Bungie has decided to take on some of the vast selection of rumours regarding its upcoming Halo 2 title. The company has followed its usual policy of commenting on rumours and has used plenty of humour in doing so. The target of the, clearly upset, Bungie employees were some feasible and well-known rumours as well as some ideas verging on the ridiculous.
One of the more obsolete and unlikely rumours, apparently, was the one regarding the appearance of Halo 2 on PS2 and Gamecube. Of the plenty of comments Bungie had on the subject, the most charactersitic claimed that, this is just dumb. Seriously. Of all the rumors, this is the easiest one to disprove scientifically, while sitting on the toilet, armed only with a magnifying glass and a handbag.
Other rumours were approached more seriously, the story of the Lost Halo is one such example. A well circulated rumour, especially during this spring, suggested that a Halo 1.5 (an online enabled version of the original game with a few new maps and some graphical improvements) would surface before Halo 2. Bungie says Halo 1.5 is a decent idea, but the fact remains, we were never working on it. We had to finish Halo and then devote every available resource to Halo 2. There was no time for monkey business.
The recent bot issue, that Halo 2 will feature AI opponents in multiplayer games, was also denied with Bungie claiming that they will have a complete single-player game and a rock solid multiplayer one as well. We never mentioned bots. Not once. Except when we were saying, "No, there's really no bots..." says Bungie. Other rumours quashed included :
-dual-wielding any weapon a feature rejected since Bungie does not want ...filling the Xbox Live servers with crazy, twin-rocket launching space-freaks who can also drive ATVs in zero G.
-four player split-screen co-op play, another possible feature which we will miss due to practical limitations, ...there's two player co-op, but that's it. Four player co-op is quite possible, but it would be a mess in split-screen.
-Halo 2 will feature massively multiplayer combat, the multiplayer limit of Halo 2 will be 16 players because ...if the game was simpler, smaller and dumber, you could fit loads more players in a server.
-The Bungie.net clan and stat features will require a paid subscription, Bungie claims that it may be responsible for that rumour since it featured ...an April Fool's a few years back, claiming that Bungie.net was going to become subscription based, and offered subscribers access to our secret story bible, extra webcams and possibly mildly erotic massages from staff members. Even so Bungie clearly states that The online aspect of Halo 2 - apart from your Xbox Live subscription that is - will be free. Gratis. That means clans, stats, delicious kernels of Bungie.net information and anything else... What is more interesting however, is that the Halo developer suggests that free downloadable content is also a very strong possibility for the game.
If you wish to read the full Bungie rant regarding the rumours follow the download tab above.
