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XBox (Games)

Halo 3 Teaser Aired, Beta Signups Start 77

Posted by Zonk from the i-was-looking-forward-to-the-game dept.
Gamespot reports on the airing of the Halo 3 Teaser trailer on Monday Night Football, and the beginning of signups for the Halo 3 beta at Halo3.com. From the article: "[Yesterday] registration for the beta program began at the Halo 3 Web site. The beta will initially be open to North American gamers, and not everyone who applies is guaranteed a spot. To participate, gamers must have: a) An Xbox 360 with a hard-drive; b) A valid Xbox Live Gold subscription; c) A valid Microsoft. NET Passport account with a Xbox Live GamerTag linked to it." The teaser featured a mix of live-action and very impressive CG. It just didn't grab me in the same way that the trailer from E3 did, though. If you're interested in some more substantive information on the game, the folks at Ziff have been offering up information via the 1up Show.
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Halo 3 Teaser Aired, Beta Signups Start More

Halo 3 Teaser Aired, Beta Signups Start

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  • Mirror? (Score:4)

    by dch24 ( 904899 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @05:00PM (#17120082) Journal
    Gamespot requires registration. Can anyone post the HD version (I know...46 Mb is kinda big) for me to look at? Please?

    • Re:Mirror? (Score:5, Informative)

      by refitman ( 958341 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @05:04PM (#17120162) Homepage Journal

      Streaming version found at Break.com [break.com].

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 )

      Can anyone post the HD version (I know...46 Mb is kinda big) for me to look at? Please?

      I downloaded a fairly high-quality .MOV from GameTrailers.com [gametrailers.com] earlier.

      I like the visuals (the white sands contrasting with the deep-blue-to-black sky) and the sound and animation look great, but the presence of pre-rendered footage in advertising a computer game still annoys me. But I do hope Bungie steals the specular map for the pre-rendered Whatsit Chief's armour - it looks far better than the slightly naff, moulded-pl

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Osty ( 16825 )

        the presence of pre-rendered footage in advertising a computer game still annoys me.

        Unlock other companies (*cough*Sony*cough*), Bungie has been up-front with the fact that this ad uses rendered images rather than in-game footage. Ever since they announced that the ad was going to air, they've made it clear that it's not in-game.

        But I do hope Bungie steals the specular map for the pre-rendered Whatsit Chief's armour - it looks far better than the slightly naff, moulded-plastic effort being flaunted i

        • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Unlock other companies
          Does it require a Game Shark?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Osty ( 16825 )

            Oh man, that was a stupid typo. And I even previewed! :) Obviously that should read, "Unlike other companies."

        • While the footage is rendered CGI, all of the assets used in the video are from the game itself (or more likely, the high-resolution models and textures that the lower-poly in-game models and lower-res in-game textures will be generated from). That's not to say that there aren't more effects in the rendered video that can't or won't be done in-game, but I'd expect it to be relatively close by the time the game is done.

          To be fair, this is exactly what Evolution (Motorstorm) and Guerilla (Killzone) said the

      • but the presence of pre-rendered footage in advertising a computer game still annoys me.

        The E3 teaser was done using the actual game engine, and still looked pretty damn good. I think this trailer was more of an artistic effort than a tech demo. As others have said, Bungie is pretty frank about things. (Even stating not to expect the same level of detail seen in Gears of War, for example) I trust them not to pull a bait n switch on us.

        Side note, after watching this I think that doing a CGI Halo movie instead of Live action would have a lot of potential. I'd love to see Pixar on a proje

    • You can save the hi-res WMV here (link under the streaming version): http://xboxmovies.teamxbox.com/xbox-360-hires/4001 /Halo-3-Trailer-HD/ [teamxbox.com]
    • Guess what: You can get it from Zudeo here [azureusplatform.com]
    • I put up a mirror. 720p with no watermarks ;) I might take it down later however according to how much the server burns down... http://h4xmb.org/h4x/halo3.wmv [h4xmb.org]

  • Fanboys (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Broken scope ( 973885 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @05:00PM (#17120092) Homepage
    Make the worst beta testers. I hope to go bungie looks at the people who signed up near the middle first. They are more likely to give honest feed back about what is wrong with the game.

    • Re:Fanboys (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @05:14PM (#17120344)
      Make the worst beta testers. I hope to go bungie looks at the people who signed up near the middle first. They are more likely to give honest feed back about what is wrong with the game.

      Well, the problem is the people you would want to be part of the Beta test are probably the least likely to sign up for a beta test.
      • No, you don't want people who hate the game to sign up. You want the people who were like "Well darn, I have work tommorow so i need to sleep instead of staying up and trying to get a sign up", because the page was so overloaded with people it took an hour or so to get a sign up. You want the fans who don't focus their lives around the game.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Thraxen ( 455388 )
          Actually, you do want those people. Some of them will send you more feedback than you even care to read. But you also want the casual gamer as well. I think you would want all types of Halo fans to be represented and I'm sure MS is aware of this.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @05:38PM (#17120774)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GweeDo ( 127172 )
        The best beta testers for them are the crazy fan boys. This Beta test isn't about real testing...it is about buzz and press. The crazy people that love Halo will slobber all over it and give it the worldest greatest reviews they could.
    • I know the rules of games are different, but surely your familar with the goal of traditional beta testing.

      It's to get the largest number of possible use test-cases as you can to test for bugs before a comercial release. At least that's what I've been taught in my software engineering courses. No doubt there are different concerns in acceptance testing in the world of games, but fanboys will do everything in their power to break the game. If there's any sort of logging system built into the beta rele
      • This may be a gameplay beta not a bug hunt beta. Bungie might be looking for a few things like crash bugs but that they indicated gameplay was the focus.

        Im going on the "this game is perfect, besy game ever you disagree you need to die" style fanboys. Not the man this game is fun to play fan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Barny ( 103770 )
      Normally by the time game makers get to this stage, all they are doing is stress testing and exploit testing, both of which are easy to spot (and more importantly fix) in a beta.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sibko ( 1036168 )
      I think it's rather clever, actually.

      You see, Halo and Halo 2 have both been plagued by little glitches, which give huge advantages to the players that can best exploit them.

      The biggest offenders in Halo 2 being:

      Superbouncing - You crouch and walk into a small space, then jump on a crack in the geometry, at which point you'll go flying up in the air. Allowing you to gain access to otherwise unattainable locations.

      Button Glitches - Which are endorsed by the MLG [Major League Gaming] community. [E
    • They pay QA people to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb, because it's a job and no right-minded individual actually wants to do that on their spare time. They invite beta testers for stress testing and publicity (NDA? ya sure). They'll turn up some of the more game-breaking bugs along the way through sheer numbers.

  • Live action? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Adam Zweimiller ( 710977 )
    A mix of live action and CG? It looked like it was entirely CG to me. Not to say that the CG didn't look great, it did. I just don't recall any live action. Did I miss something?
    • They probably rendered it with the game engine, and then CGed the entire thing (not that I know what I am talking about, but this seems plausible).
      • I imagine it's 100% CG. This isn't a Halo 3 trailer, it's a trailer for the Halo franchise in general. There are no less than three Halo games in production - Halo 3, Halo Wars, and whatever it is that Peter Jackson is cooking - and this was designed to advertise them all simultaneously. As it's not a Halo 3 trailer, they don't need to feel constrained into using only Halo 3 in-game graphics.
        • It did have the "Finish The Fight 2007" tagline like the first Halo 3 trailer. And since it not only featured Master Chief but made showed him recovering from a near fatal fall, (From the covenant ship to Earth at the end of Halo 2) it's fairly clear that this is specifically a Halo 3 trailer.
          • Fall? I took it as he was in the overturned Warthog you see when he stands back up. Looks like he got nailed by a mortar from a wraith to me.
    • Someone did miss something. And it wasn't you.
      • Glad to hear it. I had read that it was rendered by the Hollywood effects house Digital Domain, and that it was entirely CG, and my eyes agreed when it aired.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Foggen ( 1036068 )
      No, you're right, those were CG kids. What I'm wondering is how much of that trailer was realtime Xbox 360 graphics... The E3 trailer was reportedly in-engine, so presumably this would be too, but it seems too clean to me. I guess I need to see it in HD to see the appropriate seams. If it is realtime I probably couldn't be more impressed.

      Also, that shield grenade is freaking bad ass.
      • The said this was being done in CG. They never said it was in-engine. You are right its pretty clean. The e3 trailer was in engine. This one is not. they were done differently. I am repeating myself and I don't know why.
      • I read that this commercial was entirely pre-rendered CG, not running in realtime on the 360 hardware. Disappointing considering that the E3 was running in realtime using the engine.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sibko ( 1036168 )
      The live action portion was in the beginning, with the two children. There was a quick Q&A in IRC about the trailer after it went live, I made a post containing almost all the pertinent information here: http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl? read=765397 [bungie.org] Though I think I missed a question somewhere.

      To quote Frankie: "Actually the stuff with the kids was filmed on a set they filled with grass."

  • Not Live Action! Not In Engine! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anubis333 ( 103791 ) on Tuesday December 05, 2006 @07:03PM (#17121908) Homepage
    Guys, this was pulled off by the whiz kids at one of the best film-effects studios there is. It is not in engine, and it was done in a very short timeframe. Please don't perpetuate another Killzone incident.

    CE

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Khuffie ( 818093 )
      The summary said it was CGI. No one said it was In Engine. The people who were saying 'live action' must have thought it was the two kids at the beginning. Unlike Sony, Bungie never, ever said this was in game.
  • ...but it would be nice if they'd release for the PC as well. They're hardly competing platforms, and it would increase the install base which would in turn increase the pool of players available for multiplayer.

    Obviously they're afraid of what would happen to 360 players when confronted with mouse-weilding PC gamers.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DeeDob ( 966086 )
      Xbox Live anywhere will pit PC VS 360 gamers in FPS games.

      ShadowRun will be the first of these and playtest suggest that contrary to what people beleives, the mouse/keyboard DOES NOT provide an advantage over a controller.

      In tests, it was reported that mouse/keyboard gave an advantage in snipping at long range where the controller, because of it's analog controls, gives an advantage in close range because of easier circle-strafing.

      We'll have to see when the game ships, but all i'm saying is that in a future

    • ...but it would be nice if they'd release for the PC as well. They're hardly competing platforms, and it would increase the install base which would in turn increase the pool of players available for multiplayer.
      Actually, they are. MS wants to increase the 360 install base, because that attracts developers. Halo is their single best tool to accomplish this. Putting the game out for PC would waste that opportunity.
      • Nonsense. Halo isn't incentive for someone with a PC to run out and buy a 360 because frankly, PC gamers just aren't impressed enough on the whole. But it may just be incentive enough for someone to pick the 360 over the WeeS3. More importantly, if it were tied to DX10 (as it almost certianly would be), it would provide the most incentive to upgrade to Vista thus far. Hell, if they were smart, they'd give away a free copy of H3 for the PC with every copy of Vista sold.
        • People don't need incentive to buy Vista. It will come pre-installed on their new computers. (And enough people buy new computers to ensure market penetration) MS wants to drive their console sales, and Halo 3 will definitely do that. Look at the spike in Xbox sales that happened when Halo 2 was released.
          • That just goes back to the point that most XBox buyers ARE NOT PC GAMERS. Sure, there's some overlap, but in general they're seperate communities. Halo 3 will drive 360 sales regardless of whether or not it's simultaneously available on the PC, but putting it on the PC will boost the H3 MS Live community.

            Anyway, thanks for your comments, but I'm done responding to this thread.
  • Will this be like Halo 2? New features in Halo 3: Triple weapons: hold 3 weapons at once! control-havoc! New vehicle: you can now pilot underwater vehicles! Weapon changes: you favorite weapon from Halo 2 now SUCKS!
  • No mention of how the servers were overloaded from the get-go and it took until after 11pm for most users to get to the confirmation page?

    I'll tell you it was frustrating as hell. At any point during the registration process you were likely to get a blank white page with Microsoft's copyright at the bottom, so it was nearly impossible to tell if your registration was successful.

    It appears that Bungie is going to make a selection from all those who registered, and there is no information yet as to how they

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