boj4ngles

I highly doubt that 343 is going to show up at E3 with something groundbreaking simply because they are still very hot off the heels of Halo 4 and if they do have something planned to come out in 2014 then it will probably be a sort of expansion like ODST.

Now that being said, if there's any series that could get gamers who are on the fence about xbox one to give it a second look, then it is Halo. Afterall, Halo is still synonymous with xbox and despite the recent downfall in the series popularity, it is an immensely familiar product most people have had a positive experience with at some point or another. A reimagining could really get people excited.

The problem (and this is the problem that faces every game series) is in deciding what risks to take and what departures to make. In the past, the Halos series has always been very conservative and prudent in changing the series from entry to entry. After six games and over 10 years, the series basics haven't changed all that much. I think that 343 would be wise to not mess with the core gameplay. Keep it a sci-fi FPS with a two weapon limit and rechargeable health. Keep vehicle combat and highly differentiated enemy bots and weapons. But instead of making changes, make additions. I think the series would greatly benefit from a narrative, branching campaign sort of like in Star Craft II. Between missions, the player can interact with NPC characters as well as make subtle changes to the way their equipment in the campaign. They could also benefit from some RTS style play as an addition to standard missions, like in Black Ops 2.

I thought Halo 4 was actually a very strong entry in the series. After having several months to play it, I would definitely say it is top 3, both for its excellent campaign and multiplayer. Part of the reason it is so good is that the 343 knew not to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Evil, starving north koreans turn him into dog soup.

It doesn't work like that, we couldn't get a subpoena for live feed, at least not that I'm aware of. We could only subpoena information that has already been collected and is the property of a defined entity, in other words their consumer business records. So if for example Microsoft was using Kinect to record information, either video or audio, and then storing that information in their servers for later use, then we could subpoena it. Now I've never done this but in theory it is possible.

Say for example you pirated a music or video file through pay per download site like rapidgator or mega (not saying you ever have, just as a hypothetical). If some law firm subpoena'd the PPD for business records, and if you had a premium account with one of those sites, then it's possible they might come up with an email address you used for making your account but still don't have your name. Well if it's the same email used to create your xbox live account then they could subpoena Microsoft for any business records linked to that email which could identify john does that are defendants in their case. And if they were nasty then they would specifically request video and audio information. I admit it is morally grey but as far as I know it is legal.

Now all that being said, their is a provision in place to protect consumers. If a company is going to provide consumer business records in compliance with a subpoena, they need to notify the consumer in question and that consumer has a time period (I think it is 30 days in CA but I might be wrong), to file an objection. The problem is that many companies I would subpoena were notoriously bad about notifying their consumers. They would often send a single email with no follow up and the consumer would never respond. This is great from the perspective of the plaintiff because they get all the consumer business records but sucks for the consumer.

Well let me give you a real world example that might not seem so paranoid, an example I'm not proud of but is relevant nonetheless. I used to work at a law firm and one of our specialties was suing people for libel and slander committed anonymously online. Sometimes our clients would be business owners trying to go after someone who said something false about their business on some forum. Sometimes they were just a rich person who got in a flame war and decided they were going to really ruin someone's year by suing them. We were also approached by various anti-piracy outfits to see if we would work with them.

In all these instances, the first step is to file a complaint in court against a Jon Doe or various Does. Once that's done we can then start a series of subpoenas against websites or ISP's to identify the real world identity behind an online identity. In theory, if I found someone's email address and I suspected that they had an xbox live account, I could then subpoena Microsoft for information leading to the account holder's identity. One client we had wasn't even interested in recovering monetary damages for defamation, he just wanted to dig up dirt on a business competitor and then make it public in documents filed with the court.

The point is that digital information can be obtained if someone wants to go after it. Today you may be confident that you have nothing to fear but you can't know what you will be doing in the future. In the meantime, we need to have reassurances from the companies we trust with our personal lives that they do have their consumer's best interests at heart.

Call me paranoid but their unveil of the new kinect was not exciting, it was creepy. So my xbox is designed to be on 24/7 with a camera that has facial recognition and voice recognition? Microsoft needs to come out very clearly about their policies regarding the collection of user's data, how it is stored and under what circumstances it is shared. I used to work at a law firm specializing in litigation and I know from experience that it is very easy to subpoena a company like Microsoft for their business records regarding customers.

Knowing only what I know today about xbox 1, I can't say I would play on one even if it was given to me for free.

Actually the real reason ZDT lost was because its director, Bigelow, had won best picture with her last film (Hurt Locker) and that film was way better than ZDT. Also it was outclassed. Django, Lincoln, and Beasts of the Southern Wild were all better than ZDT. They were also better than Argo but that's another matter.

@nivash: There's no question that DICE are fantastic at building the aesthetics for a Modern Military FPS. I remember when I played the BF3 beta for the first time and hearing the wizz of incoming sniper fire was just wicked sweet. From uniforms to weapons to just battlefield scenery, they are clearly committed to presenting something that looks realistic and serious (unlike COD).

I just wish they would take a little of that creative vision into their campaigns. It was not too long ago that the early Rainbow Six, Delta Force, and Ghost Recon games were trying to feel like something that could actually have a maybe 5% chance of happening in real life. Now we get Russian invasions of Paris and marines who escape CIA custody in NY to chase a nuke on a subway. It's Michael Bay crap. The missions in the campaign aren't really missions at all. They have no actual objective except to move from point A to point B, then to point C, etc. and kill the hundreds of enemy clones along the way. Remember when the Al Quaeda branch in Algeria captured an oil facility and held the workers hostage a few months ago? What if DICE used a scenario like that for a mission and gave you the ability to set up an attack plan for your forces ahead of time? I think it would be awesome. It'd have a lot more replayability than anything they're making now, that's for sure.

@seppli: Oh I've played BF:BC1. It's not semi-open world at all. The levels are a little more spaced out than your average Modern Military FPS corridor level, but it's still a pretty bland. At most I'd say that it sometimes feels a little bit Halo-like in the way you drive vehicles from point A to point B. That's not open world. And yes I've flown the Hind. I think you might be exaggerating when you say that the campaign captures some of the multiplayer's essence. It really is just another FPS campaign. Or at least that's how I played it.

Well here I am, the gaming cynic you have so accurately foresaw foreseen. We obviously don't know a whole lot yet except for what we saw in "Fishing in Baku" so it may be premature to make predictions but here is my read on things anyways.

As far a single player campaign, BF4 looks like another eight hours of crap. Enemies will just hide behind a piece of cover and pop up every few seconds. They won't employ tactics anymore than those little whack-a-moles at Dave and Busters. Likewise, the player will be encouraged to use this style most of the time. Sometimes there will be a sniping segment. Sometimes there will be on-rails vehicle chases. These segments will be totally indistinguishable from their numerous ancestors across the genre. It will never matter what weapon you have unless you are trying to decide between a shotgun or a rifle. Apparently there is now some mechanic whereby you can tell allies to attract the enemies' attention and thereby flank them. But rush/flanking enemy bots in the bad company games and in BF3 was already available so I don't see how this is any real improvement aside from cosmetics. As expected, your allies can't really do damage (at least not that we've seen) and they certainly can't execute a plan you lay out for them like "breach these two doors to the house simultaneously while one dude covers the windows from a sniper's perch". And of course they are invulnerable, just dropping to the ground and playing dead for a few seconds before getting resurrected.

But all this goes without saying when the developer is intent on delivering another Michael Bay style clusterfuck as opposed to something that tries to resemble modern military science. The player is thrown out of moving cars, crashes through collapsing buildings, runs from an enemy helicopter circling at 100 feet above the ground before it spectacularly explodes for no reason. This is not the kind of game that embraces player agency. You don't play through twice with a different experience. It might kind of look like the multiplayer experience, but in terms of gameplay it is the complete polar opposite.

As to multiplayer, well like I said we don't know much but the short development cycle would lead one to expect that they aren't changing much. That's fine with me because BF3's multiplayer was great. I've heard rumors they will add the Chinese as a faction and that seems great. My own opinion is that BF3, like it's parent BF2, worked best when played as a kind of "simulator of a military simulator". The player always knew they weren't flying a plane or helicopter in a complicated aircraft sim, but it kind of felt like that nonetheless. They knew they weren't pursuing realism through tactics like in the Arma series, but when they played with their friends in squad it kind of felt like that. This is why it feels like a deeper gameplay experience than COD. The Bad Company multiplayer had a distinctly different feel from BF3 in that things were faster, more "jumpy", more arcade like, less simulator. I liked Bad Company but I liked BF3 too and hope that DICE doesn't try to take BF4 back in this direction but keeps the franchises distinct.

And no offence but having helicopters in on-rail segments sounds like a bad idea. Remember how anticlimactic the aircraft carrier level was in BF3?

I have to confess that overall, the HOTS campaign was a bit disappointing. I don't know if I have a favorite mission but the first mission, the last mission, and the one where Gen. Warfield is sending gorgon battle cruisers were all pretty good.

BTW, anyone know if there is a hidden mission?