the Hushed Casket

I disagree with Midnight who agrees with Devin who agrees with Midnight who sees things differently than me.

I can't believe there are comments about users not being able to shoot themselves with a Wraith. You can't shoot your teammates with a weapon will riding the passenger seat of a H1 or H2 hog. You can't use the H1 or H2 hog turrets to shoot your vehicle. You can't shoot yourself with a Shotgun. I must have missed the LAN party when driving a Wraith was cool.

There are a lot of ways you can't kill yourself in H1 and H2.

Not everyone plays the game the same way I do. Using "dumb" people to test the game doesn't make the game "dumbed down". It makes the game more accessible.

Why did we not like HALO 2's campaign? Because it was short and plain. Not because it was too easy or too hard or too limiting.

What made HALO 1's campaign awesome wasn't that we have freedom to rotate a turret at any angle. It was because the story was believable and the campaign took a good while to complete.

And what did we do when we were finished with H1 and H2's campaign? We all play multiplayer modes for countless hours per month.

The point of the Wired article is to demonstrate the ends to which Microsoft is going to make sure that there are as few playability holes as possible in H3. They are doing thousands of hours of research to make the game more playable by the average user (a.k.a. average teenager). Most people playing H3 won't have a college degree - let alone a technical college degree. Most people don't want to work a puzzle. They want to aim a weapon or drive a vehicle.

The fine tunings that Bungie is doing is going to make the game better for me.

Who wants to play a level that requires a Warthog only to find out that your AIs took the Warthogs? There are a lot more AI in H3. They are smarter and will be with you more often.

Who wants to run out of ammo halfway through the campaign because you can't tell if your bullets are hitting the enemies at a distance? I've had to play through some H1 levels with inferior weapons. It was hard to play that way. It's good that they detected that people were running out of ammo.

I'm guessing if I were to fight in a real war my commanders would clue me in as to where your weapons were, where your vehicles were, and what men will be there to help you. It's a first person shooter. People are supposed to shoot their weapons. It isn't about conserving ammo or having a high hit percentage or going to areas of the map that weren’t supposed to be accessible.

Bungie is making sure we have the tools to finish the fight.

If you want to hunt all over a map to find grenades, don't worry, you'll have plenty of things to hunt. Bungie will hide a zillion things in the levels for you to find. In fact, I would guess that most people that reply to this thread never found all of the skulls in HALO 2.

And who wants to play on levels and maps where there are stale spots? Why not build levels were gamers explore the level and don't just write off entire sections of the level? All this research is a good thing. It will be good for HALO 3's campaign.

The HALO campaign formula will still be there. It was there in H1 and H2. Huge open levels. Lots of enemies. Check that. Even more enemies, more battles, more technology, and more vehicles. Find your way through the level. Drive some vehicles. Fight with your AI. Escape from or kill a ton of enemies and perhaps kill some final boss. Teleport to a new level. Repeat.

People want to beat the game. For the most part, they really don't care how easy or hard it is. If you do care how hard the game is, then Bungie will give you at least 4 difficulty levels to try which will make the enemies harder to kill or make you have a more difficult time surviving. HALO 3's campaign won't be easy. It won't be short. It will be fun.

Bungie isn’t making a game for me. They aren’t making a game for skilled gamers. They are making a shooter for everyone.

I don't sense that we'll be handcuffed in any way. But even if we are, I want a rich HALO 3 campaign experience - which it definitely appears we are getting and HALO 3's campaign will be lightyears better than HALO 2's campaign.