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Inside the Mythic Map Pack of Halo 3

Published February 17, 2009

This past Thursday, Bungie played host to media types at their studios in Kirkland, Washington where, in addition to delicious sandwiches and brownies, journalists and fans feasted upon the Halo® 3 Mythic Map Pack. We were privileged to see Assembly, Orbital, and Sandbox, all of which will be included in the Limited Edition of Halo Wars™, releasing stateside March 3, 2009.

Assembly is great for Capture the Flag.

Assembly
There aren't too many small maps for Halo 3, a problem that Assembly is here to fix. While not a remake, nor inspired by any previous maps, Assembly is reminiscent of Wizard/Warlock found in the first and second Halo. The map is circular with two easily traversed levels. You'll want to spend most of your time on the upper level, where all the power-ups, equipment, and power weapons are.

After designer Dan Miller's fly-through, we settled in for a few games (you can see all of our game stats on Bungie.net) to see what worked best with the map. We started off with some Capture the Flag (CTF), putting the map's two bases through their paces. Being symmetrical, the map is great for CTF although I wouldn't recommend epic numbers on this one. At just 3-on-3, both teams were able to make quite a few stops despite the low numbers. Any more than 5-on-5 would get a bit crowded.

We played some straight-up Territories and that worked very well. The small map means you need to fight for each territory you earn, as opponents will have two or three respawns worth of time to evict you from the territory. We started to settle in here, using more of the map and becoming familiar with weapon placement, leading to mass carnage.

Orbital is set in the docking station of the Quito Space Tether.

Orbital
This is a really unique map for the Halo universe, and it's quite difficult to describe. We were told it was like placing two U-shapes on top of each other, with one slightly offset. A base lies at the end of each U, and there are two routes to the other base, one high and one low. You can switch between the routes at a few points, and at the apex of each is a power weapon.

Aesthetically, Orbital is one of the prettiest maps the game has to offer. It's original in that, while the Human architecture and color scheme is familiar, it looks nothing like the Human levels in the game. If anything, it resembles the Cairo Station from Halo 2. There's a lot to see here, with tons of little details.

Lars Bakken, multiplayer designer extraordinaire, gave us the tour and recommended Slayer to start with. While all Halo maps lend themselves to Slayer, Orbital's mix of close quarters combat along with long lines of sight make it great fun in this mode. Unfortunately, we were distracted by lunch at this point and didn't explore too much more of the map, though I'm sure it would lend itself well to CTF.

Sandbox is an enormous outdoors environment.

Sandbox
The most exciting part of the Mythic Map Pack is the potential in Sandbox. Much like the Foundry map, Sandbox is completely Forge-able, the default map being made of objects which can be wiped out to create a blank slate. Unlike Foundry, however, Sandbox is outdoors and absolutely enormous. In addition to the ground level, Bungie has added a massive underground area (referred to as the "crypt," it's perfect for Grifball), and an unimaginably large amount of space to play with in the sky.

Bungie's been hard at work on these maps for quite some time, so there were several variants ready to go when we got there. We played CTF on the default layout, which was an absolute blast. Vehicles are awesome on Sandbox, with all of the objects doubling as ramps. We also tried Team Slayer on a version of the map that was fine-tuned for vehicular mayhem. There were lots of explosions.

After that, we tried out another variant created in the sky bubble. I believe verticality was the theme, as you could never tell whether that dot on your radar was above or below you. Then we moved down into the crypt for our next game, in a map designed for that area by a Bungie tester. We played about five different variants on that map in just an hour.

The Mythic Map Pack for Halo 3 looks to be a lot of fun. With Bungie providing near limitless tools to the community in the form of Forge and the Sandbox map, the possibilities are endless. Look for these maps when they first release March 3 as part of the Limited Collector's Edition of Halo Wars.

Article by KP