ZIZZY’s blog

Bungie’s Weekly Update just went up, and it contains a few interesting things regarding Halo 3. First, a few rumors are cleared up; contrary to a recent rumor, Halo 3 will not be running at 60 fps and 1080p:

1080p at 60 fps is awesome for fighting games and barely a stretch for Live Arcade games. But if you want epic battles, dozens of bad guys, huge vistas and colossal structures, with advanced AI, HDR lighting and explosive physics, then you’re not getting those at 1080p at 60fps. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate – Halo 3 will display at 1080p through the Xbox Elite with its scaler and HDMI port, but not natively. We’ve seen it do just that and it looks utterly lovely. So if you have a 1080p TV, enjoy it yourself in a few weeks. Most people, and I mean the VAST majority of people don’t have a 1080p TV, so it would be foolish to sacrifice even a single feature for a bullet point number on the back of a box.

So much for that. Then there was the event would take place on May 11th:

May 11^th was mentioned in a San Jose Mercury News blog as an “unveiling” date for Halo 3. Of course Halo 3 was in fact “unveiled” at E3 a year ago. The May 11^th date simply refers to a Public Beta preview for the press so they can get their stories done for the real Public Beta launch a few days later.

So it’s really nothing spectacular, just an early look at the beta for select people. There was more than just rumors being cleared up though, and some details were given on the matchmaking and split screen that will be available in the beta:

Since we’re testing matchmaking, you won’t have the kind of control you’re used to with custom games, but we’ll be there to guide you into a very nice selection of Matchmade game types – and don’t worry, the playlists will almost certainly have your gametype in there, in some shape or form.

You’ll also be pleased to hear that split-screen will be an option, although limited to two people in the Public Beta. We’ve also done something cool with the splitscreen display for HD monitors – instead of stretching the horizontal or vertical axes into big, scary too wide or too tall horrors, we’ve sensibly windowed the action, maintaining lots of screen real estate, but preserving a proper, playable aspect ratio.

They also shared some information on another map (although not for the beta), which sounds like it would be quite a blast to play:

Perhaps more enticing is the mention of a VERY large map that went from being just about the most empty, soulless placeholder geometry in the entire game, to one of the moodiest, most atmospheric and beautiful maps we’ve ever made. It’s also the single largest multiplayer map. You pretty much need a vehicle to get around in it, so luckily, destroyed vehicles respawn super-fast.

Vehicle dominated maps are usually fun, and this should be no exception. They also revealed the controls for the beta (although they most likely will change by the time the full game releases):

Don’t worry if you don’t like it though, as it can of course be customized - that is merely the default.

Last but not least, they included a brand new image (seen at the top). It certainly is beautiful, and perfect for a desktop background. Make sure to look at the full resolution picture too, as the small one definitely doesn’t do it justice.

Now that you’ve gotten to here, check out Bungie’s full post for more, along with information on the problems people have been having downloading the new Halo 2 maps.