Dovahkiin
Well-known member
Details from a 343i Q&A on Infinite.
Lastly, the next Troy Denning book and sequel to Shadows of Reach, Divine Wind, has also been announced. Without spoiling anything major for its predecessor, there's a strong chance it will tie into the Halo Wars 2 plot.
Additionally, Point of Light's been released, and although I've yet to finish it myself, it's garnered a pretty positive response for the most part. Also has some pretty big lore details and hints for the future that I'll share below.CONFIRMED: In order to help make the ring feel alive, so in addition to day and night, they have weather systems. This includes a wind system. However, there are not rain storms or snow storms at launch, though they are "excited about the future."
IMPLIED: This also seemingly confirms future campaign content (which we'd assumed before.)
CONFIRMED: Day night does affect what enemies you'll run into. Grunts sleep more at night, phantoms have search lights and are around more, etc. Coils, shield enemies, etc. also appear more in darker areas and at nighttime.
CONFIRMED: There is no hostile wildlife in the game at the moment. There are apparently some cute "space gophers" though, so that's cool. There is wildlife that is bioluminescent that appears at night.
CONFIRMED: Dual-wielding is not in the game, and it is not currently in the cards. "We can do everything", but they want to focus on the weapons, grenades, melee, and their focus on equipment is why dual-wielding is not present.
CONFIRMED: There are no playable Elites (sadness) being supported because "this is a Master Chief and Spartan story." They did say "never say never" to that and that we may see them one day in the game.
CONFIRMED: Weapon upgrades were toyed around with as an idea for the campaign for customizing them and such, and they felt it was a rabbit hole, but the game veered too far away from what Halo is about, so they decided to take a "different avenue" in things you can progress. You are able to upgrade equipment items you unlock throughout the game, and there are "cool weapon variants" you can find and unlock in the game.
CONFIRMED: You can hold only one piece of equipment in Multiplayer, and it is currently a "use it and it is gone" sort in the Multiplayer. They do, however, want to implement tools so that you can change this in custom games to allow multiple pieces of equipment to be used at once.
CONFIRMED: The game is not open world. It is inspired by missions like Silent Cartographer, as an example. Paraphrasing a bit here, but an example they gave was what if you could keep a Scorpion you had at the end of one mission and take it to the next? What if you could take that scorpion, and instead of driving it up to a gate, you took it up a hill and destroyed a wraith before it even knew you were there? The world has many paths to get to the objectives you need to reach. Like Silent Cartographer on steroids.
CONFIRMED: There will be multiple biomes. "Pacific Northwest" is the primary biome, but there will be sub-biomes, such as swampy wetlands, wartorn areas referred to as "the Deadlands" which feature environmental storytelling, hexagon caves, forerunner architecture to explore, Banished bases.
CONFIRMED: The hexagonal pillars are still an important environmental structure as an "underlying" structure of the damaged ring. They have continued to work on their rendering, such as their shaders and how they are grouped.
CONFIRMED: Nothing is stopping you from, for instance, grabbing a banshee is jumping to some objectives farther out in the story. You can do that. The story is structured with a general path, but there are multiple places you can go outside of the primary story beat that is present in the game, allowing you to stray from the path, rescue marines, fight Banished, explore structures, regardless of if that is what the game demands at this moment. The core story serves as an ever-present anchor that will often drop you off, so you can't jump ahead and experience primary story content, but side areas and invisible walls are not what limit you. He story is crafted to flow you through the areas in a natural way. So...
CONFIRMED: There is a linear thread still, and the story will progress in a linear fashion. Some areas will unlock and be visitable based on your progress in the story, or you may be able to find things because of what vehicles you now have access to, you can take Marines with you that you've rescued. You can't cut ahead in the story, but it's up to you how you tackle it.
CONFIRMED: There are many ways to find story elements on Zeta Halo beyond the "Golden Path." An example given was a crashed pelican that has skidded across the terrain.
CONFIRMED: There are audio logs in the game you can find that tell stories of battles on the ring, personal stories, etc. They compliment environmental storytelling in many areas as well. They were likened to a "cool radio drama."
CONFIRMED: The ring in the skybox is a full 3D model, not a painted skybox so that the ring can have a characteristic attribute to it. This also makes it much easier to see directly where the areas you are present on on the ring connect to the actual ring, as well as allowing it to cast more realistic shadows onto the world. There is even a point where the ring briefly will eclipse the sun and give a cool "midnight feel."
CONFIRMED: Cutscenes are affected by the day/night cycles, as they are still all done live in-engine. Thanks to the smooth transitions between gameplay and cutscenes, whatever time of day it is, whatever weapon you have in your hand, etc. is all present in the cutscenes, as well. Transitions between cutscene and gameplay will always be smooth, as well.
CONFIRMED: They have put a lot of effort into mixing relatable scenery (trees, etc.) with the major megastructures, rocks, etc. that will be found so that the sense of scale will not be lost on the player.
CONFIRMED: Banished maintain their "heavy metal, red war paint" aesthetic from Halo Wars 2 which we will see in their structures, etc. We will see they have structures with spikes that were dropped from orbit and dug into the environment, slammed onto the ground, crushing whatever was below, which contrasts against the environment.
CONFIRMED: Yes, you can knock things off of the edge of Zeta Halo. An example given was a while playing they even managed to, by luck, knock a Wraith off of the ledge of the ring and into the abyss. It is difficult, but it can be pulled off with luck and skill combined.
CONFIRMED: A lot of the concerns brought up by the community after the July reveal was on a list of things they wanted to address, and they are thankful for the extra time to do so.
CONFIRMED: There will both be outposts and bases you can encounter, as well as patrols and random encounters you can come across between locations.
CONFIRMED: There is a system in place to recognize what you have done/are doing. If you are on foot, encounters will spawn that are meant to be fun to do on foot, but if you come in a flying vehicle, there will also be things there that are designed to be fun to encounter while flying. This is not designed to punish you, simply to be a fun encounter based on how you're exploring.
EXAMPLE: In previous Halo games, the linear experience was designed around what vehicles they knew you may have. But here, encounters are designed to be fun in, say, a Wasp (he mentioned the Wasp specifically, so this seemingly confirms the Wasp will be in the game.) and so will spawn if you are in a Wasp.
Bastion, which was teased in Halo 5, is revealed to be a mobile Shield World acting as the Librarian's secret laboratory. It's basically a vault for her most valuable research, mostly involving the Precursors, Forerunners, Ancient Humans, and Living Time. The interior is also modeled on the surface of Earth, albeit with minor modifications so as to be more dramatic and aesthetically pleasing, like “the rough gem of Earth cut into a polished jewel.” By the end of the book, it winds up in Spark's possession, who endeavors to keep it away from the Created and catch up on the Librarian's research in the meantime.
The other central object of the book is a Forerunner ship called the Eden, which the Librarian arranged to travel to another galaxy and, get this, reseed the motherfucking Precursors. Apparently two plant-like Precursors briefly survived their genocide by the Forerunners in Path Kethona, albeit with serious wounds. While they were able to heal themselves, they opted to die instead, and from their corpses came seeds that germinated over the next million years into the following...
On the cavern floor thousands of green teardrop plants as large as melons awaken with the light, unfurling wide leathery leaves that fan gently over the ground with the grace of a bowing dancer, and exposing a glowing starburst of delicate white blooms dangling from groups of lantern-like stems. The spectacle is breathtaking.
... and will one day grow into adult Precursors in some other galaxy. Accompanying them are spores that are reminiscent of the Flood, but the Librarian (or an AI imprint of her, more accurately) is unconcerned that they'll develop into the Flood because, in her own words...
“To understand the Flood, one must understand that the concept of one-mind unity inherent in the Flood was not an aspect inherent in the Precursor race as a whole. There was corruption, yes. But there was purity. There was division, and unity. Inclusion and exclusion. All Precursors were not created the same. Just as the last living Precursor, the Primordial, relished in suffering, so did others celebrate joy.
The Primordial, and later the Flood, went against the very nature of the Mantle, its First Rule to preserve the balance of Living Time. Incalculable destruction, gratuitous slaughter, and suffering on a galaxywide scale create a distortion and restriction in the flow of Living Time, putting it at risk of collapse.
My people erasing our Creators and continuing the hypocrisy of holding ourselves worthy of the Mantle set the stage for the greatest imbalance Living Time had ever seen. And then the Flood continued this imbalance.
These blooms are not corrupted with vengeance and misery, they are clean and beautiful and right, and they have a great purpose."
Not likely to have a large role in any future games, but I'm quite pleased at the confirmation of benevolent Precursors.
On the cavern floor thousands of green teardrop plants as large as melons awaken with the light, unfurling wide leathery leaves that fan gently over the ground with the grace of a bowing dancer, and exposing a glowing starburst of delicate white blooms dangling from groups of lantern-like stems. The spectacle is breathtaking.
... and will one day grow into adult Precursors in some other galaxy. Accompanying them are spores that are reminiscent of the Flood, but the Librarian (or an AI imprint of her, more accurately) is unconcerned that they'll develop into the Flood because, in her own words...
“To understand the Flood, one must understand that the concept of one-mind unity inherent in the Flood was not an aspect inherent in the Precursor race as a whole. There was corruption, yes. But there was purity. There was division, and unity. Inclusion and exclusion. All Precursors were not created the same. Just as the last living Precursor, the Primordial, relished in suffering, so did others celebrate joy.
The Primordial, and later the Flood, went against the very nature of the Mantle, its First Rule to preserve the balance of Living Time. Incalculable destruction, gratuitous slaughter, and suffering on a galaxywide scale create a distortion and restriction in the flow of Living Time, putting it at risk of collapse.
My people erasing our Creators and continuing the hypocrisy of holding ourselves worthy of the Mantle set the stage for the greatest imbalance Living Time had ever seen. And then the Flood continued this imbalance.
These blooms are not corrupted with vengeance and misery, they are clean and beautiful and right, and they have a great purpose."
Not likely to have a large role in any future games, but I'm quite pleased at the confirmation of benevolent Precursors.
Zeta Halo also appears in the book, and among other unique features, has
- an extremely verdant surface, but an extensively damaged subterranean framework from the events in Primordium, and lower levels that still have no power at all.
- native creatures that travel in swarms and can disable starships with electromagnetic attacks.
- a massive chamber that was once the core of Mendicant Bias, but now serves as a monument that houses the essences of Ancient Humans.
- a Monitor called Despondent Pyre who is "everywhere and nowhere", along with numerous subordinate Monitors, one of whom is called Adjutant Veridity.
- Flood research facilities, but ones at no apparent risk of containment breach. For now.
Lastly, the next Troy Denning book and sequel to Shadows of Reach, Divine Wind, has also been announced. Without spoiling anything major for its predecessor, there's a strong chance it will tie into the Halo Wars 2 plot.
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