343 Industries, the new team working on the Halo franchise now that Bungie has moved on, are not afraid of changes. While there is a certain feeling to competitive multiplayer that has become synonymous with Halo, 343 Industries is going to be implementing a few changes when Halo 4 hits shelves this November.
Lead Multiplayer Designer Brad Welch, recently sat down with GameInformer magazine to discuss the changes coming to Halo 4's competitive multiplayer mode - arguably the most-anticipated aspect of Halo 4. Players will be fighting as a Spartan IV, the fourth generation of the Spartan program. As such, players will notice some changes in the way Spartan IV armor allows them to move and interact with the game world. Some of these notable changes include...
- Tweaks to movement speed and jump height.
- Ranking up nets your Spartan Points, these can be spent on customizing your character.
- Players can now unlock items, a brand new addition to Halo although it has been seen in franchises like Call of Duty previously.
- Sprint is now a base ability, as opposed to an assignable power in Halo: Reach.
- Active Camo and Hologram return, along with a brand new power - Forerunner Vision - which allows you to see through walls.
- While Forerunner Vision feels pretty powerful, Welch was confident that it is counterable with other powers that the game offers. No one power makes you unstoppable.
- New free for all game mode, 'Regicide'. One player is marked as King, with a bounty on his head. The more kills that the king earns, the higher his bounty gets. This player is marked on the map for everyone else to target, although as it is free for all, they will also be targeting each other.
- Capture the Flag returns, albeit with some changes that Welch couldn't talk about. All of the classic game modes that return in Halo 4 are getting revisions or updates.
- Custom games with pre-set loadouts are not going away in favor of a progression/unlock system but, rather, the two will complement each other.
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