Initial impressions:
-- Move speed: Default move speed still looks way too slow. I don't remember which video it was that the player (I think it was Elamite) used his ordinance to drop the new Speed Boost power-up, but the player traits that he gained after using that power-up should be the new default. When he was using Speed Boost he was moving much faster than normal, his strafe was much more effective, his reload animation was quicker, but sprint and rate of fire were unchanged. Halo 3 speed, while better than Reach's terrible default speed, is still much too slow.
-- Sprint: Could be alright in this game, if the kill times were faster. But it doesn't produce good gameplay when the minimum individual kill times are ~2 seconds (my rough estimate based on that footage of a BR 5-shot) and players can recharge their shields. One of my least favorite aspects of Reach was when I would shoot an opponent down to one-shot and then they would just duck their head and sprint to cover. I could barely notice a difference in sprint speed when the player was taking damage -- if they don't tweak that to make it more punishing before the final game then plenty of players are going to be running from fights with no penalty like they do in Reach.
-- Weapons: Some weapons looked promising (actually just the Carbine and Scattershot), but most of the guns looked pretty ineffective. The BR looks terrible; it reminds me of the pre-patch H2 BR with that horrible spread and a 5sk is way too long. DMR looks alright but I can't make a solid judgement based on the amount of footage shown in those vids. The Carbine wasn't shown much either but from what I could tell it didn't have bloom of any kind, so if it kills in less than 5 minutes it could be a viable weapon. Scattershot looks pretty cool although I don't see it being much more useful than the shotgun (343 kept talking about how you can shoot around corners with it but I haven't seen anyone use it to that effect in the footage we have). I didn't see a single person get a kill with the Sticky Detonator, though I assume it won't be that ineffective once players start to understand how it works a bit better. Storm Rifle seems a bit beefier than the 3/Reach PR but unless they give it Plasma Stun like the H1 PR then I probably won't bother using it much. The AR inexplicably looks more powerful than the Reach version (why the hell do they keep making the easiest gun in the game more effective?). The Rockets seem to have received a big nerf for no good reason; the flight time of the rocket seems to be longer than in the past and the blast radius was decreased pretty noticeably, so hopefully that gets fixed before launch. Not a huge fan of the Magnum being a 6sk with only 8 bullets in the clip, but I guess they're trying to relegate it exclusively to a secondary role so can't fault them too much for that.
-- AAs: Pretty much only saw Promethean Vision in action during this footage, and it was obviously OP. I think a good way to take it down a notch would be to limit the effective range and make it behave more like pulsing sonar instead of being pure X-ray vision. Saw a little bit of the Thruster Pack in action and I like the possibilities for that to be used in strafing/evasion.
-- Overall: Seems like a mixed bag. It looks like a solid core game but it could definitely benefit from an increase in pace, both in terms of kill speeds and movement speeds. I don't know if I would still enjoy playing the build they're showing in this footage after my thousandth game, but I'm cautiously optimistic that they can make some solid improvements before November.
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