Halo 3 Almost Done 73
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.
This is news...why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And considering they will need a bit of time to press the discs and ship them to retailers, it is about time that they are almost done now.
Sheesh, if they would have declared Halo 3 gold master, that would at least have been some sort of news, but "It is almost done" is not the least informative; right now, it is to be expected if they want to honor their release date.
Re:Final Chapter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bungie announces Halo 3, the third and final game in the Halo Trilogy. Halo 3 will be released for Microsoft's Xbox 360 in 2007.
I think it's open to interpretation, so they could get away with declaring this the final chapter in the arc. I'll chalk it up to clever marketing speak and leave it at that.
Re:Disappointed with E3 Screenshots (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Disappointed with E3 Screenshots (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, the E3 Halo footage was still Beta content, we know that it looks better by now and also that its a smooth 60 fps. I'm not sure whether Killzone was in-game footage or not (I know that there was a hoopla earlier over their use of pre-rendered footage) and we also don't know if it was running at the desirable 60 FPS mark. Thus far, I have yet to see anything on the PS3 which tops the 360 graphically and doubt we ever will (the 360's GPU technology is a generation ahead of the PS3s after all, and was designed for the console, rather than a PC part tacked on late in the design process when they discovered that multiple Cell processors didn't provide the graphics power they desired at a cost they could stomach.)
My one prediction for this holiday season is that the 360 and Wii will widen their respective leads over the PS3
Re:One month from release and still not done (Score:3, Insightful)
Finalizing gameplay is a bit like making a collage, you lay out all the pieces and see how it looks, you fine tune and look again, repeat until you're satisfied, then glue it all down -- of course, through the magic of software you can continue to fine-tune after its out in the wild as well.
Its standard practice that gameplay isn't in its final form until a week, or even days, before being sent off for manufacture.