343 Industries' Kynan Pearson joins Podcast Unlocked this week to talk about the process of designing Halo 4's multiplayer maps.
Ryan McCaffrey, Mitch Dyer, and Destin Legarie talk about THQ's troubles, Mass Effect, SmartGlass, and Skyrim's next DLC.
Download Podcast Unlocked Ep. 76: Makin' Maps (MP3)
Mitch Dyer is an Associate Editor at IGN. He’s also quite Canadian. Read his ramblings on Twitter and follow him on IGN.
343 Industries has confirmed that The Flood will return in Halo 4. In a massive set of screenshots released today (which may contain campaign spoilers), Microsoft showed off The Flood in action, as well as a new map. The Flood will return in a new multiplayer mode called Flood.
Separately, during an event at the London Film Museum in Covent Garden last night, 343’s Frank O’Connor confirmed that Halo 4 is complete and ready for certification. According to Videogamer, O’Connor reported that "We had a big piece of news yesterday back in the office, which is that the game is literally finished at this point. They are handing it off through the various certification processes and that, and we're done. It's been three years of incredibly hard work by about 300 people." Developing story…
Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following him on Twitter or IGN.
If you've ever wanted to throw your skull before, you'll enjoy the changes planned for several multiplayer modes in Halo 4. 343 Industries announced today that players will be able to pass and catch the ball/skull/bomb in both Grifball and Oddball during its Halo panel at PAX. This news comes a day after the announcement of Capture the Flag (CTF), and a new War Games map, Exile. Similar to allowing the flag carrier to carry a Magnum in CTF, you'll also be able to weild a pistol while carrying the ball in Oddball. Assassinations are also possible which apparently vaporzize your enemies.
Here's the two modes in action.
Both modes themselves are carry-overs from past Halo games, Oddball featuring classic "earn points each second you control the ball" gameplay, while Grifball arms players with Gravity Hammers and Swords in a bid to score points by carrying the ball to the other team's goal.
Including a weapon in CTF makes enough sense given how wide open t=most CTF-ready maps are, but I wonder about adding a pistol to the ball-carrier mix given the typically smaller-sized arenas best suited for Oddball. There's something about relying solely on melee attacks that's always balanced out the gameplay, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays (343 only showed the mode off via its presentation, it wasn't playable).
In case you missed it yesterday, here's what we thought of the new CTF mode.
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343 Industries' boss Frank O'Connor has responded to fan concerns over the length of Halo 4.
After yesterday's achievement list leak pointed to the game containing just eight missions, O'Connor explained on NeoGaf that this didn't reflect how long each would be.
The main campaign is substantial and will compare favorably with previous entries in the series.
Posting as 'Stinkles', he wrote that the "Number of missions has no bearing on the length of the campaign. It's a Halo sized campaign. PLUS [Spartan Ops] etc."
His words were then added to by 343 Industries' designer David Ellis (as lybertyboy) who claimed that "[Spartan Ops] season alone is longer than [Halo 3: ODST].
"Spartan Ops and Campaign are completely separate teams. As Frank mentioned earlier, the main campaign is substantial and will compare favorably with previous entries in the series."
Spartan Ops is a new story-driven game mode set to feature in Halo 4 and will replace the Firefight mode that appeared in Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST. Gamers can play it on their own or co-operatively with up to three other players, and the first Season of Spartan Ops plans to deliver five new objective-based missions and cinematics each week over a 10-week period. It's this content taken in isolation that Ellis has claimed will consist of more content than Halo 3: ODST.
So it seems if you were concerned after yesterday's news then there's no need to panic. Halo 4 launches on Xbox 360 on November 6.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
Halo 4's achievement list has been revealed by developer 343 Industries, offering some slim insight into what tasks we'll undertake in the game.
Beware of spoilers below. There's nothing too soul-shatteringly revelatory, but don't say you haven't been warned.
Developing and designing these game-specific challenges might seem simple but is quite a bit more complex once you begin digging into the psychology of a gamer.
The achievements on offer were revealed in an update on Halo Waypoint by community manager Jessica Shea, who also explained some of the reasoning that went into the achievements' design.
"Developing and designing these game-specific challenges might seem simple but is quite a bit more complex once you begin digging into the psychology of a gamer," she shared.
"Our primary goal when creating Halo 4’s achievements was to reward milestones and increase replay value while balancing both difficulty and the breadth of game modes.
"Our secondary goal was to live up to Halo tradition with weird ass names for some of them (hello, The Dongblainer!). While you will only be able to speculate on the exact nature of some of these achievements, here’s a peek at their very basic in-game descriptions."
So, without further ado, the achievements you'll be testing your Spartan training to breaking point to achieve are:
Halo 4 will release on Xbox 360 on November 6.
Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Editorial Assistant. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter.
