14 DAY TRIAL // When Bungie announced the day when the Halo Reach beta would kick in, it also promised that it would continue to feed us information along the way until we actually got to shoot each other on The Powerhouse map, but also that it would release a ViDoc "very, very soon." As it turned out, "very, very soon" was sooner than many of us might have anticipated and the official Bungie.net page has already posted the new development diary. The "diary page" is a very interesting one, something that some of us might not have expected, growing weary of the Halo franchise.
As we might have expected, the main drive of the clip is the visual aspect of the game, with developers happily announcing that they're now able to significantly increase the number of polygons on any model, be it a humanoid or part of the environment. But from here, everything else evolves, and from the new technical possibilities available to them, the Bungie developers start to detail how they were able to make the game a story-driven one. With the helmets no longer welded to their heads, the Spartans in Halo Reach will be able to express genuine emotions, a vital part of the title's story-telling selling point.
The post reads that, “From the beginning, you know the end, but to start it all off the team tapped into a decade of creative experience in the Halo universe, focused on the best elements from Halo’s past, and supercharged every aspect using a rebuilt engine and some surprising new twists.” The video clip also details how the battles have been upgraded, going to enemy engagements of far larger proportions with around 40 AI characters on the screen, on both sides, fighting each other.
Another thing that was detailed in the video was the game's flexibility, as the developers made it very clear that Reach was a sandbox game. Players will have to fight their way through a lot of un-orchestrated, unscripted skirmishes, deal with vehicular logistic and combat, but also have an arsenal to help them overcome their challenges. Cinematic stealth kills were also present in the title, so we can expect a bit more from the Nobel team than just plowing through the enemy.
You can check out the ViDoc below.