343 Industries has announced on their blog that Halo 4 is nearing completion. The singleplayer campaign is now complete and only needing polish and bugfixes before release.
Along with announcing the campaign’s completion, 343 Industries revealed the ‘Longbow’ multiplayer map, a snowy military base located in the polar regions of the planet ‘Concord’.
‘Longbow’ was designed as an homage to the Halo series’ long history of snow-bound multiplayer maps and will showcase a new unnamed multiplayer game mode.
“We experimented with having extremes of Fire and Ice on opposite sides, but ultimately decided a glacier theme fit better with the spectrum of themes from other maps. The look and feel really took off from there to be distinctive and atmospheric,” reads the blog.
“We wanted a big engineering effort that connected to the war or the resources needed for the UNSC, so when looking at the designers’ initial idea for the map from the top, we began thinking of a Y-shape or loop shape that accommodated this single big machine—a magnetic launcher that works on similar principles as a MAC Cannon. It was an interesting case of trying to make a symmetrical map area feel natural and almost accidental, while still telling an epic sci-fi story.”
