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All of gameplay, kills and thrills condensed into an epic minute within your reach!

By now, you've likely dissected every frame of the new Halo: Reach trailer, mining its most precious infoz to your heart's content. Or maybe (like us) you work for a living, or have other responsibilities that keep you from busting out the microscope and going to town. That's where Digital Foundry comes in.

DF conducted a thorough breakdown of the X10 video, monitoring the frames-per-second (fups, as us cool kids call it) in all of the presented gameplay. All in all, the ViDoc seems to have spoken the truth: Halo: Reach's engine is a significant improvement over that of Halo 3's. It looks like Reach should run at a smooth 30fps, the same as its predecessor, at a higher resolution: 1152x720 over Halo 3's 1152x640. Yep, you pixel-counters just read that right. Head on over and give the video a gander.

[Via HBO]

Microsoft's X10 press event has come and gone, and with it came a stack of Xbox-related news, trailers, screenshots and more. It was so much content, we nearly broke the Internet! Alright, that's probably inaccurate but we have to assume we were close. In case you missed anything, we've wrapped it all up and have it here for you in one tidy, little package.

Bungie's Marcus Lehto was grinning like a proud papa when we had a chance to chat with him during X10. The Halo: Reach creative director had been demoing his baby continually for around eight hours, but seemed excited just to be able to tell us more about the studio's final Halo game, his presentation of which had totally wowed us earlier in the day. We reached out, shook his hand, said Halo (okay, not really) and got cracking with our questions.

Joystiq: As a game that is intended to cap off Bungie's work on the Halo series, how do you end a story by going back to the beginning?

Marcus Lehto: What we wanted to do is kind of bring everything full circle. Going back -- to a prequel -- to delve into the stories of the Spartans on planet Reach and to tell their stories; What they did, what they did that transpired and led to the events of Halo 1, was such a cool thing for us to tackle. That's the thing that really got us excited about [Halo: Reach]. We came up with an amazing story tell tell.

For us, like I said, it does literally bring things full circle for us because we're doing things in Reach -- and telling this story -- that really help us encapsulate the entire series and make sense of everything.

Coinciding with the massive Xbox info avalanche that was X10, Bungie has released a new ViDoc for Halo: Reach. There's pretty much something for every Halo fan in here: Spartan customization, new weapons, huge maps, new music and plenty of human-on-Covenant violence. A few things to look out for include a grenade launcher, stealth kills and a Spartan actually sprinting. You'll even get an un-textured peek at the huge battles Bungie demonstrated during X10. A full squad of marines, Spartans and 30 Covenant duking it out all at once? Yes, please.

Once you pick the video apart -- and we know you will -- be sure to post your OMG megaton discoveries in the comments. Once you're done doing that, go download the ViDoc from XBLM and watch it in HD.

Shortcut: Download the Halo: Reach 'Once More Unto the Breach" ViDoc to your Xbox 360 [Via Xbox.com]

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Bungie's "community guy " Brian Jarrard and Halo: Reach creative director Marcus Lehto were on-hand at X10 to provide a much deeper look into the workings of Reach, what they are calling "the best Halo yet" and "the most ambitious title Bungie has ever produced." The duo talked us through many of the changes being made to the established Halo formula, and new elements they believe make this "the definitive Halo experience."

Lehto talked about the team's desire to "throw new things at the player," building on the hallmark underpinnings of previous Halos and even changing some things to suit the new game's more serious tone, but said Bungie wouldn't "be pushing it." Another key goal with Reach, according to Lehto, is to "reintroduce the Covenant," by both making them look different -- more alien, more savage -- and giving established enemies new behaviors. It was also mentioned that, to keep with the more realistic tone of Reach, players won't be able to understand what the Covenant are saying.

During last night's Microsoft's X10 press event, Bungie revealed the final box art for Halo: Reach. (Spoiler: It's real pretty.) And just as we were about to tile images of the cover to dress up our desktop backgrounds, Bungie released perfectly sized wallpaper images on its official site. Nab the wallpaper for widescreen setups, CRT screens, and even your iPhone right now! It's the closest you're getting to the Spartan-heavy adventure until the beta launches on May 3.

When asked if Bungie was sticking to the tried-and-true multiplayer formula in the upcoming prequel Halo: Reach, creative director Marcus Lehto told Joystiq the developer would be taking some "pretty big risks" for its final Halo title. "While we'll still have all of the good stuff that players have come to know and love about Halo, we've made that better and given them new features on top of that," Lehto said.

Lehto wouldn't detail the new risky features, but he would confirm players would see the "new multiplayer features" during the Reach multiplayer beta; beginning May 3. Lehto also reiterated that "currently" the multiplayer beta would only be accessible through a Halo 3: ODST disc.

Brainstorm with us, folks: What new features do you hope for in Halo: Reach multiplayer?

click to enlarge
Bungie's "community guy " Brian Jarrard and Halo: Reach creative director Marcus Lehto are on-hand at X10 to provide a much deeper look into the workings of Reach, what they are calling "the best Halo yet" and "the most ambitious title Bungie has ever produced." The duo talked us through many of the changes being made to the established Halo formula, and new elements they believe make this "the definitive Halo experience."

Lehto talked about the team's desire to "throw new things at the player," building on the hallmark underpinnings of previous Halos, even changing some things to suit the new game's more serious tone, but says Bungie won't "be pushing it." Another key goal with Reach, according to Lehto, is to "reintroduce the Covenant," by both making them look different -- more alien, more savage -- and giving established enemies new behaviors. It was also mentioned that, to keep with the more realistic tone of Reach, players won't be able to understand what the Covenant are saying.

Bungie unveils "the definitive Halo title."

This is what it looks like.

With Microsoft's X10 event underway in San Francisco, the company has finally announced the first details surrounding the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta. The beta test will officially begin on May 3, 2010. As promised, owners of Halo 3: ODST will be able to access the beta through the ODST game disc. There is no word yet on how the general public will get a crack at the beta (or if they will at all, for that matter). Details on what to expect in the beta also haven't been released yet. We'll update this post if we get any new information.

Access begins this May.

Bungie sets the record straight.

Click image to Spartan-size We hope you wanted to see a bunch of screens from Halo: Reach today. Bungie has uploaded a ton of new images, showing off environments and gameplay, as well as an extensive collection of concept art (all compiled in the gallery below). You'll also find some character bios on Bungie's site, if you plan on getting to know your squad of Spartans a little better. The images are generally full of the things you'd expect at this point: Spartans; Covenant; and general Halo-y goodness, but one image in particular is very curious to us. Not only is the reticle not in the center of the screen, but there's also a HUD item scrubbed out. Whatever could it be? We know the internet has had way more experience than us in putting Halo stuff under the microscope, so we leave the guesstimating up to you. Best one wins our undying love and admiration forever! [Thanks, Omer]

New details released on Noble Team.

Much like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves demonstrated in 2009, Halo: Reach will be expected to deliver an experience that not only speaks highly of its developer, but also of the technological capabilities and commercial identity of its home platform. Whereas Halo 3: ODST was built upon Bungie's 2007 space hoop outing (has it already been that long?), the developer tells Edge that its next shooter is already "bending the Xbox as far as it'll bend." Surely that voids the warranty? "We are... taking every advantage of everything on the CPU and GPU, and every bit of memory in order to produce the look of Reach beyond anything of Halo 3, " creative director Marcus Lehto noted, attributing the evolution -- which also benefits the size of environments and complexity of the AI -- to increased understanding of the hardware. "We're pushing it as far as we can go," Lehto said. "With every iteration we understand what more we can exploit with the hardware." Chalk up another win for longer console life cycles -- and for long-running franchises.

Bungie murders murder mode murmurs.

It's got Kate Winslet? It's on a boat? It features just enough Billy Zane involvement? No, no, we can only dream. Bungie makes the analogy between Halo: Reach and James Cameron's disaster film because you know how it ends before it even begins. "Reach is going to fall and 700 million people are going to perish as a result," said Bungie creative director Marcus Lehto in a new interview with Edge. Dude, spoiler alert! How the developer is handling the seeming contradiction between the reward of "beating" the game and experiencing the fall of Reach is the meat of the Edge interview. It's a fine read if you want to know more about the next Halo game than just how many guns you'll be able to fire at the same time. (Seven, if you must know. Yeah, we were confused too.)

Take a look at what Bungie has been up to.

Were you quick enough to catch the handful of Halo: Reach screens released via the EBGames website? Well it happened, we assure you, and luckily the folks at XCast Online snagged the whole lot of 'em. That said, if you've already got the February issue of Game Informer, chances are you've seen these screens before -- that's because a good deal of them are directly from that issue's cover story on the upcoming prequel. If EB Games has already gotten its hands on these screens, chances are we'll be seeing an official release from Microsoft in the not-so-distant future. In the meantime, we've pestered the publisher for some idea of when exactly that'll be.

As part of its month-long look at Halo: Reach, Game Informer has put together a brief video about 343 Industries, the group put together by Microsoft to handle the massive Halo franchise. The magazine puts a few questions to 343 Industries' Josh Holmes, Bonnie Ross and Frank O'Connor about how the group came to be, the creation of Halo Waypoint, and what the meaning is behind its mysterious name. According to O'Connor, Microsoft decided some time ago that Halo was large enough that it needed more than a handful of people to steer the franchise. As for the 343 Industries name, Ross mentions the obvious connection to everyone's favorite Forerunner AI, 343 Guilty Spark, but adds that it may be more fully explained in the future. O'Connor expands further, noting that the answer to the mystery behind 343 will "make itself evident in a few years." Our best guess: "Because it sounds cool."

Noble Team is ready to report for duty.

Here's the news, Halo fans: You're going to buy the February issue of Game Informer. The magazine will have a ten page cover story on Halo: Reach, including screens, details and -- as illustrated by the cover above -- some new artwork. In addition to the cover story, the Halo: Reach hub on GameInformer.com will be receiving updates throughout the rest of January, including a look at the Halo franchise, profiles of Bungie and 343 Industries employees and "expanded details on the new game." The next update is set to drop on Tuesday, January 12. In the meantime, we'll be scrutinizing every detail of the cover for clues about the game. For example, did you notice that the third Spartan from the left has a skull painted on his visor? Because he totally does.

What could it be?

Mark your calendars.

An in-depth look at the latest trailer.

Update: Microsoft sent over a hi-res version of the trailer (seen above) as well as the screenshot in the gallery below. According to the publisher, Halo: Reach will follow the story of "Noble Team in their heroic stand to defend the planet Reach." As promised, Spike's 2009 Video Game Awards delivered the first footage (in-game, 'natch) of Halo: Reach to the masses. More Spartans? Check! Female Spartans? Check check! A skullfaced Spartan? Wait ... what?! Since the show just aired, we've got a low-res version of the trailer for you after the break and will have a prettied up version as soon as it's available.

An official screenshot from Bungie's upcoming shooter.

No more of that lone wolf stuff.