Category Archives: Halo Waypoint

343 Team Spotlight: Simon Gordon

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The following is a reblog from Halo Waypoint: 

By Grim

This week’s spotlight shines bright on the Halowaypoint team and software developer Simon Gordon who has been hard at work bringing the Halo Wars 2 companion experience to life on the web.

Hey Simon, welcome to the Team Spotlight! To kick things off, can you tell us a little about yourself? What’s your current role with 343?
Simon Gordon: I am a software developer on HaloWaypoint.com. My main focus has generally been to work with other internal teams on showing stats and delivering an out-of-game companion experience for the Halo games.

How long have you been with the team? What prompted you to join 343?
SG: I have been on the 343 team for three and a half years. My wife and I moved to Seattle and while I was looking for a job, I heard about a job positing at 343 for a web developer. Having just worked on developing a website, I figured it was a natural fit.

What’s your background prior to joining 343?
SG: I earned a Bachler of Science in Computer Science at Washington State University. I had an internship while at college and several years of job experience before applying for the job at 343. Continue reading →

Community Update: Cetacean Celebration

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

By Ske7ch

Hello everyone and welcome to another installment of the Halo Community Update. This week we’ve got another jam-packed serving of Halo goodness spanning Halo Wars 2, Halo 5 REQs and helmets, Warzone, a new team spotlight, community egg hunters and more. Let’s do this!

HALO WARS 2 BLITZ BETA

Wow, it’s hard to believe that ten full days of the Blitz Beta have come and gone so quick! Many, many players jumped at the chance to take Blitz for a test drive on Xbox One and Windows 10 and we’ve gathered a ton of great feedback, bug reports and game data to help the development team.

As the beta fades into the distance Dan Ayoub, 343’s Studio Head of Strategy Games Development, passed along the following note for our community:

“On behalf of the entire Halo Wars 2 team I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who participated in the Blitz beta! Your feedback and the data we gathered during the beta is critical to helping us make Halo Wars 2 as awesome as possible when it launches on Feb. 21. I hope you’ll continue to share your thoughts and feedback for the rest of Halo Wars 2 when you experience the full game in just a few short weeks. See you online!” 

I don’t know about you but I love a good infographic. Thankfully the team has us covered with this sweet snapshot of some of the more memorable statistics from the Blitz Beta:

blitzbeta-infographic-inline-655da8bb75414f6a979be1ce81597434 Continue reading →

Canon Fodder: Log of War

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

BY GRIMBROTHER ONE
ISSUE 97

Greetings fellow lore-lovers! Thanks much for joining us again for another installation of your favorite fiction feature. Last issue, we unleashed a torrent of awesome art and accompanying background info as a deeper dive into many of the units available in the fast-approaching Halo Wars 2. Today, we take a look at a feature in the aforementioned RTS experience that regular readers of these particular pages will no doubt be intrigued by. Plus, we’ve extracted more awesome tabletop details from one of our BFFs (best fiction friend, obviously), Kenneth Peters – including some Deep Link-style lore for one of my personal favorite Sangheili ranks. And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve got some more behind-the-scenes Q&A with more of the folks behind Halo: Tales from Slipspace. So yeah, should be fun. Ready?

PHOENIX LOGS

One of my favorite unsung features in Halo Wars 2 is something that lore-leaning Halo fans have asked about for quite some time. Aside from a (admittedly really cool) Kinect-centric Library feature included with 2011’s Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, there hasn’t often been much in the way of a more comprehensive “codex”-style destination within a Halo game, which makes the new Phoenix Logs feature something I’m personally pretty stoked about.

cfphoenixlogshot2-e00c236073b347ffab48d190823f759d Continue reading →

Blitzing the Night Away

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By Sk37ch
Welcome back, friends! We’ve still got Blitz on the brain so this week’s update has some pro-tips and insights to hopefully help elevate your game and win percentage as we go into the final weekend of the Halo Wars 2 Beta. We’ve also got quite a bit of Halo 5 news on deck including info on tomorrow’s “Warlords” playlist, new helmets, an ask for feedback and more. Beyond that we’ve also got another 343 Team Spotlight from deep within the Halo Wars 2 team and Uny’s serving up another helping of the Community Spotlight and a Play of the Week.

I know I solicited your feedback and quetions on Twitter this week and while quite a bit is covered below, I know I couldn’t get to everything. I also owe some updates on Forge creations so I’ll revisit those questions and topics next week when we come up for air from the Blitz Beta.

We’ve got a fully loaded deck of legendary updates this week so without further ado…3..2..1..Blitz!hw2-blitz-mp-beta-blogbanner-1120-x-334-3cd197c27ad9447cab6c814f377e8896 Continue reading →

Canon Fodder Issue 96: The Art of War(s)

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

BY GRIMBROTHER ONE
ISSUE 96

canonfodder-1-18-17-b6fbefdc141f4cd292d763bfde6e1746Greetings, and welcome back to the first Canon Fodder of 2017! It’s been a while since we last met like this, with understandable cause of course – with the Halo Wars 2 Blitz Beta nigh upon us, and the full game launch itself barely a month away, the studio has been abuzz with activity on a myriad of fronts.

With these things in mind, we thought it prudent to kick this year off the right way – with a salvo of salivation-inducing sweetness that we hope will satisfy the many lore-leaning fans who love to linger around these parts. We’ve got awesome new Halo Wars 2 Blitz art, an in-depth look at some rad new recent additions to the Halo: Ground Command arsenal thanks to fellow 343 lore liaison Kenneth Peters, cool community contributions, and more. Shall we begin? Continue reading →

Community Update: RTX 2016 Recap

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BY B IS FOR BRAVO

Welcome back, friends. Since we last spoke, the Warzone Firefight release has reached your consoles, we’ve traveled to the heart of Texas, and we’re now back in the studio preparing for what’s next. Perhaps the “what’s next” list may be of great interest to you.

This week, the Warzone team pushed out an update to fix the “back button” scoreboard and PGCR (post game carnage report) sorting, and they’re also hard at work on further updates to Warzone Firefight. As we speak, teams are looking at all of the data and feedback you’ve generated so far, and evaluating as they work towards future updates for the mode. While we don’t have a final ETA just yet, you can rest assured that work is well underway, and that you’ll be hearing about more details soon. Oh, and fixes for Tidal lighting are being worked on, too.

HFFL: Oh good, regarding Tidal. It takes an inordinate amount of time to bake lighting. If you are going to forge on Tidal, I HIGHLY suggest SAVING your game before baking lighting. The game can lag out before doing so. It’s happened to me and a few others I know of. 

We’ve been thrilled about the incredible amount of new players who jumped into Halo 5 during the free play period, and hope many of you stick around (one of us! one of us!). As we mentioned last night, we’ve also been ecstatic to see the number of monthly Halo 5 players increasing month over month over the past few months. This is pretty special to see, and I’m looking forward to plenty more gaming with you this summer. Speaking of, we’ve seen many inquiries about what’s to come for Halo 5. We’re glad you’re asking. While you won’t be seeing updates every month moving forward, nor updates the size of the Warzone Firefight release, we’re happy to let you know that there’s still more on the way. Things we have yet to talk about or discuss. Things that I have seen, and I think you will like. These and more are in the works, so in short, there is indeed more to come. Rest easy.

HFFL: Cool. Glad to know there is more on the way. We’ve gotten plenty already. More than enough, IMO. SO anything from this point forward is a huge heap of icing on the cake, so-to-speak.

Next up, let’s catch up on a few different topics, starting with RTX and the cool things we brought there. Grim’s got the details.

RTX 2016

rtx-2016-halo-banner2-4dde8771ef4f4e689c119146338ff8d5 Continue reading →

Canon Fodder: Crown Jul

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

BY GRIMBROTHER ONE
ISSUE 81

Howdy, Halo lovers. Thanks for joining us for another week of your favorite service for story-centric snippets. Last issue was a lovely load of lore lovin’, continuing the Firefight-focused fiction feast. This time around we’re playing a bit of catch-up after an incredibly busy few weeks, but we’ve still got some pretty cool things to talk about that we think you’ll enjoy. Also, props to Halo Waypoint community member Nihilus Shadow for the epic highlight shot of the Didact’s Hand (though maybe not quite as good as this one) used as this week’s feature image. And with that, let’s dive in!

JEWEL MADONNA

canonfodder-7-8-16-adee61e09aa243f3add8b121c4f5a56cOne of the sweet little surprises that awaited players diving into Halo 5: Guardians for the most recent release was the (re)appearance of a well-known Sangheili warlord. There were no doubt plenty of surprised  lore aficionados when Jul ‘Mdama’s name was called out for the first time in Warzone within the Attack on Sanctum scenario, as the challenging Boss he is. While this is the first time players have had the opportunity to tackle the resurgent Covenant leader in-game, it’s certainly not the first time he’s left his mark on Halo hearts. Jul first appeared in Karen Traviss’ Halo: Glasslands and would go on to feature prominently in her Kilo-5 trilogy, revealing the ugly underbelly of interspecies post-war politics. Continue reading →

Community Update: Warzone Firefight Preview

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint, added commentary by my in BLUE I will also specifically bold certain points in the article in GREEN as a point of focus to take note of:

BY B IS FOR BRAVO

Welcome to the Warzone Firefight preview, friends. Next Wednesday, the newest Halo 5 content release will arrive, and it’s bringing a bunch of friends with it. Between new maps, the Warzone Firefight game mode, Campaign Score Attack, new vehicles and REQs, new enemies, a new Forge canvas, and plenty more, it includes a ton of goodness that we hope you’re excited to jump into when it drops on June 29.

To get you ready for Halo 5’s biggest release yet, we’ve prepared this Community Update with extensive developer commentary on a few of the things you’ll find next week. Additionally, the live stream team is hard at work putting the finishing touches on next week’s show, which will take place on Tuesday, June 28 at 2 P.M. PT sharp. Don’t be late.

Today, we’ll hear from designers, developers, and artists on some of the things they’ve built for you, plus a bit more. Let’s get into it. Also, if you haven’t yet caught the full REQ Reveal for Warzone Firefight, you can catch it here.

WARZONE FIREFIGHT

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Since beta, the Warzone Firefight team has been reviewing your feedback and putting in the time to make updates before the final release. To get the details, I chatted with the some of the folks who are doing said hard work. Take it away, guys.

DAVID ELLIS, MULTIPLAYER DESIGNER

If you’re not familiar with Warzone Firefight (What’s wrong with you? 😊), it’s our brand-new 8-player Co-op mode where you and your Spartan squad must overcome 5 rounds of increasingly difficult objectives to rack up huge scores and emerge victorious. If you are familiar with Warzone Firefight, then chances are you participated in our pre-release beta back in April. And believe me, you were not alone. We were blown away by the community response to beta. Whether internal telemetry, community forum posts or social media replies, we gathered a treasure trove of information and used that data to update and improve the entire Warzone Firefight experience. Your participation and subsequent feedback helped to inform our work for the June release. What’s changed since then you ask? (Even if you didn’t I’m going to tell you anyway because that’s why I’m here).

Continue reading →

Canon Fodder: Surface Features

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BY GRIMBROTHER ONEISSUE 79

Greetings, fiction-followers, and thanks for tuning in for another edition of your favorite Halo story corner. Last time we met, we recapped the story of the original Halo Wars for, you know, no good reason at all. And this week has been pretty quiet on all fronts, really. Not a whole lot going on, not a bunch to talk about. I mean, other than E3, Halo Wars 2, and Warzone Firefight fiction. But other than that, nothing. Promise.

ARRIVAL

Okay I lied. So this week, the Halo heavy hitting came from the hallowed halls of the 2016 Xbox E3 presence, and the initial salvo was provided in unsurprisingly spectacular fashion with a new cinematic trailer courtesy of our friends and partners at Blur Studio. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it right meow. If you have already seen it, you know you want to watch it again. I’ll wait, promise. In fact, I’m probably watching it again myself right this very moment. We’re one and the same, you and I.

Continue reading →

Community Update: Warzone Firefight Sneak Peak

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We have returned from the annual pilgrimage of E3. In mostly one piece. Over the past four days, thousands of players stopped by the Halo Wars 2 booth to get hands-on with PC and Xbox One, and many more of you have joined the Halo Wars 2 beta, which still has a few days remaining. In fact, to thank you for your playtime, patience, and enthusiasm, we’ll be extending the Halo Wars 2 Beta on Xbox One through Wednesday, June 22. We hope you’re able to get a few extra battles in.

I myself am looking forward to spending some time at home with Deathmatch, which just released today in beta. Grim will be talking a bit more about Halo Wars 2 later on in today’s blog.

halowars2-players-e3-6c99f8a6e0034e889773188edde38cbf Continue reading →

Canon Fodder: Local Units

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BY GRIMBROTHER ONEISSUE 78

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Welcome back, canonballers, thanks for stopping by! Last issue, we knocked out some more Hog Wild REQ fiction, and sat down with new-to-Halo author John Jackson Miller, who is contributing stories for both Halo: Fractures and Halo: Tales From Slipspace. After a week break to gather our strength – and sanity – we’re back and in full E3-prep mode.

As it’s no real secret that we’ll be showcasing the long-anticipated sequel to a certain Halo real-time strategy title on the expo’s show floor, we thought it might be prudent to take a quick look back at the story of the original Halo Wars, and set the stage for what might be next for the UNSC Spirit of Fire and her crew. Feel up to a stroll down memory lane? I thought so… Continue reading →

Community Update: All Units

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The pre-E3 Community Update is a ritual. It is a calm before the storm. By the time you read this, many from the 343 and Xbox team will already be down in Los Angeles preparing for the ceremonious week ahead. Others will soon follow. Like many before it, this one will be a brief update that will ensure you’re ready for the week ahead. I’ve also spent some time this past week with devs that you have yet to hear from in a weekly update, and we spoke about a specific something they’ve been working on. All that and more today. Cue cool music.

E3 2016halo-wars-2-e3-b6a30995e3054a67a064772748f8f327

It is time. Booths are being built, stages are being lit, and tens of thousands of gaming fans, media, and devs are en route to Southern California for the biggest week in games. We’re on our way, too, and we hope we run into many of you there. Whether you’ll be joining us on the show floor or watching from home, here’s all of the info you need to know. Continue reading →

Community Update: Hints and Heroes

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dont-decode-this-halo-5-teaser-a5e699ab1ce042d9aa1bc305cd7240fd

Welcome back to another edition of the Halo Community Update. We’ve got a quick blog this week, as teams across the studio are preparing for a very busy June – including the Warzone Firefight release as well as gaming industry events, expositions, and exciting endeavors. Today, we’ll talk Pro League goodness as well as some new happenings. Shall we?

In less than a week, we’ll be heading out to the annual games festival known as E3, where we hope to see and hang out with many of you. Drop me a line on Twitter if you’ll be in town. We’re hoping for some quality time with friends both old and new, a week of sunshine, and that you like what you see from the show. Continue reading →

Canon Fodder: Driving Force

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint:

BY GRIMBROTHER ONE
ISSUE 77

Greetings, story-seekers! Welcome back to another lovingly crafted edition of your favorite fiction feature. This week, we’ve got even more Hog Wild lore-lovin’ on tap, as well as a virtual sit-down with a new name in the Halo story stable, John Jackson Miller. Intrigued? Then by all means, read on, friends!FARAWAY FICTION

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Over the past couple of issues, we’ve shed some light on a couple of exciting new story sources for Halo fans coming up later this year – Halo: Fractures, a new short-story anthology, and Halo: Tales from Slipspace, the aforementioned graphic novel collection. Both books include some particularly intriguing new names within the Halo writers realm, and over the next few months we thought it might be fun to get to know a few of them a bit better in order to whet community appetites. Keen-eyed Canon Fodder followers might likely have noticed why Mr. John Jackson Miller made a logical first choice to start off these familiarization exercises, as he’s written stories for both upcoming products. Using the power of the internet, I sat down with the tri-monickered man to get an idea about where he’s been, and what makes him excited about leaving his own mark on the Halo universe.

Continue reading →

Community Update: Hog Wild REQ Drop

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This is a reblog from Halo Waypoint: (Apologies for the late posting of this, family stuff takes precedence)

Welcome back! ¡Bienvenidos! Вітаємо!

This week, we’ve got a quick blog showcasing the full suite of Hog Wild REQs, and a bit more. Onwards!

Teams across the studio are preparing for the upcoming Hog Wild REQ Drop, the Warzone Firefight release, and even goodness that lies beyond. The Halo Wars 2 team is anxiously gearing up for E3, where the game will indeed be playable. There’s also – well, I can’t talk about more just yet. To stay out of trouble, let’s get right into the Hog Wild REQ Drop.

HFFL: Goodness that lies beyond, huh? Let’s hope that means more free DLC!

HOG WILD REQ DROP

h5-guardians-hog-wild-vis-id-horiz2-dd0ca21120ef458488346ba5d3896a8a Continue reading →