Bungie's proclivity for advertising its seminal Halo franchise with classy, live-action advertisements was exhibited earlier today by the release of a new vignette titled "Remember," which launched alongside the official site for Halo: Reach. The trailer, posted after the jump, features footage both old and new, blended together to tell the stories of a handful of Reach inhabitants who are struggling with the decision between "fight" and "flight" in the month preceding the events of the game.
Check out the super dramatic vignette below. Also, a word of advice to the poor souls therein: Flight, you guys. Seriously, skedaddle. You do not want to be on that planet during the next few weeks.
#piracy
As leaked copies of Halo: Reach hit the torrent sites, Microsoft tells Kotaku that they are aggressively investigating the leak and are fully prepared to hand out bans to anyone caught playing the game pre-release. More »
Plumbed from the depths of Bungie's latest weekly update by ThatVideogameBlog comes confirmation that Halo: Reach will support campaign co-op matchmaking. In the simplest and, may we say, least Bungie way to do it, public acknowledgment of the expected functionality was given in response to a Bungie.net user asking, "Can I haz Campaign Matchmaking?"
The answer, in one word: "Yes."
And with that, Bungie has confirmed that all three major Reachgame modes -- regular ol' multiplayer, Firefight and co-op -- will support the developer's excellentmatchmaking experience. Though this news is overwhelmingly good for Halo fans, we're pretty worried about what it'll do to our work days.
What's gonna give Halo: Reach the best shot at topping Modern Warfare 2's $310 million in day-one sales? Marketing. Much to no one's surprise, Microsoft is splurging on its biggest game campaign to date, according to Advertising Age. While Reach's marketing budget has not been disclosed, it's expected to easily top Halo 3's reported $6.5 million bill.
The ad campaign, which began in earnest with a big-budget plug ... for the multiplayer beta (way back in April), will continue to use live-action segments to attempt to forge an emotional connection with a broad audience across TV and the web. "We're trying to get people to connect back to their lives, not computer graphics or something overly sci-fi," Taylor Smith, director of global marketing communications for Xbox, told Ad Age. "Live action is a way to capture that." In particular, director Noam Murro (Smart People) has created three live-action short films that depict life on planet Reach before the Covenant invasion.
Meanwhile, potential buyers will be urged to "remember Reach" as they consume Pepsi products. A renewed partnership between Microsoft and the snack-time mogul will put Halo branding on some 300 million Mountain Dew bottles and 30 million Doritos bags beginning next month. Of course, to top past efforts, Microsoft will expand the Reach campaign beyond these somewhat pedestrian reminders: Cue massive KUKA KR 140 robotic arm!
The viral site RememberReach.com, which becomes fully operational at 3AM ET tomorrow, features a user-generated light sculpture of Reach's Noble Team, created by the robo-arm and some fancy camera equipment. Typically used to assemble cars, this KUKA bot has been outfitted with an LED and stationed in an undisclosed San Francisco warehouse. As detailed by GameLife, visitors will direct the machine to plot the 54,000 points of light that will form this Noble Team "monument." Bizarre.
Buried in Bungie's weekly update is a terse confirmation of an unprecedented feature for the series: Campaign matchmaking. Players now will be able to find friends or link up with strangers and fight cooperatively through the game's campaign mode. More »
Continuing in the sad tradition of Halo 2 and 3 before it, Halo: Reach has apparently been leaked. Modders at Game-Tut.com found a way to trick Microsoft's servers -- which are currently hosting a $1250 download of the game's files intended for game reviewers and meant to only be downloadable with a code. The site has yet to openly leak the files to the general public.
It appears that the game is leaking other places as well -- at least one video shows off a tour of Forge in the game's Firefight mode, and spoilers for the game can be found everywhere from Bungie's official forums to NeoGAF (if you really want to see them, you can find them yourself).
What's most puzzling is why the game is being distributed to reviewers on Xbox Live Marketplace, as Bungie will be holding the usual review events for Halo: Reach that it's done with previous Halo releases. Whatever the reason, it seems to have facilitated an exceptionally early leak for such a high profile game.
Remember the bizarrely out of place Xbox News app on the Canadian Xbox dashboard? It turns out that it was bizarrely out of place for a reason: it's actually part of a Halo: Reach alternate reality game. During the second episode of the program, a news ticker at the bottom of the screen clearly shows information related to Halo. According to Shacknews, the information was apparently meant to alert Canadian gamers to the existence of upcoming Halo: Reach preview events in the Toronto and Vancouver areas.
Somewhat more interesting, however, is that the Xbox News program was intended to run for several more episodes before the Halo connection was revealed. A source informed Shacknews that the marketing team behind the ARG skipped ahead to the first Halo-related episode, thanks to the generally negative reaction to the premiere episode. Marketing lesson of the day: make ARGs about something relevant to your audience. Like bees.
It's pretty much a universal truth that there can be only one. But which one? The suspense isn't exactly killing us in this latest Halo: Reach ViDoc, which details the six Spartans of Noble Team -- of which "only one will hold our fate in their hands," according to the wise Dr. Halsey (her mind was cloned twenty times, you know!).
We're betting on Noble Six, the guy with the "hyper-lethal" classification. After all, "there's only one other Spartan with that rating" ...
Bungie fans -- and more specifically, Halo fans -- are feverish in their dedication. This tenacity is exemplified by the recent discovery of a hidden live-action short for the studio's forthcoming game, Halo: Reach. Bungie forum user "Canuckian" discovered the short (embedded after the break) by poring over the code from the "rememberreach" ARG, where a handful of Windows Media video file names were found. After replacing the first ARG video's URL with the names of the WMV files found in the code, only one video worked: "Patrol."
In the clip, a trio of UNSC troops engage in brief, hurried discussion about the civilian rebellion on Reach and Noble Team's efforts to calm the "insurgents." The other videos -- "balloon," "hybrid long," "hybrid short," "new life," and "spaceport" -- aren't functional as of right now, but presumably will go live as we draw closer to the Halo: Reach launch.
#halo
Microsoft has released a new trailer for Halo: Reach today, and it's continuing the franchise's recent tradition of eschewing pre-rendered cinematics in favour of real men being shot by real cameras. More »
#xbox360
Why does Microsoft seem to be selling Halo Reach over Xbox Live right now for $1250? Answer from Microsoft: They're not, and they don't plan to sell Reach as a downloadable game. More »
No, this isn't a glitch. Nor, is it a hack. Halo Reach is technically available on Xbox Live Marketplace right now, a full month before its official retail release. But before you load up on Microsoft Points to get early access to the game, be warned. Even with $1250 worth of MS magic money, you won't be able to download the game. Unfortunately, you'll need a special code that unlocks the game.
According to an official Microsoft Support document, "customers can see the item in the Web Marketplace but cannot purchase it unless they have the special pre-paid token ... The content is available only to users who have a special 25-character pre-paid token that enables them to download the item."
It's likely that the full version of Halo Reach is being offered to reviewers via digital distribution; however, don't expect Halo Reach to be available via the Games on Demand service. Microsoft had previously enabled early digital distribution of Crackdown 2 for reviewers -- and Crackdown 2 is still unavailable to the public via Xbox Live.
Microsoft's Major Nelson just posted the Halo sound-effects the Halo Reach edition of the Xbox 360 makes when powered up and when the tray slides. He's offering them as ring tones, an act we're not prepared to judge yet. More »
#clips
Three maps, not part of the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta, were recently confirmed. We saw Reflection on Friday. Here's Zealot, which has low-gravity features that seem very useful for ... jumping right into a melee to the face. More »
#clips
This goof would seem to be played out by now, but Tobuscus is back at it again, singing it like he sees it in the Halo: Reach Trailer. Why wasn't the gun already turned forward? Now you're dead. More »
#clips
Ah, Team Slayer. Halo: Reach packs new multiplayer modes like Stockpile and Invasion, but in the beta, even those typically devolved into Slayer-esque battles of headshot-and-revenge. Here's five minutes of Slayer on "Reflection," inspired by "Ivory Tower" from Halo 2. More »
Bungie dropped its Weekly Update on Halo: Reach a little early this week, which is probably a good thing because there's a lot to take in. First and foremost, the update lists nearly every item available in Forge -- including their cost -- allowing budding map designers a chance to start their planning phase a little early. There's also a bunch of new graphical filters to choose from, including the nifty "Pen & Ink" filter seen above.
If that's not enough for you, the update also details the return of Race mode (now with landmines!), assassination animations (there are over 40 in Reach) and details how you can win one of the Noble Team statues displayed at E3. Check out a behind the scenes video on the creation of said statues after the break.
#mcfarlane
McFarlane Toys ensures that no Halo fan will want for Halo: Reach action figures this fall. Nor will they starve for bad-ass plastic Halo vehicles in which to stuff the entire Noble Team. It's gonna be all "Boooosh!!" and "Pew-pew-pew!!" More »
#activision
The next chapter in Bungie's development history is well underway, according to its new publisher Activision. With Halo: Reach having "gone gold," the team responsible for Halo (until now) is shifting its focus. More »
#event
GameStop, Microsoft and pro-gamer Tom "Tsquared" Taylor will be showing off some new Halo Reach footage and sharing some tips and tricks for the game at an event this Friday. More »
#event
GameStop, Microsoft and pro-gamer Tom "Tsquared" Taylor will be showing off some new Halo Reach footage and sharing some tips and tricks for the game at an event this Friday. More »
