Halo Master Chief Pre-order bonuses

Yep, pre-order bonuses are back…

The good thing is, they are skulls that we should be able to unlock through normal gameplay anyway. These will just give players a quick step up on skulls.

Let’s take a look at these bonuses, shall we?

HMCC Amazon pre-orderAmazon’s pre-order will get you the Piñata skull. With the Piñata Skull, enemies will drop plasma grenade with every melee! You can pre-order from Amazon HERE.

HMCC Best Buy pre-orderHere’s Best Buy’s bonus. The Grunt Funeral Skull. You can pre-order from Best Buy HERE.

HMCC Gamestop pre-orderLastly (for now), Gamestop’s pre-order bonus, the Bandana Skull. The Bandana Skull provides unlimited ammo and grenades. You can pre-order form Gamestop HERE.

At least it’s not armor this time around. I STILL don’t have that Deadeye helmet from Halo 4 🙁

If there are more pre-order bonuses to come, you can bet I’ll be on it and let you all know.
-Sal

A game of love, Bravo’s thoughts from E3.

Bravo posted this yesterday shortly after the Halo presentation at E3. 

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When I first heard murmurs that Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4 were being re-mastered on a single disc, I, among many others (and over the past few weeks, possibly many of you) thought to myself “no way.” As time went on, murmurs turned into blueprints, but I’d still hear designers, testers, and producers ask “are we really gonna do this?”

Yes, we are indeed going to do this. Fast forward a bit to earlier this year, and I spot several teams across the studio working on a project that would come to be named Halo: The Master Chief Collection. On one screen, someone’s taking Cairo Station screenshots for our E3 reveal, on another, a 4v4 match on an early build of Halo 2: Anniversary’s Ascension is being played over, and over, and over again to ensure that the map is just right. At some point over the past several months, it began to dawn on me – the thing that looked insane and overly-ambitious on paper was actually becoming reality.

As I sit here at E3, I speak for many back home at 343 when I say that working on this project has and continues to be something truly special – not just as developers, but personally for me, as a fan of Halo. Whether it be countless late night matches of Halo 2 on Xbox Live, Legendary co-op runs of The Library (yes, that’s right), or long-lasting friends I’ve met through Halo, there’s a good chance that the games and experiences found in Halo: The Master Chief Collection are some of the reasons why we’re all here today, talking about the games and the franchise that we love. It is incredible to think not only about reliving many of these experiences, re-mastered at 60 fps and on dedicated servers, but also the new experiences that lie ahead for this year and beyond.

Earlier today, I had the extreme privilege of being on stage with Bonnie, Dan, Neighbor, and Ghost to showcase an early look at Halo 2: Anniversary multiplayer. Being here at E3 to announce Halo: The Master Chief Collection, along with Halo: Nightfall and the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta was a humbling experience for far too many reasons, and we hope you’re excited about the journey we’re all about to embark on.

If you’d like to find out more about today’s announcements, you can head to our updated home page, which details each of the above projects as well as an eyeful of candy. Stay tuned to this blog throughout the week as we celebrate these announcements with exclusive assets, wallpapers, photos (aka shenanigans) and videos from E3. It’ll be a lot of fun, and I’d love for all of you to join us.

We’re sure you’ve got a ton of questions, and over the next few days, weeks, and months, we’ll have answers. Thanks for reading, and thanks for joining us in celebrating the announcement of The Master Chief Collection. As you’d expect, we’ll have more to talk about and reveal between now and November. For the latest news and updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter and check into Waypoint all week. We’ll try our best to make it worth your while. Enjoy!

Bravo​

Master Chief Collection Official Wallpapers

These were put out by Waypoint yesterday. I’d have gotten them out then, but I was pretty exhausted mentally. I was in a stream/podcast/blogging/tweeting for 12 hours straight. I posted a dozen or more articles on the blog. So, yep, I was pretty tired. Besides this left me with other things to post today…

So without further ado, here are the official HMCC wallpapers:

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Facebook banner (four horsemen)

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Twitter banner (four horsemen)

halo-master-chief-collection_facebook-bannerFacebook HMCC banner

halo-master-chief-collection_twitter-banner-visual-idTwitter banner 

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Twitter profile

The following are all from the digital series Halo: Nightfall. I’m really interested in this damaged Halo scene.halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-1920x1080_nightfall1920×1080

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-1280x720_nightfall1280×720

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-1024x768_nightfall1024×768

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windows phone

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-iphone5_nightfall
iPhone 5

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-androidphone_nightfall
Android phone

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-surface_nightfallSurface

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-androidtablet_nightfallAndroid Tablet

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-ipadmini_nightfalliPad mini

halo-master-chief-collection-wallpaper-ipad2_nightfalliPad 2

Enjoy!
-Sal

The Master Chief Collection menus and in-game screenshots explained.

Before I get start, I need to gov e a shout out to IGN. I pulled the following screens from their video footage of their interview with Frank O’Conner and Dan Ayoub of 343.(So blame IGN for the crappy resolution, LOL)

Okay, lets get this ball a rollin’

This is the start up screen. The circular bands around the logo rotate around it.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.17.13 AM
This next image below shows the main page of the UI (user interface).  The menu bar at the top from left to right reads: Campaigns/Multiplayer/Playlists/Extras.These will be explained further down.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.19.12 AM
So here you see that Halo 2 Anniversary was selected from the Campaigns menu. To the right of Master Chief are the missions. They are all unlocked (form all 4 campaigns) from the start. This means you do not need to play through each campaign to get to certain missions. Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.20.30 AM
There are more missions when you click as far to the right in the mission select area from the image below. Note the arrow next to the highlighted mission indicating as such. Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.20.58 AMBelow we see that you can choose what settings you want, level of difficulty you want to play on and use any skulls you have unlocked.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.21.04 AM
In the multiplayer section you see that you can select Find Game, Custom Game, or Spartan Ops. Obviously Spartan Ops is Halo 4 only.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.22.17 AMWhen you select Find Game, it takes you to the playlist selection. For instance below you see that Big Rumble is selected. It tells you team size, minimum player count and max party size, max local players. But there VERY cool new thing is to the right of that it shows you which of the four games this playlist is attached to. In this case ALL four are available for Big Rumble. This means that you may see of the three choices to vote on a map from CE Anniversary, Halo2 Anniversary, Halo 3 or Halo 4.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.22.49 AM
Now the image below shows that Rumble Pit is available for maps in Halo 2 Anniversary and Halo 4. BTW, these may change later on and are not yet locked in stone. Player feedback, choices and such will help dictate to 343 if they need to add another games maps to the playlist or take a games maps out of a playlist.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.23.17 AM
Here you see the Extras tab selected. Blur trailer is that of Blur, the company who did the Halo 2 Anniversary skins. Terminals are self explanatory. Good thing is we do NOT have to exit to Waypoint to see these now! Halo Nightfall is the ‘digital series’. Now I’m not sure if that launches from the disc or not, but from the interview it seems like it does. And finally the Halo 5 BETA. This will not be available at launch of HMCC, but rather a month later. Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.26.05 AM
Below we see that Cairo Station is being loaded up to play. Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.26.33 AMThis is an example of the new graphics. Much more contrast!Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.26.44 AMIn the image below you can see at near left center a skull. Yep, that’s one of the ones for you to find in Halo 2 Anniversary.Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.27.11 AMDual wielding is BACK! Well, it’s in Halo 2 Anniversary anyway. (And Halo 3)Screen Shot 2014-06-10 at 10.27.44 AM

There will be more things revealed by 343 in the coming months regarding Halo the Master Chief Collection. For instance they’ve remade 6 classic maps from Halo 2. One of which was shown during the Microsoft presentation. That being Ascension.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this slice of the HMCC’s (Halo Master Chief Collection) menus and a few of the campaign newly skinned graphics.

If you’ve got any thoughts on these, let me know by replying below!

-Sal