Last week, Microsoft Korea filed an indeterminate ratings board listing for something called Bootcamp – a new Halo game for the PC. Remember those?
Nobody knows quite what it is. But we’re going to have a go at working it out, just the same.
The listing is vague, as they often are, and made more so by Google Translate:
Halo 3 first-person point of view of the world based on the contents of the Action Game software going to perform the mission expressed mild violence (third-person point of simple weapons, attack representation and fresh blood description) that the game industry, therefore Article 21 of the Act on the Promotion and classification hearing in accordance with paragraph 3 of Paragraph 9 2015 Rated PG ‘classification as decided.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: express mild violence.
Thankfully, a Microsoft rep was on hand to eliminate some of the confusion. “What’s Bootcamp?”, they rhetorically asked CVG when poked. “It is not related to our Xbox One efforts, or [343 Industries’ post-Reach trilogy] the Reclaimer Saga, but rather a project we’re very enthusiastic about and will have more to say about in the near future.”
It’s likely no coincidence that the new game has cropped up first on the Korean ratings board. East Asia is already awash with adaptations of successful Western series hoping to take advantage of its burgeoning free-to-play market – witness the bewilderingly-titled Call of Duty Online, Activision’s collaboration with Tencent.
It’s also worth noting that the name, ‘Bootcamp’, fits quite snugly within Halo multiplayer’s existing fictional conceit. If you recall, those countless brutal energy sword slayings are all supposed to be part of an extended training program.
And there’s only one reason we can imagine Microsoft would bar a Halo game from the new Xbox: to bolster Windows 8’s lacklustre range of exclusive titles.
A free-to-play, multiplayer Windows 8-exclusive Halo, then: that’s what we’re betting the site on. What do you think Bootcamp will be?