What to Expect From Halo: Reach
Master Chief isn't the only Spartan in town.
June 18, 2009 - With Halo 3: ODST coming this fall and the newly announced Halo: Reach arriving next year, there's more Halo to look forward to than ever before. There's also an ever expanding alternate universe to keep track of which is why we here at IGN have put together this primer for Halo: Reach. In it we take a look at everything we know about the game so far -- an admittedly small amount of information -- and examine the events taking place in the Halo universe at the time of Reach. If you love Halo, this is the info you can't afford to be without.
What We Know About the Game So Far
Halo: Reach was announced at the Microsoft E3 2009 Media Briefing on June 1, 2009 with a target release date of fall 2010. The announcement came in the form of a teaser trailer that showed the planet Reach being bombarded by Covenant fire and little else. No actual video of gameplay was shown. The trailer didn't even indicate what type of game it will be, though Microsoft later confirmed that Halo: Reach will be a first-person shooter.
[ign]14276699&downloadURL=http://xbox360movies.ign.com/xbox360/video/article/996/996261/haloreach_spc_rewindtheater_flvlowwide.flv[/ign]
The best news for Halo fans, though, is that franchise creator Bungie handling development. Many assumed the studio would want to move on after finishing the fight with Halo 3, but the upcoming Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach prove that's not the case.
We don't know much about Halo: Reach yet, and that is by design. The aim of the announcement was not necessarily to get people excited about Reach, but instead to convey the news that everyone who buys Halo 3: ODST -- which will be released September 22, 2009 -- will automatically be invited to take part in the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta. When exactly in 2010 that beta will take place has not yet been revealed, but the very fact that there will be a public beta suggests that the multiplayer game in Halo: Reach will be different from that of Halo 3. If the gameplay were identical and Halo: Reach was only offering new maps, there wouldn't be any need for the stress testing, bug fixing and balancing done through a public beta. Perhaps the multiplayer Halo game is about to expand beyond 16 players into a more massive online war.
The planet Reach is the most heavily guarded human colony.
To get to the heart of what to expect out of Halo: Reach, it is important to look at the setting. Reach is a human occupied planet was destroyed by the Covenant just prior to the events of Halo: Combat evolved, making this game a prequel to the main trilogy. That planet's doomed future, as shown in the E3 announcement trailer, ensures that Halo: Reach will not highlight humanity's heroic victories over the Covenant. That doesn't mean there won't be any heroes.
Why Reach is Important
In the Halo universe, the planet Reach is the most important of all human colonies. It is the home of the UNSC Fleet Command Headquarters and is the single largest spaceship manufacturer, making it the seat of all military power. It's where soldiers are trained, massive battleships are built, and most importantly, Reach is where the secretive Spartan training program was held.
At the age of six, a boy was torn from his parents and conscripted into the UNSC military for a top-secret project. His name was John, later known only as the Master Chief Spartan-117, and he joined 70 some-odd others in a rigorous regimen on the planet Reach that would turn these gifted children into soldiers of unrivaled effectiveness. Just when the group finished its brutal training, the soldiers are subjected to a series of risky biophysical enhancements. Only 33 of the originals survive the entire ordeal with Master Chief emerging as their leader.
The group assembled and trained with the hopes of quelling a civil war that intelligence officials believed was on the horizon, but the conflict with the Covenant gave the Spartans a new focus, turning them into one of humanity's last hopes for survival.
Through the beginning stages of the Human/Covenant war, Reach was considered impenetrable. With hundreds of ships in orbit as well as twenty Mark V MAC guns (powerful enough to rip an entire Covenant battleship to shreds in a single shot) hovering on orbital stations, this planet was the one where humans still felt safe. Nothing, they believed, could withstand the combined might of the space and land based forces, especially when they bunkered down in the underground tunnels that twist hundreds of meters below the surface of Reach. Unfortunately for Reach's many inhabitants, that turned out not to be true.
The Fall of Reach
The Halo: Reach announcement trailer ends with the text "Falls 2010." This was not a typo. Bungie is almost certainly referring to Reach's destruction at the hands of a massive Covenant fleet, as described in the book by Eric Nylund, "Halo: The Fall of Reach." The events of that book follow Master Chief's childhood and the initial contact with the Covenant, and the climax involves Reach's destruction. This would put the events of Halo: Reach after Halo Wars (which deals with the first Covenant contact at Harvest) and prior to Halo: Combat Evolved (which deals with the first discovery of the Halo ring).
The whereabouts of Reach was one of humanity's closely guarded secrets. Heck, the location of any human controlled planet was kept secret from the Covenant. The alien collective had this nasty habit of bombing any planet inhabited by humans until the entire surface was melted, so everyone felt it best not to give them another target. In "Halo: The Fall of Reach," the story is told of how Captain Keyes inadvertently leads the Covenant to Reach, thereby ensuring its destruction.
[ign]14276699&downloadURL=http://xbox360movies.ign.com/xbox360/video/article/988/988724/haloreach_trl_e3_60109_flvlowwide.flv[/ign]
What kind of force could take down humanity's great stronghold? The book describes an invasion force of 300 Covenant ships with a ground force of thousands upon thousands of soldiers. The force is simply overwhelming, and Reach quickly is destroyed. In the book, the battle for Reach is primarily described as a space battle. So where might the game take place? For that answer, one has to look at another Halo book, this one titled, "First Strike."
The Stars of Halo: Reach
Unlike Halo 3: ODST, it is possible that Master Chief will make an appearance in Halo: Reach. It's even possible, depending upon how much before the fall of Reach this game begins, that he is the star -- but don't count on it. The most interesting events on Reach take place on the ground while Master Chief is elsewhere.
At the time Reach is attacked, all 30 remaining original Spartans are on board the Pillar of Autumn, preparing to set out on a mission to capture a Covenant Prophet. The attack on Reach changes everything and the primary mission becomes the protection of the planet. The group quickly realizes that the orbital MAC canons' power source must not be disabled by the invading forces on the ground. At the same time, NAV data in a space dock that would point the Covenant to Earth needs to be either destroyed or made safe.
Master Chief is quoted in the book "First Strike" as saying, "With all due respect, sir, Spartans are trained to handle difficult missions. I'll split my squad. Three will board the space dock and make sure that NAV data does not fall into the Covenant's hands. The remainder of the Spartans will go groundside and repel the invasion forces." The Chief joins the smaller group in space before escaping on the Pillar of Autumn to begin the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, which would effectively eliminate him from being the central protagonist in Halo: Reach. The rest drop to the ground, a moment that might be captured amidst all of the distress calls in the Halo: Reach announcement trailer.
As Reach falls, Master Chief jets off to find the first Halo ring.
After intense fighting with numerous Spartans lost, a group of five retreat underground and wind up running into more Covenant forces as well as some Forerunner artifacts (The Forerunner artifacts are the reason the Covenant refrain from totally glassing Reach, thereby allowing an extensive ground battle to occur.) The five Spartans include Fred, Kelly, Vinh, Isaac, and Will -- three men and two women. Could these be the group of five depicted in the solitary piece of artwork that Bungie has release for Halo: Reach thus far? If so, Fred (Spartan-104) would take the role of the main protagonist as he was chosen to lead the ground forces.
Of course, it is entirely possible that Bungie will introduce previously unknown Spartans as the main characters. Based on the E3 trailer, that seems likely. Master Chief was a member of the first wave of Spartans, but the books repeatedly mention a second group in training. During the trailer, Sierra 320 announces she is ready for insertion and Sierra 259 says there are Spartans on the ground. If these are the call-signs for Spartans, they would be numbered higher than any of the first wave that Master Chief was a member of. And since we don't know how many Spartans took part in the second wave of the training program, it could be that we'll see many more Spartans in one battle than most of us previously thought possible. The idea of the Spartan as a lone wolf might be about to perish.
Could these five be the Spartans Fred, Kelly, Vinh, Isaac, and Will? Or does the E3 trailer hint at a new second group of Spartans?
The trailer also features a distress call looking for someone or something that goes by the name Noble (Nova?) One. His or her direct callout seems important and this may be the code name for the new Halo: Reach protagonist.
Speculation has already begun regarding which Covenant forces we'll face in Halo: Reach. While we're definitely speculating here, the books do offer some guidance. The Covenant forces that took part in the ground invasion of Reach include Grunts, Jackals, Hunters, Banshees and Wraith tanks. And though the books don't mention the Flood during the fall of Reach, we've seen in Halo Wars that those little rascals tend to pop up everywhere.
Pure Speculation
As we just stated, all of this is pure speculation on our part. Whether Bungie decides to directly follow the events outlined in the books or tell previously untold tales remains to be seen. And with Halo 3: ODST coming out this fall, it seems unlikely that we'll get any concrete information on Halo: Reach anytime soon.
|