Deux décennies plus tard, la bande-annonce emblématique de l’E3 de Halo 2 sera jouable
La partie la plus cool de Halo 2 n’en a jamais fait Halo 2. Si vous êtes fan de la série, vous savez exactement de quoi je parle : la démo Earthcityprésenté lors de la présentation E3 de Microsoft en 2003. Ce niveau n’a jamais été intégré à la version complète de Halo 2mais près de deux décennies plus tard, une version jouable est en préparation, a annoncé aujourd’hui 343 Industries dans un article de blog.
Juste pour vous donner une idée de la façon dont c’est terriblement cool, voici ma réaction en temps réel après avoir appris la nouvelle, copiée directement de Kotakus Canal Slack :
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my face fell onto my keyboard
In the cold light of todays fidelity arms race, you might not get this impression looking at the clips lo-fi visuals, but its hard to overstate just how spine-tingling Halo 2s E3 2003 demo was. Two years prior, Halo: Combat Evolvedand this almost goes without sayingredefined the first-person shooter. But that game was set entirely off-planet, on a ringworld called Halo. The Earthcity demo showed a look at a broader Halo canonthe primordial ooze for a sci-fi universe thats spanned decades of games, spinoffs, comics, novels, a canceled film, and a recently renewed TV series.
The general scenario of Earthcitya human metropolis is getting attacked, youve gotta protect itis more or less replicated during the second and third levels of Halo 2. And certain gameplay elements the demo shows off, like the ability to wield two weapons at once, were also included in the full game. But the plot details diverged. Near the demos end, Master Chief boards a ghost, a typical ground vehicle of the covenant, Halos primary antagonistic force. He tears it full speed down a highway. He crashes, and then the demo pivots from real-time gameplay (eye-poppingly impressive for the time) to a pre-rendered cinematic. A number of covenant drop pods fall from orbit, elites wielding energy swords emerge and surround Chief. He pulls out a plasma grenade.
Betcha cant stick it, Cortana, Chiefs AI companion, says.
Youre on, he says.
In Halo: Combat Evolved, elites with energy swords were arguably the toughest enemy unit. Facing one or two was usually tough enough. But seven? In close quarters? The demo couldnt have ended on a more precipitous cliffhanger. As a player, you knew how much danger Chief was inand you needed to know how he, how you, would fight your way out of it.
Though theres no release date, 343 Industries is planning on making the stage playable in PC versions of modern retail Halo 2. (Halo 2 was released as a remastered version in 2014, which is also included as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection.) The chance of it being playable on console is totally up in the air, in part due to the high technical hurdles for this endeavor.
We originally didnt have a lot of assets lying around for the map from previous analysis of leaked builds and the like, General_101, a modder working with 343 on this project, wrote. Just the source JMS files for the BSP and a few scenery objects. However, once the source map files turned up it was only a matter of time before we had all the data we needed.
Beyond Halo 2s E3 2003 demo, 343 is working with modders to add a ton of cut content to Halo: Master Chief Collection. For longtime Halo fans, theres a ton of other fascinating stuff in the pipe, including the original elite models and a number of other renderings that never made the final cut. You can read it all here.