"Halo: Reach" - Speculation, hopes and discussion.

As of now Bungie will be done with the Halo IP after Reach and supposedly Bungie already has an idea for a new IP, also nice wording for the camparison with Kojima Productions.

 

Oh my goodness.

Finally! And to know that's all in-game graphics? That's a good feeling, considering the doubts some people were having over the blurry leaked pictures last month. The guy with the skull on his helmet looks super cool, and I'm loving the new music. 2010, here we come.

 

That is awesome. I've read the book. I loved it. I might have to get a 360 so that I can get this game when it comes out.

 

Is this going to be a 6 man squad based game? RCish? They mentioned the 6th man. 2010 should be a great year.

 

I LIKEY! I'll like it even more if those are actual in-game graphics. And those choppers, they awfully resemble Halo Wars Vultures. Speaking of Halo Wars, Noble's commander looked an awful lot like Sgt. John Forge.

So it's a six man squad, does that mean an actual six-player coop game? I truly hope so. I also hope Bungie won't limit the coop action to just a player's friend list; it's so damn frustrating you can't have a coop game when everyone else is playing something else most of the time.

 

I believe I read Forge is in it.

 

How could Sgt. Forge be at Reach by 2552? He would have been dead for decades already.

 

Yeah it's definitely not Forge, although I also thought it looked like him. I like that everyone's got slightly different coloured armour. Over at B.Net forums they've worked out a bunch of the characters already:

Carter-259 is the squad leader in the blue, his number was named in the original announcement trailer.

Jorge-052 is the giant one, the only one actually named in the trailer.

Kat (Katrina?) -320, the other Spartan named in the announcement trailer, she has a Russian sounding accent and a bionic arm(!)

Then there's E-239, the guy with the scary face scratched into his mask, who is the only person other than the player character that doesn't say a word in the trailer, but who is sure to be the fan favourite just because of how badass he looks.

J-266, full name unknown, a sniper, who I suppose nothing is really known about but he has an accent as well, and what looks to be a sweet piece of ghillie/camo mesh over his shoulder.

And then there's your character, who is referred to as the "new number 6" and he's tentatively being called Wolf because of the lone wolf line in the trailer.

The callsigns for the two unknown Spartans were figured out from easter eggs in ODST.

 

The game does give off some Gears of War or RC vibes, especially the part where your character checks out his helmet in first person. The art is sort of off-putting in that it looks like it was made by some studio other than bungie. The elite at the end of the trailer looks like something out of Halo Wars, the Spartans look goofy. The whole thing looks more like a third-party adaption of Halo than any bungie game.

I know its been said, but Eric Nylund sucks and should never have written for Halo. He plays up all the militaristic aspects of Halo while leaving out any of fantastical elements with the Flood or Forerunners. If Nylund were to write a sequel to the movie Predator, it would probably be about Dutch killing rebels in South America and nothing else. Bungie shouldn't be basing a game around such TFOR.

Anyways, that's my nerdrage for the evening.

 

Well from what they've shown, it seems to differ quite a bit from the actual book, and most of the nerdrage I've seen elsewhere has had more of a problem with that. I'm enjoying the new designs. And I dunno exactly how we can decide anything from the Elite, as we've only really seen like half of it, in the dark, covered in shadows.

 

Can't say what or if anything looked off about the Elite. I think his presence there is merely a reminder that you will be fighting Elites again this time around. Which is
good, 'coz I'm sick at blasting away at those damn, dirty, monkeycerhous Brutes.

Where are those easter eggs in ODST that refer to Reach's Spartans?

 

I'm going to hold out untill the media blitz in January before I make any definitive judgements on the look of Reach. I got the feeling that this was meant to be early on a cloudy day because Halo's signature colour pallete did creep in towards the end of the trailer. I definitely think it's too early to call 'Gears of War with Spartans' at the moment.

I really like the new bulky Spartan armor, it seems to have a lot of character IMO. Paticularly that EVA rig with the Elite skull painted on the visor. That was extremely cool, it gave me the same vibe as Sev's 'blood streaked' helmet in Republic Commando. I just know I'm going to like the guy.

The one thing that shocked me with the trailer is the game engine improvements. I expected improvements over Halo 3/ODST but I only thought they were going to add a few more polygons and tweak the lighting. This just blew me away. I wonder if there will be multiplayer maps of that size...

 

The only info I know about Reach is from the history of the games, that the Spartans were wiped out there in one of the first major engagements with the Covenant. I thought the first look on the VGA's was pretty cool; I'm excited for this game.

 

See I think that's one of the major misconceptions right now, that people believe Reach is set way before the other Halo games. In fact, Reach takes place almost right up to the beginning of the first Halo game, as it was the last major battle before the attack on Earth. The Spartans were only wiped out at this point, as humanity wouldn't have stood a chance during the last 25 years of war without them.

Supposedly some of the abandoned cars in the Mombasa streets have license plates that basically have the first initials and the numbers of the characters in the Reach trailer, which is how some people knew "George" would actually be spelled Jorge, even before seeing the trailer with subtitles. The letters just matched up that way.

 

The funny thing here is that it's not new. I think Lone Wolf and some of the crew are wearing versions of the Mjolnir Mark V armor, it's look updated thanks to the more advanced game engine. What Master Chief's been wearing since Halo 2 is the Mark VI.

 

You see I suspected this, but only having played the trial of Halo: CE and a scan through the forums at bungie saying "OMG Look at the new Armor!!!" (Not the most reliable source I know. ) I decided to just go with the flow and assume the armor was new.

The design does look a little tweaked though, just a little bit more bulk. Not a lot but a little.

 

Looks much more functional to me. Slots for combat knives, grenade pockets, and ammo belts are all visible. The sniper guy even appears to have some ghillie mesh over his shoulder for camouflage.

 

Mark V is a bulkier design when comparing it to Mark VI. Granted, the bulkiness in Halo: CE possibly had a lot to do with the more primitive game engine. Had Halo: CE been released now, I'm sure the design would be sleeker.

 

Well, each and every one of these spartans look like they could kick the crap outta Chief and his skinny armour.

Sure, it might be more advanced, but right now its scale of badassery is getting squashed by mister skull mask.

 

Yeah, Sierra-Skullface looks badass alright. Wonder if the warpaint blocks out his field of vision though. There is a strong debate going over at the B-net. forums whether Noble Team is a team of Spartan III's, II's or a mix of both classes. A press release from MS hints that your PC or maybe even the entire team are in fact SIII's.

 

Well in HD you can see it's not paint at all, but it's actually carved in. Probably with that badass knife of his. Not sure if that would be better or worse than paint though . I think a theory is that he just scratched off the gold reflective layer on the helmet, so it still works just fine.

And although I was initially really against the idea of Spartan-III's, the press release, the mention of Pegasi Delta in the trailer, and a pile of other evidence is stacking up to make me believe they are III's after all. Which sounded disappointing, although really, the only major difference between S-II's and S-III's is that Chief and his friends use MJOLNIR armour, which is far too costly for a large force like Spartan-III's, so the S-III's got a cheaper version that relies more on stealth than shielding.

But basically, if they are III's, what we see in the trailer seems to be a group that all has MJOLNIR Mark V (and variants of it), so it looks like with their fancy new armour they're basically bumped up to the capacity of Spartan-II's.

EDIT: Although an even more likely theory is that the squad is made up of Spartan-II's and the new PC is a Spartan-III who's been bumped up to work with them, receiving new armour and all that jazz.

 

Yeah, and let's not forget what a weasel Col. Ackerson was. He might not have been able to provide the more expensive Mjolnir armor to all of his disposeable SIII's, but maybe he managed to get it for more select squads, like Noble seems to be. Though SIII's are supposedly inferior to SII's in regards to lack of bio/cyber augmentations (I'm playing by ear here, haven't read Ghosts of Onyx, but am planning to), SIII's should be able to wear Mjolnir regardless.

 

Yeah exactly. It's been a long time since I read GoO, but I remember hearing that it may even be that the III's have better augments, due to the advance in technology and the fact that they had a 100% success rate. I also may be wrong though.

 

I heard a rumor going around that these guys might be the first appearance of the Spartan II class II.

Chief and all the spartans from the novels are class 1.

 

I don't know whether anyone cares about the Halo soundtracks like I do but in case anyone is bothered Bungie's latest Weekly Update contains a link to a download of the theme tune from the Reach trailer. I have it on my hard drive and I must say, it's bloody impressive.

It's much better than the ODST theme, however it's still not as good as the proper Halo theme.