> Claude’s writeup about last week’s Halo 4 MP event is here
>
> Halo 4 Game Night, Bryant Park Hotel
>
> …and I definitely suggest you read his first before you read mine. You should actually read these two articles by the mainstream press as well.
>
> New York Daily News: Halo 4 Preview
> Gamespot: How 343 Is Reinventing Halo
>
> They all provide important details about what has been shown, where things are going, etc. I thought I’d provide a more macro view of things, which is a little self-defeating since it will be stated over and over again that what I got to play with was far from finished. Still, I think that macro view is kinda missing.
>
> It was damn exciting to be there, and I give utmost thanks to Frankie, Alison and all the folks at 343i/Microsoft and Edelman who put this shindig together and then decided it was OK to invite little ol’ me. Also cool to have Claude and Chris from TSL to hang with as well. It helped to have fellow veterans to share insights with. It was of course very unusual to be surrounded with top NFL draft picks. When I told a friend about who I was hanging out with he said not to worry if you pounded him on the virtual battlefield, the guy just signed a multi-million dollar deal - he’ll get over it! It was just so much fun.
>
> Early on I asked Frankie what we could divulge about event and he, paraphrasing, said “Write whatever you want. Just be honest.”
>
> And so I will be.
>
> Folks, can we finally put this damn thing to bed and acknowledge that 343i is not Bungie? Hell, was the Bungie of 2003 the same as the Bungie of 2008? We’ve reached a point where Halo is like anime’s Lupin. A property that other’s can re-create with their own ambitious vision. Notice that there’s no judgement passed in the previous statements. That is up to you to deduce for yourself when you get to buy/demo/sample the game when it’s released in a few months.
>
> If you’re a Halo fan beyond the games then there should be nothing shocking about the previous paragraph. We’ve already seen re-interpretations of Halo through the eyes of different programmers, novelists, artists, etc. And yet the forums and comment sections are overflowing with teeth-gnashing over how this ain’t going to be no Halo we’re used to.
>
> Well, I think that’s very true now after playing it for a few hours.
>
> I started off slow when I picked up the sticks and jumped into a MP game. Everything is just different. The graphics are crisper, the sounds are different, the movement is ‘off’. It doesn’t help that due to my carpal tunnel problems I haven’t played a serious game of MP in a while, but hey, I’ve been playing the damn game for over 10 years, so cut me some slack - I’m no n00b.
>
> But as I told Claude, by the time I was 3 games in I was comfortable. The game was Halo and no matter all the enhancements, changes, etc., it had a familiar feel to it. But here’s the thing, all of you are going to have the same initial reaction. It’s just different. Grenades bounce different. Explosion radii seems to be different. The DMR feels like the BFG (once you master it) you never saw in Halo before. Can the beta aspect of the game I played complicate things? Of course. I confirmed that the build we were playing was really from about 2-3 months ago, and even the first level of the campaign that we got to see is much more polished now at the studio. But beta or not, you can still tell the direction the game is going and it is a doozy of a change. Remember when you first saw MW2 and the snow level? The ice picks? Think that - exactly that - in campaign. To call back another game experience… remember when you first saw the Doom 3 previews? It was that much of a shift from the previous games - in a good way! But then seeing Cortana now pull up holo-screens to monitor the Chief? That’s a bit of a slap in how things have been depicted before. And it proves that you have to be willing to accept that things are going to change. Ergo those two articles I referenced at the beginning.
>
> So that’s really it. There’s not much more to say. Hopefully you’ll get a chance to play a more current version of the game at E3 and PAX and can let us all know how it feels to you. But what I would implore is to just accept that it’s going to be different.
>
> After all, it’s just a game. 
>
> - M
as well as a fallow up
> What’s this? I don’t even…
>
> Oh hi, first post.
>
> I was a Halo CE fan. Then I became a Halo 2 fan. At some point I was a Halo 3 fan. Halo ODST snuggled with me for a while. Then Halo Reach took the ring. For a while there I was a Halo Anniversary fan. Oh yes, Halo Wars is no where on that list. Sorry.
>
> This was the problem when I wanted to write something about what I experienced. I wanna give you all something to mull over, but at the end I’m not like your typical player. I can get upset over stuff, but I let it slide after a while. So yah, seeing Cortana doing the Tom Cruise floating window thingie was off putting, but 'da -Yoink-, It’s Cortana! In all her glowing blue -Yoink!- self! Let’s get this thing going! No different then the Elites talking classical bad-guy English in Halo 2 nor the damn rocket-deodorant sticks under Pillar of Autumn in Reach.
>
> I can see how folks are going to look at a few levels and see some COD similarities, but I’m not someone that right off says “BOO that sucks!” I wanna see what they do with it. As I said, after a few games I got into it. “More immersion”? Hearing Chief breathe? Do I really want that in full-on 5.1? But I’m curious how it’ll play out. With MP, it was pretty -Yoinking!- cool to jump around in the beta maps, with that MLG dude schooling us and us schooling some of the NFL dudes. I really couldn’t complain. I’ll wait until the very end when the game finally ships to say yay or nay, but I guess what I was trying to get folks to brace themselves for is that if it does turn out to be a big change, soak it in… see what you think. Don’t just be a knee-jerk jerk! It’s unrealistic to think new devs aren’t going to want to change things up. THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S BAD CHANGE!
>
> Claude said something that I thought was pretty cool. He may have relayed it in some of his other posts here or elsewhere, so sorry for repeating: he met some folks at the event that were super psyched. They said they were tired of Halo being the same old Halo… they had left the game maybe around Halo 3. And playing this got them excited. I think Frankie would like to hear that. We don’t all live on an island and get to permanently carry the conch shell. Take a breath folks and lets see what the folks at 343i put out.
>
> What’s not going to surprise me is if some folks read the above and say “That’s it! I’m outta here. The game is -Yoinked!-. It’s all a mess!” I can’t do anything about spurring such -Yoink–ishness. But I think you’re being a fool. A -Yoink–fool at that.
>
> - m