Beta Blog

Halo: Reach


I’ve intentionally waited a few days to write this so my reactions weren’t just giddy excitement and a biased opinion. If you slap the name “Halo” on something you’re going to get my attention.

Halo: Reach as most of you know will be Bungie’s last Halo game, and they have described their efforts as “Going out with a bang”. After Halo 3 was made, Bungie split from their looming Microsoft parent company, however Microsoft retained the rights to Halo. Microsoft has every intention of keeping Halo going, however Bungie will be out of the picture. Halo being Bungie’s creation and by far their most well known work, there is a certain “end of an era” feeling with the entire situation.

Reach takes place before Halo: Combat Evolved (the first Halo game, and launch title of the original Xbox), the details of the storyline and events of the game are still coming through, but one can assume it will be at least loosely based on the novel “The fall of Reach”, a Halo based novel written by Eric Nylund. In short, Reach is a human colony and a primary military network for the UNSC (United Nation Space Command) which houses a large military presence and over 700 million civilians. Through the events in the book Reach is attacked by the Covenant (alien military at war with humanity) and the planet is “glassed”, where the Covenant uses a form of fusion to heat the planet’s crust so intensely it turns to glass, thus killing every living thing on the planet.

So, if you own a copy of Halo: ODST or are lucky enough to get an invite code, as of May 3rd, 2010 you now have access to the Halo: Reach Beta. For those of you who don’t know, a “Beta” is a small portion of a program that is released during development for evaluation from the target audience. A beta can accomplish a couple things, in this case it gives excited fans a sneak peak, it gives the developers a ton of feedback and “free” game testers, which developers usually have to pay. The Reach beta is a small part of what will be the multiplayer for Halo: Reach. It includes a few game types and a small selection of weapons. Some new, some classics (the infamous “Halo 1 pistol” as well). One of the new features to the Halo franchise are “loadouts”, at the beginning of a multiplayer match you can select (currently) one of four loadouts, in the loadouts are weapon selections and an armor ability. These abilities can be activated at any time during the match for a limited time, the beta currently offers active camouflage (invisibility essentially), sprinting, temporary invincibility, and a jetpack. (Current favorite; jetpack).

They have changed some things, damage, added a health bar (where have those been, anyway?), added “assassinations” (instead of a simple melee attack from behind killing a player, you can hold melee to perform an assassination where your Spartan will do a quick deadly killing move) .

All in all it’s still Halo multiplayer, the new twists are fun, and I guess if it’s not broken don’t fix it. I look forward to seeing the rest of the game.