In an interview with the Independent, 343 Industries' Lead Game Designer Scott Warner recently spoke about 343 industries' approach to a gaming franchies previously synonymous with Bungie.

Warner discussed aspects of Halo 4 across the campaign and multiplayer modes, as well as the next-generation of Halo games

"I think players really want to also have something new to fight against, and from very early on we came up with the concept of the Prometheans, built around that goal of trying to a bring a mix of the brand new and the classic to the player so they will be able to go through a campaign and have a nice flow as they progress through it," Warner said referring to the Covenant and the process of bringing a new enemy to Halo. He also discussed Spartan Ops, the episodic series with 5 missions a week; the series is the length of approximately 2 campaigns, previously estimated to be around 12 hours.

Warner explained that the advantage of working with Microsoft is access to the next-generation gaming hardware. As a first-party developer, it is expected that 343 Industries will have access to the next-generation Xbox console.

"[W]e'll try to develop our technology and take advantage of it," Warner added when referring to the next-generation Xbox console. Halo 4 is the beginning of the Forerunner trilogy, so at least one title will be available on the next-generation Xbox.

[W]e've always wanted to make sure that when we came out of the gate, that people looked at it as a very big step forward from what they had seen before. It seems like so far people are feeling that way, so we are pretty happy about that," Warner explained, referring to the "underwhelmed reaction" to the graphical jump from Halo 2 to Halo 3.

Halo 4 received a positive reception at E3 2012, following the campaign demo, below. The game will be released on November 6 on Xbox 360.