10 New "Halo 4" Headlines From E3

Halo 4 is undoubtedly one of the most anticipated games coming out this year, though sometimes it seems like there are as many people just waiting to lambast it as there are who can't wait to delve in.

After all, it's the first Halo game (besides Halo Wars, a strategy spin-off) ever to be developed by a studio other than Bungie, who've moved on to develop a new sci-fi series with Activision.

At the helm instead are 343 Industries, headed by the likes of Frank O'Connor and Kiki Wolfkill, two Halo mega-fans who sat down with us at E3 to show off the fruits of their labors.

Frank, or "Frankie" to fans, is 343's Franchise Development Director, and Kiki is the game's Executive Producer. Both were enthusiastic as they played the game and answered our questions.

"With Halo 4, we do look at it as the start of the next 10 years, the start of a new saga for Halo. Our aspirations are definitely to deliver on an epic sci-fi experience. I think that's a key piece of Halo, and to be able to deliver on that mystery and that awe and that sense of wonder, of being somewhere new and alien," O'Connor said. "It's been a long plan, but it's about to pay off."

Check the next ten slides to learn 10 new things about Halo 4—including some of our own insights, as we were lucky enough to play the game's multiplayer ourselves. Let us know what you think in the comments or on Twitter.

Halo 4 will pick up exactly where Halo 3, the last game in the series chronologically, left off—sort of.

You see, it takes place five years after Halo 3's ending, which saw the Master Chief locked in cryogenic sleep as his heavily damaged spaceship floated lazily toward an unknown planet.

"We pick up where that left off. You're going to go down to that world, and there you're going to be introduced to a bunch of new mystery, but also to a new adversary," O'Connor told us. "The new adversary are the Prometheans, and they bring with them a lot of story obviously but also elements that we add to the Halo sandbox."

The best news for Halo fans is that with a return to the series' chronological storyline and the end of Halo 3 comes the return of a familiar face—or, rather, a familiar visor.

Bungie may have intended the Master Chief to be ambiguously laid to rest, but 343 and Microsoft appear to have had zero qualms about waking him the fuck up and yanking him out of retirement.

The entire campaign is built around the Chief, or John 117, as his friends know him, and Halo 4 will focus more on him than any previous Halo games have.

If you've read the Halo novels, then you already know that John is a much more interesting character than the games so far have given him credit for, so it'll be nice to see that reflected in Halo 4. We still don't care whether we see the guy's face, though.

Games like Halo 3: ODST, Halo Wars, and Halo: Reach have explored side-stories and prologues to the previous trilogy's tale, but Frankie said that from now on, everything will be pertinent to the larger narrative.

"We realized that these things that take place in the alleyways and corners of the Halo universe aren't nearly as compelling or satisfying as the mainline story and the characters that people are familiar with," he said. "So it was a really simple decision: From now on, everything matters.

"So every piece of story content that we've added to the universe since that point will actually pay off in Halo 4. The characters that you've learned about, the technologies you've learned about, the mysteries of the Forerunner universe—everything's going to be in Halo 4. You're not going to need to read the novels to understand Halo 4—it will all be fairly self-contained—but it's a really sort of satisfying part of what the philosophy has brought to the story."

By the end of Halo 2, members of the alien Covenant have entered into an uneasy alliance with humanity, and that alliance grows throughout Halo 3 into a full-on truce. But 343 has thrown all that out the window because, hey, it's super-fun to pop Grunts in the face with a pistol.

We can't argue with that logic.

"The alliance with these particular Covenant is gone," Frankie told us when we asked why we'd once again be fighting Elites, Grunts and Jackals. "Every Covenant that you encounter in Halo 4 specifically is a bad guy, and that will be very apparent why at the start of the game."

Mercifully, at least, there will be no Flood in Halo 4, despite Frankie's insistence that he rather liked using them for target practice in past Halo games.

The Halo universe has been fleshed out over anime, comic books, and ten novels, including Glasslands by Karen Traviss and Greg Bear's Halo: Cryptum and Halo: Primordium (with a third "Forerunner Trilogy" book due at some point from Bear).

Much of the lore that will be explored in Halo 4 is set up in the books from these two authors, including the massive UNSC Infinity starship and Spartan IV soldiers in Traviss's and the Promethean enemies and other mythology in Bear's.

"I would point out that to the layman it doesn't matter because we will encapsulate all that, but at the start, everything that we did for the last few years has been planting the seeds in building the structure and scaffolding for this [Halo 4]," O'Connor said.

"So people who've read the novels are going to have so many 'ah-ha' moments that, if we did it right, we'll succeed."

Astute Halo fans may have noticed that some of the game's new weapons—including the Scattershot shotgun, the Light Rifle and the Repeater—actually resemble Covenant weapons pretty closely. And even more astute fans might remember that the Covenant based all their technology on the Forerunner relics they unearthed.

That begs the question: are the Prometheans actually Forerunners?

"They're certainly using Forerunner technology," O'Connor said. "The Prometheans are covered in the Greg Bear novels. I don't want to give away too much about the story because the nature of the Prometheans is actually pretty pertinent to that, but yeah, they're Forerunners effectively."

And their dynamic with the Covenant, who apparently aren't necessarily pleased to be meeting their benefactors, should prove interesting.

"You saw us just now fight the Covenant and then the Forerunners, and I can't get into too much, but they will interact with each other and in various different ways," O'Connor said. "Sometimes they'll be cooperating with you, and other elements they'll be resisting each other."

One of the most exciting new elements of Halo 4 is the Spartan Ops experience, a series of co-op story missions that take place six months after the conclusion of Halo 4's main campaign. The "Spartan Ops" missions will be released episodically, with each weekly episode containing roughly five 5-7 minute gameplay missions, and 343 said the first "season" will last "months rather than weeks."

O'Connor and Wolfkill stressed that the stories, like everything else in Halo 4, will "matter".

"The stories aren't just 'blow up the generator' and you see the generator explode in CG," Frankie said. "It's: you're going to meet really important characters and meaningful characters and things are going to happen to people you love, things are going to happen to actually change the course of the universe."

"Some of the biggest story beats to ever happen in the Halo universe are actually going to happen in Spartan Ops, so it's not just throwaway content by any stretch of the imagination," he continued.

Season 1 will be free to anyone who owns Halo 4, including those who buy it used or rent it. O'Connor wouldn't reveal any details beyond the first season, but said, "Obviously, if it's successful and people are enjoying it, it's something that we'd like to continue."

Halo 4's multiplayer experience has got a new name ("War Games") and some new features, but there should be enough classic Halo for every type of fan to enjoy, according to O'Connor and Wolfkill.

"It's absolutely an evolution of our existing multiplayer suite, and you can play all the classic games that you like—Capture the Flag and Slayer—but we've added a bunch of stuff," O'Connor said.

The biggest change in War Games is that, like everything else, it "matters" story-wise. Set on the UNSC Infinity, the biggest starship that humanity has ever built, War Games is the training and exercise program for the Spartan IV soldiers.

In addition to the new multiplayer storytelling comes other changes, including new loadouts that, like those in games like Modern Warfare and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, will allow players to choose custom weapons and abilities before matches.

Every player now has the ability to sprint, though only those who choose a specific perk in their loadouts will be able to sprint indefinitely. Other abilities include special visors, more ammunition, the ability to carry two primary weapons, and so on. That last one was our favorite, though we're sure there's a use for all of them.

Truly competitive Halo players—the kind who frequent Major League Gaming tourneys and never stopped whining about Halo: Reach's Armor Lock ability—are going to piss their pants when they learn that the infamous Battle Rifle from Halo 2 and Halo 3 will once again be rearing its divisive head.

The Battle Rifle is so powerful that it absolutely dominated competitive multiplayer in the second and third games of the original trilogy. There was basically no reason to pick up anything else, as the gun's three-shot burst made it all too easy to pull of headshot after headshot.

During our time playing "War Games" at E3, the Battle Rifle seemed slightly toned down. We didn't have any more luck with it than with the assault rifle, which has also been reworked to make it more balanced overall.

Then again, our time with the game was relatively brief, so you'll just have to decide for yourselves come November whether or not Halo was better without the BR.

After playing around in both "Spartan Ops" and "War Games", we started to realize that Halo 4 felt different—somehow—though it took several stiff drinks and lengthy conversations for us to realize exactly what the difference was.

The Spartan IV's must have heavier armor or something, because it turns out they move slower than we're used to moving in Halo games. We didn't get to use any vehicles, but movement on foot, at least, was definitely slower.

On the other hand, weapons seemed to fire, switch and reload faster, every player was able to sprint (and some indefinitely, depending on loadout), and there was no respawn timer—when you died. You could tap X immediately to get back into the action.

All that helped make Halo 4's reduced movement speed feel inconsequential, as matches actually played out faster, in some ways. It's a strange dynamic, and we can only hope that 343 has put in the testing necessary to determine if it's actually the right way to go, considering they have no plans to perform a public beta.

One thing's for sure: it certainly felt right to us.