Halo: Reach at X10: Conundrum -- continuity versus kickass guns

• by AJ Glasser
• February 11, 2010 19:16 PM PST

Halo: Reach is a prequel to the existing Halo series. The story centers around a team of Spartan-3s who predate Master Chief by a generation in the war against the Covenant. Despite being "from the past," the technology in Reach is so futuristic, you feel like you fell into a time warp. Seriously, why couldn't this have been Halo 3?

Graphical improvements aside, the world of Halo: Reach is a lot bigger than anything the Halo series has worked with before. Remember, if you can, that moment in the very first Halo where Master Chief finally exits the narrow corridors and winding paths of a spaceship into an environment with a huge open sky and sweeping vista out in front of him. It was breathtaking; it made you want to get out into the alien world and explore. Reach is going for the same sensation in all its levels with even bigger skies and bigger vistas. The game has more of a sandbox approach where players can explore every nook and cranny of a big, open environment -- and determine how they'll approach hostile encounters. There will be lots of hostile encounters, mind you; a bigger world means more space to cram in more enemies.

The story in Reach follows Noble Team, a group of five Spartan soldiers who recently lost their sixth member and get you as a replacement. In addition to your five teammates, you may also be working with groups of Marines during combat against various types of Covenant soldier during the game. The Elite units return to active duty in Reach, providing you with some tough AI to compete against, as well as the new Skirmisher soldier that looks like a pissed off hyena with a gun. On the Spartan side, med packs return to gameplay and the armor equipment system is swapped out for a persistent armor ability system. For example, once you equip something like a shield boost you won't have to swap it out when you find something better later on and it won't "run out" after only one level. Additionally, there are weapons new to the series and significant overhauls to old standbys like the assault rifle that make them look like better -- and prettier -- weapons.

During the gameplay display clip, Bungie developers gave games journalists a little taste of a map that's going to be part of the May 3 beta test: the Powerhouse Hydroelectric Facility. This level looked like a silo and a small farm compound built into the side of a mountain out in an Arizona-like desert. The first thing we noticed is how much better everything looked; the level of depth to the rock textures, the colors of the different types of weed on the ground, and even the attention to detail on the compound walls that were stained to signal disuse. The second thing we were treated to is an example of the new deferred lighting techniques that make the weapon projectiles glow when you fire them -- it was like the Needler was shooting bits of neon rock candy. Lastly -- and this was hard to appreciate because the venue was so crowded -- they demonstrated an overhauled sound lineup for the different weapon projectiles.

All of this seems pretty spiffy based on the hands-off demonstration; however, we had to wonder how it would actually feel from a continuity standpoint once we got our hands on the game. Reach is a prequel, so from a purely nerdcore standpoint, it doesn't make sense for the weapons, the technology, and the Sparant-3s on Reach to be incredibly better than what Master Chief has to work with in the other three games. It feels like the developer had to make a real trade-off between continuity and kickass improvements. We're happy to take the improvements, sure, but it would have been nice to add a little retroactive continuity like an alternative time line or something. Speaking of plot points, actually, we're also worried about how Halo: Reach will end. If you recall your canon, the Marines lost Reach to the Covenant before the events of the first Halo. So in other words, you could be kicking all kinds of ass in Reach and know that whatever you accomplish comes to nothing?

Yeah. Now we're really hoping for some alternate time line continuity.

Halo: Reach still doesn't have a release date, but the multiplayer beta kicks off May 3.

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