That Bungie dodged every single-player related question asked was no surprise. That Bungie showed us the first-ever footage of the single-player was a huge surprise. It was brief though, and we were told that what we were about to see, we'd only see once, and that nobody from Bungie was going to talk about it. They added that if we'd blink we'd miss it too. Our attention was grabbed...
Bungie played us a Saved Film (see the interview on p42 for more) from the single-player fame that they'd recorded a mere two days before we arrived and, while it only lasted around ten seconds, it blew us away. The clip began with Master Chief spraying bullets everywhere from the turret mounted on the back of a highly detailed Warthog. It charged into what looked like a large open aired multi-level industrial warehouse. The area was rammed full of Covenent enemies, vehicles and ships. World War III was kicking off before our eyes.
Cortana could be heard screaming instructions to Master Chief about the annihilation-in-progress and the Halo music was blaring out of the speakers. A Covenant Wraith was spotted skirting the sides of the environment unleashing massive plasma bombs while a Covenant ship was hovering over the action giving it everything it had in the direction of Master Chief.
When Bungie said blink and you'll miss it, it was right. But we spotted them - Spartans! For the first time in a Halo game MC looks to have back up in the form of other Spartan warriors. We briefly saw an AI-controlled Spartan run over to a new type of vehicle we've never seen or heard of before, jump on and join the battle. This new vehicle could only carry one person, and hovered around quickly like a Ghost. It's design appeared to have been influenced by those circular fossils Time Team digs up and the Spartan rode it like you would a huge Harley Davidson! The multiple levels of the environment housed turrets that had been manned by both Covenant and human soldiers. Everyone was firing everything they had, or could get their hands on, at each other - all at once!
With this much going on, you might expect slowdown from a game in early development, but everything ran smoothly.
The graphics engine is a re-worked version of the Halo 2 engine and Bungie let us know that even though what we were seeing looked impressive, there was plenty still to go in. Halo 2 was running on a HDTV next to us while we played the multiplayter and, yes - there's a huge difference in what Bungie has already milked from the Xbox 360. Playstation 3 - you'd better start running now!"
