SANTA MONICA, California -- "Halo 3" is bigger and longer than previous "Halo" games but is also supposed to be easier -- and harder -- than what those prepared to buy the game on September 25 might expect, according to the game's developer, Bungie Studios.

At the final "Halo 3"-related meeting of E3 last week, Bungie head writer Frank O'Connor talked with MTV News about game length, game difficulty, graphics and upcoming revelations about his development studio's anticipated new game.

"In terms of the actual game length, it's probably geometrically the biggest 'Halo,' " O'Connor said. "We found in tests [that] it's testing pretty similarly to 'Halo 1' and '2' in terms of overall game length. But we're trying to push people toward playing [the game on the] Heroic [difficulty setting], which is why we demoed that at E3. There's much more going on, and that will certainly take longer than it did on 'Halo 2.' "

To clarify: "Halo 3" will have bigger levels, and if Bungie has its way, players will choose to go through those levels in a more time-consuming, enemy-packed, harder difficulty mode to help the game last longer.

To understand what O'Connor meant, MTV News played a few minutes of the game's first level. O'Connor skipped the opening phase of the level, because he said it would have given away some big surprises. (He laughed off the suggestion that the surprise has Master Chief removing his helmet to reveal that he's "Gears of War" hero Marcus Fenix.) O'Connor had set the difficulty to Heroic. Allied soldiers and, apparently, "Halo 2" character Arbiter cut through a jungle alongside the player's Master Chief. They ambushed enemies. On a thick fallen log suspended between two tall boulders, an enemy Brute held a human soldier in the air by the throat, Darth Vader-style. A shot in the Brute's direction helped end that problem. But soon a counterattack of Covenant aliens swarmed into the jungle, and Heroic Master Chief became dead Master Chief, body held up from total collapse only because his face mask was pressed against a tree trunk.

When O'Connor had played on Heroic, he passed that part. He reached a dock where an allied drop-ship lowered into battle, then took fire and flew away to crash -- only to have an enemy drop-ship descend after that and engage Master Chief in a fierce firefight. O'Connor lowered the difficulty to Normal and offered MTV News another shot. This time the dock was reached, the allied ship entered the picture and left to crash, but the enemy ship didn't come next. On Normal, it's not programmed to show up. That makes the battle less frenzied and makes the level shorter. A major set piece is left out. That's what O'Connor was trying to show. He said that, compared to previous "Halo" games, such content-based differences in difficulty levels will be more pronounced.

Bungie and Microsoft wouldn't allow any filming of the campaign mode but hoped that a trailer based on it and sessions run by O'Connor and other Bungie team members would put the game's campaign in the spotlight. Much of the reaction to "Halo 3" up until then had been based on fan impressions of the spring's open multiplayer beta (see [article id="1559460"]" 'Halo 3' Sneak Peek: Three Things Every Beta Player Must Do"[/article]). One concern voiced on message boards about the beta was the game's graphics. While clearly better than those of "Halo 2," the multiplayer visuals didn't meet some players' expectations for a next-gen "Halo."

While O'Connor said that graphical improvements have been made to multiplayer since the beta, he said there are intentional reasons it may not have blown people away. "The difference between single-player and multiplayer really is multiplayer takes on a very specifically clear, sterile look because it's a competitive sport in a lot of ways. You wouldn't necessarily want to build a hedgerow maze on a football field, because people want to see what's going on. ... Graphics in multiplayer are always toned way down compared to those in single-player."

Another concern was that the multiplayer matchmaking Bungie uses didn't effectively keep novice players from getting thrown into firefights with experts. Among the suggestions offered to Bungie to remedy that were the introduction of computer-controlled "bots" that would serve as training partners for novice gamers and even a multiplayer tutorial mode. O'Connor shot the first idea down: "We're not going to do bots. We would always want to have the best [artificial intelligence] for bots possible. And the best AI for a bot is another human, that's just a fact."

Bungie had a few offerings that might help. The development team is creating "social playlists" that will encourage more casual play. "You can just dip in and out," O'Connor said. "You can quit with no penalties. It's a much easier way to go in and enjoy the experience and learn things. There's no pressure. Your rank doesn't change." And they're encouraging people to pick up skills via the campaign: "Learn the basics," O'Connor said. "Enjoy the story and the adventure. And then when you get your feet wet ... the system will have settled itself out to a nice level of evenness."

He also said Bungie will take care of these concerns by tracking player performance in online matches at a very fine level. "We're gauging and tracking people's experience as well as their skill. We can tell how good a player is, how good he is at hitting things and how good he is at throwing grenades and all that sort of stuff. ... More importantly, we can tell how long they've played. We kind of draw a line between how much they've played and how skillful they are as a result. The end result is [that] a couple of weeks after the game goes live on September 25th, we'll have pooled enough players so we can start matching you very, very closely. If you can't play at all and you can barely look around, hopefully you're going to get matched against similarly skilled or unskilled players, and you can all just run around falling off stuff for a couple of weeks until you get better."

And, intriguingly, Bungie has some surprises coming for those not sold on the multiplayer experience as it's been described so far. Said O'Connor: "There are a couple of things we haven't revealed -- that we're going to reveal in the next couple of weeks -- that are going to make the game more interesting to a wider range of people who are interested in multiplayer."

Clearly, there are secrets still to be revealed. That is a theme of "Halo 3," from the game's modes and features to its story: "What we hope with 'Halo 3' is by the time this story runs to a conclusion and the credits are going to roll, people are going to retrospectively look back and say, 'Well, all the questions I wanted answered have been answered.' " Then, if the player wasn't any good at "Halo 3" at the start, they should go play their first match of multiplayer -- and enjoy those graphics.

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