It was a battle of such ferociously large scale, that it stood out even in the newly embiggened Halo 3. I mean, scale. Scale of combat and literal, physical scale. There’s a couple of things I’m not at liberty to reveal about that encounter, and the one immediately before it, but it was big. Think dozens of fiery explosions, plasma fire coming from everywhere. Aerial combat in the skies above. Jerks with turrets on the ground below. Rockets flying everywhere and dozens of ways to approach the combat. It was epic and mind numbing, and still 100% Halo.

But graphically, this level was sort of a shock to me. Some of the interiors were apparently totally complete. Lit, shader effects, proper detail, atmospherics, audio, everything. The exteriors still needed some polish, but sweet crimeny Christmas.

It looked amazing. Last week I talked about how we were adding all this hyper realistic stuff, while still trying to keep it true to the look and feel of Halo. The evolution of those ideas is that some of the test screenshots we took for an internal presentation, looked exactly like their concept paintings. Not just in terms of scale or detail, but the actual color palette. It’s rich and vivid and full of life.

Water update is short and sweet this week: They added a huge rippling splash for when you shoot a Banshee plasma mortar into the water.