First Look: Halo Reach

Reach is a dead planet. All its 700 million inhabitants are dead. They just don't know it yet. A distant radar station stops working. Reach separatists are thought to be responsible and a UNSC team is sent to investigate. A routine mission, but all communications are lost with the team.

UNSC reacts by sending a team of Spartan III soldiers, Noble Team, to deal with the rebels. You are one of these soldiers. A young lieutenant with limited experience, who joins the mission as a replacement. At the scene there is an uneasy atmosphere of calm. Everything is deserted. There are plenty of settlements from the time when pioneers settled on Reach about 100 years ago. Cut into the rocks in order to withstand the harsh climate of Reach.

Everyone is gone. Dead. No signs of life. Something terrible has happened here. It's more than just an angry group of separatist, whose only wish is that UNSC leave their planet alone. This is when the battle begins. It's intense, it's hard to see the enemy as they bounce between walls, jump off roofs and run up the streets.

Halo players will quickly identify Jackals with their shields, and the grunts of the Grunts, but they will have a harder time placing the jumping enemies. But the Spartans have no idea what they are up against. This takes place before Halo: Combat Evolved, an Covenants are still something that belongs in outer space. When the battle is over it is with ill concealed disgust the officer in charge Carter, notes that it isn't humans they have fought, but Covenants.

All of this took place early in December. A select group of journalists had been invited to Bungie in Seattle to get a first glimpse of Halo: Reach.

When I arrived at Bungie I'm greeted by a stern guard, who had no intention of letting just anyone walk into the studio. He was only doing his job, but he was the perfect fit for the job, the neck of a bull and deep, intimidating voice and piercing eyes. While I wait for Bungie's community manager Brian Jarrard, my guide for the day, to come pick me up I take some time to adore the lobby packed with various awards, as well as statues, replicas and characters from the Halo universe.

Brian Jarrard takes me on a tour of the Bungie offices and tells me that they have long since grown out of their current locales, which is in fact an old grocery store. Jarrard points to desks, walls and tables and explains that all of them have wheels for quick and easy relocation, something that happens a lot. There is also a Bungie team located across the street, working on something top secret we are not allowed to see. All of the Halo: Reach team is, however, kept under one roof. Soon all of Bungie will move to a location large enough to house the entire developer under one roof.

We entered Bungie's press room and meet Marcus Lehto (Creative Director) and Joseph Tung (Executive Producer), who show us a short film on Halo: Reach. A presentation of what the planet is all about, that informs us that it went down in the single largest Covenant attack in history and that its 700 million inhabitants perished with the planet. But they didn't go down without a fight and Halo: Reach is the story of how these brave men and women met their fate.

During the presentation my thoughts drift away and I think of Titanic. A movie about a disaster where everyone knew that the boat was going to sink and that most passengers would not survive. Just as the presentation comes to a close Joseph Tung makes the same comparison. But there is also hope in Halo: Reach that takes place in the year 2552. Just a few decades earlier, 2509 to be exact, the Pillar of Autumn was constructed in orbit around Mars.

The same ship that just barely got away from Reach and carried Spartan-117, Master Chief, just to run into the first ringworld in Halo: Combat Evolved. Most of us know that this was the beginning of the end of the Covenant in Halo 3. What happens to the brave Spartans of Noble Team is something we don't know and won't know until the game comes out later this year.

I can't help but wonder if this won't affect the level of suspense I will experience when playing the game. I and many others have read Halo: Fall of Reach, and we all know how this ends. However, Marcus Lehto gives me his word that no player will feel disappointed in the story and that there will be plenty of surprises.

It should also be noted that this is not the playable version of Halo: Fall of Reach, but something that stands on its own. There will be a lot going on, that no one outside the Bungie offices have ever heard of. Once I have been reassured that there will be plenty of excitement the demo of the level I started out telling you about kicks off.

As Carter kneels down and realises what he has just fought against, I can't help but feel that Bungie have managed to reinvent the Covenant, make the scary and mysterious again, even though I know them well. Most of them anyway. But during the attack on Reach there also some up until now unknown relatives of the Jackals, called Skirmishers. Faster and more mobile they make a welcome addition to the easily disposable Grunts. Better resistance makes for better action. Bungie explain to us that the reason why we haven't seen them before is that the last of them perished on Reach.

This is also true for several weapons and other new items that flash by. The explanation is similar to the one George Lucas used to explain why technology seemed so much more impressive in the prequel trilogy. It was at an earlier stage of the war when the military was operating at full capacity, and on top of this it takes place on a separate planet with its own traditions and methods.

Halo: Reach looks really nice and is a major step up from Halo 3 in graphical terms. Everything is moving with much better animations, there are more details and the lighting is of the highest quality. Other effects are also of the highest calibre. This includes the amount of debris a grenades kick up as they hit the ground. The measly firecrackers are gone and replaced by massive bombs that there the ground in pieces. The warthog has also been upgraded and now sports individual suspension, and rolls around nicely over rough terrain. The deep grooves of the tires rip into the ground and you could easily think that some kind of giant garden tiller with a mounted machine gun was making its way towards you when you see it coming.

Despite all of this I cannot help but feel a bit underwhelmed. I was hoping for more, and I quickly jot down "graphics?" in my note pad to remind myself that I need to ask Bungie about about over lunch. But there is more action to be seen before I get to tangle with whatever food gets served at lunch. Team Noble bravely battles on and even though there are place holders in places I still manage to spot a few other new features.

There are civilian vehicles such as tractors, execution moves in close combat if you sneak up on enemies, rain of sparkles as you rain down bullets on a concrete wall, how much more powerful the Covenant weaponry appears and the return of Elites. The warriors who later left the Covenant sect, and were replaced by the not nearly as interesting Brutes.

The Elites make a welcome return. Bungie tells us they had a lot of unused ideas from Halo: Combat Evolved, when it came to both game and the Elites. Bungie describe them as the samurai warriors of the Halo universe. Noble, smart, calculating and completely ruthless when they need to be. There will be several variations of Elites in the game, although I only got to see two of them.

Finally I got to see a small part of a night level. Apparently the third level, as I was first given a glimpse of level one. Something drastic happens during the second level and Bungie did not want to spoil anything. During the night level I got to see another new feature in Halo: Reach, as you can now pimp your armour.

Spartan III soldiers is despite the higher number (Master Chief is a Spartan II), something of a "wear and tear" version of the Spartans. They don't have unison equipment, aren't as high tech and are cheaper to producer. This is why Carter, Catherine, Jorge, Jun and Emile will use parts from the battlefield to upgrade their armour. You can add abilities and looks to cater your own taste and the character you create is also the one you will take online in multiplayer. Bungie did not want to give too much away about the multiplayer, but one concrete thing is that the power up items from Halo 3 have been removed.