Halo 4 E3 Builds

Halo 4 at E3 2012

In 2012, 343 was poised to release their latest and most ambitious project yet, Halo 4. Drumming up anticipation, 343 took their project to the show-floor at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo. During this time, 343 showed off Halo 4's 3 main game-modes; campaign, wargames, and spartan ops. In order to show off each of the 3 aforementioned game-modes, 343 built 3 different versions of the same game. One that booted to an incredibly limited campaign menu, one that booted to a limited wargames custom games menu, and one that booted to a limited spartan ops menu. These 3 builds would come to be known as the Halo 4 E3 builds. Contrary to what one might initially believe, each build is unique from one another considering each aims to show off different parts of Halo 4.

Halo 4 E3 Build Dates

Build Name	Build Version	Build Date
Keynote	15119.12.05.31.0400.e3m60	Thu May 31 07:22:17 2012
WarGames	15116.12.05.31.0300.e3	Thu May 31 06:19:41 2012
Spartan Ops	15117.12.05.31.0300.e3	Thu May 31 06:23:28 2012

Keynote

The keynote presentation build is perhaps this collections' most interesting build, at first glance. To clarify, this build is the one that 343 played live on stage during the their presentation. Additionally, the build contains an early and highly scripted version of the mission 'Infinity' which is the 4th mission Halo 4's campaign. With the mission being heavily scripted, it is very easy to miss triggers and even entire pieces of dialogue given the player moves in a sporadic manner. Before moving into the brief demo sequence, it is important to first take a look at the introductory menu and its subsequent sub-menus. Pictured below is what a player would be introduced to after selecting the build's given xex. Pictured next to that is the menu that will be loaded upon pressing start.

Initial Menus for the Keynote Build:

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  The start menu in the E3 build.
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  The menu loaded after pressing start in the E3 Keynote build.

As is evident by the pictures above, the menu provided in this build is nothing like the retail game. The retail build would bring players to a complete menu accompanied by options for campaign, infinity, and waypoint; this menu brings players to a locked screen containing only one option, campaign. Additionally, players are unable to back out or progress into the other game modes that the retail build would allow by normal means. Pressing start button will take players to the settings menu where the player is free to set their control preferences, network status, audio/video options, loadout, spartan armor, and emblem. The pictures below showcase the settings menu in its entirety. To quickly preface the next set of information, this article will not be re-posting the settings menus in each of the 3 builds seeing as each of them are identical; instead, this article will aim to only point out the differences given there are any in the next version's settings menu.

Settings Menu of the Keynote/E3 Builds:

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  The settings tab in the E3 build.
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  The Audio/Video tab in the E3 build.
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  The controller tab in the E3 build.
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  The network tab in the E3 build.
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  The fileshare tab in the E3 build. It is disabled for the E3 build.
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  The customize tab in the E3 build.
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  The loadouts tab in the E3 build.
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  The spartan armor tab in the E3 build. Armor variants in wargames.
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  The spartan ID tab in the E3 build.
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  The career tab in the E3 build.

The Keynote Presentation Mission

With the preliminary information out of the way, it's time to delve in to the real meat and bones of this build, the mission itself. As was mentioned, the E3 demo aims to showcase an early and highly scripted version of the mission Infinity; this is the 4th mission in the final game. Upon pressing the only button available, players will be instantly begin loading into the mission. However, before players are able to gain control of Master Chief, they must first endure a cut-scene that shows the UNSC Infinity ship crash landing onto Requiem; this is the planet that Master Chief has also found himself stranded on. Following the UNSC Infinity's crash onto Requiem, the Master Chief finds himself tracking down the now crashed ship. Following a brief stint with the Diadact's Cryptum ship, Chief makes his way into a jungle like area where the player finally gains control of the Chief.

The UNSC Infinity crashing onto Requiem.

The Master Chief briefly encounters the Diadact.

Upon taking control of the chief, the player is greeted to quite the scene; in the opening shot the Diadact's ship, a slew of banshees, and the UNSC Infinity can all be immediately observed. Upon stepping forward, the player will be met with a brief interruption that has Cortana giving the Chief coordinates to the crashed Infinity ship. Additionally, a phantom along with numerous banshees proceed to make their way over the Chief's head. After this, the player should then begin to move toward the destination marked on their map; during the player's journey to said mark, the squid can be viewed floating above. To quickly address something of note, this squid is nowhere to be seen in the final game. Also, note how the squid appears as an ally on the players map.

The first scene in the Keynote build.

Upon moving, the player will be interrupted by Cortana.

The infamous squid can be viewed during this part of the mission

Continuing on, the player will quickly find themselves amidst a group of enemies. Consisting of an elite, two grunts, and one jackal, this fairly small group of enemies do not initially spot the player. After some convenient dialogue alerting the Chief that his location has been compromise, the group of enemies will quickly began to attack the player. To quickly side track a bit, this group of enemies will not spot nor attack the player until Cortana alerts the Chief of his location status. To clarify, say the player were to prematurely approach the group before the game had taken the time to play out its mini cutscene, the group of enemies would ignore the player until said mini cutscene concludes thus thrusting the enemies into a combative state. Upon the death of the grunts and jackal, the elite will pull out an energy sword and charge the player. Sadly, firing at the elite seems to do little to deter his efforts to slice the Chief up, but thankfully, a mysterious beam intervenes and saves the Chief seconds away from being attacked by the elite. The source of the mysterious beam can then be viewed lying atop the tree to the right of the player. Additionally, once the player looks at the source, it will quickly vanish thus leaving Chief to ponder as to what exactly that was. Furthermore, the source will vanish regardless of whether or not it has actually killed the elite.

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  The first enemy encounter the player has in the keynote mission
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  The elite that charges the Chief being evaporated
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  This entity kills the elite, and vanishes once the player looks at it.

Following the first group of enemies, the player finds themselves surrounded by a group of promethean crawlers. After pushing forward, the player will get ambushed by a promethean knight. After a brief cutscene showing the Chief getting pushed around, the player regains control of the Chief. Following the death of the attacker, a lightrifle will drop on the ground along with an icon pointing to its location. Picking up the lightrifle ques the Chief to stare down the weapon as it morphs in his hands. Following the brief lightrifle show off, the player is tasked with chasing down the now fleeing promethean watcher. Once the Chief has caught up to said watcher, three crawlers will emerge underneath the watcher. If one were to only view this scenario from an observer's perspective, it would seem as though the presenter's grenade had taken out the crew of watchers. Interestingly enough, this couldn't be further from the truth seeing as grenades do not work. So, in order to trigger that 'explosion' shown off in the presentation, all the player has to do is take out the promethan watcher hovering above the three crawlers.

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  The second enemy encounter in the mission.
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  The Chief is ambushed by a knight midway through the mission.
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  The lightrifle morphs in the Chiefs hands.
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  When this watcher is shot down, an explosion will trigger

Once the watcher has been taken down, the next area begins with another knight spawning whilst two crawlers make their way towards the Chief. Once shot down, the knight will drop a scattershot just in time for the player to take out the recently spawned knight to the left of first the knight's resting place. Thankfully, the scattershot will decimate the knight in only one shot thus taking out the final mortal enemy in the fairly brief E3 2012 mission. To wrap up the mission, the player must make their jump off of little cliff. Following this, the player must turn on their promethean vision in order to trigger the final mini cutscene that shows multiple promethean crawlers making their way across a large tree branch whilst a ton of knights began to appear. Finally, one final knight will appear directly in front of the Chief and swing at his face thus ending the mission and queuing the Halo 4 logo.

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  The final batch of enemies in the E3 mission.
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  The final mortal enemy in the mission.
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  The final scene in the E3 2012 mission.
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  After being attacked by the final knight, this will display.

To wrap up this section, it'd only be fitting to link the Halo 4 E3 2012 presentation play through itself. So, linked below are two videos. The first is a video that showcases the build being played live on the E3 2012 stage posted by Top10Series and the other being a raw run of the mission along with an exploration of the map using theater mode posted by Cashmint.

Mission Transcription

• Cortana: "Chief, there!"

The Master Chief quickly turns to see the UNSC Infinity crash landing onto the Forerunner planet, Requiem.

• Andrew Del Rio (From the Crashing UNSC Infinity): "Mayday! Mayday! This is the captain of the UNSC Infinity. Unknown Enemy has seized control of our ship; we're without power! We are on a collision course with an unidentified Forerunner planet."
• Master Chief: "Track its decent."
• Cortana: "Marking. Impact predicted 77.8 kilometers due north."

The UNSC Infinity has now completed its crash landing onto the unknown Forerunner planet. The Chief, after having turned in order to get a view of the UNSC Infinity, is then caught off guard by the Diadact's Cryptum after its sudden appearance following the Infinity's crash. Following the Cryptums's brief stint and scan of the Chief, the Cryptum flies by the Chief toward to wreckage of the UNSC Infinity.

• Cortana: "Know where he's heading."
• Master Chief: "Same place we are."

The Chief then proceeds to walk toward the camera thus queuing a cut. Upon reemerging, players are greeted to an armed Master Chief making his way through the jungle like environments that inhabit Requiem. After another cut to black, the game finally gives players the ability to control the spartan therefore ending the intro cinematic of the Halo 4 E3 2012 keynote build.

• Cortana: "These Covenant aren't messing around. I'm detecting additional forces inbound."
• Master Chief: "Can you get us down to the ship?"
• Cortana: "Affirmative. Setting a waypoint for Infinity; let's go.

• Cortana: "I don't think we're the only ones in here. Keep your eyes open."

The Chief encounters a small group of enemies shortly after Cortana expresses her concerens regarding the possibility of malicious entities on the planet.

• Cortana: "Scouts, holdup...They spotted us!"

After clearing out the enemies, the Chief notices a strange light that had seemingly disintegrated the elite that had been charging at him.

• Master Chief: "What was that?"
• Cortana: "Unknown."

An Overview of The Unlocked Menus

As one should be aware, this build boots to an incredibly locked version of the campaign menu; said menu contains a single option, 'campaign'. Obviously, this loads up the lone campaign mission available in the build. Thankfully, this menu isn't the only one available and the rest can be loaded through some nifty unlocks. By breaking out of the locked menus and loading the regular menus, the player will instantly be greeted with something much more familiar upon boot up. Pictured below is the actual menu found within the E3 2012 keynote build. Before going further, this analysis will aim to show off every single aspect of the menus. So, in the interest of saving time, this section will not be repeated across every build. Instead, only the differences will be noted among the different build's menus. Without spoiling too much, there is a few key differences between the menus of the different builds. Also, these menus will not include any text describing them; instead, each picture will possess a brief description in the thumbnail. However, if a section has something that needs to be said, it will be done within the proper section.

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  By unlocking the xex to load the regular menus, one can view a slew of hidden things.

Waypoint Menus:

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  The community tab in the waypoint menu. Identical to the Halo 4 network test one.
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  The Halo career tab in the waypoint menu. Compared to the Halo 4 network test, this one is actually complete.
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  The infinity news tab in the waypoint menu. Identical to the Halo 4 network test one.

Campaign Menus:

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  The proper campaign menu within the E3 2012 Halo 4 build.
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  The second campaign menu within the E3 2012 Halo 4 build.

Infinity Menus:

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  The infinity menu within the E3 2012 Halo 4 build.
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  The WarGames selection menu within the E3 2012 Halo 4 build.
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  The WarGames playlist menu within the E3 2012 Halo 4 build.
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  The spartan ops selection menu within the E3 2012 Halo 4 build.

Before moving on, it is important note that whilst the other two builds showcase an introduction to spartan ops upon clicking the 'spartan ops' option in the menu, the keynote build will actually showcase a much earlier verison of the same exact cut-scene. Listed below are two videos, the video that plays upon clicking the spartan ops tab in the keynote build, and the video that plays upon clicking the same tab but in either the spops or WarGames builds. Thanks to GamesMediaPro for the final infinity trailer and Lord Zedd for the early version of the infinity trailer.

Keynote War Games Custom Games Menus + Settings:

Before moving on, it's important to quickly preface the following documentation with a fair bit of explanation. To start, note the title of this section; it includes keynote in it. This is because the keynote build has a different custom games menu than the other two builds. So, this section will be detailing the custom games menus and settings in found within the keynote build whereas the menus belonging to the wargames/spartan ops build will be detailed later on. As for what changes between the two, the gametypes found within the two builds are each different. Listed below are the available game types along with their subsequent game type variants that can found exclusively within the keynote build; the gametypes within the other two builds will be listed in a similar manner.

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  The custom games menu within the E3 2012 build.
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  The game-types available within the keynote build.

• Settings Present Across All Game Types
  • Weapons and Vehicles
    • Custom Powerup Traits
      • Shields and Health
      • Weapons and Damage
      • Movement
      • Sensors
      • Appearance
  • General Settings
    • Base Player Traits
      • Look at Custom Powerup Traits above
    • Spartan Loadouts
    • Elite Loadouts
    • Respawn Settings

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  Settings menu from the E3 2012 build.
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  The weapons and vehicles menu from the Halo 4 E3 2012 build.
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  The custom powerup traits menu from the Halo 4 E3 2012 build.
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  The general settings menu from the Halo 4 E3 2012 build.

• Capture the Flag
  • CTF2-AnimTest
  • Capture The Flag
  • Midnight CTF 2 UR

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  CTF icon.
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  CTF variants.
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  CTF Settings.

• Flood
  • Flood

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  Flood icon.
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  Flood variants.
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  Flood settings.
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  Flood settings.

• King of the Hill
  • King of the Hill

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  King of the Hill icon.
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  King of the Hill variants
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  King of the Hill settings
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  King of the Hill settings

• Oddball
  • Goal!
  • Team Oddball

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  Oddball icon.
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  Oddball variants.
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  Oddball variants.
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  Oddball settings
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  Oddball settings

• Regicide
  • E3 Regicide
  • Regicide

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  Regicide icon.
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  Regicide variants.
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  Regicide Settings.

• Scorched Earth
  • Scorched Earth

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  Scorched earth icon.
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  Scorched earth variants.
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  Scorched earth Settings.
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  Scorched earth Settings.

• Slayer
  • BR Slayer
  • E3 Big Infinity Slayer
  • E3 Infinity Slayer
  • E3 Team Slayer
  • Infinity Slayer
  • M-Slayer UR
  • Midnight FFA
  • Midnight Team Slayer
  • Slow Spawn

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  Slayer icon.
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  Slayer variants.
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  Slayer Settings.
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  Slayer Settings.

• Stronghold
  • Stronghold

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  Stronghold icon.
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  Stronghold variants.
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  Stronghold Settings.
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  Stronghold Settings.

Keynote Spartan Ops Menus:

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  Keynote spartan Ops menu.
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  Keynote select chapter spartan Ops menu.
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  Keynote find co-op game spartan Ops menu.
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  Keynote offline spartan Ops menu.

Before moving onto the next section, it is important to realize that the keynote build's forge menu is very similar to that of custom games; so, in order to analysis forge in its entirety within the WarGames section, the forge menus will be skipped over in this part of the analysis. If one wishes to view such menus immediately, documentation can be found within the WarGames build section.

Theater Menu:

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  Theater menu.

??? Menu:

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  Menu present within both the network test and E3 builds.

Differences From Retail

One of the most interesting things about the keynote build is its inclusion of the infamous squid. The odd creature makes no appearance in the final game yet was seen briefly during 343's 2012 presentation. Thanks to theater mode, it is possible to get an up close look at the thing.

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  Whilst making an incredibly brief appearance in the Halo 4 E3 show, this odd creature is no where to be seen in the final game.

WarGames

Talk about war games son!!!

Spartan Ops

Talk about spops son!!!