I can't remember the last time I was this giddy. I think it was when The Dark Knight came out, or when Halo 2 was released, or even further back when the new line of Beanie Babies came out. Suffice to say, I'm giddy. Now you're probably asking what the shenanigans are all about today....... Well..... I'm excited to say....... that Bungie has just released a new trailer, entitled Keep It Clean, for one of their upcoming video games. And no, for those of you rolling your eyes, its not for Halo Wars, but a completely new installment in the Halo series.



As with most upcoming games, this new Halo project is subject to a lot of speculation and guessing, and with the release of this new trailer, there will be even more speculation and guessing. So I did some analyzing and guessing of my own, and came to some interesting conclusions from reading some of the blog posts and watching the trailer and pressing pause 237 times. So lets go down the rabbit hole....

First lets take a look at the trailer:



The trailer is from of the point of view of various city security cameras in New Mombasa (How I know this will be covered later). During the first part, it gives us a view of the city, as well as the year 2552, and in the Halo series this is still during the Human-Covenant War. The view then turns to space and we get at a look at what looks to be metal containers, which bear striking similarities to drop capsules in Halo 2, employed the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The next few scenes return to the city and show us the impact of the pods on the city. A few seconds after that, the screen goes to black, initially I thought the trailer was done, but I checked the timer on my media player and the movie wasn't done yet. The heads up display starts to reboot, and as it does it starts to display a series of seemingly random messages, and then it cuts back to the city cameras and then it ends with one of the pods flying into the camera. The video ends with the phrase "prepare to drop" and then regular credits, but what puzzles me is that it ends the trailer with the title of Halo 3, but we all know that Halo 3 was released last year. I sincerely hope that it won't be a follow up game like Final Fantasy X-2.




People speculate that this new game will be tactical shooter, like Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six Vegas, because in 2007, Bungie hired Christian Allen, the creative director from Red Storm Entertainment, which brought titles such as Ghost Recon and RSV. So you probably won't see those large firefights that were in the original Halo games. During the game I saw what I took to be drop pods for ODST's and then the phrase "Prepare to Drop", both references to the ODST soldiers, since they're known for their usage of orbital drop pods, and their motto is "feet first into hell". This leads me to believe that this game will center around on the ODST's themselves. You might remember them as the commandos who wore the black armor instead of the normal green colored armor in Halo 3.


I also read two articles on the Bungie website, of what seemed to be a communication log between an Artificial Intelligence entitled "Keep It Clean" and an officer on ship in orbit and another log entitled "Pardon our Dust" between an soldier fighting on the planet and a commander of a ship in orbit fighting another ship. The log between the AI and the officer is interesting. The officer tries to communicate but the AI responds with a series of nonsensical phrases found in the trailer, the officer then tells the AI that they're sending a team. Now, this log gives further credit to the tactical shooter theory since it mentions they're sending a “team”. On a side note, AI rampancy (basically the AI pulls a HAL 9000) is a big theme in Bungie games, such as in the Marathon series and to an extent in Halo 3, this log seems to hint at some rampancy. The next set of dialogue (Pardon Our Dust), is a request from a planetside soldier, who apparently doesn't report to fleet, and asks for his squad to be deployed. Again we see similar words like squad and team in both dialogues.


I loved the Halo series and I will be eagerly watching and waiting for more snippets of news of this new game as they trickle down the grapevine.