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"Halo 4 is undoubtedly one of the biggest releases of 2012, and despite it launching in under seven months&amp;#039; time, Microsoft and developer 343 Industries are still keeping rather quiet about specifics. However, the team has now unveiled the game&amp;#039;s multiplayer and teases of added narrative as part of the experience. We sat down with Kiki Wolfkill to discuss how it&amp;#039;s delivering story in new ways for the sequel. Why are you revealing multiplayer first? &amp;quot;We have actually talked about campaign in small pieces for a while. We came out talking about Chief and about some of the things that we want to do. &amp;quot;[We] came out first in showing multiplayer just because the multiplayer component is so important for people to understand, and we know that&amp;#039;s something we have to be able to start to show early, and we have a lot we want to tell with multiplayer as well, so [we&amp;#039;re] getting a start on that so we can start to really pace out the information.&amp;quot;  So it&amp;#039;s a case that people need to get their heads around it more than the campaign changes, right? &amp;quot;Yeah. I think part of it is all of the new feature detail that we&amp;#039;re going to want to share over the next six months. The multiplayer audience wants to understand a lot of detail, and they&amp;#039;re also a really vocal audience, so we want to be able to give them information as quickly as possible.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve revealed two maps - why those two particular maps? &amp;quot;Those two maps I think we mentioned are being used for some internal network testing. So those are our ones that are in testing now, we&amp;#039;re spending a lot of time with them, it was the most natural...&amp;quot; So it&amp;#039;s a more practical thing that anything else? &amp;quot;Yes! We&amp;#039;re definitely a highly practical team right now, we&amp;#039;re on a tight deadline!&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve been talking about adding more of a story to multiplayer. How are you going to deliver that? Is it through the environment, through text at the start of loading? How are you going to tell story that way? &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s really less about really explicit story telling, for instance in competitive, and more about making sure that we&amp;#039;re contextualising the things that you&amp;#039;re doing in multiplayer. There will be a higher level narrative and story that ties together and we&amp;#039;ll talk more about that soon, but I think in some cases it will be more explicit and in other cases again it will be making sure that there&amp;#039;s some context around what you are doing.&amp;quot; So it ties into the single player fiction but not in an obvious way - kind of expands it? &amp;quot;I think for us what&amp;#039;s important is that it feels natural.&amp;quot;  One particular detail that was interesting was that there&amp;#039;s a reason why red and blue teams are competing. Can you say what that means? &amp;quot;I think that refers to that contextualisation.&amp;quot; Something I found interesting in the Waypoint trailer was that there&amp;#039;s a part where you could see Master Chief&amp;#039;s arms. Does that mean there&amp;#039;s going to be more physicality in terms of the character? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s definitely a goal for the player to experience more physically. I mean, part of Chief is his physicality and the things that he&amp;#039;s able to do himself and not just with a gun. You know, I think we definitely want to be able to express more of what he&amp;#039;s able to do as a Spartan from the player perspective.&amp;quot; How are you going to do that? At what points in the game will you show that physicality? &amp;quot;Without giving details on story it&amp;#039;s hard to give specifics about that. I think it&amp;#039;s really about when it makes sense for the player. I think we&amp;#039;re looking for more narrative tools than just first person shooter perspective [then] cutscene, right? So there are some pieces of the story that you&amp;#039;ll want to be able to experience in some different ways.&amp;quot; So it&amp;#039;s not just recently [in shooters] where you&amp;#039;re climbing a ladder and you see the character&amp;#039;s arms, that kind of physicality. It&amp;#039;s more a way of delivering story? &amp;quot;Yeah. I think it&amp;#039;s really, again, we look at all our narrative tools, the design of the environment, the design of a crate, the audio that people experience - all those are ways of queuing player understanding of what is happening and telling that story. So that is a pillar for us. We look at really any means we can to move that story forward.&amp;quot;  The video made [Halo 4] seem more mature in the way that you&amp;#039;re approaching things, is that right? &amp;quot;I think that we really shy away from the term mature because it&amp;#039;s so loaded, right? People look at that in any number of different ways. I do think that Josh [Holmes, creative director] used the term sophistication which is accurate without being hoity toity. &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s more human themes and really, if we want to take the player on this emotional journey, there are going to be peaks and valleys in where we want to take them. I think you could look at some of those valleys is this [being] darker and more mature.&amp;quot; When it comes to multiplayer it sounds like a lot of changes will be outside of matches? &amp;quot;I think there&amp;#039;s both. I think there&amp;#039;s definitely features we&amp;#039;ll talk about that are very much the moment to moment gameplay. Some of them are that mid-level, between mid-gameplay loop and some of them will be at an even higher level than that in terms of the whole framework.&amp;quot; One element - and this is more of a personal thing - but I think matchmaking in Halo is quite slow compared to other shooters. Is this something that you&amp;#039;re particularly looking at? &amp;quot;I would definitely say as we evaluated really on the things we wanted to focus on, that would be one of those areas that we looked at.&amp;quot; Halo 4 will be available exclusively on Xbox 360 later this year.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/halo/interviews/a369211/halo-4-interview-343-industries-on-multiplayer-new-forms-of-story/>