OMEGATHON Firefight gameplay from PAX: Firefight does look like allot of fun!!

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/09/06/video-joystiq-th...

More than any other revelation it's the sheer bloody size of ODST which should take you by surprise. For a year Bungie have touted it as an expansion - a little extra dose of Halo for the fans - but ODST is as big as Halo 3, as epic as Halo 3, and even better than the very best of Halo 3.

Halo 3: ODST really is everything Bungie initially claimed that it wouldn't be. It's part Halo, part Far Cry 2, part Ghost Recon; over twice the size of the game they initially announced at TGS 2009, and stealthy right up to the point you actually pull the trigger. Bungie's Halo expansion has become the most ambitious and creative Halo title since Combat Evolved - always unique and original in the big city, always intense and exciting in the flashbacks, and always the very best of two very different worlds.

It's not going to be a 8-10 hour campaign for most people. Hardly anyone, in fact.

3hrs in 4 players coop, 4-6hrs on hard for most players for the SP playing normal.

That's the story you'll read on the back of the box when ODST ships to stores on Sept. 22. But Bungie isn't exactly known for tying up loose ends, and like all Halo games, ODST just may end up raising more questions about the Haloverse than it answers. At PAX 2009, Bungie lead writer and ODST Creative Director Joe Staten made it clear that there's going to be more going on under the surface of the game than has been previously reported.

Remember the I love bees alternate reality game that surfaced as a marketing push for Halo 2? The company that made it, 42 Entertainment, spawned a splinter company called Fourth Wall Studios. And Bungie has been working with Fourth Wall on an entire sub-story that's buried within Halo 3: ODST. It's called Sadie's Story, and it follows the life of New Mombasa resident named Sadie during the final hours before everything goes to hell in the city during the events of Halo 2 (and subsequently ODST).

Staten showed a few fleeting images of Sadie's Story, which he co-wrote with Fourth Wall, in collaboration with renowned comic artist Ashley Wood. We saw concept art of Sadie on a commuter train, then an image that looked like a flash of violent red and black with multiple figures in silhouette... and then it was gone. Just a glimpse of what's to come.

Bungie didn't elaborate on how Sadie's Story will be presented in Halo 3: ODST, but we do know that adding it to the game doubled the amount of voice acting work the studio did for the overall project. And the story won't be told in a traditional action-and-cutscene format, but rather will be revealed in snippets as your character, the rookie, makes his way through the world, gathering clues about what went down in the city. Bungie says Sadie's Story ties in with the main ODST storyline and, consequently, the overall Halo meta-storyline.

Oh it's definitely easier than.. not co-op. There's no denying that. But if I finish it in three hours I finish it in three hours. That's how long the game is.

Co-op isn't some cheat. It's one of Halo's defining features.