Why Reach's Campaign Was Disappointing

Games Other Halo
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NOTE: This was originally posted on Bungie’s forums(here). Many of the posters suggested I post this here as well since it also applies to 343.

TL;DR at bottom

I’m going to cut the introductions and jump right in; Halo Reach’s campaign was incredibly disappointing. In fact, I was so disappointed; I felt the urge to tell Bungie why(I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t think you could do better). It frustrates a great deal that Reach received a metacritic score of 91/100. Why should Bungie be rewarded when they made such a lacklustre story/campaign? A studio needs criticism to grow and Bungie hardly received any from major media sources. If criticism isn’t heard or taken seriously, Bungie’s next game will have the same problems that Reach had. Hopefully Bungie is still early in the development process for their next game to consider this criticism.

(Spoilers below)

Campaign Mission Design:

Bungie said Reach gave them room to explore and try new things in the campaign. I can definitely see what ideas Bungie was aiming for. Ideas like plat-forming with the jetpack on Exodus, turret defence in The Package, space combat in Long Night of Solace, and the on-rail shooting segment in Tip of the Spear. They’re good ideas, but they weren’t fully explored at all. It felt very underdeveloped, short, forgettable and just not that fun (aside from space combat). Perhaps extend these moments or add more pressure/ intensity. There are few (if any) memorable moments or high points in Reach’s campaign because of the lack of variety. They all seem to blend together into one big mush.

During the first 75% of this game, activating switches seemed to be the main/only objective in Reach. Do you know how boring that is Bungie? Someone should really go back and count how many there are. Do you know just how many levels ended by activating a switch? Four. Four out of nine levels: Winter contingency, Tip of the Spear, Exodus, and The Package. To add to this lack of variety, the majority of switches involved activating/deactivating AA guns. How many freakin AA guns are in this game? Again, the lack of variety hurts the campaign considerably.

To add to the lack of objectives, there was also a lack of story through 75% of the game. The story is very, very thin here and I don’t need to tell you that. Th-this is just so disappointing. This is absolutely no over-arching story at all. This isn’t good Bungie, not good at all. I’m so flabbergasted I don’t know what else to say.

One thing that really bugged me was the lack of explanation and clarity ranging from character back-story to the planet Reach itself.Take this clip for example.Do you think the average Halo fan/casual gamer would have any clue about Dr. Halsey and the relationship she shares with Jorge? Why wasn’t this explained to the player? Not only would it have created sympathy toward Jorge, it wouldn’t established who Dr. Halsey was and why she’s important to this campaign. There are many others, but unfortunately I must move on or I’ll run out of space.

(As an aside, armour abilities felt like they were shoe-horned into the campaign. It would have been cool if armour abilities had more important roles that are essential in completing a mission. For example, wouldn’t it have been cool of an entire battlefield became under bombardment by covenant airships, and the player had to use drop shield to traverse his way across? Or maybe a high octane chase where the player chases an elite using sprint. I don’t know…something like that. Something more creative instead of just plopping them in there.)

This is kind of nitpick, but did anyone else find it disappointing that the “Defend [insert character name]” sections of the game were just firefight enounters in disguise? I mean if it says “Defend Jun” wouldn’t you expect Jun to die (temporarily) if you don’t defend him? It came off as very cheap. I thought this would be an added layer to the gameplay but no…it’s not. It’s just an illusion to give the player the impression that the gameplay has changed without actually changing anything.

Untapped Potential:

If this is a game about a planet being invaded and being utterly destroyed by the entire covenant armada, wouldn’t you expect to witness the mass invasion and the planet’s annihilation? It baffles me that these key moments are completely non-existent. Instead of a cut scene or epic level, the player is introduced to the covenant by this simple phrase, “The covenant is on Reach. I repeat the covenant is on Reach”. That’s it?? It wasn’t even that great of a line. In fact, it was an awful line. Bungie, if you want to create an epic game, this isn’t the way to do it.

The same can be said with the game’s ending. The player hardly saw Reach in ruin. Sure Sword Base was in tatters, but that’s really the only indication that Reach is going to hell. Jeez Bungie, the game’s marketing message was “Remember Reach” and" From the beginning, you know the end" and the player hardly saw any of “the end”. How wasn’t this in the game? Why wasn’t the ending more dramatic? Why was the entire game lacking in dramatic and climatic effect? For a story that was supposed to be emotionally investing, removing the most dramatic moments was a huge mistake. The cut scenes were flat, characters were flat, and environments were flat. Honestly, there’s just no uniqueness here. Nothing stands out.

Secondly, I thought that the campaign should’ve explored more interesting locations on Reach. Space, New Alexandria, and the mountainous areas were all neat, but it would’ve been better if you added to this collection. I mean, you had a whole world to work with. What about a snow, desert, or forest level? During the campaign, the player was always around the same terrain. After awhile, it got…kind of boring. It all looked the same. It definitely looks pretty, but the same mountainous areas just don’t hold up after 2 levels. Again, lack of variety is your main problem.
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Emotional Investment

As mentioned above, lack of dramatic effect and bonding with the planet hamper the emotional investment in Reach. They’re all important, but it’s the cast of characters that create and drive emotional investment the most. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really emotionally attached to any of the characters. But if I had to choose, the character I cared for the most was Kat. This is probably because the majority of the missions heavily involved her. The more time I was with her, the more I cared about her. I didn’t really care for any of the others because I didn’t spend much time with them and there are too -Yoink!- many of them. Noble Team should’ve consisted of only 4 members: Kat, Carter, and Jun because they were the most interesting, and Noble 6 (well…Noble 4 now) . That way, it would’ve been easier to create a bond between the player and other characters. 5 Characters to care for is just way too much for an 8 hour campaign.

Having a very thin story means little emotional investment. Relationships are created when going through tough hardships, solving problems, and struggling to meet a common goal (and don’t tell me “defending reach” is the common goal; that’s just pathetic). Reach’s “Destroy this”, “Defend that” design gave me little reason or opportunity to form a bond. It was just a bunch of generic missions without any underlying purpose.

For a Halo game, the campaign really disappointed. Where were the epic, large-scale battles? where were the moments where the player felt like a hero? Where’s the sense of accomplishment? Where the hell is the story?

I’m glad Bungie’s starting a new project because now -for the first time in 10 years- they’ll actually have to prove themselves again. They’ll actually have to take risks and put thought into what they’re doing.

Update Just some clarification on things people have mentioned…

> “Halo: Reach was not supposed to have a feeling of accomplishment, it was about hopelessness and defeat.”

What most people don’t understand is that to evoke a feeling of hopelessness and defeat (moods Halo Reach wanted to create), players need to have something of value taken away from them. How can one feel defeat/loss when nothing they care about has been taken away? Halo Reach immediately threw the player into the thick of the battle without trying to make the player feel connected with Reach or its characters. As a result, the player doesn’t have a reason to care for Noble team or Reach.

If Bungie attempted to make the player feel like they had a purpose (which ties to accomplishment) and feel emotionally invested, the player would hopefully feel hopelessness when these are taken away(ie. when Reach gets destroyed/noble team dying). But unfortunately, how can you take something away when your given nothing to begin with? Bungie assumed we cared about the planet and characters and didn’t even try to make the players decide for themselves. This is one of the biggest problems Reach suffers from. If Bungie made the players care, the campaign would’ve felt drastically different.

> “You said Reach lacked a feeling of accomplishment. But the last two levels felt pretty accomplishing to me. We brought Cortana to the Pillar of Autumn for goodness sake!”

Reach lacked a feeling of purpose/accomplishment on the whole. 2/9 levels is just not good enough. That’s 22%. And 22% is a failing grade. The last two levels worked because the player was striving to reach an overall goal; get Cortana to the Pillar of Autumn. If you’re trying to reach an overall objective, you-the player- has a purpose. The same cannot be applied to any of the other levels. Did the missions ONI: Sword Base and Nightfall connect to each other and progress an overall story? No, they did not.

TL;DR: Reach’s campaign was a failure because it lacked variety, story, emotional investment and feeling of accomplishment.

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Anybody? I’d be nice to see what forum goers over here think about this…

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I thought the campaign was disappointing too. For example, I didn’t like how Bungie recycled the map winter contingency for the map the package. The map wasn’t even that well designed and was essentially one big circle. I also didn’t like the lack of emotion and character. It became hard to care what happened to the other spartans. I actually just found them annoying because they would just get in the way. Also, the lack of decent check points is frustrating. Frankly, it seems that the multiplayer and extra features such as forge and theatre are what really makes the game. The campaign felt sort of like it was made last and with the least amount of thought.

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I don’t know, I liked it. Even though that that the missions where kind of jumpy and some didn’t really connect an overall objective. It was more like at first the missions are like parts of Noble Teams efforts stifle the covenants efforts. Since the game lasts for a month and 4 days they skip around through that time frame. It’s almost more like a mystery in the beginning, wondering what the Professor Sorvad’s latchkey discovery was, why couldn’t they get orbital support, these kinds of questions come up in the beginning of the game, you find them out later and makes the story a mystery at first. Bungie wrote the story knowing how they wrote it and how they made the story feel like what they wanted it to feel.

The title Halo: Reach seems like you were going to see the whole battle of reach with Red Team, Blue team the planet being glassed but you don’t. It’s more like it would be called Halo: Noble than Halo Reach because the story seems to be fixed on Noble Teams actions safe guarding and in the end getting Cortana aboard the POA. In short I understand why your disappointed, but I was pleased with reach being more of a boots in the mud story then the galactic opera kind of deal. I do hope the next halo is written more like a galactic opera. I like team story but I also like a story like Halo CE-3 where the story was told around the main protagonist Master Chief.

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Ok, so I read this thread a few days ago. Just hadn’t had the chance to reply.

Anyway. . .When I first looked at this thread, my first thoughts were “wow, look at this genius, another negative thread”. To be honest though, as I read your thread (which took a while by the way, fair play for the work you put into it), I found myself agreeing with some of your points.

I see how Noble team lacks development and character, and some of the missions are dull and recycled, especially in their concepts (flip switch no. 532, etc.).

Still, I have to friendily disagree that the campaign was “disappointing”. I guess that is a bit of an unspecific word to use, that might be giving me the wrong idea of the strength of your feelings, so sorry if I misinterpreted it. ;)I really felt like the look of the campaign was great throughout the majority of the levels. The opening level did disappoint me somewhat, but I find more reasons to like it as I revisit it. I think the mix of settings in the campaign is good, and everything is quite polished. While a lot of these settings are seen in multiplayer and firefight, I don’t think they’re bad levels. I understand that the feeling of Reach really falling is kind of missed in a lot of these levels. So there’s some untapped potential there. Nonetheless, I quite like and still admire the design of the game, even just all the elites. Nightfall really stands out for me, a really great looking level.

Sorry, kind of started rambling in the last paragraph. Last point. I agree that there’s a lack of emotional development of the rest of Noble team. Still, I somehow don’t have as much of an issue with this as others. Throughout the game I do feel for Reach and Noble team. I think that it’s mostly Marty’s superb score that has that effect on me. The music at the start of lone wolf gives me a mix of feelings every time.

So overall, I agree with you for the most. Nonetheless, I still enjoy the campaign, and wouldn’t really say I was disappointed. But could Bungie have done better? Yes.

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On a personal level, I disagree about the lack of character development and emotional triggering, but this could also be because I’ve read every book, including the encyclopedia, so I was keened into subtlety (like Jorge and Halsey as you mentioned above) that others might miss and I see where you’re coming from there.

I enjoyed the campaign, but 2 things were really disappointing to me. 1) Kat’s death. As a female gamer, I was so stoked to have a strong, smart, clothed female character and then just to have her die aimlessly? All the males get heroic deaths, why not her? That really irritated me and jaded the rest of my game play.

The second thing I was disappointed in was the lack of scarab battles. It’s horrible to tease me by showing three scarabs and not let me take down any of them. While this may be a continuity thing (MC being the first to take down a scarab in Halo 2), I still really felt like that was a missing component.

The end, however, I thought was perfect. I’ve never seen an ending like that and it was, for me at least, emotional. I didn’t really care when anyone, other than Kat, died, but in that final stage after I’d taken damage and it went to the cut scene, I kept yelling for my spartan to keep fighting. True, it didn’t have the impact that the end of Halo 3 did (heroic ending where I bawled like a baby for a few hours), but it still felt like a really satisfying way to end the story.

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My interest in any of the Halo campaigns is about the game play. The story in any of the Halo games doesn’t interest me after I’ve completed them the first time. Reach is no different for me. It’s what happens on the battlefield that matters to me.

I feel guilty saying this…I can’t get into the Reach campaign. Reach is the first Halo campaign that doesn’t interest me at all. I’m annoyed that I feel pushed through the missions and that I have virtually no control over the battlefield, and I feel rushed through the campaign missions. I would have rather enjoyed it to see the rest of Noble team bite it during the first mission so I could get them out of my way and play the missions by myself. I guess I’m a selfish Spartan on the battlefield! I’ve tried hard to enjoy the campaign but there isn’t even one mission that draws me back into it.

Going it alone would have been better for me then to watch Jorge shoot his machine gun turret into rocks, crashed vehicles, trees and other assorted objects while missing virtually every enemy around him. The only time Jorge has been effective with his turret was when I attempted to board a Banshee on the Tip of the Spear and Jorge blew it up just as I was attempting to board it for the “Banshee, Fast and Low” achievement. If I had the capability to push him off the map to his death that day, I would have done it.

Jun gets in my way all the time on Nightfall. Emile may as well have been equipped with a straw and a supply of paper so he can shoot spitwads at the enemies, because I have only seen him kill just one enemy with his shotgun. Kat whines and complains that she is being shot all the time. Carter is much like the other team members, utterly useless. Yes I know, if they were more effective it would have turned the player into a spectator. I just don’t like having them around.

I hate to say this but, the Lone Wolf mission was the dumbest excuse for a mission I have ever experienced.

Could someone please explain to me why the Noble Actual game trailer/cutscene is considered a campaign mission? If I don’t shoot weapons, kill enemies, drive some sort of a vehicle and toss grenades, then it isn’t a campaign mission.

On Legendary, I’m reduced to the noob-combo technique to tackle the Elites and I hate it. Dropped Needlers have so little ammo in them that I have to search the battle area for several just to get it fully loaded. There is usually a lot of Plasma pistols available but the Ballerina Elites are dancing so much that getting a non-noob combo kill with it is exasperating and annoying. The Elites throw plasma grenades at near the speed of sound and it annoys me to no end. Auto-aim is too strong and causes me to miss enemy kills because the targeting reticle is being tugged and pulled so strongly when I’m in the middle of several enemies. After 4 Halo games, I really don’t need any help placing a targeting reticle to get a kill.

What happened to the Warthog in Reach? It tips over so easy and rolls like a beachball in a windstorm. Is it made from Helium? Was it really necessary to ruin this vehicle so completely that driving it is exasperating? The Revenant, or as I call it, the “Irrelevant”, is so underpowered on Legendary that firing it’s weapons is pointless. I would rather get an actual kill with it’s weapon then send an enemy flying off 150 feet away after I shot it.

Combat dialogue, or lack of it.

Bungie set a standard in the previous Halo games with the combat dialogue from nearly all the characters, and I was shocked that there is so little combat dialogue in Reach. The battlefield is dead quite compared to any of the previous games and my immersion is totally ruined. Why have the (I Would Have Been Your Daddy) skull in Reach if no one is saying anything? The Grunts sound like Ewoks. The Brutes and Elites sound like other Star Wars aliens, and I’ve even heard several dialogue lines lifted directly from Star Wars. This isn’t Halo when the Covenant characters sound like Star Wars aliens. The marines hardly say anything at all, even during battles. The combat dialogue provided an extra dimension to the battlefield that I have so enjoyed in the previous games. I feel like I’m in a Covenant shooting gallery because of all the silence. The Sergent Johnson Firefight voice generates more dialogue then I have ever heard in a complete run through of the entire Reach campaign.

In my opinion, the only thing that is epic in the Reach campaign is the wonderful environments. The battlefield is boring, rushed, too quite and lacks any replay value for me that the other Halo games had in abundance. Several times during the Reach campaign I felt that the artists had a blast during the development process, but the missions designers were yawning!

So many missed opportunities.

That’s about all from me. Sorry if I sounded overly negative. It’s all about the campaign battlefield for me and Reach fell flat.

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The only reason why I would consider Reach’s campaign disappointing is because of the story.

It was wasn’t all that it should’ve cracked up to be. And the reason is not because we’re missing huge epic battles or that kind of thing. It’s because the characters weren’t that interesting. They were bland. Yes, like any of the other Halo games, you needed to read those subtle hints about them like with the ODSTs or any of the Human characters, (honestly, Halo 2’s Covenant characters were the best developed in the series, in my opinion, such as the Arbiter). But even so, Carter felt one-dimensional throughout the whole campaign. His tone of voice almost never changed. We didn’t really see much of Kat, but she might as well have been the same as Carter, almost all of the dialogue was objective. That’s kind of why I like Emile, Jun and Jorge. They had some more personality to them. It’s also why we should have had more cut-scenes like the beginning of LNoS. They focused a little bit more on the characters. I wish Staten was involved a little bit more with the story of this game. But other then that, gameplay, soundtrack, voice acting, AI, you name it, everything else was great.

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They focused a bit too much on multi player. If only it had a bit more to it…

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I absolutely have to agree with what everyone is saying here: lack of character development and personality really hurt the campaign, much more than the lack of epic battles or a clear sense of purpose.

I HATED Emile when I started the game, but at the end, I was ready to kill every last Covey on Reach after they took down my last (and most entertaining) teammate. Now, this wasn’t really due to character development, but because his personality actually existed, which is more than you can say for everyone else. I realize Spartans are trained not to “have” feelings, but still… I really didn’t care when anyone but Kat an Emile died, and I only cared about Kat because she was the only chick in the squad (what if I survive Reach, how am I gonna repopulate, oh gross what if it’s with Emile, oh God what if Emile is a really ugly man-chick with a deep voice aaaaaaaaaaagh!!, etc)…

Now, as much as people say they hated ODST, it was by far my favorite Halo game to date, for many reasons. The dark mood of the music and the streets as the Rookie, the fact that there was something as cool as the idea of the streets that you came back to multiple times, the stealthy, suppressed-weapon gameplay, unlockable caches, etc. An even though there wasn’t much development, most of the characters had a personality. Just the back and forth between Buck and Dare, and the change you saw later in the game was fantastic. Then they go and give the demolitions expert and sniper their own personalities, you can really see that even though they’ve just gotten thrown into it with each other, they still go nuts after what happens to Romeo… I mean, In Reach, the Spartans die, and the other Spartans don’t get pissed. They just get mopey. You’d think there would at least be a cutscene where someone loses it and starts destroying coveys left and right, a shotgun in each hand, yada yada, then the smoke clears to reveal even more covey bodies littering the floor as he/she stands there breathing heavily, still shaking with rage.

However, one issue that ODST also had was the new guy thrown in. Either people didn’t like you at first, or they had no opinion of you at all. At least in ODST they warmed up to you a bit. In Reach, everyone dies before you get to know them. In some games, you lose your girlfriend (or dog/horse/companion/whatever), and it feels like you (the person looking at the screen) just lost a little piece of yourself. I was kinda hoping at the beginning that Kat and 6 would hit it off, and just when it seemed like she might not completely hate your guts - it’s done. I was disappointed.

Anyways, that’s my extremely convoluted and out-of-order 2 cents. Thoughts?

ps. ODST FTW!

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The only thing I have to -Yoink- about with Reach, is that the higher difficulties break the fiction.

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> The only thing I have to Yoink! about with Reach, is that the higher difficulties break the fiction.

More the whole Pillar of Autumn, I’m fine with upping the difficulty, it’s the Pillar of Autumn that they’ve yet to simply explain away.

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Yeah yeah yeah, the Pillar was supposed to be in space already. I guess I’m used to the George Lucas style of Retcon so much that it doesn’t bother me.

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It’s not so much about the characters you should be really sad at, its the actual feeling when you played the game and it’s storyline as a whole. It was just so damn BORING. No, I could not tell there where TONS OF MORE AI. You see, when Epic said, there would larger scale battle’s, they proved by the second level and continued to do so.

The level’s were beautiful, and I’m talking about the area’s your player cannot be not the actual level themselves. In Exodus, the city felt so clean, and doing well despite 3 corvett’s attacking. Plus the music after the cut scene was useless, you walk by dead civilians and have a crow or some bird fly away as it was feasting on dead bodies, but I didn’t feel any anything, I felt more in halo 1 when I couldn’t protect my marines from the flood. There was also next to ZERO diologe with the marines or ODST. (Cant spell)

Could someone please explain to me why the Noble Actual game trailer/cutscene is considered a campaign mission? If I don’t shoot weapons, kill enemies, drive some sort of a vehicle and toss grenades, then it isn’t a campaign mission.

It is because it’s the intro. If you would have the level after that and have to watch the entire cut scene, it’d be annoying, and putting it into two cut scene’s is possible, but didn’t. Halo 2 had about 3-4 missions that were cut scenes.

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> They focused a bit too much on multi player. If only it had a bit more to it…

they didn’t focus ENOUGH on the multiplayer in my opinion. considering they re-used a map in campaign, I would have expected more maps for multiplayer that weren’t in campaign besides HALO. because it gets realy boreing and i cant wait till i get the noble map pack tommorow to hopefully end this streak of boredom.

OT: here are my problems with campaign

  1. none of the characters say anything meaningfull so you don’t get attached to them, even six you only get attached too because he is your spartan while he bareley says anything.

  2. no epic battles considering they said they could add in a ton of AI in a battle, tip of the spear was such a small mission considering what was going on everyware, they could have added back the elephant for a large scale battle like that.

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I agree Bungie should of spent more time on the campaign my biggest gripe with it though it is clashes with Fall of Reach canon

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> Yeah yeah yeah, the Pillar was supposed to be in space already. I guess I’m used to the George Lucas style of Retcon so much that it doesn’t bother me.

But it hasn’t been retconned, it’s just a mismatch right now. And George Lucas is a tool, if he’d leave Star Wars alone it would probably have more fans, instead it’s just us old folks who hang on to the glory that is the original unedited movies.

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I don’t think it deserves an entire topic, so I thought I’d ask this question here:

(keep in mind that I am a big halo nut and have all the fiction, so if you do need to reference something in your answer I’ll be able to look it up)

Exactly how does the Pillar of Autumn being on Reach at that time completely destroy the canon? I understand how it wouldn’t make sense for 117 to be in cyro at that time, but that was more of an easter egg. As for Autumn being on Reach, how isn’t it possible within the story?

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> I don’t think it deserves an entire topic, so I thought I’d ask this question here:
>
> (keep in mind that I am a big halo nut and have all the fiction, so if you do need to reference something in your answer I’ll be able to look it up)
>
> Exactly how does the Pillar of Autumn being on Reach at that time completely destroy the canon? I understand how it wouldn’t make sense for 117 to be in cyro at that time, but that was more of an easter egg. As for Autumn being on Reach, how isn’t it possible within the story?

At the time the Pillar of Autumn mission happens, the Pillar of Autumn is on it’s way to the first Halo in the books.