Halo 3 brought us something that console fans had been yearning for in one shape or form since Halo: Combat Evolved, and that was a level editor of sorts. Dubbed Forge, this basic level editor would let players customise some of their favorite maps with a variety of weapons, props and vehicles.

Later on in Halo 3′s life Bungie released some unique DLC expand forge further, 2 maps came out over the months the first of which was Foundry, where keen level editors were given a small blank space to play with and a lot more terrian objects to play with, such as bridges, shipping containers etc, this got gamers such as myself pretty excited at the amount of freedom you had in such a small area. But when Sandbox came out for Halo Forge this took map editing for Halo 3 to a whole new level. You could create pretty much anything you wanted within reason, you were given 2 tiers to customise with a wealth of terrain and landscaping tools. With Sandbox I created my own game pretty much, which never really took off, but I may bring it back.

With Halo Reach just round the corner (about a month and a bit by my watch) what has Bungie done with the forge for the next game? Just to let you guys know, its worth noting here that this is the last Halo game Bungie will be creating. Also do you remember the Blood Gultch video I showed you on the last Reach post, with Sarge from Red Vs Blue asking what was beyond the mountains (or words to that effect) well your about to find out.

Forge World, as it has been dubbed for Halo Reach is this single biggest editable landscape that Bungie have ever created for the Forge Universe, just so you know how huge this is, Bungie have pre made 3 whole multiplayer maps in this world at the same time, in one place you have Blood Gultch, which has now been dubbed Hemorrhage, in another you have Pinnicle which is another remake of the classic map Ascension and in the 3rd proverbial corner you have Cage which is a map suspended in mid-are with a variety of ramps and walk ways designed for close quarters and sniper ranged combat.

Just a snipit of forge world. Taken from IGN.com

The awesome thing here is you can delete all of this and run free in the Halo World. You will be able to tell from the get go that this World is back on the ring planet itself. As a blank canvas the world is split up into five areas called Canyon, Island, “The Rock,” Quarry, and Coliseum. Each of these are big enough to house a full on playable level, that’s again another taster of how stupidly big this map is and it is all yours to edit.

Keen forgers out there will be very pleased to know that actual level creation has been improved and re-tweaked. It is now way more user-friendly than it was back on Halo 3. For hours at a time I would get easily frustrated trying stand a block up in Sandbox, or aligning a walk way correctly so there were no gaps. Now in Forge world every object has 3 settings, you can make each object realistic like in Halo 3, or suspended in mid-air meaning they won’t drop to the ground as soon as you let go, and my favorite, you can make each object phased, meaning you can merge objects together to make one huge thing. There are 150 objects to choose from, including massive stair cases, huge platforms, all sorts really.

Here is some of the stuff you can use, only some mind. Taken form IGN.com

The world is yours to customise, you can section things bits off for small maps, or just make the biggest multiplayer map ever, all in all Forge world is amazing, and with another 3 forge built maps coming with the release of Halo Reach, I can safely say that Bungie have not skimped out on this one.

Garv