“We’ve Heard It A Few Times” – 343 On Halo 4’s Resemblance To Metroid

In its thunderous open, Microsoft showed off just one of the many fruits of 343 Studios’ work on Halo 4 with a brief introduction to the single-player campaign during their E3 2012 press onference. As we covered in our live blog, the jungle level they had shown seemed awfully reminiscent of Retro’s first-person reboot of the Metroid series. From the more complete visor, to the glowing bug-like enemies and an alien super soldier with a small avatar/chopper in its back. All the time I watched this, I was having flashbacks to Metroid Prime’s exploratory levels.

After the show, I met briefly with a few 343 guys, including content producer David Ellis where they acknowledged they’d heard the reference. Ellis said it was a bit of a risk to merge the live action and in-game sections of the trailer introducing the UNSC Infinity. I felt it ultimately paid off and was reminded that everything within Halo 4 will remain in-engine, just as previous games have. He wasn’t able to reveal much more than the morsel that we all saw, but rest assured when we get more info, we’ll deliver it to you!