Halo 3

Development, Release, and Reception

Halo 3 was officially announced at E3 2006 with the first cinematic trailer, and Bungie continued to throw the groveling masses bits of information on it's weekly update up to the games release. Halo 3 was developed using an in house engine commonly referred to as the Halo 3 Engine. The engine utilizes advanced graphics tech including High Dynamic Range, Global Lighting and depth of field effects in the cutscenes, Motion Blurring was added in the main game but wasn't in the beta. Halo 3 uses normal, bump, and parallax mapping to increase the detail of models but  keeping the number of polygons down. Halo 3 has over 50,000 pieces of audio (40,000 of them being NPC dialogue) a drastic improvement over the previous two games (halo 2 having about 15,000) in fact separate recordings for both distant and near gunfire were made and if the player were to hear distant gunfire it might actually be an NPC shooting and not just ambient noise.

Voice Actors

• Steve Downes as Master Chief.
• Jen Taylor as Cortana
• David Skully as Sergeant Johnson and the Elites
• Keith David as the Arbiter
• Tim Dadabo as 343 Guilty Spark
• Ron Perlman as Lord Hood
• Robert Davi as Rtas Vadum

Along with several voice acting cameo appearances from RvB and Joss Whedon's Serenity characters.

Halo 3 was advertised using every marketing technique imaginable, including viral ads, game trailers, pre rendered CGI, four Developer Diaries, real time cinematics, Beta tests, product tie ins, even live action film. Also, before and after the release many interviews with Bungie personnel were conducted by the gaming press along with many magazine stories. In addition to the astounding amount of advertising money poured into the launch, Halo 3 was plagued by leaks, including a leak of the games test Beta before it's gold release (confirmed to have been 99.99 percent complete), Microsoft has responded by banning the gamertags of people caught playing it until the year 9999. In the weeks leading up to the game many pre release (pirated) copies were seen for sale on E-bay, and a catalog retailer accidentally released copies of the game for sale a little early - this was confirmed as an honest mistake, and Microsoft is not punishing Argos (the retailer) for the error.

Halo 3 received  favorable reviews from many critics, and with an average of 94% in reviews, it's the sixth best reviewed game on the 360. The single player aspect though, had mixed reviews some saying, it was too short, others going so far as to say certain levels left a rotten taste in their mouth, while others saying it was anything but disappointing. The favorable reviews along with multiple record breaking sales fueled the games popularity as sales skyrocketed all the way up to the release of the map packs. Halo 3 has received several awards from several sources, including game of the year awards, runner ups for best shooter, best multiplayer, most addicting game of the year, and several more.

Promotion

The summer prior to Halo 3's launch Pepsi released a new Halo specific Mountain Dew called Game Fuel. The flavor was a mix of Code Red and Live Wire, and the drink was discontinued early November. This may be due to the fact that the drink had a reputation for a horrible taste. Halo 3 also had an ad campaign in association with Burger King prior to the game's release.

In addition to these promotional tie-ins, 7-11 stores across the United States were equipped with a variety of Halo themed merchandise including three collectible slurpee cups and posters. The game was also sold in 7-11 stores for a limited time, even featuring a pre-order program. There were a variety of problems with this initiative, however, including the fact many staff members were unaware of the promotion as well as shipping issues on launch day.

Easter Eggs

Skulls

Bungie has expanded the original skulls easter egg from Halo 2. Now when you find a skull  you can turn it on and off at will as opposed to having to start a new save to turn it off. There are 4 silver skulls which don't give an achievement but go towards unlocking the Hayabusa armor, and 9 gold skulls which each have their own achievement and go towards unlocking the Hayabusa armor.
Cowbell Skull-This skull makes explosions larger
Catch Skull-makes enemies use grenades more often and also drop more when you kill them.
Blind Skull- makes your Heads Up Display removes your reticle, shield bar, How much ammo you have left ect.
Iron Skull- When you die you must start the level over from the last chapter.
Black Eye Skull- Beats enemies down to recharge your shields.
Grunt Birthday Party Skull- When you shoot grunts in the head their head explodes and confetti flies out.
Tough Luck Skull- Enemies are better at dodging explosions and vehicles.
Fog Skull- Removes your motion sensor.
Famine Skull- Makes dropped weapons supply you with less ammo.
Thunderstorm Skull- Enemies have more health.
IWHBYD Skull- Opens up new dialogue in the game.
Tilt Skull- Enemies armor is more efficient.
Mythic Skull- Enemies ranks are higher.
Look at the guide section to find out where to find them.

Ranks

In Halo 3 reaching different ranks requires the player to gain certain amounts of EXP and reaching different skill levels. Skill levels are increased when the player wins ranked games. EXP is gained from simply winning games which can be either ranked or unranked. One EXP is gained from winning a game, zero is gained from loosing a game and one EXP is lost for quitting out of a game early.

Title Update 1: Melee

In Bungie's first mandatory Title Update they fixed what many players where complaining about at the time, the melee system. Previously if both players melee'd each other at the same time, the play with the more shielding would die and there was a two second window that the system considered "same time". Do to the high level of complaints, Bungie came up with a new Melee system. The "Same Time" window was closed to about a second and the kill would often go to would hit first, if both players hit at the same time then both players would die. Ending in a some what humorous death as both players flopped backwards. Prior to this update the Elite shoulders, "Commando" were glitched so getting the "Overkill" achievement to unlock them didn't work. The update granted every player to be able to use the "Commando" shoulders regardless if they had the achievement for it or not.

Title Update 2: Ranking

In their online Weekly Update for August 1st, 2008, Bungie unveiled a new addition to the online ranking system to be implemented in the second mandatory Title Update for Halo 3.

The update offers players another visual representation of their progress in the online game, and serves to display precisely how many victories they have earned in any given matchmaking playlist. This is achieved by adding a new layer of specificity to the tracking of player EXP (EXP is a value that serves to illustrate how seasoned a player is in matchmade games). While a player's online Service Record still reflects their total EXP value, under the new ranking system, the player also has a visual EXP value (in the form of the same military ranks that previously existed in the online game) for each individual playlist. To clarify, this means that as a player wins more games in a particular playlist their overall EXP value responds as it normally would, but they also progress through the Halo 3 military ranks specific to that playlist. An example: A player may fancy the Team Slayer hopper over all others, and after some time and enough wins, obtain an EXP rank of General in the playlist -- however, if said player has only been competing in the Team Slayer playlist, they will have a playlist military rank of Recruit in the other playlists that they've been ignoring.

A common misconception among Halo fans after the announcement of this news was that the hard-fought rankings that they had toiled away for since first setting foot online would be made meaningless after the release of the update, because now any player who invested enough time in a certain playlist would reach the esteemed upper ranks in a much easier fashion. This concern was later proven to be immaterial, because no aspect of the previous ranking system was being modified, and the individual playlist rankings were not to be reflected in a player's Service Record.

Aside from the addition of the new ranking system, the second Title Update adds several "under-the-hood" fixes and updates. The details of these "invisible" changes were not explicitly fleshed-out, but the general overview given of the modifications indicate that they increase the functionality for auto-detecting malicious behavior and cheating over Xbox Live.

While initial rumors and speculation ran wild with the release of Bungie's Edge Acceptance speech, they have calmed the outcries of bots and campaign objectives by definitively stating that these things will not be appearing in multiplayer or forge.  While they have not explicitly said there will be no new mapmaker, they have talked about what the major September update will entail.  What began as a simple test of Epitaph and Snowbound without shield doors has led to the creation of two new maps, Epilogue and Boundless respectively.  While Epilogue is entirely without shield doors, Boundless still has those in High and Low base middle entrances.  These new maps will replace the existing ones; they will appear in matchmaking simultaneously, however in the long run Bungie hopes to have these maps become the dominant set.  In addition to these two, Sand Tarp is now a version of Sand Trap without the Elephant vehicle and with new flag capture spaces.  Pit Stop is a new version of The Pit with the upper spawn areas now inaccessible.  These same matchmaking policies apply to these two as well.  In addition to many other playlist changes the playlists Ranked Big Team Battle, Big Team Social, Rocket Race, and Head to Head are being taken away and new playlists coming in include Squad Battle, DLC FFA, and DLC Big Team Battle.  Bungie has not confirmed whether this is the extent of the update, or whether the new maps will require purchase, however their attitude toward matchmaking incorporation would indicate they would be free.