New Halo 4 trailer shows origin of Spartans

With the release date for the game right around the corner, developer 343 Industries has released a new trailer for Halo 4. The trailer is more of a story trailer than anything else as it shows many small bits of story, including the origin of Master Chief and other Spartans. Master Chief's mind is violated by a powerful new enemy, who in searching for Chief's weaknesses, finds the source of his strength. The video sheds some light on how Master Chief became a Spartan. This hints to the fact that Master Chief, who was known as John before he donned the armour, had a lot of experiments done on him.

Recently, Halo 4 was leaked and the game was easy to acquire through torrents. The game is available on torrent sites with all uploaders having their own versions of the disks. Some have single ISO files for each disk, sized 8,334MB; others have the entire two-disk game in one torrent. The torrent for the game is being seeded by several thousand torrenters, and is spreading like wildfire. This can be attributed to the fact that Halo 4 is easily one of the most anticipated games this year. Soon after the leak, Microsoft has started banning players it finds have pirated the game from Xbox Live. Users from Reddit have stated that they have received an email from Microsoft saying that they have been banned from Xbox Live for "prerelease title play".

Back in September, developer of the game 343 Industries had released some screenshots that showed some of the environments and weapons that will be in the game. The new screenshots showcase the game’s varied environment and level design and hints to the die-hard fans of the series about where the story will take them in this game. The screenshots also show the protagonist – Master Chief – using some of the weapons that were shown in the Covenant weapons trailer that was released by 343 Industries recently.

More asses need to be kicked

The developer had also released a trailer that showed the new weapons and sound effects in August. The trailer mostly attempts to showcase the completely rebuilt sound effects for the weapons in Halo 4. The video also displays the revamped sound effects of popular weapons from the earlier games, such as the pistol, DMR, rocket launcher and shotgun. Some of the newer weapons showed in the trailer are a sticky grenade launcher and a rail gun that can kill in one hit, but has a relatively long down-time between shots.

During Comic-Con in July, Microsoft and 343 had announced a limited edition Halo 4-themed Xbox 360 set costing $399 (Rs 21,500 approximately). The set contains the Xbox 360 with Halo-themed artwork, two limited edition Halo 4 controllers, a copy of Halo 4, a wireless headset and downloadable codes for Halo-4 themed avatar items and in-game DLC.

The development of Halo 4 has been taken over from Bungie by 343 Industries that helped out with the game Halo: Reach and provided fans with an HD remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. It’s about time the Xbox 360 got a solid first party game. It seems since the past few months, Microsoft has been targeting the casual gamer over the hardcore one.

Halo 4, Microsoft’s next iteration in the Halo franchise, will arrive exclusively for the Xbox 360 by November 6, 2012. Halo 4 takes place nearly four years after the events of Halo 3 and will mark the return of Master Chief, who was absent from both Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. Coincidentally, this game also marks the beginning of a brand new Halo trilogy.