I have to say my Halo fandom stretches about a mile short of 'hardcore', but watching the Comic Con panel made me pretty excited. Particularly this moment.

YouTube - Halo Reach Panel at Comic-Con 2010 - Part 2

Watch from the beginning of that video up to the end of the presentation (Part 4) for a little more detail into the new forge that the ViDoc might gloss over. Part 1 of the presentation basically talked about the new Firefight, how you can customize the waves and play in matchmaking and stuff, but more importantly now you can play it 'Versus' as an Elite. They also showed off how the Sword has its own unique melee kill animations, and a new vehicle.