Last year during E3, 343 Industries surprised Halo fans new and old with the reveal of Halo 4. I was, of course, excited and even had a comic written and posted onto Facebook immediately after. Since that time, there hasn’t been much about the game worthy of mention. There was a concept art trailer that showed some pretty cool pictures, but no fully developed images of the game itself.

While we’ve yet to get another trailer, 343i did release a look at the game in a video documentary titled “Halo 4 First Look”. While very little campaign gameplay was shown, great shots of the multiplayer were revealed. The maps will be made from scratch, rather than making like lazy a-words as Bungie did with “Halo: Reach” and just recycling campaign maps. Armor permutations will return, and will even have effects on the gameplay, but not in the fashion of a perk system like in Call of Duty.

I don’t entirely know what to expect for the soundtrack of the game, now that Martin O’Donnell is no longer working on the Halo games, but if the one track heard in this ViDoc is just a teaser of what’s to come, then I can’t wait to hear the other tracks when I play the full game.

Unlike previous titles, this game is set to tie in other media from the Halo universe. Previous Halo games have usually avoided going too deep into the universe established by the novels, and “Halo: Reach” nearly went as far as trampling the story written in Eric Nylund’s “The Fall of Reach.”

However, it has been stated by 343i that this game, unlike its predecessors, will instead be utilizing the novels and tying in their plotlines to further strengthen the story of Halo 4, notably with the two most recently released books, “Halo: Glasslands” and “Halo: Primordium.”

The game is to take place right after the events of Halo 3 and will supposedly be focused on the Master Chief’s character, giving us more insight into the man behind the well-known MJOLNIR Mark VI mask, as well as his A.I. companion Cortana.

There has been no release from 343i on what the “new enemy unlike anything Master Chief has ever faced before” will be, but from what I’ve read in recent novels, as well as saw in the terminals in “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary”, we may get to see the return of the Forerunners.

I for one cannot wait to find out when Halo 4 is released later this year!