I have to admit I didn’t see this one coming. A pre-E3 screenshot on Xbox.com confirms that Halo 4 is in the works (good eye, NowGamer). If you’re looking for details, well…that’s it. It’s worth noting that this new title is apparently completely separate from Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the HD remastering of the original game that launched the franchise.

The Halo series is an old favorite, but this news leaves me a mixture of stoked and confused. Halo 4 seems to be coming pretty hot on the tracks of Reach, which leaves me wondering what relationship, if any, Bungie will have with the franchise going forward. The torch for running the Halo servers was passed at least in part to 343 Industries, a Microsoft underling who is also handling the HD remake. I would assume they’re at the helm of this project as well.

On a more geeky note, despite Halo 3‘s tease of Master Chief and Cortana crashing landing into new adventures on a mystery planet, I actually liked the finality of the trilogy’s conclusion. It seemed fitting for this hero inspired by Greek history and mythology to pass into legend taking his rest among the stars, accompanied only by his watchful muse. It also looks like the above screenshot picks up right where we left off with them. Master Chief is clearly too much of a cash cow to let him stay asleep, so it looks like Cortana will wake him when she needs him sooner than I thought.

Update: The game is set to land in 2012, and will be the start of a new trilogy. Oh, by the way, check out the trailer.