5 New Features Coming To Halo MCC Season 3 and ODST

Halo 3: ODST will drop for Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC on September 22. These are five new features in Halo MCC Season 3 that you should know about before jumping in feet first into hell, from new customization options to quality-of-life updates.

5 New Features in Halo MCC Season 3 and ODST cover

The long-awaited Halo 3: ODST will drop for Halo: The Master Chief Collection for PC on September 22. Together with the new title, 343 Industries is adding new features in Halo MCC Season 3 as well. Let’s take a quick look at what the Halo team has been cooking up for the Halo 3: ODST update before we jump in feet first into hell. 

1. Halo 3: ODST Firefight Wave Customization

MCC Technical Designer Dana Jerpbak said they are adding dedicated servers and wave customization to the Firefight mode, just like in Halo: Reach. Along with all the legacy contents, including 10 original maps, classic settings, variations, and then some. You will be able to customize your starting weapons, movement speed, gravity, time limit, number of lives, damage output, and many other options.

Unfortunately, we still can't spawn an Elephant -- for now anyway.

Unfortunately, we still can’t spawn an Elephant — for now anyway.

Jerpbak: All of the new settings are meant to give players that control; things like the starting weapons, the vehicle set overrides so you can go on Lost Platoon and, instead of a chain gun Warthog, you can have a Gauss Hog, a Scorpion, a Hornet, or even an Anti-Air Wraith. You can just go nuts with that and play how you want. You can set random weapons and play Fiesta style, or you can start everyone with a sniper. Things like the time limit, the set limit, betrayal, booting, and friendly fire (plus some additional pieces) are also up for adjustment. It’s up to you to customize and curate the experiences you want.

They are also making changes to matchmade Firefight. In the Xbox 360 days, your run will never end until you run out of lives. But to “respect people’s time” in matchmaking, the game will run for a single set, around 25 to 30 minutes. Of course, you can still do marathons with your friends through custom games.

2. Halo 3: ODST Weapons Coming to Halo 3 Multiplayer Sandbox

More toys to play around with.

More toys to play around with.

ODST isn’t just the only title that’s getting a new feature from other Halo games. The addition of new features in Halo MCC Season 3 will also add previously ODST-exclusive weapons to Halo 3’s multiplayer sandbox. Jerpbak said that they have to tweak how ODST weapons originally work and to give them more personality that distinguishes them from the standard versions.

  • Brute Plasma Rifle: Has longer cool down time compared to the standard Plasma Rifle but can fire faster. Overheat much faster too.
  • Silenced SMG: The first fully automatic weapon that can zoom in with a scope in Halo 3. Has a longer range compared to the standard SMG but needs to be fired in bursts to be effective.
  • Automag Pistol: Got the most changes thanks to its high fire rate. In Halo 3, the recoil is removed and they made it into a consistent “five-shot kill” weapon.

From the sounds of it, Automag might just be the worthy successor of Halo: CE‘s Magnum.

3. More Halo 3 Customization

Season 3 will be all about Halo 3 and ODST.

Season 3 will be all about Halo 3 and ODST.

Season 3 will bring over 80 customization items including new weapon skins, new visors, and other “brand new content” for Halo 3. For armor and weapon skins, you will be able to disable them via an option toggle just like in Halo: CE. Any seasonal challenges that award skins like the Golden Assault Rifle or Sniper in Season 2 will expire, but may return at a future date. Jerpback added that you should be able to unlock items quicker since MCC Season 3 will only have 50 tiers compared to the 100 of the previous seasons.

Jerpbak: Yes, so for Season 3, first off, it’s a shorter season in terms of number of unlocks. […] This is due to this season coming online much sooner after the previous one compared to the time window between seasons 1 and 2. For Season 3 a lot of the unlocks are being centered around Halo 3, with some for ODST.

4. Halo 2: Anniversary Customization

It's about time Halo 2 got proper permutation options as well.

It’s about time Halo 2 got proper permutation options as well.

Although MCC Season 3 focuses on Halo 3 and ODST, additionally Halo 2: Anniversary is getting an update for its customization options. You will be able to customize your Spartan or Elite’s armor components on a per-piece basis, similar to Reach and Halo 3 armor permutation system. No more samey, boring sets.

5. Small Revamp to Challenge Notifications

Last but not least, quality of life updates are coming as well:

  1. You can easily access the Challenge Hub directly from the pause menu in any game mode.
  2. You can turn off Challenge notifications altogether.
  3. Changes to the notifications’ colors. Some featured Challenges will be colored gold while others are blue. The featured ones generally have special rewards such as season points.

Ready to explore the ruins of New Mombasa again? Share with us your thoughts on the new features in Halo MCC Season 3 and Halo 3: ODST update in the comments below.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

×