Intervista a 343 Industries su Halo 4, 5, 6 (Reclaimer Trilogy)

[Turrican3]

343 Industries has revealed the first details on Halo 4, due out in 2012 on the Xbox 360.

The next three Halo games, designed to take players on a decade-long journey, are collectively called the "Reclaimer Trilogy", a panel of 343 staff told an audience at Halo Fest this evening.

The planet both Master Chief and Cortana are seen heading towards at the end of Halo 3 when completed on the Legendary difficulty, and at the end of the Halo 4 E3 2011 trailer, is a "very mysterious" Forerunner planet on which we will see a "different aspect" of the alien architecture than we've seen in previous games.

"We're investing heavily in the look and feel of Forerunner," senior art director Kenneth Scott said.

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"You've lived with inert, static Forerunner abandoned structures," franchise development director Frank O'Connor said. "It's going to be really interesting to see a different aspect of Forerunner engineering and Forerunner architecture when it's not completely inert and dead and empty."

200 or so people are working on Halo 4, indeed have been doing so for a couple of years now. Staff from 25-30 different game studios are represented at 343.

"It plays like Halo," creative director Josh Holmes said. "It sounds simple but that was really important to us. As a team we were brought together by this love for this universe and this play experience, and we wanted to maintain the core of that magical Halo feel.

"But at the same time, it was important for us to have the courage to take risks and evolve the gameplay feel so it is fresh and different. It's this constant question of balance for us we've wrestled with since the beginning as a team. How do we maintain both what is the core of Halo, making sure it feels like Halo, while at the same time adding new weapons, new abilities, new experiences you've never had before in a Halo game?

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The game will explore Master Chief's character and personality in greater depth - although it does not touch on his origin.

"It is a direct continuation in a way of the events of Halo 3," O'Connor confirmed.

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Another aspect of the game discussed was multiplayer. Will Halo 4 cater to the competitive player or the casual player? "You look at the Halo community, it's such a diverse community," Holmes said. "There are so many different perspectives people bring to the experience. It was really important to us as a team to try to represent all of those perspectives and play styles and make sure we're striking the right balance between them and giving different players a different experience depending on what they're looking for."

Meanwhile, Scott confirmed the divisive design of Master Chief shown in the Halo 4 trailer was not final.

"The Chief you saw in the teaser is not the final Chief. We understand how important Chief is to this universe and the people who play him. We're probably on iteration number four right now. There's a lot of love and investment in making sure he's the best he can possibly be.

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Microsoft announced three Halo games at E3. Why? "It was important for us to signal to the fans and the community what our intentions were, our commitment to this story we want to tell," Holmes explained. "When we first started working on laying the plans for the Reclaimer trilogy a little over two years ago, we knew exactly the story we wanted to tell.

"A lot of what this trilogy is going to focus on is exploring the character of Master Chief and what it means to bring him back, and really getting a little bit closer to that character than we've ever experienced before in any of the past games. There's a lot of depth to John that exists primarily in a lot of the other fiction we felt we wanted to explore more deeply and lay a journey for him that would transform and evolve him as a character and a man."

Other interesting tidbits from the session included confirmation that access to the Halo 4 beta will not be included in the upcoming Halo: Combat Evolved HD remake.

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On co-op: "Co-op is a big part of the Halo experience and something we think about throughout the crafting of our campaign," Holmes said. "As our mission designers are building the campaign experience it's always top of mind."

And Halo's Forge feature will return. "Forge has been an engine for the community to create and share amazing creations, and it's something as a studio we believe very, very strongly in. We are continuing to invest and developing that toolset. Definitely that's going to be something that's a big part of what we do in Halo 4."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-08-28-halo-4-5-6-the-reclaimer-trilogy
(ho cercato di mettere le parti più importanti della lunga intervista)