What happened to Reach?

Games Other Halo
1

Let me start off my thread with a trailer we should all know. What the point of this thread is, what happened to Reach from the point of this trailer to release? Before I go on my rant, I’ll throw out a little disclaimer: I love Halo. It is and always will be my favorite series. Reach is a good game, but it could have been so much better than it turned out. Now, onward…

Let’s just analyze the trailer. We were told this was the opening cutscene, using the real game engine and graphics. At the time, I was utterly amazed. Was it possible for a game to look this good? We start off with Noble 6 looking at his helmet. The hyper-realistic glare of the glass visor still gives me goosebumps.

We jump forward a bit, to where Noble 6 gets out of the Warthog. Notice the dust. Beautiful dust, blowing in the wind. This is absent in the final game. Noble 6 walks by Jun. The lighting is down right amazing at this point. Dynamic shadows, everything. Jun is even portrayed as a pretty damn cool guy. He just takes a glance at Noble 6, then carries on loading up his mag. The pounding music fits perfectly.

Next we’re shown Emile, sitting there in all of his badassery. He doesn’t say a word, and it makes him look awesome. Kat comes in (Stop right there, criminal scum), and in the trailer even she is portrayed as a badass Spartan with a Russian accent. She looks at Noble 6 with such a look. She’s examining him. This looks like real human emotion. Very well done.

Noble 6 steps forward. Again, the lighting stuns me. The reflection of Noble 6’s visor can pass as real. You hear the radios buzzing. There’s a battle going on somewhere, and you’re about to be plugged into it. Jorge turns and says “Didn’t think anybody survived Pagassi, sir.” This was the only problem I had with this. At the time of this trailer, it wasn’t confirmed that we were Spartan III’s. I still believe Spartan III’s don’t belong on Reach. This line should have just been changed, and the whole team should have been Spartan II’s. Anyway, cut to Carter. He says the iconic “Spartans never die.” Epic, no matter how many times its said.

Now its a team break, everybody heads out the door, the epic music starts again. It’s time to head into combat. Everything here is pretty much the same as the final cutscene, except Jun’s line “This our new number 6?” “Affirmative” “You picked a hell of a day to join up!” This fits a hell of a lot better than “Welcome to Reach.” It also sets the tone of desperation. The Covenant are attacking, and this team of Spartans has to get in there ASAP and save the day.

We end with the Falcon flying off into the distance. We see an explosion illuminate a Covenant cruiser. This proves it, the Covenant is here, and they’re showing no mercy on Reach. Thunder/plasma ripples through the sky as Kat confirms that the Spartans are on there way.

Now watch this. What happened? What happened, obviously, is that when Bungie added the higher levels of customization, the graphics had to slip. This is exceptable, but that is no excuse to let the story/dialogue fall. This is the end of my post. The point? I don’t know. I’m just ranting I guess. Bungie shouldn’t have shown us this and said “Yeah, this is actually how the game looks!” then later say “We lied.” Bungie never even gave us an official explanation that they had to tone down graphics to add more customization, they just surprised us on launch day.

I just can’t wait until the day where a new console comes out and can actually run amazing graphics like this trailer. I’m sure Halo 5 will look amazing.

2

They said that the trailer was CGI, but Reach would look almost as good. And you’ve got to admit; it does come pretty close.

3

The cutscene was different from the trailer. There were much better cutscenes throughout the game that were spot on.

4

Putting graphics aside though, the feeling of desperation, that the Covenant was hovering over you, was lost in the final product. I can understand a slip in graphics, but there’s no excuse for a slip in writing.

5

> Putting graphics aside though, the feeling of desperation, that the Covenant was hovering over you, was lost in the final product. I can understand a slip in graphics, but there’s no excuse for a slip in writing.

I think it’s kind of hard to do that when you already know how the story ends. It’s like watching a movie that someone has already told you the ending for.

6

> > Putting graphics aside though, the feeling of desperation, that the Covenant was hovering over you, was lost in the final product. I can understand a slip in graphics, but there’s no excuse for a slip in writing.
>
> I think it’s kind of hard to do that when you already know how the story ends. It’s like watching a movie that someone has already told you the ending for.

Everyone knew reach falls, but that’s no excuse for the lack of emotion the story this game has. I mean Just look at the book. The Fall Of Reach. The title gives away what happens, yet there is a compelling story. gg.

7

It is a bit like Halo 2 we saw some pretty awesome stuff that never did materialize. It is just the nature of the beast I guess.
I do Hope that Halo 4 has the epic open feel that Halo deserves. Especially since we will be exploring all over again in a new “world”<<(for lack of a better word.) :slight_smile:

8

Wasn’t there a same post like this in B.net? I guess Bungie felt rushed in making Reach since it was their last game. I hope 343i sees your post and doesn’t make the same mistake.

9

They sold the Halo franchise just in the middle of Reach .
So no one was really working on it .

10

Bungie gave up. And Halo Reach is a disgrace of a Halo game. I agree with you.

11

I’ll start by saying that I’m a fan of each individual level of Reach’s campaign. Each level tries out a new and different approach to the campaign that wasn’t seen in Halo 1-3. ONI is an open-world style mission. Nightfall does the nighttime combat thing. TotS does a nice impression of a straight rail, shooting gallery. Solace gave us a pretty nice space combat scenario.

That said, I’ve been contemplating the Reach campaign for awhile now. The gameplay is fun and interesting in certain respects. But the story has a very disjointed feel to it. I think that Bungie did with Reach what they did to Halo 2, but in a more organized fashion. For those who don’t know, Bungie set up working groups whose responsibility it was to create levels of Halo 2. When the groups sat down together, they realized that they had created a massive load of confusing, unplayable poop.

I feel like Bungie sat down at an initial meeting and asked a bunch of questions like what are some cool things that we can add into Reach that are different than what we’ve seen in Halo so far? The list they came up with was armor abilities, space combat, stronger enemies, open-world missions, etc.

So with that list, they set about adding each element into the game. But what they realized is that the elements don’t naturally follow each other. So they began stitching. Noble 6 is made into a former pilot to explain the Solace and Alexandria missions. So on and so forth.

So each mission tries something new, but gives a very disjointed impression of how the story progresses. The best way to shoehorn the whole thing together seemed to be saying that each mission was Noble’s attempt to get ahead of the Covenant and slow the invasion down. But each step the Covenant get further ahead and so Noble is always playing catch-up to the Covenant’s moves. Until we get to the mini-story contained within The Package and PoA.

Other things that seemed out of place that ultimately were included: armor abilities, which really don’t seem that useful most of the time. The only time I found AA useful was sprinting (but never in battle, only to get from one battle to the next), and active camo on Nightfall. Armor lock is useless b/c as soon as you go into it, the Covies decorate you like a blueberry Xmas tree until your AL runs out and you die a Smurftastic death. Hologram is marginally useful if you have no other ability around, but anytime I’ve found a hologram, there are other AAs nearby and I take one of those.

My other pet peeve with Reach in general is the unending ability of all Covenant to dodge EVERYTHING you shoot at them. This was Bungie’s worst idea IMHO. One of my favorite examples was a FF Doubles match I was in one time. I killed an entire round of guys and left one Elite Ranger with a plasma repeater alive. I sprint across the board and start locking on and firing Blueberries at him. Any guesses as to how many it took to finally kill him? 50. Five, zero. Basically 50 plasma grenades dodged with hardly any damage done for 48 of them. From a weapon that is supposed to track down and stick to targets.It’s like Bungie didn’t even ask the question, how are the established weapon and new weapon sets going to interact with the abilities and AI we’re going to build into our enemies. Each Halo they talked about making the PP and needler better at what they do. Reach sees the worst performance of both of these weapons due to the fact that while each is very powerful when they hit, they miss most of the time when used due to the Covies ability to evade!
The number of times any one enemy really needs to be controlled. If Spartans can only dodge a bullet twice, Covenant need to have say three dodges available. The ability can refill over time, but needs to be though of like endurance. Sooner or later everyone’s endurance gets used up. This sort of sloppy thinking I feel contributes to many people’s perception of Reach being a terrible campaign or a terrible game in general. It’s not terrible, but it also wasn’t as well thought out as it could have been and thus doesn’t deliver the same feel-good experience of the original Halo.

12

> Now watch this. What happened? What happened, obviously, is that when Bungie added the higher levels of customization, the graphics had to slip. This is exceptable, but that is no excuse to let the story/dialogue fall. This is the end of my post. The point? I don’t know. I’m just ranting I guess. Bungie shouldn’t have shown us this and said “Yeah, this is actually how the game looks!” then later say “We lied.” Bungie never even gave us an official explanation that they had to tone down graphics to add more customization, they just surprised us on launch day.

They also lied about the scale.

Did you notice that the one thing that the trailer/first cinematic emphasizes most is how big things are going to be? Hey, look at this warthog, now look at it in this HUGE valley. Oh, and this base, it’s nestled in there too, with HUGE mountains in the background giving you an idea about how BIG everything is going to. And oh look, there goes your falcon into the yawning colossus that is this game!

And there’s only two ways to express the point of this charade. Either it was to set up the biggest bait and switch in gaming history (Peter Molyneaux eat your heart out!) or, more reasonably, to set up Massive Team combat or whatever it was they showed off at the Pax before last. Only in that context does anything from that opening trailer make sense and only in that context do we see why Halo Reach is such a crushing disappointment (whether we realize it or not.)

Bungie downplayed it then, but given how limited and, presumably, economical the AI is, how slap-dash the missions we ended up with are, how suprisingly awkward multiplayer is(ex. armor lock and infini-vade banshees), why the truly new guns are anti-vehicle weapons (when that niche was already one of the best stocked) and how much of this game is recycled (Sword Base, one campaign level, shows up FIVE -Yoinking!- TIMES in this game, when never before has bungie had to sink that low even when it came to filling out ODST, an expansion pack with limited resources, personel, and time) it isn’t unreasonable to suppose that they had their minds on a certain something else for a good chunk of Reach’s development cycle but shifted much later to the rushed POS game we have now in front of us. And, of course, they don’t admit it only because honesty, when it comes to mucked up economics, isn’t the best policy. Re-marketing it as “the definitive” version of whatever it’s bastardizing is because then you subvert any existing standards that might call you out on overselling your wares.

And oh look, that’s just what they did.

13

>

Very well-said. Everything about Reach except for Megalo gives me the impression that at best, the game was rushed – or, more likely, it was developed half-heartedly and without the effort that has been put into previous Halo games.

14

> Let me start off my thread with a trailer we should all know. What the point of this thread is, what happened to Reach from the point of this trailer to release? Before I go on my rant, I’ll throw out a little disclaimer: I love Halo. It is and always will be my favorite series. Reach is a good game, but it could have been so much better than it turned out. Now, onward…
>
> Let’s just analyze the trailer. We were told this was the opening cutscene, using the real game engine and graphics. At the time, I was utterly amazed. Was it possible for a game to look this good? We start off with Noble 6 looking at his helmet. The hyper-realistic glare of the glass visor still gives me goosebumps.
>
> We jump forward a bit, to where Noble 6 gets out of the Warthog. Notice the dust. Beautiful dust, blowing in the wind. This is absent in the final game. Noble 6 walks by Jun. The lighting is down right amazing at this point. Dynamic shadows, everything. Jun is even portrayed as a pretty damn cool guy. He just takes a glance at Noble 6, then carries on loading up his mag. The pounding music fits perfectly.
>
> Next we’re shown Emile, sitting there in all of his badassery. He doesn’t say a word, and it makes him look awesome. Kat comes in (Stop right there, criminal scum), and in the trailer even she is portrayed as a badass Spartan with a Russian accent. She looks at Noble 6 with such a look. She’s examining him. This looks like real human emotion. Very well done.
>
> Noble 6 steps forward. Again, the lighting stuns me. The reflection of Noble 6’s visor can pass as real. You hear the radios buzzing. There’s a battle going on somewhere, and you’re about to be plugged into it. Jorge turns and says “Didn’t think anybody survived Pagassi, sir.” This was the only problem I had with this. At the time of this trailer, it wasn’t confirmed that we were Spartan III’s. I still believe Spartan III’s don’t belong on Reach. This line should have just been changed, and the whole team should have been Spartan II’s. Anyway, cut to Carter. He says the iconic “Spartans never die.” Epic, no matter how many times its said.
>
> Now its a team break, everybody heads out the door, the epic music starts again. It’s time to head into combat. Everything here is pretty much the same as the final cutscene, except Jun’s line “This our new number 6?” “Affirmative” “You picked a hell of a day to join up!” This fits a hell of a lot better than “Welcome to Reach.” It also sets the tone of desperation. The Covenant are attacking, and this team of Spartans has to get in there ASAP and save the day.
>
> We end with the Falcon flying off into the distance. We see an explosion illuminate a Covenant cruiser. This proves it, the Covenant is here, and they’re showing no mercy on Reach. Thunder/plasma ripples through the sky as Kat confirms that the Spartans are on there way.
>
> Now watch this. What happened? What happened, obviously, is that when Bungie added the higher levels of customization, the graphics had to slip. This is exceptable, but that is no excuse to let the story/dialogue fall. This is the end of my post. The point? I don’t know. I’m just ranting I guess. Bungie shouldn’t have shown us this and said “Yeah, this is actually how the game looks!” then later say “We lied.” Bungie never even gave us an official explanation that they had to tone down graphics to add more customization, they just surprised us on launch day.
>
> I just can’t wait until the day where a new console comes out and can actually run amazing graphics like this trailer. I’m sure Halo 5 will look amazing.

Well if you had noticed cinimatic trialers or cutscenes can never define a video game, consoles can olny run 60 FPS at a time. In multiplayer the FPS are sliced and have to be sufficient enough to support all the explosions and bad connections.But yes i agree the “Epicness” of the game was lost but i partially blame the Community.In addition the new generation of consoles won’t be out in a while and i doubt there will be a Halo 5, by then 343 is a sellout.Would you Halo to end up like Final Fantasy?

15

I understand the drop in graphics, but the story should not have been altered the way it was. I remember reading a post where someone said that instead of the Covenant chasing Noble Team, like it should have been since the Covenant was invading Reach and all, Noble Team was running around chasing the Covenant. It just didn’t seem right.

16

I watched the trailer, then the final product, then the trailer again. The trailer just had so much more feeling and drama compared to the final cutscene.

I also am not a fan on how Noble is a team, but are only really ever together as a team during Winter Contingency. Every other mission is 1 or 2 other Spartans with 6. So much for “leaving the lone wolf stuff behind.” ODST had a better campaign, and that wasn’t even marketed as a real game.

17

> Putting graphics aside though, the feeling of desperation, that the Covenant was hovering over you, was lost in the final product. I can understand a slip in graphics, but there’s no excuse for a slip in writing.

True. The trailer was much better from every aspect.
Just watching the final part of the trailer, when you see the covenant cruiser between the clouds, gives me chills.