Halo 4 News
Halo 4's multiplayer has been unveiled by 343 Industries.
The mode has been teased to be faster and more intense, while still offering Halo's trademark gameplay style. Players can customise their own Spartan IV both in terms of looks and abilities, with the chance to customise play styles and build unique loadouts into matches. Two maps have been revealed. Warhouse is a civilian manufacturing facility orbiting a gas giant, and is a spherical map with a focal point near a centralised mech platform. Meanwhile, Wraparound features a Forerunner solar facility that generates artificial sunlight and energy for a shield world, and offers circular catwalks and corridors for multiple routes. Halo 4's maps will be designed to tell more of a story, visiting locations beyond those explored in the campaign. 343 Industries will also offer a compelling backstory as to why the familiar red and blue Spartan teams will be fighting one another. Maps are being designed specially for competitive play, and won't be repurposed from campaign scenarios. While specifics of multiplayer haven't been revealed, Halo 4 will offer a "vast arsenal" of weapons, the return of medals, and familiar map features such as gravity lifts and man cannons. Halo 4 will also offer a redesigned HUD and a game engine with visuals and sounds built entirely from the ground up. "We really want to redefine that Halo multiplayer is, and make it so that it's something that's indisputably Halo at its core, but has evolved in important and innovative way," said creative director Josh Holmes at a press briefing attended by Digital Spy. "From a gameplay standpoint it's really about creating something that's true to that magical Halo feel but is faster, more visceral and intense in all aspects of the combat." Systems outside of matches will also be dramatically changed, and have been teased to be "unifying the surrounding experience for multiplayer and providing a new way for you and your friends that's unlike anything you've played before."
The mode has been teased to be faster and more intense, while still offering Halo's trademark gameplay style. Players can customise their own Spartan IV both in terms of looks and abilities, with the chance to customise play styles and build unique loadouts into matches. Two maps have been revealed. Warhouse is a civilian manufacturing facility orbiting a gas giant, and is a spherical map with a focal point near a centralised mech platform. Meanwhile, Wraparound features a Forerunner solar facility that generates artificial sunlight and energy for a shield world, and offers circular catwalks and corridors for multiple routes. Halo 4's maps will be designed to tell more of a story, visiting locations beyond those explored in the campaign. 343 Industries will also offer a compelling backstory as to why the familiar red and blue Spartan teams will be fighting one another. Maps are being designed specially for competitive play, and won't be repurposed from campaign scenarios. While specifics of multiplayer haven't been revealed, Halo 4 will offer a "vast arsenal" of weapons, the return of medals, and familiar map features such as gravity lifts and man cannons. Halo 4 will also offer a redesigned HUD and a game engine with visuals and sounds built entirely from the ground up. "We really want to redefine that Halo multiplayer is, and make it so that it's something that's indisputably Halo at its core, but has evolved in important and innovative way," said creative director Josh Holmes at a press briefing attended by Digital Spy. "From a gameplay standpoint it's really about creating something that's true to that magical Halo feel but is faster, more visceral and intense in all aspects of the combat." Systems outside of matches will also be dramatically changed, and have been teased to be "unifying the surrounding experience for multiplayer and providing a new way for you and your friends that's unlike anything you've played before."
Development of Halo 4
Halo 4 was officially announced on June 4, 2011, at E3 2011. Its development was revealed at the same time as Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Microsoft's UK entertainment director Stephen McGill saw the November 2011 release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary as a way to introduce a new generation of fans to Halo before the release of Halo 4. The game's creative team, which comprises nearly 200 people who have been developing the game since at least 2009, is led by creative director Josh Holmes. The game will continue the Halo series' tradition of inspiring wonder in the player while providing engaging, visceral gameplay. The game will utilize much of the "sandbox" that has been featured across all six prior Halo games and other media, in addition to introducing new characters, weapons, vehicles, and other elements. The game's "sandbox" and overall style are meant to be more evocative of Halo: Combat Evolved than of later installments. Master Chief's character will also be explored and developed in more depth than in the prior games, and the relationship between John and Cortana will be heavily featured and greatly expanded. The new design of the Master Chief's armor has undergone a number of iterations, and it has been confirmed that the design from the announcement trailer is not the final version. Developer Frank O'Connor said December 2 that both Master Chief and Cortana will undergo "radical" changes in appearance for the new game, some of them attributed to better graphics and others to story elements. The art director for Halo 4 is Kenneth Scott. He described the visual style of Halo 4 as being more ingrained in the expanded universe fiction, and more "mature" than before. With the game's increased focus on the Forerunners, the artists have invested heavily on the look and feel of Forerunner technology. It has also been stated that there will be more diversity to Forerunner structures, including fully active Forerunner technology as opposed to the mostly inert and abandoned structures seen in the earlier games. Sotaro Tojima, best known for his work on Konami's Castlevania: Circle of the Moon and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, serves as Halo 4's audio director. The team has performed many live audio recording sessions, several of which occurred in Tasmania, Australia. Some of these recording sessions have taken place in generally inhospitable environments, such as underwater, in fire, and in ice, through the use of specially designed microphones; other recording sessions have utilized "home made" explosives. Tojima intends for the game's audio to be clearly grounded in the Halo universe, though to also have a more realistic quality than in past titles. On April 11, 2012, it was announced that British record producer and score composer; Neil Davidge would be the lead composer for the soundtrack of Halo 4. Neil intends to add "a touch of romance" to the score as well as adding more electronic sounds whilst still keeping it grounded in the Halo universe. He intends to keep the feel that Martin O'Donnell originally created 10 years ago but will not use any of the previous themes composed for previous games, opting instead to create a whole new set for the new trilogy