We left off at the Watchers. Now onto weapons, disintegrations and locales, oh my!

Some cool looking weapon concepts. Scattershot made the cut. The one at middle-left looks reminds me of the weapon used by the Forerunners in the Halo Legends cartoon.

Chief using the Scattershot, the Forerunner’s shotgun equivalent. I LOVE how it’s just oozing with power. It’s supposed to be nerfed now from when it was first revealed at E3. Still, I can’t wait to try it out!

I just love how all the Forerunner weapons “transform” for lack of a better word. What a cool design choice. Definitely something different in Halo. (For the better, IMO)

Chief looking rather menacing himself. I believe that’s either the Boltshot or Suppressor he’s holding.

Have I said how much Forerunner weapons kick ass? Can I haz?

Here is the digital wireframe showing a Knight being disintegrated.

Followed up by the in-game result. Another excellent design choice. This really shows off the level of tech the Forerunner weapons have. And…it’s just cool looking.

Is this part of the innards of Requiem or one of the mighty Forerunner structures on it? By the way, you’re looking up, not across in this pic.

Great shot of an UNSC Scorpion in a hangar. I really hope we get to game in this area and it’s not just a cinematic. Again, the lighting is amazing. 3443 really has gone above and beyond with lighting.

A Jackal (foreground) and a grunt. Are they patrolling the Forward Unto Dawn? If so, they’re in for a world of hurt when they come across the Chief. Heh, I think I’m going to start calling this version of Jackal a “Cyclops.”

Looks like an Elite General and a Knight Commander are squaring off. Who will win? I’m betting on the Knight.

One of the outside locals on Requiem. It looks peaceful enough. Not the typical Forerunner structures at the base of the land. My how they like to pervade upon nature.

A hazy shot of a mountainous region on Requiem. The haze helps to give a good sense of scale, distance, and perspective.

Chief looking across a ravine. I really like this shot as you can see some great detail in the armor and undersuit.

Ah, our sweet Cortana. Not just another pretty face though. Her role in Halo 4 is bigger than any other previous Halo title. I’m not looking forward to her going crazy, but it’s a necessary part of furthering the story. I just hope she’s not “killed off.”

Crawlers showing off their namesake in a tight gully. Again lighting makes this more dramatic. I sense danger here.

Sentinels patrolling something that looks tantamount to an altar…
The scene is dark, again conveying danger. If this is part of the campaign, I’m betting it’s going to be one hell of a fight here.

A Phantom surveying wreckage. I don’t think this is any part of the UNSC Infinity. Rather, this is likely craft from sometime in the long history and past. Maybe early human design?

A Phantom again in the Foreground. It approaches a Mammoth near bottom-left. But wait, what the hell is that thing in the upper-right? It’s MASSIVE. I think trouble is about to find both smaller craft.

The visage of a Promethean Knight on a holo table aboard the UNSC Infinity. They are supposed to be 12 feet tall. I wonder if they didn’t walk with bent “knees” and hunched over with that huge shell on their back how much taller they’d be? Another 2-3 feet taller? They’re bigger than Hunters even hunched over and we have to fight them regularly. Yikes, imagine having to fight Hunters through whole missions of previous Halo games? The Knights are worse though as they can teleport and have much better weapons, not to mention the Watchers who protect them and can call upon Crawlers to help. A formidable opponent to say the least.

And finally, Chief encounters the Didact sphere. This promises to be one hell of a showdown!

I hope you liked my breakdown and discussion of the latest “Making of Halo” vid. If so, please post a reply. I’d love to know what you folks think as well of the vid and the articles.

-Sal (HFFL)

This article is going to be image heavy, so I’m putting them in small. To see them larger, click on them.

So if you read my blog yesterday or went to halowaypoint.com you would have seen this video by now. (If not, scroll down and check out the vid). Now I’m taking some time to discuss parts of what we see in the video. I originally took 114 screenshots of this, but had to cut that down to something reasonable. I got it to 43… So I’m splitting the article into two parts.

Here we go:

The Promethean Knight is checking out the Spartan. Notice it’s NOT Master Chief. That helmet looks EOD-ish and has a green visor. Could this be from Spartan Ops?

Aha, so now we see that the Knights come in both Orange and Blue varieties. This shot is near to exactly the same one from the E3 vid.

Cortana’s butt, LOL.

A beautiful Forerunner causeway. Note the Covenant Phantom flying in the middle. There’s a lot of detail in this shot.Lighting is superb and I like the one-point perspective of the shot.

A concept scale shot of a Knight and Spartan. Um, wouldn’t that be kind of strange and uncomfortable slotting your arms in the armor like that? (on the Knight)

More concepts. These seem more like Cat people to me. Thundercats HO!

The middle concept is getting very close to the finished result. 343 really took great care and time to come up with the final design. (more on that in a bit)

Here’s that eerie glowing blue skull again. I LIKE it!

An earlier concept that had a face as part of the helmet, that then splits open to reveal a skull. It’s rather creepy, wouldn’t you say?

Ah, now this grunt looks like previous ones, well at least the helmet/breathmask. It’s going to take a little getting used to grunts with nose breathing tubes…

An Elite’s day is about to end. VIOLENTLY! It’s good to know you aren’t the only target of the Prometheans.

Another Knight variant.

I am MEGATRON! Well…it does look like him to me.

Another view, with the hard light spikes on the back. Coolness!

Hey, you got “Ring around the collar!” (okay, if you get that reference, you’re OLD…like me.)

A fantastic pic showing 4 variants of the knight. Note the different “swords” on each one as well as the collar/back variations. These look like overgrown battle beetles to me. LOL. I’m sure they’ll pick up a name like that along the way.

A cool color concept of the crawler. I’m digging these Didact Dogs!

RAWR! Note the mandibles split away and are floating, not attached to the crawler.

A Watcher close-up. Check out that little face on it.

He’ll sting you!

Watchers can regenerate Knights. Man, that’s going to be a real kick in the pants. Just when you think you’ve won a battle! Looks like Watchers are going to be a priority. (Maybe)

This amazing behind the scenes vid, with a lot of in-game footage as well, is a cool 10 minutes 40 seconds long. Packed with new imagery and details about the Forerunner foes we’ll be facing in Halo 4, this video can not be missed. Well, unless you don’t want to see any potential spoilers. (So you’ve been warned…) LOL

I take screenshots of these vids to discuss later. After viewing this, I looked at how many I took. I couldn’t believe I snapped 114 screenshots… Needless to say I won’t have that many in my discussion write-up later, but there really is that much Halo goodness in the vid.

Okay, enough of my rambling, if you got this far without clicking on the vid yet, you’ve got a ton of patience. More than I would have.

Click the vid below and please reply with your thoughts.

-Sal (HFFL)