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Halo 2 Confirmed For Fall 2004
Jeremy Parish writes "Bungie has finally announced that Halo 2 will ship this Fall for Xbox, as relayed via 1UP. But to make up for this semi-distant release date, they've released the first Halo 2 multiplayer screen!" Over at Halo.bungie.org, they point out a Bungie development update noting the new screenshot is "...entirely representative of the lighting, polygon counts, bump-mapping and particle effects", and also refer to the original Bungie.net announcement, clarifying: "A number of people have been confused by the title of this news item. The game is NOT named 'Halo 2: In Reach of Fall'. This is just a reference to the title of novel The Fall of Reach.)"
entirely representative of the lighting, polygon counts, bump-mapping and particle effects
Certainly not representative of screen resolution though, unless the xbox can display 1600x1200 on any TV.
It doesn't look any different from the first one. Will it have more than a handful of multiplayer levels? Will I be able to make my own mods with the engine? (for the PC version obviously) Is it going to be as damn repetitive as the first one?
yeah, god forbid the game display some consistancy with the storyline.
/gameplay/. I'd say the level design in most multiplayer UT/Q3 maps is lame rehash too. But the games played in those maps are still pretty damned fun.
Sure, they reused the maps, but they balanced the areas and encounters entirely differently. Was that 1/3 of the game less fun because you'd fought around that same hill, tree, and patch of ice a few hours earlier? Or is it ok to admit that so long as the game played differently when you moved through that same area again, it wasn't quite as bad as everyone would like to make it out to be. Or did you have absolutely no fun flying around with the banshees, just because you'd run through those valleys before?
An philosophical/artistic qualm with level design is not a valid critique of
the blue player on the left is not shooting at the blue player on the right. The blue player on the right is being shot by the red player on the right. Notice that the red player and the blue player are pointed at each other firing their weapons, thats how you can tell.
The weird blocky effect on the antenna is a result of the antenna "wobbling." Perhaps you'll recall the antenna on the scorpion tank in the original halo. It flopped back and forth. The antenna is apparently not supposed to be a stiff metal rod, but bendable. It wobbles when the vehicle moves. Load up Halo, get in a scorpion and check it out.
I loaded up the image in photoshop and dropped it down to 640x480. It looks a lot shittier, big duh.
Bungie never announced a release date for Halo 2 up until today, so nothing's been "pushed back" or "delayed." Still... FALL!? I recognize how much of the H2 demo played by the Bungie guys was scripted and limited in scope, but it was still an example of where the engine was.
The screenshot released today shows that they have functional multiplayer now, too. Beta testing should take a few months, but it seems to me that Halo 2 is clearly past the alpha stage at this point.
So why 8-10 months more? Even IF they're still in alpha, they've got to be in late alpha by now... I just don't see how it'll take that long. Maybe that's my fault... perhaps a lack of experience with game development and emotion are clouding my vision on this. I'm willing to accept that, and I don't think that I'm "owed" anything, even an explanation... but damn it, I'm disappointed and saddened by this news.
Even on the off chance that Bungie is just screwing with our heads, I've still lost some of my confidence in them. Hell, if they ARE screwing with our heads, I'll be angry at them for toying with their fans' emotions.
I'm going to go distract myself before I get depressed.
~UP
Eat the Path.
This is not a 1st person perspective picture. It's not representative of a 1st person shooter. The viewpoint is too low and there's no HUD. You will never see screens like this when you own the game.
FYI, Bungie has built in camera settings to their engine to stop any kind of action, move the camera where they want and take a snapshot. This really isn't all that new. Think of it similar to Quake 3 when playing online and being able to "fly" around the map when your not playing and watching the other players duke it out. This is the main method that companies use to create their press release stills and such. What did you think they do? Hold a camera up to the monitor and take a picture? Bungie had tons of pictures like this from the first Halo, and I believe that someone actually has created a small program or found out how to use this camera for taking pictures in the PC version.
-my other sig is your mom
Being a game programmer, and more specifically, having worked on the XBox, I have to say you are wrong. Halo 1 did not push the XBox hardware that much, the machine has a LOT more power in it. And as a game developer, sure I can do things on the PC that I can't do on any of the consoles, but I effectively have to write the game twice, once for the low end PCs, and again for the higher end hardware. Either that, or I have to cut out the lowed end PC market, at which point its probably no longer worth it. In addition, although consoles have technically lower specs than a PC, we can often do more with it, primarily because developing a game takes 1 to 2 years, at least. This means that on the PC, I am trying to write code for a system that doesn't even exist yet, I'm trying to hit a moving target. On a console on the other hand, its a static target, and the longer I work on a particular platform, the more performance I can I get out of the machine.