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Bungie Weekly: Return of the flamethrower and the fourth grenade
No longer confined to the shackles of Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC, the flamethrower is making its triumphant return in Halo 3. IGN has all the technical deets on this powerful "new" weapon, along with the unveiling of the mysterious fourth grenade -- now known as the fire bomb -- and it's pretty much what it sounds like: awesome.Frankie took a break from the usual weekly banter and went with a Q&A format, revealing some interesting new tidbits regarding Halo 3. First off, the ladies have something to celebrate about this week as Frankie has confirmed that female Spartan voices are in for multiplayer. As for campaign news, the points and scoring system behind the single player meta-game will be explained before the game ships, so expect that sometime soon. Be sure to check out the update and see if any of your burning questions were answered.Another incentive to peep the update are the latest batch of pages from Halo: Uprising, due out "soon-ish" according to Frankie. Sigh ... we remember back when it was July!
Bungie Weekly: Further co-op details and the Forge
After this week's incredible news that Halo 3 would support four player cooperative play, we've been anxious to hear more. Frankie doesn't spill all the beans with this update, but he does reiterate some important facts. Again, co-op can be played both on- or offline via Xbox Live or system link play. While the maximum players per console is two, you can use any combination of split screen and non-split screen players. You'll be able to begin a game at the start of any level, or at an "Insertion Point," which can be thought of as a sub-chapter for that mission, according to Frankie. Regarding those Insertion Points, should a player be dropped or quit the game, all other players will be booted back to the lobby where they can then continue from an Insertion Point. That's the bad news. The good news is that compared to system link play, Xbox Live co-op is "practically identical when your connection is solid, right down to the instantaneous Lobby joining process." First superior Brutes and now incredible net code? It truly is time to get hyped. He also mentions that co-op will be easier this time around, even with the measures they've taken to keep things challenging. The bump to Legendary difficulty is encouraged and over at the NeoGAF forums, Frankie claims, "There are more things to reveal that will make co-op on Legendary double-Legendary." Finally, there will be a scoring system in place that is sure to provide a competitive atmosphere to the journey, awarding players for killing with style, amongst other yet to be revealed ways. A brief mention of Forge was made -- Halo 3's multiplayer games editor -- that makes it sound like we're going to have a lot to tinker with. Check the update for Frankie's story about an Elephant and a whole lot of explosives.
Bungie Weekly: fully functioning, real-world Warthog edition
We'd like to think that Frankie, doing his best Gandalf impression, rode into this weeks update through a white flash of brilliance -- the fully-functioning Warthog pictured above as his steed. Created for a series of Halo shorts by would-be Halo director Neill Blomkamp (the first of which we saw at E3), WETA's Warthog is built to correct scale and features the appropriate equipment mounted on back.The first order of business for this week's update had to do with the freak out concerning some illicit EGM scans and the possibility of Halo 3 shipping without online co-operative play. Frankie reiterates that while they told EGM that co-operative play will be available for both split-screen and system link play, they didn't say whether online co-op would be available. They're well aware of the demand for it and it's something -- like the rest of Halo 3 -- that they'll continue to work on.Everything else from tweaks to the Covenant Energy Sword to Contact Harvest author Joe Staten appearing at ComicCon can be found within the update itself. It's also worth checking out if you consider yourself to be the biggest Halo fan in one of many cities across the country for a very special reason.
