Halo Reach: Where's me washboard? Have you seen it?

[Iceglow]

I don't think Loadouts will be as bad as Psy thinks though they will be difficult to get the hand off, and give a better chance to spawn killed people (we all know how hard it can be to recover when the enemy have you pinned in the spawn)

to quote the article about it:

Load Outs. At the beginning of each match or round, and again every time you wait out your respawn window, you are given the option of choosing a Load Out.


Load Outs are not player created or defined, but rather playlist and/or game type specific. Essentially, they allow you to choose your Armor Ability, your starting primary and secondary weapons, and your grenade cache on the fly.

For some playlists, that might mean every Load Out features the same weapon sets with only the Armor Abilities to distinguish them. For others, it might mean that as the game goes on, you’ll have access to more and more choices based on a number of factors we can fiddle with.

That's just one example to the right. Many gametypes will feature more uniformity in the initial selection.

What it doesn’t mean is that you will be creating your own custom Load Out to bring into Matchmaking. You’ll be choosing from our prefabricated offerings, based on what’s best suited for each gametype.

Don’t worry about power weapons being available right from the start, either. In most cases, you’ll still be finding those distributed via a number of methods throughout the battlefield, though if circumstance warrants it, we certainly can start you with, say, the Rocket Launcher.

And, of course, you can still loot the corpses of your fallen foes and you’ll still find sweet stashes of weapons strewn carelessly about the map for you to find and acquire.

So yeah it's going to be game speciffic no MW2 loadouts but yeah aside from the lack of MW2 loadout it's pretty much what I expected of Halo Reach when they said Loadouts in the trailer.

heres an image to better accompany it:



For the short version basically each game is going to start with a screen like the above image, in that screen you'll select from some preset weapon and armour ability loadouts to fight against your enemies with.

Also of note:

Embracing Our DifferencesLast week we trotted Luke Smith and friends out to talk at some length about the economy of Credits and how they, coupled with Military Rank, will ultimately inform the visual accouterments adopted by your Spartan avatar in Halo: Reach. This week, we decided to get a little more technical and dive into the more matérielistic side of the multiplayer coin. We’ll dig in even further in just a few, but since the two subjects do intertwine somewhat, I figured we’d begin where the two roads meet.

That brings us to Elites. We’ve already said that the Elites found in Halo: Reach were never meant to conform to the noble notion of equality. For far too long, our Sangheili brothers have been leashed – their very backs burdened by the weight of multiplayer parity. They hunched, bent to the whims of human anatomy.

/LARP


Not anymore. In Reach, Elites are bigger, they’re faster, and they boast better shield technology than their Spartan counterparts. To drive the first point home – the size difference — we’ve prepped a side-by-side comparison so you can see just how pronounced the physical changes really are. Click it to check it out in higher resolution.

Size matters. And when we say Elites are faster, we mean it. Natively, Elites are about as fast as a Spartan at full Sprint. Add Evade into the mix, and they’re easily the most agile combatants on the battlefield in multiplayer.

Unlike Spartans, their health is not limited to recharging in thirds as their vitality is whittled away in stages, but will recharge fully without even the need for a health pack. Their health also recharges faster, as do their shields. Significantly faster.

So, how are we gonna work them into multiplayer? Well, in a number of ways. In some circumstances, like Arena, you’ll only square off Spartan vs. Spartan or Elite vs. Elite. In others, well…stay tuned.

We’ll dig into some interesting scenarios in the weeks ahead.

Looks like elites could be beastly to play against. They've ruled out them fighting spartans in ranked mode but in matchmaking that might be another story...could if done right be amazing.

[Aerith's Knight]

We really don't do that, we're seriously too lazy to click the invite over to you. Therefore if you ever see a party on xbl for halo and want in, just join party we'll let you know when the game is up and you can join us fully.

Unless you're me. I get an invite in.. 2 minutes. But that's because I'm awesome, slightly useful in a turret and have awesome halo songs.

[Iceglow]

We really don't do that, we're seriously too lazy to click the invite over to you. Therefore if you ever see a party on xbl for halo and want in, just join party we'll let you know when the game is up and you can join us fully.

Unless you're me. I get an invite in.. 2 minutes. But that's because I'm awesome, slightly useful in a turret and have awesome halo songs.

As soon as Paul responds you best be ready to get online.

[Madame Adequate]

imho to play as an elite in one round you have to first play two rounds as a grunt.

[Aerith's Knight]

I'm done studying

So... is anyone still playing?

[NorthernChaosGod]

Goddammit, if I wanted to play CoD I already would be.

[Psychotic]

The thing about Elites is that the Elites, being larger, will be much easier targets to hit (I am assuming the hitbox will be changed, as right now the Spartans and Elites have identical hitboxes, so there are actually some places in the Elites where bullets pass through - most notably the neck!), so it's not like it'll be especially unbalanced.

Also I just want to say that the new Spartans look infinitely better than the ones in Halo 3.

[Iceglow]

The thing about Elites is that the Elites, being larger, will be much easier targets to hit (I am assuming the hitbox will be changed, as right now the Spartans and Elites have identical hitboxes, so there are actually some places in the Elites where bullets pass through - most notably the neck!), so it's not like it'll be especially unbalanced.

Yeah I know what you mean, when we play swat it makes all the sense in the world to use an elite. Hell on pretty much any game type you'll shoot an elite sometime and you'll think "smurf you! I know I had headshot" and you go right through them.

Also I just want to say that the new Spartans look infinitely better than the ones in Halo 3.

Yeah I think everything looks a lot better than the predecessor games, ODST set a much darker tone than Halo 1, 2 or 3 had and I feel that the darker tone has continued with Reach something I'm quite happy about because a lot of the critics of the Halo series so far have always pointed out how bright everything is and how it's not very gritty. Which in a sense is also a good thing about Halo, since Gears of War we've seen so many "grey" games where the entire colour pallete is a selection of greys and browns. Halo stood out to me because it stayed bright and colourful.

[Madame Adequate]

I'm not optimistic about a pessimistic tone for Reach. It looks a little grimmer, but I somehow doubt they're actually going to hammer the reality of 700mil people dying home too hard.

[Quindiana Jones]

That'd be pretty epic though. I mean, we all jizzed when CoD killed the protoganist because he failed miserably. We already know Reach gets blitzed. Throughout the whole campaign we'll be playing knowing that we are going to lose.

It could be one of the best Halo campaigns ever if they don't smurf it up.

As for Halo currently, I suck at it. I got online to play Halo, played Ranked and got bored. Though I did have a high point against a guy who took the piss out of my name. He was, statistically, a better player than me, but I spent an entire LW on Forge hunting him.

[Psychotic]

Hey Quin you dreadful man play with us sometime

[Quindiana Jones]

I will. When I can get on Live without uni cutting off my internet.

[~*~Celes~*~]

my 360 had better have internet soon

[Iceglow]

Heres somethings for you guys to read:

Details on Beta maps

Theres going to be 4 maps and from the looks of it several game types including one where the spartans will fight the elites in a little 6 on 6 action

Also in recent Halo news, last night we done fire fight between myself, Huxley and Paul we scored over 3million points it was awesome.

[NorthernChaosGod]

Dude, you guys play ODST too? I wanna play! I need the achievements.