flechettes could track and stick to vehicles, making it a Covie version of the Halo 2 Rocket Lawnchair.
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
Grimm Fandango said:
I'm more curious about that massive thing on the Warthog. Like a huge fucking missile launcher or something.
Thats what the leaks said. Apparently its in SP, and unconfirmed for MP.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
NOKYARD said:
11537_324536110726_540780726_9649509_6458696_n.jpg
Haven't figured this out yet?

My guess, it's a Needler version of the FRG which could actually be used in Matchmaking games due to lower video horsepower requirements. The larger flechettes could track and stick to vehicles, making it a Covie version of the Halo 2 Rocket Lawnchair.
I think it was shown being used in one of the anime trailers or something; it was linked to back in the leak thread. It looked like a hailstorm of needles that converged in a big explosion.
 
Merry Christmas HaloGAF. Got a ton of Packers clothes and some camping gear. Dragon Age get.

I'm with Grimm, that big ass rocket turret is much more appealing than the needle cannon. Expansion of warthogs is always good. Would love to see a fast version and a proper race varient.
 

Frenck

Banned
Grimm Fandango said:
I'm more curious about that massive thing on the Warthog. Like a huge fucking missile launcher or something.

Maybe I'm wrong but it doesn't look like it needs a gunner like a regular turret does. It looks more like something the driver can fire on his own since it's mounted right above the driver's head and lines up perfectly with the Warthog reticule that you see while you're driving.
 
Grimm Fandango said:
I'm more curious about that massive thing on the Warthog. Like a huge fucking missile launcher or something.

To me it looks like the blur in that pic is playing tricks on the eye. I could be wrong but it looks like the "giant cannon" is a piece of architecture in the background.

enzo_gt said:
Thats what the leaks said. Apparently its in SP, and unconfirmed for MP.

Hmmm. Interesting.
 

Frenck

Banned
Pudding Tame said:
To me it looks like the blur in that pic is playing tricks on the eye. I could be wrong but it looks like the "giant cannon" is a piece of architecture in the background.

Oh crap, you're right. Worst leak ever.
 

feel

Member
merry christmas / feliz navidad / feliz natal

Grimm Fandango said:
I'm more curious about that massive thing on the Warthog. Like a huge fucking missile launcher or something.
It's a huge spotlight for a level where later on you have to navigate an extremely dark area while a second warthog does the shooting.
hey, it could be decent if done right!
 
Pudding Tame said:
To me it looks like the blur in that pic is playing tricks on the eye. I could be wrong but it looks like the "giant cannon" is a piece of architecture in the background.

That is kinda what I was thinking
 

LAUGHTREY

Modesty becomes a woman
Stormtrooper30 said:
Merry Christmas HaloGAF. Got a ton of Packers clothes and some camping gear. Dragon Age get.

I'm with Grimm, that big ass rocket turret is much more appealing than the needle cannon. Expansion of warthogs is always good. Would love to see a fast version and a proper race varient.


halo%202%20warthogs.jpg



I'm still waiting for my snowhog.
 
gibonez said:
Looks like a circular multiple rocket system similar to what was mounted on sherman tanks in ww2.

shermancalliope.jpg


Used for indirect fire.

Could be, but to me the pic looks like a Gauss-Hog with the barrel facing away from the camera.
 
Adjusted the color a bit. Doesn't look like the big rocket launcher I thought it was but also not an existing Warthog turret.

The blacker thing looks like some building in the background.

warthog.jpg
 
Dax01 said:
Having that snowhog would've been amazing for AotCR.

Would've made the BEST level in the history of Halo even better.

Even without the turret?

Oh man, so much stuff cut from Halo 2, I remember reading about and see a screen shot for a night time level on the Grunt homeworld. I think it might have been from the same article that showed all the variant Hogs and Mongoose in Halo 2, tried to look for it on HBO but the Halo 2 previews link is dead.
 

Frenck

Banned
Pudding Tame said:
Even without the turret?

Oh man, so much stuff cut from Halo 2, I remember reading about and see a screen shot for a night time level on the Grunt homeworld. I think it might have been from the same article that showed all the variant Hogs and Mongoose in Halo 2, tried to look for it on HBO but the Halo 2 previews link is dead.

Do you mean one of these?

oxm-coweringgrunt-040204.jpg


oxm-jackalgoboom-040204.jpg


I always thought these screens were really interesting. It looks like an early version of QZ (snow, dead trees, sentinel factory in the background) where you play the Chief instead of the Arbiter. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be the Grunt homeworld though.
 
The funny thing is that Bungie didn't even implement different skins on vehicles until Avalanche came out on Halo 3. It took them 5 years of thinking to get that done. Several different varients/skins of vehicles in Reach would be awesome.

snowhog plz
 

Slightly Live

Dirty tag dodger
A few additional vehicle skins wouldn't go amiss. As long as they stay away from the Flaming Warthog / Honour Guard Wraith pre-order exclusive crap from Halo Wars.
 

Louis Wu

Member
Pudding Tame said:
Even without the turret?

Oh man, so much stuff cut from Halo 2, I remember reading about and see a screen shot for a night time level on the Grunt homeworld. I think it might have been from the same article that showed all the variant Hogs and Mongoose in Halo 2, tried to look for it on HBO but the Halo 2 previews link is dead.
There weren't many useful links in there - but it's live again. (Yet another part of the site that died when we had a decent drive failure a month or two ago; I'm slowly finding time to bring them back online.)
 
Alright HaloGAF I need your wisdom. I got a 120gb HDD for my 360 for Christmas to replace my old 20gb one. How do I transfer my files and saves over from the old unit to the new one? It didn't come with any cables or anything.
 
Stormtrooper30 said:
Alright HaloGAF I need your wisdom. I got a 120gb HDD for my 360 for Christmas to replace my old 20gb one. How do I transfer my files and saves over from the old unit to the new one? It didn't come with any cables or anything.
It should've come with a transfer cable.

Edit: or the link below.
 

big ander

Member
Stormtrooper30 said:
Alright HaloGAF I need your wisdom. I got a 120gb HDD for my 360 for Christmas to replace my old 20gb one. How do I transfer my files and saves over from the old unit to the new one? It didn't come with any cables or anything.
It didn't have cables or anything? Normally new 120gigs come with a transfer cable. To get one, call xbox support. Or look on eBay, but that's not exactly trustworthy.
 

zumphry

Banned
Frenck said:
I always thought these screens were really interesting. It looks like an early version of QZ (snow, dead trees, sentinel factory in the background) where you play the Chief instead of the Arbiter. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be the Grunt homeworld though.

Yeah, that looks like it is from Quarantine Zone, just like other shots from The Arbiter/The Oracle(or Uprising/Great Journey) that had Elites standing around and Master Chief shooting Jackals. I've always thought they made them to show off the levels, but keep The Arbiter twist a secret before the launch day/the French Copy leak.

http://www.bungie.net/images/Games/Halo2/screenshots/h2_x03.jpg

http://www.bungie.net/images/Games/Halo2/screenshots/H2_ChiefvsJackals.jpg
(URLs because they'd just be too big on the page)
 

big ander

Member
TacticalFox88 said:
So can we expect Halo Reach's graphics to be on the level on the E3 reveal of Halo 3 in 2006? Or am I expecting to much?
If they aren't at the level of a technical demo for an old engine, I'll be severely disappointed.
My interpretation of the VGA reveal was that bungie was saying "this is what we want our fans to set as their expectations." If the entire game looks as good as that trailer, I'll be pleased.
 
Louis Wu said:
There weren't many useful links in there - but it's live again. (Yet another part of the site that died when we had a decent drive failure a month or two ago; I'm slowly finding time to bring them back online.)

Thanks Mr. Wu. EDIT: Evidently, I found what I thought I was looking for in press scans, sorry if I made you go through a ton of work)

Frenck said:
Do you mean one of these?

I always thought these screens were really interesting. It looks like an early version of QZ (snow, dead trees, sentinel factory in the background) where you play the Chief instead of the Arbiter. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be the Grunt homeworld though.

Unfortunately, I thought the Edge article had the picture. It might have been in EGM or Gamepro and it was so long ago (before much of the campaign was scrapped). I know I'm not pulling out of my ass though. The top one is close, but the pic was much darker with Warthog headlights illuminating a good chunk of the picture and ODSTs might have been with the chief.
 

Domino Theory

Crystal Dynamics
TacticalFox88 said:
So can we expect Halo Reach's graphics to be on the level on the E3 reveal of Halo 3 in 2006? Or am I expecting to much?

Halo: Reach opening cinematic > Halo 3 E3 2006 trailer.

But I also agree with ander. Whatever was thought of as a dream in 2006 can definitely be a reality in 2010.
 
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