Technically, we're in that most exciting period of the development process - effectively the content is locked and complete, but the final layering of effects, technology, shaders, final performance tuning and as shallow as this sounds, the final graphic appearance.

It's a constant source of delight to me to grab a new build, or walk by an artist's monitor and see that a level or feature I already thought looked spectacular was just a foreshadowing of how impeccable or impressive that environment or object would look in the final pass.

David Ellis, Kevin Grace, Jeremy Patenaude and I often have MP matches with the conceit that we're just staying up to date on progress, but the truth is, we're playing because it is a ridiculous amount of fun. It's insanely addictive and the selection of levels we're going to ship with I think is a testament to building spaces that are flexible enough to be fun for just about anything, but find their sweet spot in the modes for which they were ostensibly created.

Graphically, you've seen some cool stuff, and the tech itself is a very nice hop above prior games in terms of boring fidelity and numbers - something that has happened with every successive Halo game and will in the future. But it follows in the (to me at least) admirable tradition of feeling like the concept art. Bungie always nailed this. You need only look at fan-made screenshots of Halo 3 and Reach to see how close the in-game atmosphere matched that of the stunningly imaginative concept art. We at 343 have some near-legendary concept artists and their dizzying feats of imagination always seem like they'd be impossible to replicate in a real engine environment, and yet there they are. Vistas, ideas, worlds that you can explore, inhabit and affect.

I'd love to tell you that to achieve this fidelity without compromise, and I bet you a hundred dollars one of our engineers could tell me exactly what those compromises are, but I haven't seen them. It's smooth, the draw distances are massive, the effects are stunning and the atmosphere and scale are classic Halo scope. I'm finding MP perf to be buttery smooth, controls responsive and clarity of combat exceptional.

I am biased of course, to the point of shillery, but some of you have known me long enough to know that I tend to err on the side of terror and humility rather than hyperbolae. But I will hype this team, because it's hype worthy. In a crazy compressed timeframe, we've built a team from scratch (with the somewhat bizarre-but-cool advantage that they came from some of the best games in the industry, with new ideas and philosophies - because they loved Halo already), built a game we think is deserving of the Halo legacy, and created a culture built around a simple shared goal - to make an amazing Halo experience worthy of that game's history and achievement.

It won't be perfect, that's impossible. We have too many constituents and variables in our game, our audience and our community for that to ever happen. But I think the vast majority of people who've given us their trust and confidence, no matter how warily or askance, will find something in here that meets or exceeds their expectations.

And for the cynics, an understandable position and one we respect, I think the game may surprise even you guys. Of course time will tell, and player experience, but there have been many moments that deepened my confidence in where we are. Some of those moments were big ticket brute force rubicons, and some small, personal moments.

No, you don't need to "rationalize" that. That's just making shit up in your head to accept what you're hearing.

Here you go, sorry it MP stuff, still sweet though.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/08/15/halo-4-speci...

From the dev.

"You can't enlist in any Specializations until you've gotten all the way to level 50. This is end-game content."

:O

Sweet.

Here you go, sorry it MP stuff, still sweet though.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/08/15/halo-4-speci...

LOL dont tell me you fell for the IGN hype wagon bollocks they put in just to make sure there website got hits!! change mp forever lol!

In regards to these perks i can see how some MP Halo players will not like these additions but until we hear more and actually play it, i wont throw myself of a cliff anytime soon. I remember the fallout from Bungie adding AA's and such to Reach and people screaming bloody murder, then they played it and said hey its not that bad lol.