I got this info via SpartanSwag.com (my friend VaderRx’s blog) who got that from www.littleenglishhaloblog.com. Credit goes to “FlawlessCowboy” over at the previously mentioned blog for the original info.

So here we have 11 slides to discuss.

This slide is basically a greeting to the rest of the info. Not much new here, though I like the use of the term “UNSC Infinity Training Program” near the top of the slide.

A little bit of textual history about the Halo franchise. Again, nothing really new yet.

Here’s a nice timeline shot of the Halo titles over the years.

So now we start to get to the good stuff. Okay so we know Halo 4 will be darker. Chief having to make some “very” difficult decisions? Oooh, now that sounds intriguing.

New nemesis? The Didact we presume. New Race? The Forerunner. Can Chief still trust an apparently rampant Cortana?

More Immersion? Hmm, not really explained here what that is, but I’m looking forward to discovering that.

Now HERE is what we were waiting for. 10 NEW weapons! We’ve already seen the Forerunner Light rifle and scattershot, the UNSC Rail Gun and Sticky pistol. Hmm, what else? 2 new vehicles? What could these be? A Forerunner War Sphinx? The UNSC Mammoth? That Mech we keep seeing? Or are they something else?

Here is the veiled “perks” system. (Which I’m totally fine with, BTW.) What really catches my eye in this slide is the “improved support to create, organize and track groups.” Hmm, Clans are coming back? I hope so. I belong to a gaming group (Rated Mature) and would love to set this up for the group.

Now about War Games. 10 maps to start. Cool. We’ve seen Haven, Adrift, and Longbow.

Now here is the REAL meat of the article. Spartan Ops. The first 10 weeks will be free. I thought this would be more though. Hmm, maybe will all the positive response from E3, 343 decided to draw back on how long/how much Spartan Ops would be and for free. Still, 10 weeks is a good start.  They (343) estimate that this first season will be approximately up to 12 hours of additional gameplay. Good. It is akin to a second campaign. Though I suspect some of the footage will be reused in some way. We’ll have to wait to see that though.

and finally…

Closing remarks to get the customers amped up to pre-order/buy the game.

Not a TON of new info, but what is there is welcome indeed.

-HFFL

The following is my response to a discussion on HaloWaypoint about a possible quit ban in Halo 4…

Instead of a straight ban for quitting here is what I propose: If points are used for experience, you loose 1 point per quit game. ALSO, you would lose 1/10th of 1 percent of your total credits earn. This way it’s not so bad when you start the game out, but as you earn a lot more credits and rank up you’d loose a lot more for quitting.

One way I look at this regarding quitting out of team games is that if YOU choose to go into a team game as a random yourself, then you have to consider that you may be matched up with horrible teammates. So the choice was yours. This is one reason why I won’t go into a team game as a random. I belong to a good gaming group that we have enough people on to have a team, be that a team of 4, 5, 6, or 8. Only “team” game I would go into as a random is multiteam. In that I mostly go for kills, so I’m not worried about how good or bad my teammates are.

Qutting out of a FFA or Rumblepit game should definitely cost you more, IMO. There you absolutely know it’s all on you to do well. Agreed on lag being an issue and causing games to be unpleasureable to play. One way to slightly get around that is to set your matchmaking to search for “good connection” AND “same language.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had bad lag due to the other team being from a different nation. Seems the worst with Mexico, then Australia and France. (not a knock on those folks, just that the connections aren’t even.

I definitely don’t want to see a quit ban though. As others have stated that only punishes people from playing a game they would otherwise love to play. Once in awhile, a quit really become necessary, be it lag, bad teammates, connection lost due to weather, or having to take a dump during a game…lol.

Seriously though, unless someone is a prolific quitter of games, the occasional quit shouldn’t mar someone’s record. As I stated at first, lose an XP point and some credits (above those credits lost for the game itself you quit out of).

Now, one way to stave off people rage quitting due to being pwned, is to have a fair matchmaking system that matches you up against gamers of like skill levels. That’s the biggest challenge. One the Reach never seems to quite do right.