Clans to Return in Reach?


Shacknews has followed up on yesterday's news about Arena and Active Rosters in Halo Reach with an interview with some Bungie staffers. Here's a taste:

Talking about Active Roster...

Luke Timmins: If you remember from Halo 2, there was a really easy way to get to my friends list. In Halo 2, it's right there. My friends and what they're doing. When Halo 3 came out, we had this big thing about trying to integrate with the Xbox 360 Guide. We had a lot of deep-thinking after that and decided we really wanted [Halo 2's system] back. We want easy access to friends. We want to see what they're doing and who they're partied up with.

[In Halo 3], we lost something there.

The active roster really is the tip of the spear for getting people this quick access to "what are my friends doing?" Oh, they're in a game? How much time is remaining? What's the score?

Lars Bakken: Active Roster is, by definition, always on. When you log into Reach at the Main Menu, the whole right half of the screen is going to be your Active Roster. You're going to see what all your friends are doing in real-time in Reach. No going to the Guide. You click the left stick to the right and you are in the Active Roster.

It has all the information what all your friends are doing, whether they're partied up or not, who they're partied up with, what gametype they're in whether they're searching in matchmaking [or in a lobby]. That is fed to you, real-time, in the menu at all times. It's always there.

Luke Timmins: We actually made a substantial investment in engineering tech in our user-interface architecture. We basically rebuit huge swaths of the UI [and players] will be really impressed by the quality of the UI. It's sexy as hell and our UI guys have done an amazing job. The most important button - if there's one button that matters - in the Active Roster, it's the "join" button.

This brings us to the next-big thing that we have wanted this since Halo 2. We couldn't get it in to Halo 2 or Halo 3, but Reach will have: Queued Join. We built this sytem where you can queue a join to a friend that's not in an immediately joinable state (in the middle of matchmaking or watching a film). When he becomes available, it will automatically put you guys together in a lobby.

Here's the full article. I am so looking forward to Queue Join!

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