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Bungie Weekly Update
Posted by Frankie at 1/26/2007 5:39 PM PST

Anyone who's been following the tiny bits of info about the Alpha, or read the EGM or 1UP stuff about the very early version of Halo 3, will probably be aware of Snowbound. Our test team shared a very amusing piece of test data with us - a "map" of kill zones taken using a sampling of about 650k games (all played on the Alpha). As you can see, there are some definite "hot spots" to look out for in Snowbound. When I first saw the diagram, I almost immediately recognized it based on the kill spots. Better yet, we all noticed that a map of Snowbound looks kind of like a map of the human brain. Any neuroscientists want to pick out any other coincidences?

Important Note: The BLUE represents the areas people die. White is where they DON'T die.

Return of the SWAT

Late last year in preparation for the effects of the holiday season, we removed a few playlists in order to condense the active matchmaking population into fewer pools. These changes ensured that even as new consoles and games were released, in a worst case scenario where our population dropped below safe thresholds the matchmaking system would still function well. Thankfully our population hasn't dropped significantly over the holidays and Halo 2 online multiplayer remains strong.

As some of you may be aware when we made these changes and removed a few playlists, including Team SWAT, we said that we were likely to bring some back in the near future depending on how our population held up after the holidays. In the next matchmaking update for Halo 2 we'll be bringing back Team SWAT as an unranked novelty playlist.

Since the Team SWAT playlist did have a few variations in lineup and configuration, we'll go over what will be included in the new unranked Team SWAT playlist so you know what to look forward to.

It's going to be unranked as mentioned before; the reasons for this are many and vary from the impact of unranked environments on social aspects of the game to the fact that Team SWAT disregards some of the components that make Halo 2 multiplayer, well... Halo 2 multiplayer. Lack of shields, grenades and such a small array of available weaponry make this gametype quite unique. While it is fun for many, it's not a staple Halo 2 experience so it falls within the confines of a novelty gametype.

As far as the gametypes you can expect to see in this new version of the playlist, it will focus primarily on slayer variants such as SWAT Classic (48%), SWAT Carbines(19%) and SWAT Magnums(13%). In addition to slayer variants we will feature a limited number of SWAT CTF Classic (12%) and SWAT Multi-Flag(8%) gametypes.

This update is roughly scheduled for early February... but as we are working on other things as well that is always subject to change. Please remain patient and when we have more details to release regarding other changes occurring in the update we'll let you know!

Bigness. Personified.

Um. I just got asked to check out a new feature for the Halo series. And I nearly pooped my pants. Like all miraculous features, I asked what the percentage chance of it making it into the final game are. You'd be surprised how accurate those estimates are. This one, I got a plain old "100%, no worries." Tyson downgraded that to 99%. Let's just say that it will make the folks at HighImpactHalo fill their drawers. And the MLG boys will sweat blood with excitement. They will all still moan at me about how we nerfed the pistol from Halo One, but this new thing will at least cheer 'em up for a few months. Or years. It's that big.

Bungie Hates Halo 2

Of course we don't. We love it. Was it perfect? Of course not. This week, weirdly, a bunch of websites ran excerpts from a month-old interview with Edge Magazine where some Bungie staff expressed dissatisfaction with various game features in H2. Of course we did. We're always trying to improve it. Anyhoo, long story short, for some reason, we got quoted out of context as basically hating everything about the dear old game, when in fact we love it, and want to build on it.

The stout fellows at 1Up.com ran a story today with quotes from us explaining ourselves. You can read that HERE. And you'll be all like, "Aaaah, I get where they're coming from." Probably.