Halo 2 Goes Multi-Team

Hot off the heels of me complaining about the two team limit in FPS games, Bungie apparently seeded a viciously smart but slightly unstable AI into the past to remember to post this just in time:

But the really big news is that our next set of Matchmaking Playlist updates (which is roughly scheduled for September) has some cool oddities in it. Multi-Team! This whole playlist revision will be among our most significant Playlist updates to date, because it introduces a bunch of new stuff, rolls in the new maps, and makes some tweaks to the starting weapons in a number of instances.

Multi-Team, in this instance will largely consists of 4 teams per game, with 3 players per team (3v3v3v3).

-- Bungie Weekly Update 8/12

When pressed about why they would do such an insidious thing, Bungie had this to say for themselves:

Variety is a large key to Halo 2's multiplayer success, and support for multiple teams adds new dimension to the gameplay experience. Modes like Capture the Flag become much more interesting as four teams vie for one prize, turning the battle into an absolute frenzy.

(thanks Sara!)

Four team games have bounced around the mod communities for a while, but it's nice to see Bungie take this step for Halo 2. Moves like this make me think again that Quake 4 only having basic DM and CTF setups may not be enough to capture the online crowd these days. Course, Enemy Territory is sounding very sweet.

Thanks to Tony D. ButtonMasher for giving me a heads-up that Bungie was adding these modes.