Feature: BUNGIE WATCH: Cortana Bares All on Halo 3 Subscribe to this RSS feed

Does the Halo 3 trailer raise more questions than provide answers? Find out here.

There are mixed feelings surrounding the most recent Halo 3 trailer. Some feel it was more exhilarating than the second coming of Christ, while others saw it as just a middling, unexciting teaser. No matter which side of the fence you're on, many prominent questions regarding Halo 3 have been answered: what will it look like, is it an MMO, and where does the story take place?

First and foremost, the Halo series has always used the in-game engine to render the cutscenes. What does that mean? The visual capabilities you saw in the trailer such as smoke, high dynamic range lighting, and motion blur, are all effects you will see in actual gameplay. Although the trailer was lacking in gun fights and explosions, the visuals are easily on par with Epic's graphically glorified Gears of War. When Frankie from Bungie.net was asked about his favorite graphic feature in Halo 3, he responded there are things we haven't seen yet that will blow everything else away. Another cool feature: the days of image-plane backgrounds are over; all the fallen halo rings in the distance are actual 3D modeled geometry.

Location wise, the trailer shows Master Chief strutting his stuff in New Mombasa with Kilimanjaro Mountain in the background. Also, notice the Chief is wielding an Assault Rifle from Halo 1, which Frankie denies this to be true. Could this mean the combination of all weapons from the Halo series in the next installment?

From what the trailer implies, Halo 3 will not be an MMO, but there will be a single player experience unparalleled by any other sci-fi property. How epic will the story be? Closing the trailer Cortana states, "This is the way the world ends." Is it possible Master Chief falls to save Earth from the Covenant invasion? It seems Bungie has given us a taste of the end to the Halo series.

And what is Halo without multiplayer? More so, in addition to traditional deathmatch, will Halo 3 redefine multiplay as online play that enables massive cooperative missions with multiple Spartans? Will the co-op missions be completely different from the single player missions, in essence, creating two separate games? With next generation hardware many new Xbox Live features are possible to gamers. Using Gears of War as an example, if a player is logged into Xbox Live while playing as Marcus Phoenix, another can join his or her game as Marcus' right hand man, Dom. Similar to the famous Halo level The Silent Cartographer, imagine your buddy down the street dropping in via air ship, Warthog in toe, to aid you on a difficult level.

We've only been given a tease of Halo 3 and the final product is far from complete, but you can bet that Bungie will make Halo 3 the #1 Xbox 360 game to own.