Halo 3 Almost Done

The word from Bungie is that they consider the final chapter in the Halo story 99.9% complete. They're now in the home stretch, with time to polish. Says Luke Smith, "That last .1% percent is pretty important, however. Right now, some testing is being done in a controlled retail environment via our Halo 3 Epsilon. You've probably seen reports online or even folks on your friends' list playing it, so here's the scoop: The Epsilon is a closed, final phase testing for Halo 3. We won't be making the Epsilon available for public consumption, so while that's immensely disappointing for folks hoping that Friends and Family invites would be extended for the Epsilon, just know that each day you wait in agony is another day closer to September 25." Wired has a huge blowout feature on the title, with lots of screenshots, discussion of how the game was made, and more.

Re:Final Chapter?

[telbij]

WTF? You need an advanced data extraction tool to tell you that there aren't enough Warthogs for the player to use? Give me a break. This is what play testing is for, not to mention a little addition and subtraction. I think they are making this Pagulayan guy out like he is going to save the game from bad level design by making a bunch of graphs and charts. A lot of the issues he discovers with his data analysis could be easily solved by common sense.

Sheesh, it's just an example. The depth of information they are getting from details statistical analysis goes 100 times deeper than the immediate feedback from playtesters (which they are also using). For instance, the visualizations of death frequency over thousands of matches revealing where maps are uneven.