As Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3 battle relentlessly for the top stop on Xbox Live, their developers work feverishly on their respective next incarnations, most likely to battle each other for market share in late 2009. In an interview with GameIndustry.biz, Bungie developer Damian Isla revealed the following, which I am sure will lead to a good amount of fanboy hatred:

We have a lot to learn from their success too, they did some very innovative things to keep people going and their experience-rewards system was something that we paid a lot of attention to... I think it's a great game and single player obviously is fantastic... They did a hell of a job with their set pieces, of scripting certain moments that they were really sure the player was going to actually see and experience first hand. The way that they use those moments to craft the player experience... Halo has a lot to learn from.

Well, Damian, better you realize that now than after another Halo game. I loved both Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, but when it comes to delivering a full, rewarding online experience, CoD4’s assault is simply too powerful for the Spartan Chief. Both games contain similar experience gain and level systems, but Modern Warfare actually rewards you for play with more than the occasional cosmetic upgrade to armor, giving players a reason to continue playing after they have made themselves look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I hope that Damian Isla means “rip-off” when he says, “learn,” and the rumored third-person-shooter based in the Halo universe as in-depth and robust of a multiplayer experience as CoD4 delivers.

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