Halo 3 'Heroic Map Pack' available on Dec. 11

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Nov 19th 2007 at 12:28PM }

If you've grown tired of traipsing through Snowbound in your desperate lust to eliminate squeaky-voiced, trash-talking cyborgs, the announcement of the downloadable "Heroic Map Pack" for Halo 3 should be just what the doctor ordered. A strange sort of physician that cures ills with video game news... it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really. But! Let's focus on the facts: December 11th, three maps, 800 MS Points ($10).

Included in the set are "Standoff," a symmetrical valley filled with "entrenched bases and fields of boulders" and, after about 10 minutes, enormous piles of heavily armored corpses. It's joined by "Rat's Nest," which is described as "an indoor vehicle paradise," and "Foundry," a Forge-friendly sandbox that's ideal for shifting stairways, bridges and tunnels to your twisted heart's delight. Build almost any kind of map you can think of, it says here.

Additional fact: For the patient lot among you (admittedly not a great strategy in the game itself), the maps will become free on the Xbox Live Marketplace in Spring 2008 -- right before the next wave of maps is expected.

Gallery: Halo 3 - Heroic Map Pack

Tags: BreakingNews, Bungie, DLC, FPS, Halo, Halo-3, Halo3, Heroic-Map-Pack, Maps, XboxLive

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Warlord Luthias @ Nov 19th 2007 12:49PM

Thanks, Bungie, for not listening to all of us that want Lockout back.

qbix @ Nov 19th 2007 12:52PM

And Chiron... or was it Chicharron?

amart @ Nov 19th 2007 2:54PM

Jesus would you quit your pissing and moaning already? Bungie has a HUGE fanbase outside of you and despite all the hard work they put into this great game there's still whiners like yourself, always begging for more. Consider that it is impossible for Bungie to please EACH one of their players and are doing the best they can. Further since the MS site had the news first, isn't it safe to assume that Bungie is not responsible for the pricing of these maps? Finally, I am personally in favor of new maps rather than re-hashed ones. If Lockout did come back, i'm sure you'd be the first one complaining that 'we shouldn't have to pay for a three year old map... etc..
Grow up

FomerX Con @ Dec 17th 2007 8:51PM

I think that Guardian is the remade map of lockout.

qbix @ Nov 19th 2007 12:36PM

They've got my money.

rv @ Nov 19th 2007 12:44PM

They have mine as well, even though its hella expensive.

T3H WICKERMAN (FDF) @ Nov 19th 2007 1:04PM

Is that where you broadcast "Out of Africa" Kietzman?

Grey Fox @ Nov 19th 2007 1:35PM

They probably have mine too but where are the friggin' flyable Pelicans!?

Poisoned Al @ Nov 19th 2007 1:42PM

They've got my money too...

So why the fuck should I gave them any more? 800 points for MAPS! The things people make on the PC, FOR NOTHING!

Call me cynical if you don't think packaging Halo 3 with a load of crap maps isn't just a shallow ploy to sell DC. Screw you Bungie!

rTwelve @ Nov 19th 2007 3:32PM

You people whine far too much. Why don't you "stick it to the man" in a more constructive way and download the maps next spring. You won't lose your money, Bungie won't get your money, and I won't go insane reading your comments.

Martin @ Nov 19th 2007 12:37PM

They've got his money.

Dombay @ Nov 19th 2007 12:39PM

Hmmm.. Thats a bit costly for only 3 maps.

gonk @ Nov 19th 2007 12:41PM

but think of it in terms of hours of fun per dollar

Mike @ Nov 19th 2007 12:44PM

yea, I'm gonna have to agree - when did $3.33 / map become an acceptable price? Wasn't the last map pack fo rhalo 2 (released only a few months ago) $5?

I wonder if they'll pull the same crap they pulled in halo 2 where you can't play matchmaking w/o the new maps??

either way, I'll wait til they're free. I can always play COD4

umm....hello??? @ Nov 19th 2007 5:45PM

I'll be too busy with RockBand and other games...I can wait until spring when it's free.

Dapper Dan @ Nov 19th 2007 10:29PM

agreed, i have not touched halo since CoD4 came out

modified @ Nov 20th 2007 12:21AM

$70 after this pack and you'll still have less maps than what COD4 offers.

killploki @ Nov 19th 2007 12:38PM

so is this the exciting news we were waiting to hear from bungie today? if so how did you guys get it before they even updated their site?

any word if the new maps will get their own matchmaking playlist? so they arent confined to custom games.

josh @ Nov 19th 2007 2:24PM

there are these things called "press releases"... i would guess that's how joystiq found out about this.

killploki @ Nov 19th 2007 2:37PM

there are also groups of people called "asses" who feel the need to reply to comments with their sarcastic little quotation marks.

i was assuming bungie would have updated their website to reflect any news like this, since the weekly update told us to check back on monday.

Yuccadude @ Nov 19th 2007 12:39PM

Happy late birthday to me, Happy late birthday to me...

dan stabbingworth @ Nov 19th 2007 1:36PM

I agree with Mike. I'll wait. But I'll be pretty annoyed if they kill some of the matchmaking playlists for those who don't purchase. The game will have only been out for about a month and a half when these maps come out.

dan stabbingworth @ Nov 19th 2007 1:37PM

Ooops, meant to reply to one poster down.

BobRobertson @ Nov 19th 2007 12:41PM

"Rat's Nest" eh? sounds like someone is ripping off SOCOM

Ludwig Kietzmann @ Nov 19th 2007 12:51PM

I know, rite? I saw this crow making a nest once (a "crow's nest" if you will) and he was like totally ripping off a pirate ship.

Lianne @ Nov 19th 2007 12:43PM

That's steep for three maps, especially since they'll eventually be free. Of course, it's probably going to be like in Halo 2, where if you want to be able to play online before the maps are free, you have to buy them... this is very frustrating. Why does the game industry think gamers have all this extraneous money to throw away? Oh yeah, because we fall for stuff like this.

And the information is up on Xbox.com.

dan stabbingworth @ Nov 19th 2007 1:40PM

Actually, that was only the case for the last two maps. The first two sets of maps were available in team preview only. All other playlists worked fine.

Since the last two maps were announced so late, I wonder if they did that just to get an idea of how many people would be willing to pay to play those restricted playlists. Maybe time will tell once we find out if they will restrict Halo 3 playlists.

FoxHoundADAM @ Nov 19th 2007 12:45PM

Come Spring of 2008 these maps are mine!

Apsu55 @ Nov 19th 2007 12:50PM

Once they release this map pack, will I be able to play them in ranked matches? Social matches? Custom matches? And once they become free in Spring 2008, will the maps be incorporated in the list of maps that are randomly selected for games?

rTwelve @ Nov 19th 2007 10:59PM

I didn't see this mentioned anywhere that I know of but I"ll let you know right here.

Bungie will have additional playlists for these new maps, as well as incorporating them into the existing hoppers. But the system will know whether you have the map or not, and appropiately filter your matches as such.

Sorta like how my friend can't play Snowbound or Narrows because of his scratched disc, and so it auto-cycles to another map for our party before the veto option.

Intentless @ Nov 19th 2007 12:51PM

Usually they were free shortly after and then they would be required for matchmaking. If they do intigrate it before it is free it will only be in some queues not all. Would be great if they figured a way to just simply not have it come up if someone doesn't have it...

Mike @ Nov 19th 2007 12:53PM

here's the thing - halo 3 has sold a ridiculous number of copies - almost 4 million if I'm not mistaken - they don't have to be reasonable w/ their pricing. If only 5 percent of people who own Halo 3 buy the maps, that's still 200,000 people, or 2 million dollars.

I think it's a safe assumption that more than five percent will buy the map pack, espicially if they gimp the multiplayer for people w/o it.

BIG-JG @ Nov 19th 2007 12:56PM

maybe they will make hoppers with the new maps already in them. and the blokes that dont have em cant play those hoppers. i will be buying no doubt. nice i like em all more places to PWN n00bz.

HineyWipe @ Nov 19th 2007 12:55PM

People still play Halo 3?

rTwelve @ Nov 19th 2007 12:58PM

I am going to waste too much time in Foundry buildin sum thingz. And then I'll be stuck in stage builder on Brawl. Clearly somebody is trying to erode my actual game skills.

I always sucked at Starcraft, and kept abandoning cities in SimCity 4 to develop new terrain.

SIGH.

Jake @ Nov 19th 2007 1:00PM

3 maps for $10 is basically a ripoff. I play Halo 3 enough to where the maps are probably worth it compared to the majority of full priced games out there. But it still sucks that they are shamefully cashing in like this. Would it have been that damn hard to make it like 6 maps? How about $5 instead? Certainly this isn't unprecedented for consoles, but it still sucks every bit as much.

My question is whether or not these additional maps will affect my experience in online play. Overcharging for maps heavily fragments the online populations and I fear I'll become part of a minority of people that love Halo but refuse to pay $10 for something that took the dev team pretty minimal effort to put together. Being part now of a group that is only 1/6th the size of the group I used to be in will probably hurt my experience.

Terrible news. DLC has done nothing this gen except piss me off. It sounds nice and I used to be excited about it, but it really is bad for gamers. DLC makes the experience less enjoyable than it was before the DLC came out for anyone that doesn't buy it. And when they are charging $10 for something that took 0.05% as much effort as the entire $60 game did it just fucking irks me.

David @ Nov 19th 2007 1:13PM

I can understand if $10 is alot for some budgets. But $3.33 a map is about the price of a gallon of gas or a fast food meal. That's not insane.

But what gets my goat is when someone says that the maps took a "pretty minimal effort to put together". Are you a game designer? What facts are you using to support this, especially since we haven't seen the maps yet?

Mike @ Nov 19th 2007 1:21PM

David,

food and gas are necessities in the world in which we live. These maps are not.

Let me address what you said in a bit more of a broad fashion - $10 is well within my budget, however, the value provided for that ten dollars is not worth it to me. The pack contains three maps. One of them is forge specific, so, let's face it, that one will get limited use. The other two would get high use in multiplayer, no doubt, but it's just not worth the price of entry.

As for the development costs, all that really needs be done is level design (which can take some time), if any new game assets are added (objects and textures not found on the disc) that stuff takes time to make.... however, given that they'll likely sell millions of map packs within the next six months, making TENS of millions of dollars on it, I can safely say that they could have sold this pack for half price and still made a fortune on it.

Sam406 @ Nov 19th 2007 1:23PM

I agree with Jake, I understand they are tecnically extras, but theres something about paying for DLC that just dosen't seem right.

Pay real money to get the best guns on cromehounds?
Pay real money to get the best cars in NFS without unlocking them?
Pay real money to get the best stats in Tiger woods?

DLC seems to be doing more harm than good to the industry.

Vidikron (FU) @ Nov 19th 2007 1:26PM

@David

You think they rewrote the engine for these maps? I think it's fair to say that making new maps takes minimal effort when the original game is finished. People makes hordes of maps for PC shooters in their spare time and don't have all the tools the original devs have. At best Bungie created a few new textures, but chances are most of the assets are recycled from the existing game.

mike @ Nov 19th 2007 2:00PM

$3.33 for a fast food meal? yeah right lol. That wont even get you a burger. A combo is $6.50 after tax.

David @ Nov 19th 2007 3:53PM

@Mike:
Yes food and gas are necessities, that was my point. These maps aren't necessities yet they cost the same (non-necessities usually are priced MORE than necessities). That's why i didn't think it was insane. Also, these maps do have a high reply value - compared to necessities which you need to replace. AND they aren't required to play... AND they'll be free in time...

@Vidikron:
Nope, never implied they rewrote anything. I'm not expecting anything like that, or else I would expect a higher price. But if you would take time to read bungie's update (http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12983) it looks like something more than just a few new textures. Until the maps come out, nobody knows for certain. Hence my question on how people can jump to conclusions.

@mike:
I was taking into account the $1 menu at McD's and BK. :-)

Bungie (and MS) will make money off of this, sure. They are businesses. But $10 isn't insane when people already spent hundreds of dollars on an xbox and the game already.

But hey, it's much easier to bash something before it comes out. Let's start the "these maps suck" threads now! :-)

Vidikron (FU) @ Nov 19th 2007 6:48PM

@David

I just don't think it's really all that difficult. Again, popular PC FPS games often get hundreds of free user made maps. Even Halo 1 and 2 has lots of free user made maps if you had a modded XBox. And that was without proper level editing tools to work with (i.e. no level editors). Even if they did use completely new textures, we're still talking about 3 maps... for which they want to charge 1/6 the price of the full game. Just seems rather steep when the bulk of the work was already completed with the full game.

For $10 I would expect a new game mode and/or maybe a new weapon to be introduced. But for just 3 maps? Sorry, that's just too pricey and for a wealthy dev like Bungie it really is rather minimal effort.

Is Not Null @ Nov 19th 2007 1:05PM

What a joke! It looks like I still have no reason to stop playing COD4 and GOW. Goodbye Halo 3, it's been fun knowning you.

Marty @ Nov 19th 2007 1:28PM

GoW and COD4 will go strongly into 08, I wouldn't worry about it.

xXFenixKnightXx @ Nov 19th 2007 1:05PM

COD4 FTW, but yeah Ill still buy them!! =)
Nice pic!

Billy @ Nov 19th 2007 1:19PM

I wish halo 3 fanbois weren't such mindless zombies. This will sell like hotcakes and make MS/Bungie billions. Yet in reality, from an objective point of view, it's a complete ripoff, and Halo 3 is a piece of trash. Anyone who buys this is a true monkey.