RedStarRocket91

@Biggles No. Regardless of what you do, you will have to pick from the same three things and will get exactly the same endings. Believe me, I've tried doing everything wrong and it was still the same as my perfect Paragon save. @One I like your ideas, but they need to be explained in the game itself. We can guess all we want, but we can't be certain until Bioware comes out and confirms it for us. I still have hope though, this isn't going to go away regardless of how much free stuff they throw us in multiplayer.

There are a few things I quite like about this map - the Sniper Rifle in the middle is a brilliant decision, as considering how open the sightlines are, the teams really can't afford to lose control of it. I like the use of the Large Barricades in the middle of each base, and the fact that there are multiple exits to each base. There are quite a few problems in its current state, however. I'll try and be as constructive as I can about them. First off, there are some serious problems with weapon spawns in the Blue Base. The Magnum up in the tower can only be accessed by falling off the sandbag wall and landing on the ramp towards the central platforms, which is a lot riskier than the safe Magnum in Red Team's tower. The Frag and Plasma 'Nades in the central building also aren't spawning, putting Blue at a big disadvantage. Blue Team also gets a DMR in the lower exit from the base, whereas Red Team doesn't get one in theirs. All of these can probably be solved simply by adding the items back into their spawn positions, and so should be pretty easy to fix. The actual weapons themselves might create a lot of problems, though. The neutral Sniper Rifle is an interesting choice, but the map really is far too open - it's going to lead to a stalemate where the team without the Sniper Rifle is afraid to leave their base because of the lack of cover, and the team with it is afraid to attack because of the amount of CQC weaponry in their opponents' base. I'd strongly suggest either swapping out the Sniper Rifle for something else like a Shotgun or Focus Rifle, or at the very least cutting the amount of ammunition it spawns with. Seriously, 12 shots will kill map movement. I'd also suggest swapping the Shotguns and Needlers around, as this would prevent players from just being able to camp in their bases from the very start. Even then, Needlers may be a bad choice as the map is so open that there would be almost no way to dodge the projectiles. That kind of brings me on to my last point. There desperately needs to be more cover here - as is, there's no way that anyone will ever leave the bases unless they have a death wish, as there is just nowhere to hide when the bullets are flying. Add some doorways to the bottom of ramps, Glass Covers, Covers, Crenellation Covers, whatever - just something to duck behind when your opponents are firing at you from the high ground. The killzones are also going to need some attention. It's currently possible to hide on the roof at the back of each base, and that's not even with Jetpack or Sprint. The killzone below the map also needs to be expanded or a safe zone added, because right now it's possible to get down onto the surface of the Pillar even by accident. There's definitely potential in this map, but it really needs a few changes before it's going to be won by anything but the first rush for the Sniper Rifle.

Don't see why it couldn't just be based on your team colour, that would make identifying whether to shoot at them or not much easier.

Just as a heads up, they're trapped in the Sol system, the Milky Way is the whole galaxy - and we've never been able to get out of that anyway. I don't really mind that it's a sad ending: I knew that was probably going to happen anyway. What really bugs me is that they resolved the entire plot with a deus ex machina which had nothing to do with the rest of the series, ignored all my previous choices, and still didn't make any sense: Where did this AI come from? Was it the original creators of the Reapers and the Citadel? If so, how? If not, who created the first Reaper? How and why? What is its relationship with the Reaper known as 'Harbinger'? How does it control the Reapers? Are they even fully sentient? If this AI is in control of the Citadel and wants to bring the Reapers back, why did Sovereign need to manually open the mass relay at the end of ME1? How the hell is Shepard breathing? Why do I get the same three 'options' regardless of what choices I'd made previously? Shepard is a cyborg, Anderson isn't. How is the Illusive Man controlling both of them? Garrus and Liara died right next to me. Joker was in a space battle. How did they suddenly get on the Normandy, which was then magically going through the Mass Relay? Where did they end up? How the hell is Shepard breathing? Why had this area of the Citadel never been seen before? Why is controlling the Reapers seen as Paragon, destroying them as Renegade? Why does Shepard have a magical inst-kill gun with unlimited ammunition and which he never needs to reload? Why can't I just shoot the kid? I have Reaper code. Why can't I just set the Catalyst to kill only them instead of all Synthetic life? Why does the thing you shoot look organic? I think that covers most of the problems I had with the ending. I'm sure if I gave it some more thought I could easily pick out a few more.

I think about a month, though I wasn't playing heavily at the time.

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist! In seriousness, it's actually a very good style guide and I'd encourage everyone to familiarise themselves with it. I just happen to be a massive pedant with a warped sense of what constitutes irony.

Oh dear, this should be 'and'! Whoops! This should be either 'too many a time' or 'too many times', as otherwise you're mixing up singular and plural! Also, it's either 'a' wall of text, which is singular and thus 'is' annoying to read, or it's the plural 'walls' of text, which of course 'are' annoying to read! Punctuation actually refers to more than just full stops: as you can see by the symbols I'm using here, it actually covers a whole range of ways to break up sentences - like this! Commas aren't needed unless they're breaking up lists or clauses, so it should just be 'unstructured walls' of text!

It's tied to your gamertag for access permission, not as version data. You won't lose anything.

So sort of like cops and robbers?

'Grats mate, well done!

Tactical/Soft Case.

As long as they have a 'cancel' system so that if the game starts performing an Assassination instead of a Beatdown even though you just wanted a quick kill you can cancel it, then I'll be happy.

Anywhere but B just feels awkward for me, the bumper in particular just feels odd as Halo 3 is where I played most of my online games pre-Reach and it's now just synonymous in my mind with reload.

I would quite like to see a 'Team Elimination' game mode, similar to 'Warzone' in the Gears of War series. There are no weapons on the map, but every loadout has strengths and weaknesses so that players have to work as a team in order to kill their opponents effectively. For example, Loadout 1 has an Assault Rifle, a Magnum, Frag Grenades and Sprint, so it's good all-round but without any particular strengths. Loadout 2 has a Plasma Pistol and Hologram so it can lower Shields quickly and find out if enemies are camping but needs support from other players, Loadout 3 has a Forerunner weapon which is bad against Shields but good against Health and Evade, and Loadout 4 would have a Carbine but no grenades or Armor Ability. There would be ammunition on the map but no weapon pickups, and there would be five rounds, each of three minutes. You get ten points for a kill and respawn at the start of the next round, and your team gets thirty bonus points if they wipe out the entire enemy team in a round, so there's an incentive not to camp. This would probably work best with five versus five players, and would take place on maps without vehicles.

I think the bar in that image works the same as in Halo 3, i.e. you do have Health as well as Shields but you just can't see it. I do think any Forerunner weapons should be devastatingly powerful, and it would feel quite good from a gameplay perspective if you went up against a Forerunner with a whole platoon of marines and they got wiped out straight away because they don't have shields. The Chief would seem more badass in comparison, and Forerunner weapons should definitely seem like they're incredibly powerful. You would still need to destroy the Shield first to start damaging Health, it's just that once your Shield is down it would kill you much quicker than either Human or Covenant weapons.

It's basically been confirmed now that Forerunner weapons will appear in Halo 4, and not just as Sentinel Beams. This got me thinking of how exactly they're meant to fit into the existing weapon sandbox. I don't mean as whether they'll have equivalents of the Pistol and Plasma Pistol or the Rocket Launcher and the Sniper Rifle, but how as a faction of weapons, they'll fit into the existing structures, given that Covenant weapons are also likely to make a return. By 'faction', I mean general characteristics of how that group's weapon work. While Covenant weapons are generally based on Plasma, UNSC weapons are based on Bullet. This matters because from a gameplay standpoint, Plasma does extra damage to Shields but reduced damage to Health, while Bullet does the same amount of damage to each. Obviously, there are exceptions. The Plasma Repeater, for example, does Bullet damage, while the Spiker in Reach, surprisingly, actually does Plasma damage even though it fires conventional projectiles. So, how will Forerunner weapons work? Well, this is where it gets interesting. What if their own weapons are the antithesis of Plasma weaponry, and actually deal reduced damage to Shields but bonus damage to Health? This is something that hasn't been tried before, and it certainly opens up a lot of possibilities for the weapon sandbox, as well as tactical options in-game. One player grabs a Plasma Rifle, another grabs a Forerunner Rifle. The first fires to destroy Shields very quickly, but would then normally have a very difficult time actually finishing off the enemy player. The latter would normally have a lot of difficulty in actually lowering the Shield to begin with, but in this case can finish off the enemy player in the blink of an eye. It would also make Campaign more interesting, as suddenly the player has to be a lot more aware of their Shield levels, as losing it outright is now much more deadly than previously, where Chief could lose his Shield and still have more than enough health to defeat the enemy. It also makes sense from a canon perspective too, as Forerunner weaponry is designed to fight the Flood, which is a purely biological target. What do you think?

I actually don't think it matters whether or not armour pieces can be customised. It's nice enough, but if it were taken away I wouldn't really miss it. Again, unless you play Lone Wolves it doesn't actually make any difference how your armour is coloured, so I just don't really see the point of it. I'm not saying it shouldn't be there, just that I think it doesn't really add anything to the game.

How would you feel about letting us keep our 'secondary' colours in matchmaking? Shoulder pads, helmet highlights, knee and shin guards, that sort of thing?

It takes away from the whole run-and-gun aspects of Halo. I don't think that making Halo like CoD is a bad thing, I just think that there are already a lot of games that have ironsight aiming and that implementing it would make Halo a lot less unique and so less interesting. Plus it would ruin the sandbox as badly as CoD's. If I can hit someone across the entire map with my Assault Rifle, what's the point of going for a better weapon? You'd end up with a set of guns that all do pretty much the same thing. In short, I don't agree.

I'm not really that fussed, to be honest. In most game modes players have their colours overwritten anyway, and besides, it's first-person so you can't even see it unless you're dead or driving, and in the latter it's obscured anyway. It just seems like an awful lot of processor power and memory space for very little reward.

I think that provided the Battle Rifle's effective range is less than that of the DMR - and that it doesn't dominate automatic weaponry at close-quarters - having it as a spawn weapon wouldn't be such a problem. As long as it's balanced to fit into the sandbox properly, I don't really mind what we spawn with.

Recoil is much better from a competitive standpoint, so I'd go with that. I liked the way it worked on the SMG in Halo 3, where you had a second or so before it actually kicked in. Skilled players could try to actively manage recoil, while newer players could burst fire instead. It gives a lot more control to the player and speeds up the pace of the game - definitely gets my vote!

I don't even know why Friendly Fire is still enabled, to be honest. Most other FPS franchises have long since done away with it - I actually quite like the way CoD handles it in certain gametypes, where players actually get damaged themselves instead of any teammates who they shoot. It would be a lot better than the current system, and I really do feel sorry for you over this. Nothing's worse than getting booted over an accidental betrayal.

Team Slayer uses exactly the same settings as the game did when it first came out. Super Slayer uses TU settings. TU settings, in a nutshell, decrease bloom, allow you to decrease how much time is left in someone using Armor Lock's energy bar by shooting them, and make Active Camouflage run out quicker while standing still.