The Official Halo 3: ODST Thread

[xlost7]

UPDATE: 12/19/08

With Christmas and New Year's fast approaching, the studio has been buzzing like a hive of bees. As we noted in last week's update, Halo 3: ODST is now what we consider "representational." In layman's terms, that means the game is theoretically playable end-to-end, although tons of game content is in non-finalized states. The playable spaces are all in, but while the plot plays out from start to finish, there's still quite a bit of Microsoft Mike and studio talent in the mix, standing in until the professional actors lend their voices to us.

Right now, in ODST, it seems like Staten is everywhere at once. Marine voice actor, check. ODST voice actor, check. Female marine voice actress, he's got that down too. The man has range.

We're not going to dive too deeply into specifics now (obviously), but the entire studio was pulled "offline" on Wednesday - diverted from their other work - to play through Halo 3: ODST. For those of you who think it's all work and no play at Bungie, this might not help to quash your unfounded assumptions, but quash them you should because while we certainly enjoy playing games, and while it's our stated mission to craft kick ass games that we want to play, the first playthrough is all business. We don't take it lightly. We're not only trying to find out what's fun to play, we're trying to ascertain what isn't fun to play. Where are players having to backtrack? Why are they toting a plasma pistol when they should have located the sniper rifle? The questions are nearly endless and the after-the-fact evaluation is thorough and honest.