DISCLAIMER: Chief is the hero of my childhood. The original games were nothing short of absolutely mind blowing. This should never read as a criticism of other Halos, just praise for ODST.
Halo 3 ODST is easily glossed over in the wider context of the Halo series… Sure, it’s absolutely true that it’s not the most well-polished game in the series and its storyline doesn’t reach the grander implications of Chief’s exploits, but I found that when this game came out it had so many things that all Halos to that point lacked (and some future games did as well).
- The Rookie. By the time that we all reached ODST we’d played as Master Chief for hundreds of hours, counting replays. So it was an interesting change of pace when we got thrown in the shoes of a much weaker soldier- albeit a lesser one who couldn’t wake up in time to help his ODST squad. - Firefight. The first game to showcase firefight, and frankly it was sorely missed on my part in Halo 4, spartan ops aside (which required Xbox live). Halo: Reach has better firefight presets for sure, but ODST was the pioneering instalment. - Gsgt Buck: Cmon. We got Buck! Up until that point, Nathan Fillion was unfairly consigned to the character of Sergeant Reynolds, and he died about five times a mission in Halo 3. The one-liners, leadership and awkward romance that comes with Buck brings humanity to the ODSTs when before in previous games they were simply cannon fodder when you played as Chief (case in point: “Delta Halo” on Halo 2) - Firefly. I loved firefly. I miss firefly. I hope everyone else here knows what I’m talking about. The return of three cast members from Firefly to voice characters of the same crew was unbelievable for a Brown Coat like me. Mickey was even the pilot and he was voiced by Wash (Alan Tudyk) and that’s just about the coolest thing ever. You can’t take the sky from me. - Tactics. Master Chief, on the right difficulty level, was a bullet sponge. With the exception of Halo CE where he has health, you can take bullets to the edge of Chief’s physical capacity to soak them up, and you could beat Regret into a coma to your heart’s content while absorbing a thousand needles to the back. But Rookie, Dutch, Romeo, Buck and Mickey? Even a grunt posed a threat in ODST and for once you couldn’t solve your problems with a mad charge. You had to force yourself to think like a real soldier, carefully avoiding a fight you knew you couldn’t win if you had too. - Halo 2/New Mombasa. Bungie really had an opportunity to follow the story on Earth while Chief was running around on Delta Halo and in the original trilogy there is a surprising dearth of story material to bridge the gap. We leave Earth in the grips of a battle and… Return to Earth and Kenya while it is in the grips of battle. Exploring the city and seeing the Tether fall was an amazing experience that Bungie almost missed out on. - Finally, flashbacks. The new noir (and dare I say open world?) nature of ODST was unfamiliar. The soundtrack was jazzy and the city was always dark. But the flashbacks added to the sense of isolation while you looked in on your ODST team’s achievements despite being far away from all of them until the very end. It was a fantastic device and added so much to the game.Anything I’ve missed? The silenced SMG was awesome, too.