Halo 4

Halo 4 is the recently announced seventh installment in the best-selling Halo franchise. The game was first revealed on Microsoft's homepage, hours before the start of their E3 press conference, due to a mistake in the editing department which revealed Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. The game was officially announced at the end of Microsoft's E3 2011 press conference. It is said to be the start of "a new trilogy", developed by 343 Industries, Microsoft's new internal development company.

The game is currently expected to be released in "Holiday 2012", following the release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on 15th November 2011. Also, Frank O'Connor has said that the planet is the Legendary planet seen in Halo 3 (during the Legendary epilogue).

Little is known about the game at this point.

In the teaser, Master Chief, asleep in his cryo-tube, awakens as Cortana shouts for him to wake up. Although slow to wake from his stasis (as normal for cryo-sleep), the Chief characteristically snaps into action. He gets out of the tube and approaches Cortana, reassuring her that he is awake and present. An explosion reverberates through the hull, cutting their brief reunion short and alerting John of a dangerous situation. With little time to lose, he transfers Cortana to her data chip and exits the room, drifting, in zero-g, through the disintegrating interior of the with the aid of a thruster pack. As he maneuvers through the debris-filled corridor, he grabs what seems to be a pistol that fires off single-use explosive projectiles. He uses it to blast open an opening in the aft section of the ship. Exiting through the torn section, the Chief prepares to face whatever warranted his awakening, and looks out into the abyss of space, as the Dawn approaches a mysterious planet/unknown construct with an aperture-esque portal/tunnel opening and seeming to lead into it.

If one looks closely, Master Chief's armor has changed once again. The details on his armour have been increased and the look and feel has changed, but with much remaining similar to the Halo 3 Mark VI Armour. This is probably because 343 Industries didn't want to stray too far from the original version of Halo 2 and Halo 3. The armor is the same the Chief used in Halo 3, as the scratch on the chest-piece he received when he fell from the Forerunner Dreadnought is still visible. The armor also may look different because it is missing pieces (either from the damage the Chief took in Halo 3; as a result of the [rough] flight of a "dead" Dawn, without a pilot; or some reason ). The graphics also looked different from Halo 3, because 343 Industries used CGI, instead of the normal game engine, for the teaser.

There are rumors there might be a new voice actor for Cortana, because during the trailer, Cortana's voice sounds distinctly different from Jen Taylor's, the voice actor in Halo, 2, and 3. They, however, may have just used a temporary-replacement for the teaser only [and Jen Taylor may be voice-acting for Cortana in the actual game], or it was because when her voice was heard the video was panning "inside" Master Chief's body, and therefore muffled her voice.

One may believe that the world the Dawn is approaching is Onyx - particularly if one has read Halo: Ghosts of Onyx - and the portal is opening to release what is left of the Spartan IIIs, and the rest of Blue Team. This is, however, based on speculation and may not come to be. This scenario is unlikely primarily because Onyx's planetary shell was destroyed by the trillions of Onyx Sentinels that comprised the superstructure of the construct, leaving only the slipspace rift.

The website mentions an "ancient evil". This ancient evil, stated on the leaked Halo E3 page, could be the Precursors, the Forerunners, the Flood, or something entirely new. It also should be noted that the construct shown in the trailer looks to not be of Human, Covenant, or Forerunner origin. Many ideas, though, have sparked about the Forerunners arriving from a different galaxy after the first activation of the Array.

Trivia

 * In the Halo 3 ending, the last thing the Chief says is to Cortana, as he enters his cryo-chamber: "Wake me, when you need me"
 * In the Halo 4 teaser, the first words that one can hear are screamed by Cortana as she tries to wake the Chief: "Chief! I need you!".