The gaming industry has quite a lot of highly popular franchises, but, without a doubt, one of the most successful and to which the Xbox and Xbox 360 owe much of their popularity is Halo. Created by Bungie and currently owned by Microsoft, the series explored a massive story, which is now going to evolve onto new paths and genres of titles.

The next project scheduled to be launched is Halo 3: ODST, a game that will continue the action from the highly successful Halo 3, but also introduce new elements into the first-person shooter genre. One such item is an open world, according to Joseph Staten, the writer and creative director for the next iteration in the Halo franchise.

“We're doing a lot of pretty neat things in terms of mixing it up, introducing some non-linearity, some free exploration,” Staten told the Seattle Times. “This is also a mystery story so there's a lot more clue-finding and mystery-solving than you would normally find in a game of this kind – nothing that strays too far from the fun 'Halo' experience, but we definitely decided to take a little bit of risk and have some fun with this one.”

For those of you who don't know, the game will focus on a lone Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, hence the name ODST, who uncovers clues about what happened in the ruins of New Mombasa. His method is quite unique, as, when he interacts with his teammates, he can live out previous battles in which they fought. These flashbacks will be triggered in specific sites, scattered throughout the open world, meaning that exploration will be very important.

The team at Bungie also revealed that it had had an early look at Microsoft's Project Natal motion-sensitive controller, and said that the next title after ODST, Halo: Reach, might support such a thing.