Chronique:BWU 12/02/2010

Posted by urk at 2/12/2010 4:05 PM PST

Every neuron in our heads are firing Reach, Reach, Reach.

The payload has been delivered. Noble Actual has taken back to the friendly skies, headed due north. By now you've been blown away by the beautiful and alien and huge media blast we deployed for Microsoft's X10 Expo festivities and the subsequent explosive inaugural ViDoc for Halo: Reach. If not, take a second to survey the damage for us.

Try not to squeal. Trust me. People will never look at you the same way again.

Halo: Reach ViDoc 1 - Once More Unto the Breach

"From the beginning, you know the end, but to start it all off the team tapped into a decade of creative experience in the Halo universe, focused on the best elements from Halo's past, and supercharged every aspect using a rebuilt engine and some surprising new twists."

So, yeah. I think I'm gonna let this just speak for itself for right now. I'm sure you'll have a whole ton of questions (there are already plenty peppering the forums). Rest assured we'll have answers before too long, but for now we're just gonna take this to moment bask in our own, self righteous glory. Feels good to lift the skirt. It was getting kinda pungent up in this piece.

And since the Reach Beta is now definitively set for May 3rd, you can bet we've got big, delta force type plans to bring you all kinds of tidbits about this deliciously crazy sausage over the next couple of months. After all, we haven't even shown squat from the multiplayer side yet. Hell, we haven't really shown you that much from campaign. This is what you might call the tip of the proverbial iceberg and you best believe that we're gonna take you on a deep dive before you swim around in the public beta pool.

Soon, dear friends. Soon™.

Visual Appeal[modifier]

In addition to our fancy Visual Informational Documentation (rolls off the tongue, no?) we've also added a heaping helping of new hotness to the Halo: Reach project page, to help facilitate your quest for mass consumption, I'll just go ahead and inline them here. The first three were snapped in the same campaign spaces our January batch sourced from, so you might note that there's been a bit more finishing work layered into the environment.

Of course, there's plenty of work to be done in the months ahead, so if stuff like the display on the Assault Rifle is sending you into a tizzy, take some deep breaths. It's all gonna be okay. We got this.

The second batch of images are what we internally call the Visual ID. This is the imagery we want to sear into your cerebral cortex anytime you hear the words Halo and Reach.

Sexy, ain't it?

There's more to be had in our Halo: Reach project page.

Multipurpose Powerhouse[modifier]

Also on display at X10, though the flythrough happened in private behind closed doors, was the multiplayer map, Powerhouse. We've seen some people freaking out a little bit about media coverage that made mention of Marcus calling Powerhouse out as a multipurpose space found both in Reach's campaign and multiplayer. That's totally true. Why would you even question Marcus? Ever? He's the boss of Reach.

But, as always, there's much more to this story. Not only is the team's approach to building out our multiplayer and campaign spaces different this time around in a number of ways, there's also some monumental stuff looming in Reach's multiplayer world that'll flip the script if all goes to plan. Sounds all kinds of mysteriously ambitious, doesn't it? It is.

You're Our Hero[modifier]

Though we thought our X10 Expo efforts this week were pretty heroic, they pale in comparison to your charitable support of our "Be a Hero" cause to raise cash for Haiti. While we had hoped that the Bungie Store sales would be a solid source of much needed relief capital, we were unprepared to see just how generous you, the Bungie community, could really be.

All told, as of yesterday afternoon, the donation total reached approximately $150,000.

If you've picked up a tee shirt from our storefront in support, we want to take a moment to say thanks. You are awesome. Amazing. Totally kick ass. And you have our gratitude.

We'll make sure your money washes up on Haitian shores and gets put to very good use. We know times are rough for a lot of people, so it's nice to note that even in times of economic hardship, our community still comes together to help those in need.

If you haven't yet donated, or came across some extra spare change, you still have time to lend a helping hand. "Be a Hero" will keep on keepin' on through the end of the month.

Thanks for helping us help Haiti!

Out with a Bang[modifier]

Hot on the heels of the LIVE team's restoration of the temporary offlineness of the DLC Map Packs for Halo 2, our own digital guru, Roger Wolfson, aka The Wolf, is ready to weigh in with one of his own rabid and nefarious plans.

Not only are we gonna give Halo 2 the send off it needs and deserves on April 14th, but Roger's gonna make participation worth your while should you happen to be planning on picking up Halo: Reach. Read on to learn more.

"You've already heard that we're planning to send Halo 2 out with a bang, but it remains to be seen if we're talking about a jolly New Year's Eve party favor bang, a SPNKr-hits-your-Banshee bang, or something more galactic like The Big Bang. So to make things interesting, we're going to give out a couple of party favors.

First up: Guess the final game number! You have one week to send a Private Message to the Bungie.net user, GuessTheGame. The subject of your communiqué should simply be a number, such as 802670688, and nothing else.

Editor's Note - Since we expect a large volume of participants, failure to comply will result in instant elimination. Because we're mean like that.

On Monday, February 22nd, we'll take note of the most recent valid submission per user and stop accepting new guesses. Then whenever the data stops flowing in the middle of April, we'll ask Bungie's own RocketMoose to see what the very last recorded game was, and declare the winner to be whoever was closest to that number without going over.

For reference, the number in question is what you see at the end of URLs like this:

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/GameStatsHalo2.aspx?gameid=802670688

Each game we record gets the next number in sequence. You can look at all the past games to get a feel for the current trend, and then guess what you think will happen in the next two months.

Meanwhile, there's also a contest to be won for *playing*! Whoever gets the winning point (Kill, capture, etc.) in the very last valid, complete Halo 2 matchmade game to be recorded by our stats server snags this contest.

We've joked that the prizes for winning would be that we'll unlock Recon in Halo 2 for you, but that would just be mean. Instead, we'll be offering something even better. Way better. For now, we're gonna keep it under wraps due to its top secret nature, but trust us, you want to win. You need to win.

And last up, we want to give you the chance to show the world in years to come that you're a veteran of Halo 2. We can't promise yet what this badge of honor will look like, but we're currently thinking along the lines of a special commemorative emblem option in the Reach lobby, next to your name, in the spot we currently use for showing that you registered on Bungie.net. Who knows what else we'll think of? But to do this, we need you to actually play a game of Halo 2 online using the LIVE account you want to use for Reach. Lots of you have a different account on your Xbox 360 than you had back in the days of Halo 2, so you should make sure that you can visit the following page with your current gamertag, and see at least one game listed in the Halo 2 tab:

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Halo3/Default.aspx

He Writes the Songs[modifier]

So, Marty's making an appearance on Xbox LIVE's 1 vs. 100 tonight. You're going to tune in right? They've got prizes on hand and besides, look at the way Marty works that Air Viola. It's magical. Downright majestic. Show him you love him by playing along. Fire up your 360 for more details.

Blame Stosh[modifier]

Stosh is in a great mood today. Earlier, we went on an epic journey, putting boots in the mud to get our hands on some delicious Zeeks Pizza. I'm happy to report, he made it back unharmed and even found the time to whip up a Blame Stosh for the week, straight from the heart.

Thanks for stopping by the digs, d00ds. Studio is closed for the holiday this Monday, so don't expect to hear back until the day after. (Yeah, yeah, we know.) Stay tuned. We're just getting warmed up.