February 11, 2010
Halo: Reach First Look
Bungie unveils "the definitive Halo title."
Just think, you only have to wait until May 3 to play
Halo: Reach. That's the official date for when the multiplayer beta, included with copies of Halo 3: ODST, will open to the public. It's a good thing we only have to wait that long because after getting my first glimpse of Halo: Reach, I don't think I can wait until the fall to get my fix.
Bungie gave its first semi-public showing of Halo: Reach at Microsoft's X10 event in San Francisco. The demo began with Marcus Lehto, the Creative Director for Halo: Reach, offering up a brief overview of Bungie's vision for what it is calling the "definitive Halo title." Take any aspect of Halo and you can be sure that at some point during this demo, Bungie assured attendees that it would be improved for Halo: Reach.
This will be a darker tale than what most Halo fans are accustomed to, even setting out to make Halo 3: ODST look like a walk in the park. That is because it is a prequel to the Halo trilogy, set on the planet Reach. This colony is the center of humankind's military might, the birthplace of the Spartan program, and the home to over 700 million civilians. "We want people to understand that there's a real living breathing culture to this planet," said Lehto as he scrolled past some concept art of houses and living spaces.
All of this will be gone by the time Halo: Reach finishes. The planet is destined to fall to the Covenant.
Before all of that destruction, there will be a desperate struggle for survival. That's where you come in as a new member of the Noble Team. This group of Spartans is battle tested and weary. Only one is a certified Spartan II (the same class as Master Chief). The rest are Spartan IIIs, a sort of mass produced version of the super soldier destined to save the human race.
These Spartan IIIs were described as being used in "fire and release" situations. In other words, they're sent on suicide missions. That's definitely the case here. Your only hope for survival is to work together with the rest of Noble Team. Even then, don't expect a happy ending.
Unlike past Halo games, this won't be a story of a single hero with little to say. Bungie promised to remove the helmets and flesh out each character in the squad, which seems like a fitting next step from the storytelling advances in Halo 3: ODST.
Though I didn't get to see any of the campaign, the description of where it is heading sounds like Bungie has taken Halo 3 and dialed the experience up to the max. If you thought there were big battles in Halo before, prepare to be amazed. Descriptions of battles against 30 or so enemies, with the entire Noble Team squad and extra marines were given. In short, this will not be a corridor shooter.
In fact, the word most often used to describe the campaign battles was as a "sandbox." Bungie repeatedly stressed all of the improvements it has made to its engine, allowing for bigger and more epic battles. "We want huge, epic battles with more characters and enemies than you've ever seen before," explained Lehto. We want the AI to act and react to the player." The fights won't be scripted and the routes won't be predetermined. It will be up to the player to find the best way through a space and into the heart of a fight.
To do this, Bungie had to "take a generational leap forward" with animations and artificial intelligence. I saw just a bit of it in motion and can confirm that the textures, animations, lighting, and character modeling is leaps and bounds above Halo 3. Bungie has over 30 guys working on the engine and it shows. As for AI, we'll have to wait and see though the possibilities sure do sound intriguing.
Scrapping everything and rebuilding it seems to be the name of the game for
Halo: Reach. "With Reach, we wanted to re-envision the Covenant," said Lehto. That means that Elites have been rebuilt from the ground up with all new AI behaviors. The jackals look much more impressive. There was even talk of a new enemy that may have gone extinct during this fight making an appearance.
It's easy to look at Halo: Reach and see the improvements and changes to the visual look and level design. What more people will care about, however, are the gameplay changes. I got to see just a few of them, but boy are some of them significant.
First, the little things. New kill animations have been added. If you sneak up behind an Elite, you can climb his back to stab him in the neck for a nasty looking assassination. There will be new vehicles, such as the transport vehicle I caught a glimpse of that looked pulled out of a construction yard. And of course there will be new weapons, such as the DMR (a modified battle rifle) and the Needle Rifle (a sniper rifle that fires Covenant needles).
The biggest change comes in the removal of single-use equipment. In its place are what is called armor abilities. These can be used over and over and over again, with just a small recharge time needed between each activation. The one on display today was a Sprint mechanic that boosted the Spartan's speed for several seconds, perfect for the last push towards planting a flag or for clearing an open space quickly.
You'll be able to check these armor abilities out for yourself on May 3. That's when the Halo: Reach public beta begins and anybody with a copy of Halo 3: ODST is welcome to join at no charge. Bungie gave out a few new details during the course of this demo. The beta will include a couple of maps and a couple of game modes, including one that is brand new. Several of the armor abilities will be on display for you to play around with, but a few will be held back until the game releases.
One of the maps that will be included in the beta is called Powerhouse, and Bungie closed the demo with a quick run-through of the map. It's a large, asymmetrical space centered on a hydroelectric power station. This, like all of the Halo: Reach multiplayer maps, is pulled from a campaign area. The twist, it seems, is that the campaign section will likely take place during the night while the multiplayer map is set during the day.
During the fly-through I got to see the interior of the power station, filled with corridors and lit walls (which can be shot and destroyed). The exterior is fairly wide open, with a brown, shrub covered ring encircling the large cement structure. I would venture a guess and say that standing around out in the open wouldn't be a very good idea, though there were plenty of structures to duck behind.
It was during this non-combative run through of the map that Bungie gave a brief demo of the sound improvements. Both guns and grenades sound punchier and more realistic, even those of Covenant origin.
Halo: Reach looks like it will be that leap forward that so many were hoping to see in Halo 3: ODST. I didn't get to see a whole lot of the game during this first look, but what I saw was more than enough to get me excited for the beta and Reach's eventual release. Halo fans have another epic battle to look forward to just over the horizon.
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