Sydney ODST Event, through the eyes (and camera) of Zhuk

On August 6, 2009, Microsoft held a special ODST promo event on Cockatoo Island, in Sydney Harbor, Sydney, Australia. NeoGAF denizen Zhuk was there, and took pics. Read his impressions below. (This was originally posted at NeoGAF; mirrored here with permission.)

Update: A batch of new pictures was uploaded - you can see them on this page.

Okay so tonight I was able to go see and play Halo ODST in Sydney at an event organised by Microsoft at Cockatoo Island. It was pretty awesome and a very cool sort of way to promote the game, so kudos to them for coming up with the idea, anyways I have some pics:

We started our Journey at Circular Quay which is near the Sydney Opera House, our destination for the event was at Cockatoo Island, a creepy old abandoned shipyard in the middle of Sydney Harbour.

This is the antiquated vessel that took us to the island, I swear the First Fleet must have came to Australia on this thing :)

We passed under Sydney Harbour Bridge

Our destination from afar, being lit by Xbox/Halo green - as I said before Cockatoo Island is an abandoned shipyard and industrial area, i've actually never been there before and it looked EXACTLY like The Lost Coast/Ravenwood from HL2! The seagulls made the crowing sounds :)

After disembarking we were lead to one side of the island and then passed through a 300m or so tunnel to get to the other side where the press briefing was. We were greeted with the only existing Warthog in the world, designed by WETA for Neil Blogkamps Halo short films

As you can see the detail of the vehicle is incredible

And it has LCD screens/MFD's in it as well!

Bungie's Curtis Creamer and some guy from WETA (forgot his name -.-)

Anyways the WETA guy spoke for a bit about the work they did for the Halo short and about how they are working on District 9 and it was very interesting, they are incredibly talented guys. After this Curtis began his demonstration of the ODST campaign. This demonstration was the same as the one we saw at E3, so nothing new here sadly.

The new loading screen.

The Firefight lobby.

My Campaign/Firefight Impressions:

Graphics - the graphics are definitely an improvement over Halo 3, with the character models and environments looking much, much nicer. I was very impressed with how much they actually got out of the venerable Halo engine in ODST as I found it to be quite a beautiful game.

Gameplay - This is probably the biggest change, the open world design and interactivity of the world is a step forward for the Halo series, and it really looked like a lot of fun. Another big change is how you actually play as an ODST, it is definitely different from a Spartan. From the E3 videos I was a bit skeptical how different it would be, but watching the campaign and playing multiplayer they have made the ODST exactly how I thought they would be, you have to take things more strategically and it really feels like fighting with one hand behind your back which is totally awesome. Also now that health doesn't recharge it really gives you a sense of urgency when you are low on health and you find yourself forcing to use cover all the time.

I played Firefight for 20 minutes in two 10 minute rounds, i'll just get this out of the way now. Firefight is awesome and worth the price of entry alone. You can tell that Bungie put a lot of love into this and the mode is absolutely incredible, the tension and the difficulty of the game really begins to ratchet up and it is incredibly addictive to play.

I am in love with the new pistol they have included in the game, Halo 1 fans this thing is made for you. The new SMG is pretty powerful as well, and they seem to be very well balanced for the ODST class.

Music - I took note of the new music that was been showed in the campaign, and as usual it was absolutely fantastic. It doesn't sound like the usual musical scores we are use to the in the Halo trilogy but at the same time it fits the Halo universe very well, giving ODST its own flavour and sense of identity.

We were also using the Halo ODST controllers that will come with the special edition. I made sure to check the d-pad on it to see any improvements, and yes the d-pad is a lot more responsive so looks like it will be worth the extra buy.

Overall: I'm sure like many of you, ODST has been a definite buy but has been overshadowed by many other releases these holidays, I wasn't feeling the hype. Maybe because I was just looking at it as a Halo 3 expansion and nothing else. But after tonight this is now my most wanted game , the new campaign and firefight mode are up their with the best work Bungie is done and takes the Halo series in a new and refreshing direction and shows that Bungie is still the masters of the console FPS.

I walked away tonight very impressed and absolutely hyped for the game. September 22nd can't come quicker.

Brilliant PR and a great night, many thanks to the people from Microsoft, Bungie and WETA for making it happen.

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