Halo Waypoint is meta-achievements, Avatar Awards, and News

If you follow Halo, you probably know about the upcoming Halo Waypoint channel coming to Xbox Live.  It functions very similarly to the Netflix, Facebook, and Twitter channels; it is an extra box on the interface that you download and launch.

Halo Waypoint will be available to all gold memebers (and for a limited time available to silver members).  It is otherwise free and currently in beta testing.  If you are apart of the Dashboard Preview beta (Facebook, Twitter, Last.FM), then you now have Halo Waypoint, too.

Halo Waypoint is a News channel with videos, which is handy but also kind of lame.  But, as a bonus, it is also a meta-game itself.

Halo Waypoint has no achievements itself (lists as 0/0 in your Library), but once launched can track and show its own Meta-Achievements.  These are earned across all 3 next-gen Halo titles (Halo 3, Halo Wars, and Halo ODST).  For example, one may require to you get a certain number of vehicle achievements across all 3 titles, and Car Jacking in Halo 3 or Bumper Bashing in Halo Wars both count.  The more you get, the more the meta achievement levels up.  This results in an overall rank.  Abstract and only for the dedicated, but kind of fun to see what you’ve done so far.

The aspect that will get more attention are the Avatar Awards.  Simply launching and starting up Halo Waypoint gives you a Monitor (343 Guilty Spark) who will follow you around, similar to the lightsaber or guitar you could purchase from the Avatar Store.  Most games don’t support these Avatar Awards yet, so getting one of these for free is fun.  There are several more available, currently by unlocking specific achievements in Halo ODST and then logging into Halo Waypoint.

Currently known unlocks:

ODST Helmet is unlocked by beating the ODST campaign.

ODST Shirt is unlocked by the Tourist Complete achievement.

ODST Hoodie is unlocked by the Dark Times achievement.

Monitor is unlocked just by booting up Waypoint.

Recon Helmet is unlocked by the VidMaster Endure achievement.

ODST Armor is unlocked by the Good Samaritan achievement.

 

So, obviously getting the good Samaritan became a lot more appealing, and beating the game would then net you a full ODST outfit :)

 

The interface is nothing special, but since it is a separate channel, they can update it independently from the Dashboard.  Here’s hoping they add even more unlocks and meta-game achievements as time goes on and new Halo titles come out (and add old rewards to old titles, too).

4 thoughts on “Halo Waypoint is meta-achievements, Avatar Awards, and News

  1. i downloaded waypoint and i got the monitor but i should have the hoodie shirt and odst helmet for getting the required acheivements but thhey arent appearing for me? can someone help me as to why its not working?

  2. Me too. I think we are required to restart the game. Get the achievements, and log on to waypoint. ALL MUST BE ONLINE I THINK… but i spent time playing and getting all the achievements except Vidmasters.

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