Last week, 343 Industries revealed that Halo 3 will be subjected to PC Insider tests in the first half of June, and today, the likely contents of the upcoming builds were revealed. The new Master Chief Collection development update also dived deep into how the bug fixing process happens inside the studio.
The current plan for the initial Halo 3 PC flight is to offer testers on Steam and Microsoft Store the Sierra 117, The Storm, The Ark, The Covenant, and Halo campaign missions, as well as 12 multiplayer maps to play in the Social, Competitive, and Custom games playlists. Moreover, these new features will be included:
- Customization: Updated customization will be available for Halo 3
- Forge: Forge will be available for players during this flight
- Theater: Theater will be available for use with Mouse & Keyboard for Halo 3
- Challenges: The complete Challenge System, including the Challenge Hub screen, will be available for the first time in this flight
Those interested in joining these Insider flighting sessions can sign up for a chance at the Halo Insider portal. PC players already in the program were encouraged to update any hardware changes as well.
Looking further towards the future of The Master Chief Collection, the studio has confirmed that some other highly-requested features are now in the design iteration phase. These include cross-play between PC and Xbox camps, input-based matchmaking, further modding support, and server region selection, among others. View model adjustments, menu UI improvements, and secondary key binds are, meanwhile, among the features in active development.
Today's deep dive into the "life of a bug" offers a look at how the Halo development team sources, sorts, and ultimately deal with issues that prop up during development or are reported by players. It even gives a look at what caused the projectile teleporting bug of Halo 2: Anniversary and how was it ultimately resolved. Head over here to read the massive blog post.