Halo 4 video reaction

 Recently, 343 studios released a video about the making of Halo 4, similar to one Bungie released about Halo: Reach, released months before its release. The game will take off from where the third left off, giving players control over the man, the myth, the legend himself, Master Chief.

The video put a lot of environments they developed on display, including a multiplayer map. In the map, there is what looks like a mech sitting idle. My guess would be that this mech will be usable in multiplayer, and probably be an extremely powerful killing machine. What really impressed me about the environments shown is how beautiful the lighting looks. Light reflects off of metal objects better than anything I've seen in any video game before. The light even hits Master Chief's armor and reflects in the exact spots that it hits, making the armor look shiny and beautiful.

Chief's armor looks beautiful without the light shining on it too. A comparison using the Master Chief model from Halo 3, and comparing it with the new model shows how incredibly more detailed the new Master Chief is. There are armor lines that weren't there before, and the armor looks smoother and sleeker on the new engine. I was especially impressed that 343 will be including the latest in motion capture technology. In the video, people dressed in motion capture suits are shown vaulting and making facial expressions. This hopefully will result in an effective vaulting mechanic, similar to the one in Battlefield 3, and also realistic facial movements, similar to the ones in L.A. Noire.

What disappointed me about the video is the lack of comparison to the models in Halo: Reach. When making Reach, Bungie did the same thing and compared the new engine to the one of Halo 3. It is unimpressive that they are doing so with Halo 4 because Halo 3 came out 4 and a half years ago. It would have made more sense to compare Halo 4 to Reach, seeing that Reach is the most recent addition to the series. Although Reach looked fantastic, it looks like Halo 4 is going to blow it's graphics out of the water, so a comparison between the two would have been cool to see. I also didn't like that they talked about the new enemy threat, without showing what it will look like. It would have been nice to see the foes that I will be destroying as Master Chief.

All in all, this video was just as effective in increasing my excitement for this game, just as the video Bungie did on Reach increased my excitement for that game. There are still no details on a release date and I don't expect there will be until at E3 at the latest. I'm just hoping this game comes out this year so I don't have to wait until 2013.