Bungie is completely revamping Halo with Reach

After watching the new Halo Reach ViDoc video on YouTube I realized something. Bungie might actually know what they are doing with Halo Reach. I have been worried about this game for quite some time now. The game will not have Master Chief so why on earth would I want anything to do with it? Halo: ODST was not a very good game, more or less it was there way to just take your money for a minimal amount of work. But it looks like they are definitely onto something with Reach.

Just watching through this video made me a believer. They are working on making the Spartans look more human like and want to go back to the way things were in Halo CE. I could not be happier to hear that they want to go back to the good old days of Halo. They are going to make the Elites less friendly than they have been in previous games. Why the hell should we be friends with them anyway? It doesn’t make sense and that is why Bunige is cutting the dialogue from the Elites to make them more alien like. You will not have the Arbiter being buddy buddy with you, it’s all about killing the hell out of anything not human.

As many of us already know (or may not have known) Halo Reach is going to be taken place before Master Chief or Cortana stepped into the picture of Halo. Reach is going to be a prologue of the Halo series. This makes quite a bit more sense as to why they decided to make the Elites more alien like. You will play along with the Noble Six, as a replacement for a Spartan who had died. The story in Halo Reach is going to be far more intimate and story driven than previous games. Because of this Bungie has completely redone the way they are modeling their characters.

Everything from how they texture and model their characters has been redone. They are taking far more time in modeling their characters, putting in a couple million polygons into each character. Because they are making the story more in depth they are modeling everything with a higher fidelity. What will these mean to us the gamers? It means the game is going to look absolutely gorgeous. No more ugly Halo, it’s time for a Halo game that is going to push your Xbox 360 to it’s limit, it’s going to make your 360 want to not only RRoD on you, it will want to blow up and burn down your entire house just for making it work as hard as it will have to.

Because of this Bungie has decided to create a whole new engine for their game. This will allow for them to do things they never could have done before with their old engine. Not only will that allow for the better looking visuals but it will allow for a lot in game inovations as well. The motion capture in this game is going to be far more superior than it has been in other games. The poses in the game will be far more dynamic and expressive, again leading to much better story to be told. They had 4 times the number of polygons to use than they did in previous games. Now when we shoot at a wall in the game you will see rock chips, dust and sparks. With Halo 3 Bunie could only play around with 100 coliding particles, in Reach they will have thousands. They have more customizable spartans, more polygons they can write at once. You will have massive open enviornments, spaces you will want to check out, twice as many vehicles and weapons in the environments. They are going to have a much better AI along with having larger AI on the screen at once. We are talking about having all the spartans, 8 marines and 30 covenant all in once massive battle at one time. The action in this game is going to be phenominal and much more challenging than any other Halo game.

Halo Reach is going to be a sandbox game. No longer will it be like a story based game where you are tied to being in the story and you have to go mission by mission. The game looks like it is going to be more like Grand Theft Auto, which to me is a great idea. Do you not want to continue with the story but still feel like messing around in the game? No problem hop in a warthog and drive down to the Covenant base and blow shit up. If they do follow through with the sandbox, open world idea the game will be phenominal. Call of Duty will have absolutely nothing on Reach.

Those of your players that are loyal to the Halo series will be very happy to know that Bungie is also trying to not change too much stuff that you already enjoy. Obviously as it is Bungie everyone will be pissed off about one thing or another however I think the changes they make in the game will be for the better. The weapons are being redone, the Assualt Rifle is getting a facelift to look more bad ass. They added in a new weapon called the DMR which is a medium to long range rifle that you can use kind of like a Battle Rifle only it looks to be more accurate and powerful. They are adding it powerful weapons to make you feel like you can run into a Covenant controlled area and just kill everything that is around you. We are also going to get a more rewarding melee system. Instead of just whacking an Elite in the back of the head we can now jump on them and cut their throat. Other things noticed from watching the video is the ability to run by pressing a button, it looks very much like running in Modern Warfare, which will be a great addition to games controls and mechanics.

Overall I think I’m going to have to change the donation for buying me a cup of coffee to buying me a new Xbox 360 so I can play this game when it is released. Halo Reach looks like it is going to be a great way for Bungie to break their ties with Microsoft. They are really pouring their hearts and souls into making this game something great and completely new. This isn’t just a Halo 4, it could be marketed as something completely different which is why they aren’t calling it Halo 4. This game will almost certainly win game of the year, but not because it is “Halo” but because the game will just be the best game released this year.