Much to the surprise of fans, 343 Industries quietly revealed at E3 that Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary will support Kinect, for unspecified “additive” functionality. HaloFest last month came and went, and we still didn’t find out what’s going on, despite the game’s November 15th release rapidly nearing.

Enter this past week’s TGS festivities, where Halo: CEA was one of Microsoft’s major showcase titles. Thanks to a demonstration whoopsie that wasn’t anticipated, 343i has taken the lid off of one Kinect feature set to rock the Halo franchise as you know it– voice control. Commence freaking out. Or not.

“We accidentally revealed some of it because someone kept saying one of the keywords during another demonstration. So there will be some basic voice support,” 343′s franchise development director, Frank O’Connor told 1UP.

“For example you can switch between the two graphics modes with voice commands by saying ‘Classic’ or ‘Remastered.’“

He goes on to say, however, that “there is some other [Kinect] functionality that we haven’t talked about that is not core to the gameplay per se, but it is germane to the story and fiction fans will probably really enjoy that feature — and it’s a little bit more advanced than just voice functionality.“

“We’ll talk about it later, sometime in October probably, but we don’t want to oversell it. It’s not something that radically changes the gameplay; it’s just another additive bonus on top of the other stuff we’ve added. We think of it like the [stereoscopic] 3D: something that makes the experience better, but doesn’t change it.“

Boom. There you have it. Any guesses what the yet-to-be-detailed functions are?


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