More interesting, perhaps, is the question of how the promised four-player campaign co-op will work given the description by Game Informer of the game's opening. As the article describes it, upon dropping into battle at the start of the game -- a sequence that Bungie has described as, "the most spectacular cinematic event in any Halo game to date" -- you hit hard and go unconscious for six hours. Once recovered, the search for your squad mates begins. Their story will be pieced together through playable flashbacks. Though the Rookie doesn't have an AI construct with him at all times like Cortana, there will be an artificial intelligence presence in ODST. Dubbed the Superintendent, this construct exists inside the ubran infrastructure on New Mombassa. He has been featured prominently in the teaser trailers, but his exact role in ODST is unknown at this time.
How Much?
The choice to label Halo 3: ODST as an expansion brought several assumptions from most gamers. Expansions are generally shorter than most games and aren't priced as expensively as full releases. Both of these assumptions appear to be good ones.
PR director for Bungie Brian Jarrard told Game Informer, "We don't know what the price will ultimately be. That's not something we'd be the final deciders of, but the spirit of this project is certainly an expansion of a smaller scope." Creative director Joe Staten backed up that statement by saying, "We do not view this as a $60 title, and not in a bad way. It's a great value pack thing that we want to do. We're going to make it worth a lot -- we just don't want to charge a lot for it."
Of course, as we've seen in the past, wanting to charge less doesn't always sit well with Microsoft, the publisher of these games. As of now, we still have no set price for Halo 3: ODST.
As far as the length of the expansion, the Halo 3: ODST design director told Game Informer, "When we were thinking about the Chief or the Arbiter stories that we could tell, there was just no story that fit into a three to five-hour expansion pack, which is what we're building here." This set off something of a fervor on the 'net and Bungie soon clarified those statements by saying:
Honestly it's impossible to really quantify this. Even with Halo 3 an individual's play time can vary dramatically based on difficulty level, modifiers like skulls, and whether or not it's played individually, cooperatively, or within the multiplayer portions of the game, which can amount to near infinite play time. While it's true that we view Halo 3: Recon as an extension to the Halo 3 game experience, it's too early to settle on a specific number of hours of gameplay.
First of all, while Halo 3: Recon did originate with the goal of building a 3 to 5 hour campaign experience, I can safely say that as is always the case with Bungie, the team is continuing to put more and more into it and the final product will end up being some order of magnitude more than the initial design. Game Informer also touches on the new structure to the campaign experience and how there are basically two separate components to the campaign. The initial play time targets were focused on one of those components. And lastly, there are still plenty of things we're not talking about with Recon that will further enhance and add to the experience, play time, and replayability of the final package.
Regardless of how long it ultimately takes you to make it through the Halo 3: ODST campaign, Game Informer was told that the disc will offer 1,000 new achievement points and that all of them are tied to the campaign.
Stop Bugging Bungie for Recon Armor
The adversarial multiplayer is shaping up to be exactly what you've come to know and love (or hate or lack feelings towards) about Halo 3. The reason? It hasn't changed one iota. The online matches will be the same as Halo 3 as will the modes and playlists. Think of the Halo 3: ODST adversarial multiplayer component as an all-in-one map disc that collects everything from Halo 3 in one place… plus adds a little more. All of the Halo 3 maps, as well as all of the maps that have been offered through download, plus three new previously unavailable maps will be included on the ODST disc.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/970/970595p3.html
