Halo 3 is in the history books, you were playing Call of Duty 4, but soon you will be playing Grand Theft Auto IV. Eventually though, you will be wanting some brand new action with everyone’s favorite Spartan and we cover some of the possibilities.
Editor’s Note: This article contains Halo 3 plot spoilers, and should not be considered a true preview of a game. Halo 4 has not been announced, and this article is purely speculative, however provides evidence that Halo 4 is on the horizon.
Halo 3 seems like it was released years ago, Grand Theft Auto IV is here, and Gears of War 2 is coming at the end of 2008. Let’s be honest, while we all love certain series and titles on the Xbox 360 (Condemned in my case) there are few games that the vast majority of us will play no matter what, and the Halo series is one of them.
Many people believe that Halo 3 was the true finale to the ongoing series, with the franchise continuing with the Ensemble Studios developed Halo Wars, and the upcoming Peter Jackson/WETA Digital/Bungie Studios developed episodic Halo game. This couldn’t be far from the truth however, as Bungie and Microsoft both have carefully worded Halo 3 as ”an end to an epic storyline/saga” meaning Halo 4 will undoubtedly come to fruition in the future.
So what evidence do we have that Halo 4 is even coming? Well obviously the first is the very last bits you get at the ending of Halo 3 once you beat the game on Legendary difficulty:
The video obviously depicts Master Chief and Cortana heading towards a mysterious alien planet, complete with cliffhanger music ending on a crescendo. VideoGames Blogger has a very telling article that points to evidence and hints by the developers of Halo 3, Bungie Studios. A few things are certain however, Bungie’s next project isn’t Halo 4, as they have already stated, it is an episodic game based on the Halo universe developed alongside WETA.
So when will Halo 4 be released? While Bungie Studios became independent of Microsoft shortly after the release of Halo 3, Microsoft is still a minority owner of the company, and the staff of Bungie needs to pay their bills. Bungie is probably working on a new intellectual property completely unrelated to the Halo universe, but they aren’t going to forget what made them big. Bungie will also release the game when it makes sense. Gears of War 2 out later this year, along with at least one Halo game (Halo Wars), and Gears of War 3 by 2010, there is almost no space for a completely new Halo game to continue the ongoing main series until 2011-2012. Coincidentally, 2011-2012 falls in line with analyst expectations when a new Xbox system would be launched. The game would usher in completely new technology and give Microsoft a perfect system seller, and “killer-app” from the very beginning. Any kind of new technology Microsoft implements into the new system besides better graphics and processing, such as motion-sensing control would probably be a prominent part of the game.
Another scenario is that it would be released on the Xbox 360, pushing some of the new system sellers for Xbox 360 (such as Gears of War) until the new Xbox system came out, so that Microsoft could cash in on the number of Xbox 360 units sold, similarly to the sales of Halo 2 on the original Xbox. The original Xbox, Halo was undoubtedly it’s best launch title, and one of its best up until the release of Halo 2, but many people held off on buying an Xbox or even Halo until Halo 2, understanding it would be the better product. By that time Microsoft made massive sales of Halo 2, quickly eclipsing that of the original that was released three years earlier. Similarly, had Halo 3 been somehow released when Xbox 360 launched in November 2005, they could have only sold as many units as there were Xbox 360 systems, and they wouldn’t have had enough time to market the game. Halo 3 has since outsold the original Halo as well, and is close to matching Halo 2’s sales. Lastly, Microsoft and Bungie could opt to actually spread out and support other franchises, giving the ongoing Halo series a breather until sometime after the third Xbox system is released, but that wouldn’t make practical business sense for Microsoft, which bragged about the launches and profit of Halo 2 and Halo 3 more than most other major Microsoft software releases (including Windows XP, Windows Vista, and other software).
The story would be where Halo 3 left off; perhaps echoing the sentiments Cortana had for Master Chief throughout the narration of Halo 3. The duo would crash land on the strange planet, and Cortana would somehow “calibrate” Master Chief similarly to the beginning of 1-3 with checking if you wanted normal or inverted controls. What would follow would be the journey of MC discovering the hostile inhabitants that would obviously be planning an assault on Earth for some reason, and his reunion with the UNSC that would be fast approaching the mysterious planet throughout the campaign.
The gameplay will probably go through some significant changes as well; and not just the “baby-step” changes between 1, 2, and 3 but “borrow” ideas from some of today’s more popular FPS shooters, specifically ideas like throwing back grenades, sprinting, and using cover. As always we can expect plenty of technological improvements from their last games. The differences in how well the hardware was used in all the Halo games are very apparent, and this will be no different in Halo 4. If it is on Xbox 360, expect it to blow everything out this year and perhaps beyond out of the water, and the online play to raise the standards even higher. The Forge mode that was introduced in Halo 3 that allows players to manipulate maps will be expanded upon, and Bungie.net will be even better connected to the experience in Halo 4. Of course, most of this is speculation, fueled by hopes and dreams for how Halo 4 should be, but you can always get in on the speculative fun and hypothesize on XE’s Halo 4 thread.
