Open World in Halo ODST,

I got some video from Halo ODST at E3, and at the time I thought, "meh." It looked like anything else Halo with slightly different weapons. It would appear I was mistaken...

News comes from Seattle Times & Kotaku that Halo ODST will be less linear and allow, *gasp* exploration! If there is any major complaint I have about most shooters, it's the lack of free exploration. That's why RPGs like Mass Effect and Fallout appeal to me, and why Crysis and Far Cry have so much replay value.

From the Times article:

"We're doing a lot of pretty neat things in terms of mixing it up, introducing some non-linearity, some free exploration," Staten told the Times. "This is also a mystery story so there's a lot more clue-finding and mystery-solving than you would normally find in a game of this kind - nothing that strays too far from the fun 'Halo' experience, but we definitely decided to take a little bit of risk and have some fun with this one."

Also, Bungie thinks their even newer title, Reach, could be used with Project Natal. Please, please, please let that mean I get a slick gun controller!