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Halo Forge comes out late December.
Mike, you and I got to see over an hour and a half of this new feature for Halo 5.
It's pretty huge, and it's pretty in-depth this time around.
Especially compared to Halo 4. Mike and you and I got to preview this with Tom French, the lead designer of Forge, and he was basically just running a [UNKNOWN] tire mode.
So yeah, let's take a look at all the new stuff.
We've got an hour and a half of it.
But we're gonna concise this into You know, just a few minutes.
Yeah.
So the main things to take away from it to begin with are, obviously it's very much bigger.
And there are more things to do, and it's an unprecedented level of control.
To give you a reference, Tom French was saying there are a few hundred objects you can use in Halo 4. This time around, there are about 1,700.
And you can't use them all in one map because, as you can see in the video, there's a 1024 object limit.
But you could still make pretty huge maps with a lot of things going on in them.
But, at the same time, 343 is really focusing on making it accessible despite how much bigger and deeper it is.
And that comes from new controls, just better visual cues within the environment.
And just like small touches all around that are going to increase the ease of use for people that are veterans with Forge or people that just really want to get into it for the first time.
Right.
Here's an example of the terrain, so he, you know, he basically.
Group these together and was able to move them all together at once.
Not just that but pick the parent or pick like the center of the axis of the entire grouping that he created.
Yeah cuz in Halo 4 you would have had to, say you create something you really like, but then you're like oh **** I want to really move it across the map you'd have to do it piece by piece and then make sure the measurements are the same and that they're snapping to it the same part.
Here you can just group it and move it across as this huge glacier kind of thing.
Here was something he showed us was, you know, they also have a wide range of effects.
You know, they've really stylized your map.
So here's, you know, effects on a pig's eye.
So say you're making an industrial map, kind of, like something that's really just, you wanna really getting across the idea of machinery and kind of the moving parts.
And then you put sparks on the wall and it kind of really sells that, you know, Gotta have almost like a factory or a plant that you're fighting through.
And it really just adds more details to the world you're creating.
It narrows in scope from big to small, and you have control over a lot of it.
So then we have terrain, and tons of different variations of palettes.
Which ones do we have?
Yeah, so you pick a terrain palette to begin with, and there are four right now.
And each of these are huge.
Tom, for instance, saying you could build three or four of your own maps inside each terrain palette.
Obviously the object count would prevent you from doing anything too huge.
But theoretically you could have four individual maps,if they're small enough, connected by teleporters, across these huge environments.
you can kinda see glaciers, mountainous areas.
Up until you see those diamond things in the background, those are pretty much the boundaries.
You can build anything you want inside that, making sure you don't actually exceed the object limit.
You even said it, you're not using the entire map, only because it will be a very slow game.
Everyone would be so spread out.
You're using, like, just a section In [INAUDIBLE] certain area.
Oh yeah, this dwarfs anything you've seen in Halo 4. Especially anything in the previous forges.
Just because, again, they have more power to include all the effects you wanna do, any objects, any scripting.
Which is another thing we got to see.
The scripting was I think my biggest take a way.
Why don't you describe it a little further?
Once you have two objects you just have to link them by channels.
I forget how many available channels there are.
There's Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.
Anytime you activate a switch on the Alpha channel any other object on the Alpha channel will react.
In a way that you make it.
Which again the end game world has these visual cues that show you what to do.
So the cylinder when he showed us had this upward arrow that kind of indicates he pressed the switch and it's on the same channel.
It's gonna shoot upwards and it's pretty crazy how easy it seems when he did this.
So I'm really excited to see what me and you and then tons of players can actually come up with.
Maybe you know the next grif ball will come out of Halo five's forge because of How easy it is to use.
So another big add was features like time of day so you could change it from morning, you know midnight to afternoon.
And then even something as, something maybe wouldn't be ideal, but you can do kind of like Instagram filters, which were, you know you could stylize, make like a World War II themed film grain or something.
Or you could do yeah like a green hue if you wanna make it look like Fallout 3 or some sort of post apocalyptic world.
A lot of these are all just aesthetics, but it's really just kinda coming down to how you personalize things.
But also, you can just completely change the wind direction.
It's pretty in depth of how much control you have over not just the map, but what's happening around you in the skybox and the shadows and the lighting and Anything.
It's pretty crazy how much you can actually kind of make this feel like almost a campaign mission.
Like things are happening for a reason almost, and it's not just this static map you're shooting other players on.
And to further stylize it, you can also control the opening and closing cinematics.
If you've been playing Halo 5 multiplayer, you know that it'll show your team kind of strike these poses with their guns on their shoulders.
They're just holding up They'll have the assault rifle across their chest.
And then it'll cut into the match.
you can control what the camera does there.
You can pan it and then kind of zoom out as you're going to make it a little more stylistic.
Nothing that's really gonna affect the gameplay.
But it's still pretty cool.
Legacy, you're already personalizing everything, it's just another level of that.
Mm-hm and not even just [UNKNOWN] locations, but [UNKNOWN] ,which was huge.
Which is also really bizarre to think about, because that's not really a game, that's making a movie.
So he added a chroma key.
Yeah I'm just imagining you could probably make the mini green screen into a giant movie theater.
I just imagine red versus blue and church watching it almost and just commenting on it like Mystery Science Theater.
Yeah I'm excited about it.
I'm excited about how many more options there are.
How much easier it seems like it's gonna be to use because Ford has always been one of those things.
You get out what you put in.
And I think this is gonna make this easier to devote that time to it.So I'm really looking forward to seeing what I can create and just more than that I'm Looking forward to seeing what the community creates and see what I can jump into and play myself.
Yeah, can't wait.
For all of your gaming news and Halo 5 needs you go to gamespot.com.
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