There’s a core contradiction at the heart of Halo: Reach. No matter how hard you fight in the prequel to Combat Evolved, you’re fighting a war that won’t be won. That’s because the destruction of the human colony on planet Reach is a pivotal event in the Halo universe. When Reach falls, it leaves Master Chief as the last remaining Spartan so, in a sense, Bungie’s last Halo game is also taking things back to the beginning.
Players will be controlling the Spartan code-named Noble Six, a member of the Noble Team squad that will be trying to repel the Covenant invasion of Reach. Noble Six can be made male or female and will have unique dialogue cued for either gender; your Spartan will be extensively customizable, too. As for the setting, Reach is the planet that’s home to the Spartan super-soldier program and thanks to a totally revamped game engine, it’s a gorgeous-looking planet. When Peter, Lev and I checked out the game recently, Bungie reps said that there’d be twice as many on-screen enemies as in previous Halo games. The environments will be bigger, too, and will a bit more freedom in letting find paths to your mission objectives. The campaign mode will support four-player co-op and two player local splitscreen.
Bungie’s tweaking the health management system for Reach as well. Instead of health regenerating the way the shield has done, they’re taking it back to the same sort of health pick-up system that Combat Evolved used. Another change is the addition of Armor Abilities, which take the place of the single-use tactical items from Halo 3 and ODST. (See a bit more about Armor Abilities and Loadouts here.) Triggered by pressing the left bumper, these skills include temporary invulnerability that renders you motionless, invisibility and a jetpack that sends you soaring. They’ll all need to recharge and bring a new level of strategy as to how individual players will engage the Covenant.
We got a chance to look at the space battle sequence teased in the trailer and it blew our minds. The Saber shuttle piloted by Noble Six will have to fend off invading Covenant ships while the orbital gun battery gets back online. The level design for this sequence was worked on by members of the former FASA dev studio–who crafted the excellent Crimson Skies aerial combat series back in the day–so it’s got a good pedigree. The space combat really delivers a sense of how huge the Halo universe is and the action felt tense and sharply executed. It’s a nice shift to get Halo players up off the planet.
Big changes have come to Firefight, too. Most important is probably the matchmaking support that finds players with similar stats for you to play against. You’re no longer locked to your friends’ list if you want to jump into some multiplayer. Firefight’s seeing other major tweaks, too. Players will have full control over the settings, letting them choose everything to specific enemies, Skull types (for changing up certain aspects of the game), shield strength and number lives. You can toggle whether the buffs from a skull affect human players or the AI enemy waves, too. This delivers a very fine level of customization so that you can make a uniquely specific game-type. You’ll be able to export and share these game-types with people, too.
Playing through co-operative Firefight with Peter and Lev was tons of fun, even if we didn’t have any kind of strategy going. The enemy AI was markedly improved and the Covenant troops constantly tried to outflank from multiple directions and even popped off a few sniper shots from the high ground. The change in health management makes a big difference, too, since survival wasn’t as easy as finding cover and waiting for things to regenerate. Picking the right class in Firefight will be key to successful annihilation od all Covenant waves and the different class skills can be used to get the advantage in terms of stealth or sheer firepower. One of the pre-made game types is Rocketfight, which gives players unlimited missiles. I can already tell this is going to take up a lot of my time when Halo: Reach hits in September.