Are you worthy?

http://www.areyouworthy.se/

Well they've already announced them so I figured they already probably have some of them done.

Polygon

Vote first, play second.

That's the message that Halo 4 developers 343 Industries have been sending through their website, Twitter and now a full-blown marketing plan most recently seen at New York Comic Con this past weekend.

Halo 4 kicks off a new series of games in the popular Halo franchise. The original trilogy of titles wrapped up in 2007 with Halo 3. Now, five years later, gamers get a chance to return to the space marine gunplay of the Halo universe.

But the game comes out on Election Day.

News of the November 6th release date spurred discussions among some gaming communities about whether fans of the series planned to vote or play Halo 4.

But the team behind the game are working hard to ensure that gamers don't view the release date as a choice between voting for the next President of the United States and playing Halo 4.

"We set our launch date early in the year and I started thinking about it right away," said Alison Stroll, senior producer at 343. "I wanted to sort of make it part of the national conversation. I really just hoped that people would care a little bit, if our people cared a little bit about the election."

Stroll said that the Election Day release date was selected because it happened to coincide with when the game was going to be complete and when the title could make a strong appearance at retailers.

The potential issues surrounding releasing on Election Day "(were) discussed, but there are only a handful of dates that would have worked and there are production realities and retail realities," she said.

While Stroll said the team isn't worried about Election Day impacting their game's sales, they were worried that some voters, already perhaps disinclined to vote, would use the game's release to not participate in the election. So the team built up a marketing campaign around the civic responsibility to vote.

The campaign kicked off this summer in Texas during the Rooster Teeth Expo, where Halo fans were given a chance to play Halo 4, and register to vote.

"I had Rock the Vote come out to the festival for every day of the event and sign up kids to vote while they stood in line," Stroll said.

The next step of the Halo 4 voting campaign included creating a new iconic image, a picture of the game's Master Chief standing in front of the American flag with the words "Make Your Voice Heard VOTE" emblazoned at the bottom. The image is being used on posters, stickers and t-shirts. The shirts, only 600 of which were made, were given out over the weekend to people playing Halo 4 at New York Comic Con. More than 100,000 stickers and posters are being sent to college campuses and about 7,000 stores in the U.S., Stroll said.

"It's all to make sure that people have their voice heard," she said.

The team also devised an interesting way to get gamers to watch the debates leading up to the election. This year Microsoft launched an Election hub on the Xbox 360 which offered news, polls and livestreams of the debates.

Those who watched at least three of the four debates through the free service were awarded with special animated golden armor from the game for use within Xbox Live on a person's avatar.

The reaction to making people watch a political debate to earn a free piece of art from the game was interesting, Stroll said.

On the one hand, some people were happy to be given the reward, but others seemed upset that they were being forced to watch the debates. A third group, who lived outside the United States, seemed annoyed that while they wanted to watch the debates, they couldn't receive the free virtual armor.

"It's shocking how upset people were that they had to participate in the political process in order to get this gold Spartan armor for free," Stroll said. "I was surprised that in some cases there were Europeans saying that they were going to watch the debates whether they got the armor or not and then there were Americans saying that they needed the armor in order to watch the debates.

"It was really an interesting statement ... and a sad one."

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/15/3507610/halo-4-asks-gamers-to-vote-first-play-second-in-national-campaign

Polygon

Halo 4's developers at 343 Industries will supplement the game's competitive multiplayer mode, War Games, with three map packs starting in December that can be pre-purchased for 2,000 Microsoft Points ($25), Microsoft announced today.

The "War Games Map Pass" confers access to all three packs — Crimson, Majestic and Castle — which are set for release in December, February and April, respectively. Halo 4 players who buy the pass will also get three pieces of bonus content: two helmets, "Scanner" and "Strider," and a unique emblem called "Falcon." Here are the details on the individual packs, which will each contain three maps:

Crimson Map Pack (December release timeframe)

Maps: Wreckage, Harvest, Shatter
Description: Witness the chaos of a clash of civilizations in Wreckage, with its blend of claustrophobic spaces and dangerous exposures and venture into the human colony environs of Harvest, and explore a human foray on an alien moon in Shatter.
Majestic Map Pack (February release timeframe)

Maps: Landfall, Monolith, Skyline
Description: Landfall's emphasis is on infantry battles against a glittering ocean on a distant world, while Monolith exposes you to the naked vacuum of space — and the firepower of opposing teams, and Skyline's distinctly industrial feel provides new challenges in somewhat familiar, but occasionally confined spaces.
Castle Map Pack (April release timeframe)

Maps: Daybreak, Outcast, Perdition
Description: Daybreak is set in a military facility against the backdrop of an idyllic mountain range, while Outcast plunges you into the warrens, canyons and arches of an alien edifice, and Perdition takes players into the heart of an urban sprawl, with tactical speed and situational awareness its key features.
Microsoft has not yet announced individual pricing for the map packs, but said that the Map Pass' $25 price represents a discount of "more than 15 percent" off the total cost of the packs when purchased separately. The entire War Games Map Pass is included in the Limited Edition of Halo 4, which will be available for $99.99 on Nov. 6 alongside the $59.99 standard edition.

War Games, Halo 4's competitive multiplayer mode, is separate from its Spartan Ops co-op multiplayer component. Spartan Ops will receive five new missions for free, every week, for 10 weeks after launch.

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/24/3549850/halo-4-dlc-war-games-map-pass-three-map-packs

Yeah I have read the books but as far as I could tell the books didn't portray the Forerunners as being evil. Either way I should reserve my judgement on this matter for when I finish Halo 4. I'm sure they will tie everything together quite nicely.

Tomorrow new Episode of Forward Unto Dawn...

This one is gonna be awesome i hope!