unforum

hep · Greenhorn Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 3 Location: Sydney

[SPEC] Interesting find in OZ.

**Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 10:00 am

Paradoxic · Decorated Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 160

This was brought up in #beekeepers a few nights ago. While it definitely brings strength to the "halo 2 early release" hypothesus... I don't think there should be too much weight put into it.

As far as I can tell, Bungie is now in the bug finding part of production (you may have heard that Halo 2 multiplayer beta is going on right now). If we assume that they are focused on the bug finding, then they are probably completed with the content creation for the game. If that is true and they have frozen content creation, then it is also believable that they sent in the game for a rating early. Another reason for this would be if they are shooting for a particular rating (T for teen), then they'd want to make sure that they can get it as soon as they finished content creation. This would allow them to make changes to the game to drop its rating incase it had received a higher rating (such as M for mature). That's my thoughts on it anyway.

**Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 12:37 pm

_________________
--Paradoxic

Max Damage · Decorated Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 178

Indeed. Halo 2 is intended to be the new flagship title for Xbox Live, and hence will require to be tuned, polished, bugfixed and play-balanced up the wazoo before launch.

I expect beta testing and multiplayer additions/balancing will take longer than with most games. A good thing, IMHO.

**Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 12:40 pm

Nobes · Boot Joined: 25 Jul 2004 Posts: 20

while it would take more time to test/de-bug-afy.... the fact that they had a stable netcode for halo, but never had the time to inplement it would make the multiplayer testing alot shorter. The reviews of the mulitplayer demo from e3 made it soud like there was very little left to test.. as the game had been delayed serveral times, i don't think they're jsut getting to bugs now, i think that there has been bug testing going on for awhile... at least with multiplayer...... Halo 2 was supposed to be out last november, and then in april, but for bungie to realease it early would be a huge favour to the fans of the series, not that they owe us anything.. if anything. we owe them, for the wonderful games they made, and for stuff like this, that gets us all thinking

**Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:14 pm

hep@swiftdsl.com.au · Guest

Just regardng the rating thing. The Australian OFLC can and will only rate complete games. They have to only rate them after the content has been completely finalised. They can take submissions for revisions, but to us Aussies that means that a finished version (strong on the word version there) copy has been sent here.

This of course could of been the NTSC version I imagine.

You can see this in there terms and submissions of submitting a video game for rating.

**Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 8:29 pm

colin

For completeness:

http://www.oflc.gov.au

You can search on there to find what the halo classification is...

**Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 9:09 pm