With the debut last year of ‘Xbox Live’, and its corresponding embrace by the gaming public, Microsoft and Bungie are hoping that Halo 2, expected out in the final quarter of 2004, will be the flagship title for Xbox Live. The game looks certain to be nothing short of amazing.
When Bungie showed it off to the world at last year’s E3, we saw a glimpse of the future of the Xbox. In a jaw droppingly delicious 20 minute demo, Bungie set E3 on fire. If you haven’t seen the demo yet, check it out immediately here. Little information has been released since, apart form a few screenshots, and the game has continually been delayed by Bungie, but with its release approaching the hype looks set to go into overdrive.
In Halo 2, the Covenant has returned to annihilate the human race, and it is up to Master Chief and Cortana to stop them. Environments known of are a war torn earth and a moon base, but apparently there will be several other new locations.
The game will feature a number of all new weapons and vehicles. Only two new weapons are known of at this time. They are the Battle Rifle, which is similar to the assault rifle from Halo, but trades a scope and improved accuracy for a decreased fire rate, and the SMG, which is super jumpy but has a very rapid rate of fire. The player will also be able to use the Covenant Elite’s double edged sword.
Master Chief will now be able to wield two weapons at once. Although it will be limited to certain weapons, this looked awesome in the E3 demo. Currently Bungie are trying to work out how they can allocate a button on the controller to the second weapon, as all buttons were mapped in the first game.
Grenades have also been tailored for the sequel, so that they will have a concussive effect on nearby enemies. Those not immediately within the blast radius, but nearby, will be stunned and vulnerable to attack for a short period of time.
A number of new melee moves will be available also, and MC can even string together melee attacks into devastating combos. Players will be able to lower whichever gun Chief is carrying, allowing him to sprint at twice his normal speed. He can also peek around corners Metal Gear Solid style, allowing the player to survey situations before rushing into battle.
A number of new enemies are being planned for the sequel, such as the Brute, a cross between a gorilla and a rhino, and the AI of the enemies has been revamped. They will now be a lot more cunning, using scenery for cover, crawling underneath objects, jumping over them, leaping up onto structures, and working better as a team. They will now be able to communicate with their brethren, making your job of peppering them to death more difficult and ultimately more rewarding. They’ll even use flashlights to hunt down Master Chief in the darkness.
But fear not, the human AI has been upped also. This time around human squad mates play a much larger role in the battles, escalating the sense of being involved in a much larger conflict, and your buddies will work better as a team. They will even flip over objects to provide cover, call in vehicle support when the going gets tough, and point out snipers in the distance who are picking off your mates.
The game will feature destructible scenery, so that if an enemy is taking cover behind a car or other object, Master Chief can just blow it to pieces. He can then push the frame around to provide cover for himself. Not only that, but the physics system is being created so that bullets will realistically affect everything in the game world, allowing the player to move objects around by shooting them.
Master Chief now has the ability to jack vehicles. All it takes is one button press to get on a vehicle being piloted by a bad guy, another to kick them off. This looked stunning when displayed in the demo at E3, Chief jacking both a warthog and a ghost, but it is uncertain how many vehicles will be ‘jackable’.
But the area where Bungie are taking the time to make Halo 2 really shine is in multiplayer, and more specifically, through Xbox Live functionality. Apparently they have some big things planned, which they are keeping typically tight lipped about, but we know there will be human versus covenant multiplayer battles, and a number of new maps and game modes. The team is, as of writing, laboriously adding in all the beautiful details which will elevate the multiplayer battles above standard FPS fare.
One example of this is that characters heads will now face in the direction they are looking. In the first game, characters would just look straight ahead. Implemented correctly, this means that if your team mate is saying to you over the headset “Look, there he is, he’s got the flag, go get him”, you can actually look at his character model in the game to see where he is facing. This allows you to determine quickly where said flag carrier is hiding, giving you all the time in the world to line up your sniper rifle on his poor, imminently exploding head.
The most dramatic change for the sequel, however, is the graphics. Make no mistake about it, there is nothing like it on the Xbox. The textures are amazingly detailed, the weapons are both realistic and gorgeous (with self-lighting), shadowing abounds, and the design is incredibly realistic. It all adds up to leave you in tantalizing awe.
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