This weeks Halo Bulletin is quite brief, but it lays the frame work for things to come. You can read it here, but onto the highlights!

• No more Weekly Playlist Updates. Moving to bi-weekly updates (Next update will be March 25th)
• Castle Map Pack Trailer was released (click here to watch)
  • 3 new Multiplayer maps for Halo 4
    • Perdition, Outcast, Daybreak
    • 800 Microsoft points (or “free” to War Games Map Pass owners)
    • April 8th, 2013 release
• March 18th – Studio producers will release their map pack coverage videos
• March 22nd – Castle Map Pack featured in a panel and playable at PAX East in Boston
• March 25th – Next playlist update: Adding more game variants to Team Action Sack Playlist
• April 1st – Castle Map Pack Strategy videos by 343 Industries, Achievement list, and pre-launch livestream with 343.
• April 8th – Castle Map Pack release

Now onto those items without a specific date:

• Upcoming updates to many existing playlists to prepare for CSR launch sometime in April
• Still finalizing the new FFA playlist
• Working towards “how to bring objective game types to larger parties” (hint: Big Team Objective perhaps?)
• Plenty of exclusive PAX East panel information
• “X Marker” upon death will be returning. i.e. a “X” indicator will appear where your teammates have recently killed so you can shout “ONE SHOT ON MY X!!”

They also added some details to the 3 maps for the Castle Map Pack

Daybreak: Although it is currently being used as a military staging ground, this fertile world will one day be colonized.

Description: Operation: Daybreak is effectively a cluster of ONI research facilities and sensor relays residing in the vast highlands of Saviron, on the blue-green planet Oban. With the destruction of so many worlds at the hands of the Covenant, this planet is now undergoing preparations to make it a home for millions of human refugees. In the meantime, the UNSC Navy continues to use it as a key staging ground for a number of highly classified military exercises.

Outcast: Dissident strongholds such as this one helped foment several anti-centralization movements.

Description: One of the few worlds left unscathed by the Covenant, the remote outer colony of Talitsa has always had a strong anti-centralization and pro-colonial autonomy sentiment, even since before the war. The UNSC halted several early political uprisings in the colony’s major population centers, but this only fostered a more radical form of dissent, now in the form of secluded and heavily armed redoubts. Ultimately, these sites would provide the foundation for a number of major political movements.

Perdition: City-wide evacuation orders have confirmed that the unstable thermal reactor cannot be contained.

Description: New Carthage has always been a prime example of a healthy, growing colony, even since before the war. Hidden below the city of Pilvros, however, one of the thermal reactors which provided clean and safe energy in the past has now gone critical. While a large-scale evacuation effort is underway, scans of the reactor section are quickly acquired to help analysts determine the root cause of this impending disaster.

– Chief Landless

Geronimo!