So, what does everyone think the odds are of any more DLC? It’s not unheard of for Halo games to get eleventh-hour map packs; the final map pack for Halo 2 is a notable example.
I personally have a theory that there was always intended to be one final DLC pack for Reach, but this has almost certainly been shelved due to the poor reception to the Noble and Defiant map packs, and Microsoft pushing for resources to be prioritised for Halo 4.
Why do I think this? Well, a couple of reasons. Firstly, the maximum Reach gamerscore of 1700 seems a really weird figure. 1750 would be a much more conventional number, but I suspect the long-term plan was for 4 DLC packs to bring it up to a round 2000. Secondly, the inclusion of extra Noble and Defiant achievements on the Anniversary disk is plain weird. The Reach DLC Achievements have some of the most fiddly and over-specific requirements of any current Xbox game, there’s no way this was intentional - or if it was, somebody richly deserves to be fired.
Everything about Reach’s lifespan strikes me as peaking too early, and the initial momentum not being kept up. The current state of Reach is that 343 have all but given up on it - whole gametypes have been neutered out of existence (Firefight Limited), player feedback goes conspicuously unlistened to, and the matchmaking updates and Cr events have all the hallmarks of being the responsibility of one or two unlucky sods consigned to a desk somewhere in the corner of a basement in some off-site subsidary of 343i. I know switching management halfway through Reach’s lifespan was always going to cause some irregularities, but even so, I doubt Reach will have the same “long tail”
of developer and player support that Halo 3 had.