Halo Reach Vidoc

[editor's note]: I had a complete article written out, but it was deleted upon posting. I’m taking another shot at it.

Halo Reach is the latest installment in the ever growing Halo franchise and this video seems to reveal quite a bit of things. New or not.

Some new things to come

-Sprinting
-Health System
-New Weapons (Noob Tubes!)
-Assassination Animations
-Updated (and extremely sexy) graphics
-Story Driven Game

Let’s be honest, Halo used to be about immersion into the story, the environment, and the characters. It wasn’t until ODST came around that we got the isolation and immersion back. Halo 2′s campaign was a schizo, unfinished placeholder for the multiplayer aspect of the game. Halo 3 was trying hard to tie up loose ends for the story arc while “finishing the fight” still left it open for interpretation as to where the story would lead.

Bungie have really began to get into their storytelling skills again since they basically perfected multiplayer (while also leaving it out of ODST for some reason).

How The GamePlay Will Change for both campaign and multiplayer for this new halo adventure seems to be vast. According to the vidoc, they’re trying to keep the core of what makes Halo, well, Halo. It still definitely looks like Halo, but willl it feel like Halo?

Halo 1, to many people that I still talk to, is still the best game of the Halo franchise overall. Sure, it had a long development time and genre changes, but the final product was an amazing launch title that helped put Microsoft into a niche that’s been working for nearly a decade. With further endeavours to improve and expand the game, howwever, came changes.

In Halo 2, we lost ladders, the pistol, the health system, the Assault Rifle, a finished story, isolation, and the feeling of humanity within the story.
Introduced dual wielding, the battle rifle, lock-on rockets, xbox live multiplayer, swords, lifts, and button glitches.

Halo 3 lost inifinite sword ammo, sword lunging, crappy needler replacement, most of the main characters due to “end of the story” reasoning to kill them, and a lack of urgency for “main” sorts of enemy weapons like the Scarab.
Introduced a new Assault Rifle from Fisher-Price, man cannons, Spartan Lasers, new grenades, saved films, a “finished” story, interesting marketing campaign, meta achievements, a broken melee system, vast environments (for Halo), and 4 player co-op over xbox live that doesn’t fuck with the story at all.

ODST lost… the spartans.
Introduced a very human element, isolation (again), new ways to survive from what was once an “easy” group of enemies, custom weapons for ODSTs, the pistol with a zoom, better-than-spartan turret control and movement, and Firefight.

While Halo 1 introduced the solid core of gameplay, each installment added something different. It seems to all culminate into this, a prequel. For people who aren’t knee deep in the ever growing story behind the Halo franchise, it’s hard to imagine that there were ever any other Spartans other than the Master Chief. Afterall, he’s been the only one we’ve seen up until now. After ODSTs vulnerable characters and isolated feeling while searching for your squad left a positive impact, in much the same way Master Chief’s isolation and confusion did in Halo 1, Bungie seems to be getting their act together to COMBINE a campaign and multiplayer into one game. But, what will the changes do to Halo?

The Campaign Experience

All gameplay changes will not have an impact on the campaign experience. If the footage from the video suggests correctly, it will still feel like Halo. The new features will just be icing on the cake for people who actually do enjoy the storyline and don’t just play the games to see how quickly they can rank up in Team Slayer. It seems that with the new AI capability that the need for more than just one enhanced Spartan will be needed. Some people I know still have trouble with the Legendary difficulty, so I’m going to assume with many more enemies to deal with, playing with friends will be a definite must if they include it as a part of the campaign in the same way they did for Halo 3. Let’s just hope it doesn’t arbitrarily tell us that we can’t have multiplayer because it could fuck with the story it wants to tell (I’m looking at YOU Infinity Ward…).

The Multiplayer Experience

It WILL feel like Halo. FEEL being the key word. I don’t want to say anything definite since I haven’t gotten my hands on it, and won’t until the public beta, but it seems that with the added elements of sprinting and kill animations that it could definitely change up the flow of combat depending on the maps. Halo 3 lost the ability to properly control maps, making the game a lot more unpredictable. Good or bad, that’s up to you, but we know the pro circuit has definitely taken notice in the changes (I’ll miss you original Final Boss).

Sprinting is going to be a welcome introduction for me. Nothing like being able to not only coordinate pushes on an enemy, but also RUNNING THE FUCK AWAY. That’s just my style though.

The kill animations seem to be an odd edition to me. While it is cool to see kill animations, they typically work best within a third person shooter like Gears of War than an FPS like Halo. I know it’s “optional” to give that added satisfaction and humiliation to the person you’re killing, much like teabagging, but how will it work out in a game that is fairly well paced in it’s combat. I’m sure the fact that it’s optional makes it a risk for the player that does the action by making them a semi-stationary target, but I think I really need to play with it to give a proper opinion on it. Right now, I’m worried. I know they said they’re trying to not fuck with it too much to not piss off certain people aka MLG, but I have to really see it. I have to feel it.

Upon further review, they keep saying “The campaign will be different” and “campaign experience” instead of just saying “Game” experience. Maybe that’s a hint that those features will not be in the multiplayer. Too many questions for me being a fanboy.