A post on the teamxbox forums claims to have some interesting new details about Microsoft's XBox 360 Halo 3. The story offers some interesting insights into possible directions the game will take and we have to admit that they sound positive, if true.
When reading the details below please bear in mind that the post starts ...I've got a friend who is the uncle with someone working at the offices of Bungie. While we are sure that people who work at Bungie, possibly on Halo 3, have uncles, even the poster of the entry would have to concede that such an introduction is not a confidence booster.
According to the family involved then:
- Halo 3 will have a darker and more gritty story than the previous games.
- Bungie is working hard on maintaining an online cooperative mode supporting more than two players at once.
- Halo 3 will feature an impressive amount of cinematics. The opening scenes take place thousands of years before the timeline of the original Halo: Combat Evolved.
- The game will have a multiplayer mode pitting players against bots in scenarios directly connected to the story of the game.
- Bungie is also working on a map editor and movie maker which will come on a separate disc, and it has an entire team working just on these two projects. Players will be able to send and receive their maps/movies through Xbox Live.
- Zanzibar, Sidewinder and Hang Em High will return to the multiplayer mode, completely reworked. Zanzibar will be mangled and torn apart as though after the battle, the sky will be dark red. Sidewinder will have four legs instead of just two, with bases at each end. Hang Em High will have a massive tree at its center and the structure will be deteriorated.
- Bungie's target is to be able to support more than fifty players on Xbox Live for certain maps.
The information is very precise so we have to consider that it is either authentic or a deliberate hoax and not simple misinformation. Either way this news is entertaining and since Microsoft is unlikely to comment on any such story (why ruin the free publicity?) we are free to speculate at whim.
Expect a lot more Halo 3 hype as the, expected, spring release date approaches. After all this time Halo will not just be competing against other games but against an entire next-generation console; PS3.
