Halo: Reach

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In the third excerpt from our interviews with Bungie on Halo: Reach, we turn to its campaign design. Mission lead Niles Sankey and and campaign lead Chris Opdahl explain how Reach is diverging from Halo 3's 'high action' to rediscover the tension and choice of Combat Evolved.

For our full account of Bungie's last Halo, pick up the magazine, out on UK news stands now, and soon to hit those in the US. Here's our previous coverage of Reach on Edge Online.

How have you approached designing missions for Reach?
Niles Sankey One of our big pushes has been to introduce players not only to relate to their fellow Spartans but to the planet Reach itself, before we tear it apart. We're putting bigger emphasis on this notion of epic wide-open landscapes that Halo is traditionally remembered for. We're going for that more so than in the last couple of games, and really allow the player, at least early on, to explore this world and understand it so there's some attachment to it for when it's pulled apart.

In addition to these large environments, we made a push into making the battles bigger than you've ever seen in Halo before. We're thinking that with new technology we're able to get twice as many actors on screen than in the other games. In other games you'll see these great battle cutscenes which you can't interact with. Here, we're really trying to stay true to Halo to have these epic battlescapes that the player does affect. On top of that we're also trying to give each mission a specific flavour and purpose, with something memorable for each one.

More at Halo: Reach ? Being Definitive | Edge Online

Halo: Reach will run on what Bungie says is a completely 'gutted' version of the Halo 3 engine. No area of its working has been left untweaked: "We are definitely bending the Xbox as far as it'll bend," the developer claims. And this is what is allowing Reach to achieve its larger levels, greater detail and more epic battles.

Creative director Marcus Lehto, executive producer Joseph Tung and community director Brian Jarrard tell us how they've built on the technology which powered Halo 3, the challenges they've faced in refining the classic Halo sandbox, and Halo's place in a post-Modern Warfare world.

For our full account of Bungie's last Halo, pick up the magazine, out on UK news stands now, and soon to hit those in the US.

What’s been the main enabler for the various improvements you’ve made in Reach?
Marcus Lehto It’s a variety of things. It’s not more time - that’s for certain! We had better artists, more staff capable of doing better things, we’ve been learning, improving our skills and learning how to push better looking things in our engine, and of course our engine’s been improving radically.
Joseph Tung We took a different approach to the 3D art pipeline compared to Halo 3. It’s yielded significantly better results.

ML We are definitely bending the Xbox as far as it'll bend, taking every advantage of everything on the CPU and GPU, and every bit of memory in order to produce the look of Reach beyond anything of Halo 3. We're pushing it as far as we can go. With every iteration we understand what more we can exploit with the hardware.

Halo’s wide open environments are very different to the corridors of games like Modern Warfare 2 - how do you go about designing them to have the same visual impact?

ML We take an approach where we would like to have more content spread wider throughout the environment instead of a few pieces of content up close to the camera, so we're not about only having two or three characters of a certain type on screen at any time with tons and tons of detail on them. Because that's not what really matters to the evolved gameplay experience. It's getting a wider breadth of characters, vehicles, weapons, all effects and vistas and the environments. We don't shortchange the environments. We don't limit the player to an isolated area, and everything outside that is totally faked. No, you can get into those nooks and crannies and use them to your advantage.

Brian Jarrard And now players can fly the camera out to any point and look at it – stuff you never had to worry about before, starting with Halo 3. Everything can now be explored, down to the nook and cranny. That's a curse and a blessing.

ML That's a pain in the ass!

BJ Remember that first time we flew that camera in replay up into the interior of a Pelican, which is right up in the sky? Normally you wouldn't need to texture it, but now you can see everything. It's definitely exponentially increased the amount of work we have to do.

ML Definitely. We had to increase our staff, we had to hire additional artists, animators and engineers to pull this off. There was a considerable amount of work in revisiting all that content we moved over from Halo 3. There's nothing we haven't touched. We originally had this process called buffing we were going to do, like, to buff it up and shine it to make it look better. Scrub the shaders and that would pass? No. It didn't turn out that way, and we ended up having to rebuild everything from scratch to get what we were looking for.

More at Halo: Reach - Gutting The Engine | Edge Online

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Bungie's Marcus Lehto discusses some of the new stuff on Reach:
http://gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/01/25/halo-reach-dev-commentary.aspx

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New screens of the game

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Some details of Halo: Reach revealed in this Q&A

Frank O’Connor Answers TeamXbox Reader Questions - Xbox

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Here are the most important, translated facts:

- GamePro was able to play 2 full missions of Halo: Reach

- Self-sufficiency and a darker flair are the fundamental elements.

- The story takes place on the planet "Reach", will have its "own character" and is brought to life thanks to inhabitants and localities

- Halo: Reach is set to only play on the planet surface. There will be no underground or space levels.

- variety in locations: hilly territories, a gothic flair building on a wooded level, clinical labs, dark industry complexes and big city districts.

- new, different cutscenes. Bungie wants to get a shaky hand camera feeling to create a more "dirty" feeling

- Motion Capturing is first introduced to the series

- Enemy Design: Primar goal was to create cruel and evil appearing alien enemies.

- New enemies include the "Skirmisher" which resembles the shackal from the original Halo.

- Bungie plans to double the amount of visible enemies onscreen.

- Halo: Reach's graphic engine is NOT new. It is a heavily modified Halo 3 engine.

- New weapons include a more slim assault rifle, a middle distance designated marksman rifle (DMR) and on the Covenant side, a "Needle Rifle" with familiarities to the "Needler" from previous games.

- A new helicopter-like and heavy armoured flight vehicle named "Falcon" will be included aswell. Creative director Marcus Lehto says its like the "Warthog of the sky"

- contact with civillians plays a more important role.

- brandnew weather system

- new sprint function for longer distances.

- very good AI

- GamePro summarizes: Halo: Reach has the look and feel of Halo 3, combined with the very best elements of Halo 1 (big levels, feeling of freedom) and Halo 2 (fights). The new elements play in fine with the rest of the game and have been cleverly thought through.

- No info on multiplayer yet.

Source - New Halo:Reach facts from GamePro | Rely on Horror

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As the blockbuster prequel to the best-selling Xbox franchise of all time, developed exclusively for Xbox 360 by acclaimed developer Bungie, “Halo: Reach” puts you front and center in the fateful moments that forged the “Halo” legend. As part of Noble Team, a squad of heroic Spartan soldiers, you will be called upon to defend the planet Reach, humankind’s last line of defense between the terrifying Covenant and Earth.

Starting on May 3, the “Halo: Reach” public multiplayer beta will give you the opportunity to drive the latest advancements in multiplayer gameplay in the blockbuster franchise that started it all on Xbox LIVE. Access to the beta will be available through the “Halo 3: ODST” game disc on Xbox LIVE.

Check out the Halo Reach box artwork!



Halo: Reach Beta Launches in May - Xbox

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Some interesting information about Halo: Reach straight from X10 thanks to Joystiq. They were impressed with the game and say it looks amazing in motion.

- Bungie showed a test animation of a battle between Noble Squad, eight marines and 30 Covenant -- it was even more impressive looking than it sounds.

- The game is pushing about four million polygons more than Halo 3 overall, we're told, with a completely re-written animation system and A.I.

- From the stills and footage we saw, it's on track to deliver -- the game looks phenomenal.

- Revamped game engine and A.I. will allow Reach to adopt a more "sandbox" style within its levels. They're going to be much less linear, he said, and much less scripted.

- We'll say it again, the game looks amazing in motion.

The Mind Channel: Halo: Reach looks Amazing in Motion, Pushing 4 million polygons more than Halo 3

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X10 First Look: Halo: Reach (Xbox 360)

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it's like a COD MW2 HALO upgrade. They even have there own GHOST character.

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Newest screenshots