Halo: Reach, Same, Good Old Halo?

It appears as though with Halo: Reach's newest "documentary", the guys over at Bungie are trying their hand at reinventing the Halo franchise, yet maintaining the sense of grandeur players felt when first stepping foot in Combat Evolved's expansive universe.

Phrases like, 'millions of more polygons', 'millions of more particle effects', 'new and different', and "we're rebuilding everything from the ground up", have been tossed around, giving viewers such as myself, the sense that Bungie must feel paranoid to be seen as the old, outdated Halo that was later succeeded by the Call of Dutys of the world. By this video alone, it's clear that Bungie are doing their damnedest to dispel such a stigma.

Whatever the future holds in store for Halo: Reach, mixed reception, or even a multiplayer plagued by glitches (which is admittedly very unlikely given Bungie's track record), one thing's for certain, they're going to hit it out of the park.

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Lance Darnell

February 15, 2010

I just saw this last night and it really got me pumped. It seems they added a sprint and a few other innovations. The King will return!!!

Jeffrey Sandlin

The sprint is actually going to be one of a number of 'armor abilities' which operate sort of as a combination of call of duty's perks and the equipment from the last game. It's not going to be an actual every character feature.

I personally really like the direction they are trying to go in with reach so far, but if anything about Bungie can be trusted it's that the pre launch talk for any of their games can't be fully trusted.

Pre Halo 2 they were talking about how you could fit the entirety of halo 1's geometry into one of halo 2's spaces. Turns out none of that huge expanse was playable space. They suggested that halo 2 would be even more open and epic then Halo CE and it turned out to feel much more like a corridor shooter in comparison. Sure it had some open expanses here and there but it never really felt like it used them for anything except as a bigger corridor for your vehicles to move through in a strait line.

Then before halo 3 they were making a big deal out of weapons like the spartan laser and the flame thrower and flame grenades. Then you played the game and it turned out their was only basically one part of one or two levels each you even saw such new items. Not to mention that halo 3 had a dire lack of on foot vehicle killing options compared to halo 1. So while some of the exploration from the first game was back, you were afraid to do it on any difficulty above normal because a ghost could kill you in a little over a second if you didn't have a vehicle and you were rarely ever given the rockets or other tools you needed to handle them. So halo 3 kind of forced you to use vehicles. (and even then it was much harder to kill another vehicle in your vehicle then it was for them to kill you if they hit.)

whoo...sorry about the rant but what I'm trying to say is Bungie has a habit of frustrating old fans with misleading information and seemingly boneheaded design decisions. Even they admit that it's hard for them to figure out exactly what about the original halo appealed so universally that every change they make pisses someone off.

I hope they have better luck this time, for their sake and for mine. I'm really sick of every halo game since the first one feeling like it was chafing me and making me want to just go back and play the first again.

It at least seems they are trying really really hard.