The marine may have been cautiously been patrolling the area, and Nova uncloaked and let loose when he was pinned down in the corner of that big metal thing sitting in the middle of the room. Somehow both her shields and health have swapped almost completely between the two shots. Perhaps shields go down while you’re cloaked?

Maybe the marine started firing at her when he saw he uncloak and as such she took quite a few bullets before he shields could recharge? Whatever the case, either the C-10 Canister Rifle can fire a lot faster than we think it can, or this battle has been going on a looooonng time, since her ammo has dropped from 250 to 90.

This could be because of the current ability she’s using, located in the bottom left hand corner of the screenie. It is a symbol of four arrows spiraling outward. Now I would logically assume that this is “bullet-time” ability that was covered in the Game Movie Demo summary, as it’s the last ability that was mentioned in the demo that we haven’t seen with our own eyes yet.

The other possibility is that it’s an ability that allows Nova to have an extremely fast trigger finger, explaining for the sharp drop in ammo between the two screenshots. However, since we see the marine in mid-run,

I think that this pic was taken during the “slow mo”, as then it would be easier to take a shot with the marine’s leg up in the air. It would also explain for the horrible aim for the marine being way off in another direction, compared to Nova who has had the “bullet-time” to move out of the way and aim her gun directly on the marine.

In the radar, the red pie piece can again be assumed as the firing marine, in his maximum alertness. Some sparks are also in the bottom left corner, which could be one of two things.

One: Misfire from the marine and sparks from his bullet hitting the metal wall (notice these are the same sparks from gameplay shot 1). This could be counter-argued though, that the marine is firing in a totally different direction, and as such there should be no sparks to the left of Nova.

Two: Those sparks have to do with Nova firing her weapon, not the marines, as we saw in screenshot number one that those sparks were flying when only Nova was shooting, and the marine wasn’t shooting back. If you look in the center of the screenshot, you see some gun shells flying about.

Whether these are Nova’s or the marine’s its hard to tell, since in gameplay shot 1 there are no shells when Nova was firing, which leave the shells to only be the marine’s. This doesn’t make sense though, since there is a shell just to the right of Nova’s gun, if you follow the path of them to her. Perhaps these shells go by so fast that they can only be truly seen when Nova is in bullet-time? Or perhaps Nova has changed the fire setting on her rifle from pinpoint to rapid fire? These, and many more, are possibilities.

Finally, in this shot we see something quite different. To the right of the marine’s health bar, we see “592.120”. This COULD be the marine’s health. However, below it, near the bottom of the screenshot, we see “M592.308”, a number very similar to the above one.

I believe that these are nav points or markers of some sort, like the ones used in Halo, to give a general sense of where Nova needs to go. Whether these were added just for the game demo and beta testing purposes, or are actual nav points that we will see in the game, no one knows. But whatever the case, they weren’t in the other screenshots officially released by Blizzard, so perhaps they didn’t want us seeing their beta process.

There you are, another screenshot analysis, this one was a long one. Perhaps I get too wordy....oh well, can’t wait till the next screenshot!