Halo Reach - Best storytelling in the series?

Games Other Halo
1

Just yesterday I felt the urge to replay some levels of the Halo: Reach campaign, and I really have to say one thing: The more often I play it, the better it gets. Especially when I look at it from the point of story telling (and also mission design, by the way).

SPOILER ALERT FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT PLAYED REACH CAMPAIGN:

First I replayed “Tip of the Spear”, “Long Night of Solace” and “Exodus”. And I really have to say that those three levels do not only have a few of the best Halo Cutscenes, the also have very nice gameplay elements that are a lot of fun AND create a lot of immersion.

For example the section where you shoot from the Falcon with the automatic grenade launcher, or when you fight a space battle with the Saber. I think those are great ideas that contribute a lot to the overall experience of the game.

But those three levels also are part of a “story arc” within the game. Tip of the spear ends with the arrival of the covenant supercarrier, Long Night of Solace is all about destroying it and Exodus is about Noble Six on his way to link up with the rest of his team after that. And all of that is tied together with really neat and thought through cutscenes.

Later I played “The Package” once again and hell yeah, that is maybe my new favorite when it comes to level and environment design in a Halo game. When you first start the level, the wonderful light of the sunset just creates a great atmosphere. Then the Scorpion driving section is a nice reminiscence to the earlier Halo games, and a lot of fun too. Also I found it quite nice that they actually gave you the possibility of destroying the Anti-Air-Turrets by just firing a them with the Scorpion, so you don’t have to go inside, which is realistic and fun.

The destroyed ONI swordbase really gives you a feeling of anxiety when you enter and fight your way through. And then this nice story twist with Halsey being still alive, and that really great looking underground research facility. Which really is a just wonderful setting for the upcoming “Firefight”. All the ice and the old forerunner structures, with the human research buildings, look just really, really great!

And the cutscene with Cortana? Well, that is another example for the really great storytelling in Reach.

Well, I still think that Halo 3 for example has a way more epic STORY, than Halo Reach had. But the Reach Story has at least in my humble opinion the better storytelling. And also Reach has a evolved mission design. While Halo 3 just follows the “classic” Halo mission design, which is “fight on foot”, “fight in vehicle”, Halo Reach has built in some fun new elements, which fit in very well in the Halo gameplay, but add a bit variety to the gameplay.

Am I really the only one who thinks like that?

PS: I did not start this thread in the Reach section intentionally, because it is not only about Reach, but about a comparison between Reach and the other Halo games.

2

I will agree that the campaign gets better each time you play it. You pick up on subtleties with each character that makes them feel more rounded. That said, it definitely does not have the best story telling in the series. In fact it’s pretty poor. The fact that you can predict which character is going to die next is just one example. You get most familiar with Jorge before the rest of Noble, then he dies. When you reunite with Noble at the end of New Alexandria Kat opens up to Six, makes herself seem more human, then she dies. You can see it coming because they didn’t take the time to properly acquaint you with the characters earlier in the story. The fact that you have to play it over and over to appreciate it more is a flaw, a good story would have been engaging and memorable from the start, not after multiple plays. In truth the Halo series has never had the best story telling or characterisation but Reach was definitely a low point.

3

Its rare for a First-Person-Shooter to have a good story. I could say that all of the Halo Games have had mediocre storylines with cliche characters sub-par scripted lines. I would say the Halo Game that captured me with Storyline would have to be Halo 3: ODST.

ODST set you with less handicaps and another motive. Escape the City and Survive. As the Rookie, you are on your own. Only your wits, cunning and knowledge will help you escape the city. The isolation impact really did make things alot more charming.

With Halo: Reach, I would say they did better with its story in terms of the Original Trilogy but not as good as Halo 3: ODST had done. Reach explored the themes of false hope, disaster and catastrophic losses.

If Halo 4 has any hope of being a great campaign, 343 Industries seriously have to up their game in terms of story-telling. Make the Reclaimer Trilogy be immersive and fantastic.

4

> If Halo 4 has any hope of being a great campaign, 343 Industries seriously have to up their game in terms of story-telling. Make the Reclaimer Trilogy be immersive and fantastic.

Seeing what they did as an “Extra Feature” for CEA with the terminals, how Greg Bear’s books are usually discussed on the forums/front page, and how they are excelling with cinematic; I believe we will be in for a pleasant treat with both a great story/gameplay.

5

Reach’s campaign is pretty dull for me. I only enjoy about half the missions. Running around activating switches and defending areas from miniscule AI attacks just isn’t fun.

6

Innovate all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that:

-I didn’t give a crap about any of the characters except Jorge.

-Even if Noble Team was full of deep characters, we never would have known it because we spend so little time with them before they die.

-Noble 6 had absolutely zero personality.

-If the story was supposed to tell a tale of desperation and struggle, it never felt like that. All the missions had you doing was running damage control. Never once did we participate in a large-scale battle that felt like it was a losing fight.

-The game just utterly failed to make me CARE. No iconic characters. Poorly crafted military-campaign style story…That stuff alone makes it the weakest Halo in terms of storytelling.

7

ODST had the best story telling of all the games. you felt for the voiceless rookie and his squad. you didn’t get any of that in reach. in fact; I don’t recall any of the reach characters except for Jorge, and he was ruined by taking first death.

8

Reach didn’t had the best story telling but it didn’t had the worste story either. It could have been better but theres nothing we can do about it now.

9

ODST was the best story halo game bungie put out, also music. Then for some reason Frankie said it was a step in the wrong direction ಠ_ಠ Does not bode well.

Reach was ok, not half as memorable as the other games. I think it might just come down to it not being epic (apart from LNOS and the ending), it was never meant to be epic, it was supposed to be sombre. I think it succeeded at that. It does get better with more playthroughs too, you start to notice and appreciate things.

Also i have to explain this…people complain that noble six had zero persona…that was 100% intentional, bungie wanted YOU to be noble six, this is also the reason why your armour shows up in cutscenes, and why the default armour is bland.

10

Halo Reach’s storyline was rushed. Character development wasn’t very strong (Jorge being the strongest but that was mainly shown in the level “Long Night of Solace” and the ending cutscene of ONI Swordbase. The objectives were seemingly repetitive (destroy AA guns, activate stuff, hold off enemies for period of time) and you didn’t get a full sense of the feared covenant glassing as you would have learned about till, once again, Long night of solace (partly. It mainly showed up from the Package onwards).
However, the gameplay was and still is fun if you’re willing to be more diverse. The vehicle combat is always entertaining and alot of the missions are actually nice to play through just to look around the area. So Reach wasn’t all bad.

Though TL;DR - the storyline was still rushed. Some of the spartan deaths were rather dumb (Kat survives a million sticks and concussion rounds throughout the campaign and then dies to one needle rifle shot? Emile dies to getting stabbed by an elite because of him not concentrating? Wat.)

11

> -Noble 6 had absolutely zero personality.

No offense intended:

Well, that just means YOU have absolutely zero personality. Because YOU are Noble 6 and YOU should fill that char with personality. MY Noble 6 for example had a lot of personality. :wink:

> Though TL;DR - the storyline was still rushed. Some of the spartan deaths were rather dumb (Kat survives a million sticks and concussion rounds throughout the campaign and then dies to one needle rifle shot? Emile dies to getting stabbed by an elite because of him not concentrating? Wat.)

First of all, I don’t think that it makes sense to compare Kats invulnerability in campaign with anything that happens in cutscenes. I mean, the invincibility of all Noble team members during campaign is a gameplay element (that makes a lot of sense btw) but of course that does not mean that they are invincible “story wise”. I hope you agree that this would not make a lot of sense.

So when it comes to Kats death, first of all you have to notice that Col. Holland hailed Noble Team and ordered them to answer him on a OPEN channel. Carter and Cat were aware of the fact, that the covenant would probably be able to backtrace the radio signal and find out the current position of Noble team.

Then there was a covenant glassing beam used very close to Noble teams position, which caused the shields of all Noble team members to collapse. So Kat had no shield when they ran towards the bunker.
And then Kat was shot in the head by a sniper, but not just some random covenant jackal, but an Elite Field Marschall.
It is very likely that his arrival by Phantom was no coincidence, but that he was on the hunt for Noble team and found their position because of the open radio transmission which they used before the whole incident.

So I don’t feel that it was “dumb” or not “thought through” enough.

And I also would not say that Emile died because he “was not concentrating”. It is true that for some reason he did not know that there was an Elite Zealot was coming up from behind, but we do not know what he was looking at when he was stabbed.
Maybe in front of him already the Elite Field Marshall and the other elite zealots were coming through the building, so that he had a reason to face that direction and not looking behind him.

Even Spartans are not infallible, perfect robotic warrior machines. They are at their very core still humans, which I consider makes them strong in certain ways, but on the other hand they still can make mistakes like every human.

12

theres a fine line between story and fun/gameplay

odst may have had the best story and it was also good because the way it was told

halo 3 was just a fun campagin to play but story was iffy

reach had a good story line just didnt click because of the gameplay and no master chief

halo 2 ftw!

13

Reachs Story is the worst from all Halo games.

No plots, poor character developmet, cheap and xtremely predictable deaths to stage “drama”, mission design and goals are simple and not exciting, environments…oh yeah, rocks, rocks, and even more rocks with some trees. Sorry, but Reachs military story is as boring as ODSTs. There is no “we work as a team/squad” and the missions itself are uninteresting.

Halo 2 had the best story. And in terms of action and mission design (environments, scarab battles etc.) Halo 3 is muuuch better than Reach/Halo 2.

Halo 2 and 3 ftw

14

> Innovate all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that:
>
> -I didn’t give a crap about any of the characters except Jorge.
>
> -Even if Noble Team was full of deep characters, we never would have known it because we spend so little time with them before they die.
>
> -Noble 6 had absolutely zero personality.
>
> -If the story was supposed to tell a tale of desperation and struggle, it never felt like that. All the missions had you doing was running damage control. Never once did we participate in a large-scale battle that felt like it was a losing fight.
>
> -The game just utterly failed to make me CARE. No iconic characters. Poorly crafted military-campaign style story…That stuff alone makes it the weakest Halo in terms of storytelling.

Completely agree, the whole game suffered because of the Campaign. It should have been longer, more character development and had more things to do with Halo. It felt like a fan had written a war story and tried to fit it in the Halo universe.

15

While Reach’s story was a poor “movie”, are you guys really trying to say that CE-H3 had decent character development? It was ONLY Master Chief going “I’m master chief, here’s a witty 1 liner, let’s blow -Yoink- up!” Not to say that we didn’t all love it, but Bungie tried to get more movie-esk with Reach and add multiple characters with personalities to develop. It’s not their fault that their game dev’s and not story writers (and that 95% of “movies” everyone hates anyway).

Not to say that the end of H3 didn’t bring my eyes to a water, I’m just saying making a good storyline with Master Chief running around by himself being a bad -Yoink- is much simpler than developing 6 characters in 10 minutes of cutscenes.

While I agree that ODST had the best “story”, it also was a very un-halo style gameplay. Halo wouldn’t have become as popular as it did if the linear gameplay wasn’t appreciated. 343 needs to be very careful if they wish to differ from the linear gameplay of “Halo”. ODST went over well with most, but it also was a tangent to Halo; I don’t know how people who have felt had it been a continuation of master chief’s story. This is why I think Frankie said what he did (assuming Fatal isn’t pulling this out of his booty), as when dealing with Chief, who is are a well “developed” character, in a sense at least, it would be very difficult to go in the direction of ODST and make people happy.

16

Halo 2’s story and cutscenes were the best imo.

I mean come on, The cutscene were chief takes the bomb into outer space, escorted by two longswords and then blows up a whole super carrier.

Epic?

17

To be honest Reach’s story is my second favorite in the entire series, second only to CE. Halo 2 only kept me interested with the Arbiter, but it was around this moment where I began to stop care about the chief. Halo 3 however just completely took me out of it. The character deaths seemed sort of out of place. For instance spoiler I didn’t feel like Sgt. Johnson had to die and there for didn’t feel anything after his death. The only moment I cared was when the Arbiter got his revenge. I never got the chance to play ODST although I hear it has a great story

Even though I say this I will admit it did have some flaws in the Reach campaign. Characters like Kat, Jun, and Carter were kind of boring, while Emile did have a interesting personality it wasn’t really pronounced. Similar to what I said before I didn’t feel anything when I saw Kat or Carter die, but I did feel something for both Jorge and Emile. Like others have said I didn’t feel any urgency or the depressed atmosphere until around the end. Similarly I didn’t truly fear the covenant until the last few missions. I feel like had they stretched it out a bit more, and put more depth into the character development I would be happy.

18

Agreed. Its easy to tell how they put much more effort into the writing and character development.

19

> First of all, I don’t think that it makes sense to compare Kats invulnerability in campaign with anything that happens in cutscenes. I mean, the invincibility of all Noble team members during campaign is a gameplay element (that makes a lot of sense btw) but of course that does not mean that they are invincible “story wise”. I hope you agree that this would not make a lot of sense.
>
> So when it comes to Kats death, first of all you have to notice that Col. Holland hailed Noble Team and ordered them to answer him on a OPEN channel. Carter and Cat were aware of the fact, that the covenant would probably be able to backtrace the radio signal and find out the current position of Noble team.
>
> Then there was a covenant glassing beam used very close to Noble teams position, which caused the shields of all Noble team members to collapse. So Kat had no shield when they ran towards the bunker.
> And then Kat was shot in the head by a sniper, but not just some random covenant jackal, but an Elite Field Marschall.
> It is very likely that his arrival by Phantom was no coincidence, but that he was on the hunt for Noble team and found their position because of the open radio transmission which they used before the whole incident.
>
> So I don’t feel that it was “dumb” or not “thought through” enough.
>
> And I also would not say that Emile died because he “was not concentrating”. It is true that for some reason he did not know that there was an Elite Zealot was coming up from behind, but we do not know what he was looking at when he was stabbed.
> Maybe in front of him already the Elite Field Marshall and the other elite zealots were coming through the building, so that he had a reason to face that direction and not looking behind him.
>
> Even Spartans are not infallible, perfect robotic warrior machines. They are at their very core still humans, which I consider makes them strong in certain ways, but on the other hand they still can make mistakes like every human.

Thats a very good conclusion, i never though of it that way. The problem is that yes, some part of reach had poor storytelling, but the main issue was that it wasn’t thrown in your face.

Past halo games had an explicit story and alot of details you could find if you looked far enough. Reach had a story with alot of implicit things being said meaning your average joe who plays the game for the multiplayer would not pick up on those details. I still have to say that for an fps the story could have been better represented

20

I thought halo reach was the best storytelling in the franchise. That being said, the story that was picked (not MCs story on reach) wasnt very good. And any story picked didnt have a lot of suspense, you know from the beginning you know the end.

Reach was great and didnt have a lot to work with, thats why my expectations are REALLY high for halo 4.