Halo 3: Finish the Fight...Again?

For all the hub-bub surrounding Bungie’s long-awaited Title Update 2 to Halo 3, the scant changes included little more than a new playlist-specific EXP system and 10 new Achievements. So folks, the BR spread remains unchanged, damn it to hell.

Still, the Forerunner gods haven’t completely forsaken all you Se7enth Column faithful entirely; this week, Bungie let fly a new Halo-flavored and ridiculously cyptic video, “Keep It Clean”. For those of you who were still in the quad when the bell rang, you’re not too late for class just yet: the video is available on Bungie.net here or downloadable via Xbox LIVE for free.

At first glance, the video centers around what looks like ODST pods raining down over a recently shelled New Mombasa, with glimpses of intersections that look lifted straight from the Halo 2 multiplayer map, Turf. Among the gobbldigook, there’s mention of the Flood, warnings of dust and a momentary and near-microscopic mention of the date 1/6/09, giving us some hint as to when we might expect new Halo 3 content, content described on Xbox LIVE where you find this video download as, “High action and deep mystery await players in this new Halo 3 campaign experience. Prepare to Drop!”. The video closes with the words, “Halo 3”. Hmm…

Here’s our lighthearted outloud thinking: For starters, the phrase “Keep It Clean” has been popping up on the Bungie forums all year, in reference to someone/something called the Superintendent, who likes to say things like, “Pardon our Dust”. Secondly, the 10 new Achievements available currently are nestled among a list of 20 other unexplained Achievements, many of which refer to what appear to be 5 new multiplayer maps: the previously announced Assembly (formerly dubbed Purple Reign, which was unveiled publicly at PAX this year, video here, screens here, Citadel, Heretic, Longshore and Orbital, which together we surmise make up the Mythic Map pack.

Normally, a map pack wouldn’t be incredibly big news, but these have Achievements attached them, and a curious lot of them at that. Sure, there’s the basic ‘get a Killjoy or Bulltrue on any Mythic map’ Achieves, which is cool in and of itself, but then there are Skulls. Yeah, like Silver or Gold Skulls skulls. Perusing farther down the list, we find Achievements for finding Skulls, one on each of the Mythic maps. Skulls? On multiplayer maps?

That information, combined with the wording listed above mentioning a “new Halo 3 campaign experience”, has us convinced this is an expansion to the singleplayer campaign as well as a map pack, an expansion that could possibly veer away from telling John 117’s story. Among millions of other possibilities, it could perhaps offer co-op vignettes, perhaps involving ODST’s. Said vignettes could be played on themed levels that coincide with the Mythic maps. Or, MAYBE the one pod or whatever it is that we see in close up on the video could in fact be the chunk of driftship we last saw the Chief in. Or something like that.

Now, back to the Achievements: three of the 10 currently available aforementioned Achievements, called Vidmaster Challenges, offer no gamerscore for unlocking them: Annual, 7 on 7 and Lightswitch. News (that has since been removed) broke last week via Bungie Community Manager Brian Jarrard in Bungie’s weekly update that explained that there will be a reward for those who unlock said Vidmaster Achievements that supercede gamerscore. Paraphrasing Jarrard, he said something to the effect of “there’s more to life than gamerscore.” As if.

Anyways, here’s our hunch. Come 1/6/2009, if you’ve unlocked all three of the Vidmaster Achievements, you’ll somehow get access to either the Mythic map pack, the new “Keep It Clean” content or both. Or nothing. Pffft.

One last tidbit. You can get the number 117 by taking the “1” from January in the date above, and putting it in front of the sum of adding 6, 2 and 9. OK, now we’re officially Halo weirdos.

What do you guys think? New maps? New content? And what kind of shenanigans could Bungie be planning with 5 new Skulls? And seriously, who’s the Superintendent and what the hell are we supposed to keep clean? We have our theories, let’s hear yours.

Sound off, Spartans!