Halo 3 Ghost Town Map Coming Soon!

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Finally some information and screenshots released about the upcoming Halo 3 maps! Here you can enjoy all the latest news and info on Ghost Town which is part of the Legendary Map Pack coming out in Spring 2008!

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Videos - Screenshots - Overhead Map - Interview - News

Halo 3 Ghost Town Flythrough Video!

Wicked Flythrough Video with Narration from Bungie Multiplayer Level Designer!

Halo 3 Ghost Town Map Overhead View

In addition to the three images from Ghost Town we showed earlier this week, today we’re showing an overhead of the map complete with weapon/grenade/equipment/power-up locations. At the top of the image is a legend that shows exactly where the three pictures we released earlier this week were taken, this should give folks a little bit more context for where things are and how the map will play. Keep in mind that some weapon/object placements could change.

(click image for larger view)

(click image for larger view)

Starting from the Mongoose in the upper left corner of the screen is one of the two bases (the other is in the bottom right of the image). The “Atrium” area (shown in Image 3) is a long lean hallway with a walkway that connects to the Pump Station building, a three story building with catwalks that exit to the Interior Base (again in the lower right corner) and second level walkways to the Shotgun (where the Bubble Shield sits. From Shotgun spawn, if players head to the left they’ll be able to stay on a path that feeds down into the Overshield and there’s a second level walkway overhead housing the Rocket Launcher and Grenades. Directly to the left and under the Plasma Grenades that spawn near the Rocket Launcher is a tunnel that curves behind and empties almost into the area where the number 2 Camera was taken. You can see the cave it empties from in the “Camera 1” image. The backdoor cave isn’t necessary to reach the base; you can also jump over a small ridge and some debris to reach that base.

The Pump Station building’s main room is a bombed out shell of a structure with "God Rays" filtering through the ceiling - and that top floor has a walkway that leads toward Sniper in the Atrium and a walkway (where the Brute Shot spawns) that leads to the Interior base in the lower right hand corner. That multi-level base has a few connecting walkways that lead to an elevated and dilapidated structure that overlooks Active Camo, and a Gravity Lift spawn and is positioned above a dark hallway that funnels into the Atrium. That Atrium entrance is the camera angle you’re seeing in the Camera 3 screenshot.

For the most part players have quick and dirty methods at their disposal, via quick jumps or equipment to get to the map’s second and third level catwalks and there are long sight lines from the Attackers’ base (Rocket Launcher side) down in front of Atrium and also down the Woods side (Shotgun side).

For now, the only map we’re revealing is Ghost Town, inevitably we’ll have more on Moonlight Sonata and Cotton Ball in the foreseeable future.

Once infrequently referred to as "O.K. Corral," Ghost Town is the first map from the upcoming Legendary Map Pack, the second injection of downloadable content coming to Halo 3 later this Spring. Artists Vic DeLeon and Cameron Pinard and designer Lars Bakken answered a few quick questions to give readers more information about this abandoned shell in Africa.

Q: What did each of you do on Ghost Town?

Vic: We split the map up into so many tasks that it became more of a collaborative effort than anything else either of us had ever worked on. It’s a small map comparatively speaking, so there were some challenging aspects- like who’s working on those polys over there? And hey I want to do that little part here! There are very few things that either of us can’t do, but we resolved to go with the idiom that I would direct the artistic direction and Cameron would take charge of the layout. Cameron’s heaviest influence was designing the blue base, the greenhouse building, and all that beautiful rebar. I worked on modeling the main areas around and inside the central building, the debris and damage everywhere, and placing all the vegetation throughout the map. We took turns modeling, painting, and detailing the terrain and the cliff walls.

Q: What’s the fictional premise behind Ghost Town?

Vic: Ghost Town is the fragmented ruins of a small 24th century water purification complex that geographically lies just North and West of the jungle foothills hydroelectric facility from the Sierra 117 mission. The well-protected facility built into a shallow ravine was once home to the Global Water Campaign, where the still somewhat-pure Kilimanjaro meltwater was transported via pipelines from the river and directed to this small outpost where it became further purified, and then transported via GWC trans-African pipelines along the Tsavo Highway for distribution throughout the entire continent.

Q: What were some of the artistic inspirations for Ghost Town?

Vic: We had both worked on the Sierra 117 level from the singleplayer campaign and we wanted to make something work within that environment because we are crazy like that. We knew Jungle would be hard to pull off in multiplayer, but noooo… we wanted to go further and add the elements of abandon and destruction. Cue the amazing work that Stan Winston and his team of artists made for the Halo 3 “Believe” commercials. That diorama of the huge battle with the destroyed buildings and debris everywhere was insanely cool and, well you know, we had to try it.

Cameron: The abandoned temples of Angkor Wat were always part of the early discussions but as Vic points out, we were so impressed with the diorama work from the “Believe” campaign that we looked to incorporate some of the ruined aspects into Ghost Town.

Q: Was there a hook that led to the map’s initial creation?

Vic: Yes and no. Steve Cotton started out with a very rough mass of spaces that were insanely fun to play in, and then Cameron and I were left with our imaginations running wild and our spirits ablaze, only to find ourselves pounding our heads against large heavy things. There was blood. When we got started on the map it was literally a group of boxes posing as buildings and feeling like swiss cheese. Some of the guys during our early playtests (not sure who) started calling it “The Ghost Town Map” and it totally stuck, even after a brief effort to rename it Mortar. is this something I should mention? how about "Some of us were affectionately calling it the Counter-Strike map."

Q: From beginning to end how long did Ghost Town take to complete?

Vic: The first massed out models were created in mid-September of 2007 so it’s been about 4-5 months.

Q: What's the nuts and bolts premise behind Ghost Town in terms of gameplay?

Cameron: Essentially Ghost Town is an asymmetric map designed for 4v4 encounters, it’s meant to be a strong infantry map where you get a nice range of close combat and longer range. The spaces are set up to allow two to three person squads a good bit of operating room and several tactical options.

Q: What gametypes is the map designed for?

Cameron: As an asymmetric map it’s designed for things like One Bomb, and One Flag, it also creates a great environment for FFA and team slayer. Overall though, the map is more general purpose and of course balancing is done with an eye towards our more popular game types.

Q: How has the map layout evolved over time with Ghost Town? Have different configurations resulted in a map that plays different?

Cameron: The core layout has actually been fairly constant throughout development, while a few areas have been added, for the most part it follows the original layout. Over time the map become more and more porous, we also worked on funneling action into more interesting areas of the map. I’d have to defer to Lars on most of the design changes over time.

Lars: Like Cameron said the core layout hasn’t changed much. For a time we had the “bases” switched, in terms of gameplay. The fortified building used to be the attacker spawn in objective games and the open cave spawn used to be the defender base. We made some changes to the building (added another way in), and then switched to its current configuration. Other subtle (or not so subtle, heh) changes were swapping the Spartan Laser for the Rocket Launcher, and removing the Regenerator for the Grav Lift. This one was actually pretty cool, because it allows players to enter into the second floor of the center building now without taking the normal routes in.

Q: It’s a brand new map, but does Ghost Town remind you of any Halo CE, Halo 2 or other Halo 3 maps?

Cameron: From the earliest iterations it had some elements that reminded me vaguely of Lockout, visually it has some elements similar to Warlock and Sanctuary, and it also pulls from Sierra 117 and Crow’s Nest from the singleplayer. Overall we really wanted to define a distinctive look for Ghost Town that strays outside of somewhat more traditional Halo environments.

Vic: It reminds me a little of the destroyed stuff I did on Warlock for Halo 2 - That’s still one of my most favorite maps, at least ones that I’ve worked on. I cannot deny that there’s a little bit o’ Warlock in Ghost Town, I just won’t say what or where. And no, there are no bats in it.

(source: Bungie)

Old Updates: Halo 3 Ghost Town Map News From Bungie:

"The third and final map, that we’ve nicknamed OK Corral, is a medium-to-large, asymmetrical map that I LOVE playing Slayer on. It’s just big enough to support vehicles, but in a Mongoose, it’s effectively a confined deathtrap. Vehicles are only to be used in emergencies. This map scales pretty well though – in a one-on-one match, there are obvious places to fight close to the center of the map – but the more players there are, the more they tend to sprawl into the outer reaches of the maps, complete with collapsed buildings, wreckage-strewn structures and lots of rebar.

Sniping spots are numerous, but that’s not really what the level is about. What it is about is mastering routes from one end to the other, and knowing high from low. There is nothing scarier than seeing a red dot appear on your radar and not knowing whether that person is above you, or around the next corner. Some interesting use of floor geometry means you might be able to spot someone on high, but not quite have the angle for a shot."

(added January 28, 2008)

"They remarked that what I was playing looked like an area from Campaign. O.K. Corral reminds me a little bit of Seattle, actually. Not necessarily aesthetically – it’s not full of Emerald and Traffic – but thematically. O.K. Corral is a bit of an intersection between technology and nature. A dilapidated building that resembles an observatory (primarily because of the just-added God Rays streaming through a broken skylight) is at map’s center. This small, multi-level structure has a variety of ways in and out and connects to both bases on this small-to-medium sized asymmetrical map. O.K. Corral takes place in a small canyon so one side of the map features flora and the other side has the architectural failures of humanity.

There’s a pretty broad variety of lighting on O.K. Corral, from the aforementioned God Rays to dark tunnels, nooks and crevices where much of the illumination comes from the lights on Spartan armor.

With a bunch of elevated firing platforms, choke points and multiple ways in and out of the respective bases, O.K. Corral will be ideal for Team Slayer, Oddball and Capture the Flag variations."

Keep checking back for the current Halo 3 Ghost Town Map updates and news!