Requiem for the future: a day with Halo 4

In many respects, Halo 4's situation is the stuff of nightmares. 343 Industries is tasked with guiding one of the biggest franchises in video gaming history into the next generation of consoles, all while starting that relaunch on the current generation Xbox 360. They're assuming the reins of the de facto face of Microsoft's gaming division after the departure of Bungie Studios, who created the series in 2001. They're releasing the first true sequel in the series post-Call of Duty paradigm shift.

No pressure.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Kirkland, Washington, home to 343i's gigantic studio space. At 9am, it was still quiet. Most employees had only been gone for a few hours or so. Above the studio floor was a countdown timer that had crossed its threshold. I asked Bonnie Ross, studio head of 343i, what it was for. She explained that it was their Zero Bug Release deadline. The studio had actually overshot their projected deadline by a bit, but had reached ZBR. At least for a few hours. It's one of the final stages of development, what you might call the penultimate "oh shit" moment before a game is submitted for certification.

Halo 4 is almost here. Microsoft, Halo fans, and general audiences all have their own set of massive, possibly conflicting expectations for the game. Cliches like "tall order" are inadequate. The situation 343i has walked into with Halo 4 is better described as just shy of "fucking impossible." But after three years of development, 343i finally gave me a chance to play a significant portion of the singleplayer campaign, along with some of Halo 4's War Games and Spartan Ops multiplayer modes. And 343i just might pull it off.

MOST PLAYERS HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED AT THE END OF HALO 3

Halo 4 opens on the derelict remains of the Forward Unto Dawn. Set almost five years after the Master Chief and Cortana destroyed the Ark, a Forerunner installation hidden beyond human/Covenant space (and accessed via a portal buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth), the star-crossed pair are adrift, the Dawn's hull sheared in half by the devastation of the Ark's destruction. With the Chief in stasis, Cortana has been monitoring communications, sending out a regular distress signal - and, in an attempt to explain the Chief's new look in Halo 4, making changes to his armor.

If you're already lost, you're not alone. In a presentation, Halo 4 executive producer Kiki Wolfkill acknowledged the very basic challenge Halo 4 faces from a storytelling perspective. It's been five years since Halo 3, with a steady release of games that only complicated the series' fiction. To be more blunt, many players have no idea what happened at the end of Halo 3, or how the Master Chief and Forward Unto Dawn end up on the cusp of the Forerunner world Requiem.

"We philosophically approached that story knowing that a lot of people were going to be lapsed players, or had never played a Halo game before," franchise development director Frank O'Connor told me. That said, while astute players may find information about Halo's history early on in the first level, "Dawn," Halo 4 desperately needs a substantive explanation of the events of the series before the game starts, and I don't know if it's there or not.

This event wasn't going to address that concern, shy of an extended conversation with O'Connor about the general storytelling philosophies of Halo 4 and 343i's stewardship over the franchise. Instead, 343i spoke in generalities. Halo 4 will tie the disparate threads of previous Halo plot elements together more tightly. The relationship between the Chief and Cortana, along with Cortana's apparent slip toward rampancy, will define much of Halo 4's drama and character development. But more specifics than that were hard to come by.

Instead, my time with Halo 4 seemed aimed at addressing two very specific facets of Halo 4: 343i's focus on redefining Halo's presentation, and their evolution of Halo's combat sandbox. And in that respect, I got much more than I expected.

WAR GAMES

Halo 4's rechristened multiplayer suite, War Games, hasn't changed substantively since I first played it at this year's E3 conference in June, but 343i did have a new map on hand in addition to the levels they showed at other events this year. The new map, Solace, reminded me of the Forerunner structures of Halo 3's Narrows level, courtesy of it's twin parallel walkways and jutting off of primary bases on either side.

Solace seems more like the ancient prototype to Narrows, however, past its prime, oxidized and lit by a setting sun. It is, for lack of a better word, a pretty map. Tactically speaking, it's multi-tiered with several walkways leading to each level, and numerous pieces of the architecture jut out to break lines of sight for players hoping to hit opponents from a distance.

I found success using weapons that ricocheted off surfaces - namely, the Promethean Scattershot and grenades. Jumping to get a clear line of sight enabled use of DMRs and the like, though Solace feels designed primarily to get players up close and dropping in on one another.

More interestingly, the Promethean forces demonstrate a more interconnected series of strategies and tactics than the Covenant. Knights spawn Watchers, which hover over the battlefield and offer support via shields, healing, and a tractor beam that can catch incoming grenades and toss them back. Crawlers work in packs and attack asymmetrically from walls and will often flank unconventionally.

Flanking isn't new, but the speed and ferocity of the Promethean onslaught makes Covenant attack patterns look almost lumbering in comparison. When all three of the Promethean enemy types I encountered were on screen at once, they coordinated rapidly, and demanded prioritization that inverted the standard Halo loop.

In previous Halo titles, it often paid to take out all Grunts or all Elites first. In Halo 4, Watchers were always my default target. The few times I didn't address them quickly, they'd come back to haunt me once I had knocked a Knight's shield down and moved in for the kill, and that's assuming the Watchers didn't just drop a shield down in front of the Knights to stop me cold.

Later in "Forerunner," I had the chance to watch the revamped Covenant forces engage the Prometheans. Reminiscent of the massive emergent battles between the Flood and the Covenant in previous Halo games, there was nevertheless a different sort of back and forth here. The Prometheans proved more than capable of smart, direct assaults on Covenant positions, though they were never able to roll the Elite-led forces. While other players seemed eager to mix it up in these fights, I enjoyed the equally valid tactic of sneaking by.

This underscored an experience toward the end of "Dawn,"Halo 4's opening mission, where I needed to manually trigger the ruined Forward Unto Dawn's weapons systems - on the outside of the ship. Amidst a full Covenant assault in low gravity, I was murdered by beam rifles, covenant carbines, and plasma fire. I died again and again trying to formulate a plan to make it to the control point. My solution - I drew fire on one side of the map and then retreated to a series of trenches on the hull, sneaking around the other side to an access point to assault the undefended snipers remaining - felt organic. It felt exhilarating and tactical.

343I HAS TO MAKE SURE THINGS ARE CHALLENGING, NOT INFURIATING

It felt like Halo. The ability to deduce and execute on new unconventional attack strategies practically defines the series, and it was everywhere in the parts of Halo 4 I played.

Even amidst the Covenant's makeover - more vicious, more violent, and more militaristic than before - there's something almost comfortable about swinging behind the controls of a Covenant Ghost and splattering Elites and Knights alike on the windshield. But there are little changes, like the slower turning speed of a Banshee. Covenant weapons have also seen something of an upgrade, their anti personnel capabilities boosted. And the Battle Rifle and scoped Magnum are what you expect.

SPARTAN OPS

343i brought new "episodes" from their Spartan Ops online content initiative to play as well. If you missed our E3 preview, a quick synopsis: Spartan Ops is composed of free weekly co-operative campaign-oriented episodes (though they can be played solo as well), which are in turn composed of five daily missions. Spartan Ops will consist of seasons of content released exclusively via Halo 4 and Halo Waypoint post-Halo 4 release.

While 343i gave a taste of Spartan Ops at E3, this time they showed off a more vehicle oriented skirmish scenario called "Land Grab" that ultimately climaxed in three Wraith tanks bombarding Covenant positions with plasma explosions. Playing the scenario on Normal, I get the impression that four player posses should probably ramp the difficulty up to find a suitable challenge - we rolled over the elites and grunts in our way with little trouble, and the few fatalities that occurred were "friendly" in nature.

Next up was "Sniper Alley," which was, well, exactly what it sounded like. Full of elevated platforms and Jackals with Beam Rifles, "Sniper Alley" quickly turned into a foot race between team members to see who could make it farther, killing more enemies faster than everyone. This kind of competition may become the driving force for some players in Spartan Ops.

As much as 343i has added to the combat sandbox, it's the presentational aspects that are particularly apparent.

The two levels I was allowed to play demonstrated this in different ways. Halo 4's opening on the crypt-like halls of the Forward Unto Dawn set a different tone than the series has managed to strike in anything other than 2009's Halo: ODST. But the environmental storytelling in Halo 4 doesn't seem as ambient, for lack of a better term.

The first chapter caused me some consternation, in fact. For the first half or so, it seemed much more linear than I've come to expect from Halo games, and as the opening salvo in 343i's vision of Halo 4, I was concerned. The game has quicktime sequences, a first for the series that I can recall. Granted, they really are quick - not the extended mini-movies of more cinematic action games - but they're there. And the first time I saw one, I wondered what the hell 343i was doing.

Over the course of my 90 minutes or so with Halo 4's campaign, I came around. These moments were joined by other moments, like a climb up a shaft on the Foward Unto Dawn as the ship is torn apart by Requiem's inexorable pull, but they didn't dominate, and they served to move things forward in a more dynamic way than a cutscene or first person segment would have. And they all looked pretty fantastic.

Halo 4's visual overhaul was consistently impressive in my time with the game. The screens and video that 343i have released aren't cherry-picking the "good parts," they're indicative of a game that will in all likelihood come to define the end of the Xbox 360's life-cycle, visually speaking.

More importantly, the bits of character performance I saw were improved in such a way as build characters with clearer motivations than I think a Halo game has seen before. It's difficult to talk about without spoiling some minor and major plot points, but 343i's performance capture strategy, using techniques similar to Naughty Dog's work with the Uncharted series, are paying subtle but deep dividends thus far.

As I wrapped up my time with Halo 4, I looked around at some of the 343i staffers milling around the event. They looked tired. But they also looked excited at the reactions they'd seen from a day of press spending time with a game that has been kept almost completely under wraps for three years. As coming out parties go, this one seemed to go better than most.

After a few hours with Halo 4, I still have more questions than answers. I have no idea how the Chief and Cortana's relationship will develop and yield the kind of drama that 343i has promised. I don't know if the new engine will pull off the same sense of scale that previous Halo games have achieved amidst its graphical overhaul. I don't know how the Forerunners will tie into the Halo's already established canon. But I do know that I'm excited to learn the answers to the unanswered questions. And 343i seemscapable of delivering on all of these promises.

We'll see if they do later this year. Halo 4 arrives on Xbox 360 on November 6th.

Make sure you don't miss our interview with 343i development director Frank O'Connorand details on Halo 4's new Dominion mode.