Halo Reach

projectmayhem

Loads of Halo Reach info released (or more to the point, leaked early from a magazine exclusive)

Data Burst

*Halo Prequel
*Halo 1 Era Weapons
*Large Scale Battles
*Elites Are Bad
*New Engine
*New Weapons
*New Enemies
*New Vehicles
*New Context Sensitive Assassination Kills
*New Perk Like Armour Module System

Intro
A prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo: Reach chronicles one of the most cataclysmic events in the Halo universe – the destruction of the planet Reach.

Halo Reach is the next major installment in the Halo franchise being developed by Bungie Studios. Halo Reach will depict a squad of SPARTAN supersoldiers, known as Noble Team, as they fight to defend the human fortress world of Reach when it comes under attack by the Covenant. The game was announced at E3 2009 and is scheduled for release in fall 2010, with a multiplayer beta to be released sometime in the spring of 2010

Overview
Halo: Reach is a project from Bungie Studios that will be a prequel to the original Halo: Combat Evolved. It will take place on the planet Reach, a human fortress world and the base of the Spartan-II program. The trailer shows the colony on Reach being attacked by Covenant battleships orbiting the planet.

Reach will be built on completely new technology, not reusing the Halo 3 engine like ODST did. In addition, Reach has been worked on since the completion of Halo 3 and, if released on schedule in 2010, will have had a full three-year production cycle. Halo: Reach will also be the last Halo game Bungie develops before working on a new, unannounced IP. Future Halo games will be developed by 343 Industries.

Story
The game will depict the battle for Reach, an event which happens directly prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. However, the game will not tell the story of Master Chief or the story of Spartan Blue Team from the previously released novels, instead focusing on an all-new group of Spartans, Noble Team, that is called into the fight.

Noble Team
Noble Team is a six-man squad comprised of Spartan-IIs and one Spartan-III. The squad appears to be a mixture of different Spartan classes, with two different Spartan-II classes represented, and at least one Spartan-III. Each member of the squad appears to have a specific skillset, although if this will transfer over into gameplay remains unknown. The leader of Noble Team is Carter-259.

Multiplayer
Buyers of Halo 3: ODST will receive an invite to the Halo: Reach multiplayer Beta at a later date. The game will have its own unique multiplayer, separate from that of Halo 3. The Halo: Reach beta is set for Spring 2010. According to a Child’s Play auction listing from Bungie, the beta will not launch before April 28th.

And finally, an actual screenshot. Looks lovely, not jaggy and out of date like Halo 3 & ODST!

I'm legitimately exited now

Mickeroo

if you're that excited about the screen shot then you'll love this Seems you play as this lone wolf guy and not master chief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqRkavKahrs

Vyse

projectmayhem wrote: »

And finally, an actual screenshot. Looks lovely, not jaggy and out of date like Halo 3 & ODST!

I'm legitimately exited now

Here's a screenshot from Halo 3. Unfortunately the final game didn't look quiet as good.

I am a Halo fan so do have high hopes for this. Hopefully it can recapture some of the Halo 1 magic.

silvine

Let's hope the online ranking system is improved and they put in more challenges.

happyfriday74

Cannot wait for this!

Enjoyed everything the halo series had to offer so far. Bungie can be accused of milking the franchise but so long as they keep putting out quality milk they can knock themselves out!

Halo multiplayer is sublime, looking forward to the beta. The campaign is always an experience( with the odd dozy flood heavy map), if anyone has tried taking on 2 scarabs with 3 of your friends I dare you to name somthing more exhillerating!

RAIN

The multiplayer Beta is the only reason I still have ODST at home. Can't wait, Halo 3 still has moments of pure beauty in it engine, just go to Bungie.net and look at some of the screen shots people have taken over the last 3 years.

projectmayhem

RAIN wrote: »

The multiplayer Beta is the only reason I still have ODST at home. Can't wait, Halo 3 still has moments of pure beauty in it engine, just go to Bungie.net and look at some of the screen shots people have taken over the last 3 years.

Easy to get a still image that looks good, but playing the game is a jaggy wreck at the best of times. No AA put into the engine when the 360 can clearly hack through good game code easily. Just look at stuff like Bioshock and more recent titles.

The new engine would want to be good!

happyfriday74

IN all fairness, the E3 ingame trailer for halo 3 did not look the same as the finsished product. That aside, your not going to get a more complete FPS package on the xbox then a halo title:

Fun engaging campaign
4 player co op of the above
Excellent online multiplayer
Forge
Lan parties for 8 with only two tv's and two xboxs
theater

Also unconfirmed but likily is firefight mode for halo reach, add that to the above you have it all

muppetkiller

I can't understand the excitement...Halo was a great game but nothing spectacular.
Halo 2 , 3 , Wars and ODST where just the same game with new levels...repeated storylines with different characters...
Talk about flogging a dead horse.

This game will a generic Shooter. I'm sure it'll be good fun for an hour or two but nothing special. What they need to do is make it a massive multiplayer type game (Like Battlefield 2) Huge Covenent V Marines battles.

happyfriday74

Halo 1...it had been out about a year when I played it. A mate brought his xbox over to mine to play before we headed out on my birthday.

As there were 10 of us ,instead of playing it we knocked down to the local had a skinful and woke up with the the hangovers to end all hangovers.

We had it a bash at it that morning and everyone was so blown away every single mate I went drinking with the night before got themselves an xbox based purely on playing the game that morning within a week. I've never seen a game have that effect on peopel before!

mickoneill30

muppetkiller wrote: »

Halo 2 , 3 , Wars and ODST where just the same game with new levels...repeated storylines with different characters...

You have played those 4 games haven't you? Because Wars is nothing like the other 3.

happyfriday74

I have heard mixed feelings about wars, but I enjoyed the other 3 immensly. My brother has it and he said to bash through it with a mate on co op and then return it to the shop.

ODST if they had not included firefight would have been a letdown(while the campaign is fun). Firefight works wonders as the combat in halo is so fluid and engaging.

Love the new Reach info, the geek inside me is counting the minutes to Fridayw hen bungie might throw us a few more breadcrumbs. I've actaully got back into playing halo 3 matchmaking in the last few weeks as well!

Chairman Meow

New Shots

Chairman Meow

Chairman Meow

Mitch Connor

That ghost from MW2?

neilthefunkeone

The first couple above are just drawings, not screenshots..

Really enjoyed 3, was my first installment of the Halo series.. Didnt like ODST, so hopefully this will make it up for myself!!

Of course i will be grabbing it as soon as it hits the shelves..;)

DirkVoodoo

As much as I like Halo, this is all starting to get very familiar.

When you hear Bungee going on about new directions, new engine, new character designs that are more terrifying and a Halo game that is not a sequel, yet see screenshots like those above, it really begins to sound a bit desperate. Milking the Halo franchise for the last few drops.

Honestly, I find it very hard to see what is so new about all this.

I'll wait for the game to come out, I'm just not going to get excited about it beforehand.

Chairman Meow

Halo: Reach - 3D Art Evolved
By now you've no doubt succumbed to the onslaught of new Halo: Reach information and imagery that's sweeping across the internet and newsstands. The first screenshots from our next game, generated from a pre-alpha build last November, have garnered a lot of attention, buzz and in some cases, furious debate. I tend to agree that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," with each of us forming our own personal opinions of what is and isn't visually pleasing. However, regardless of your personal artistic preferences between the new direction of Reach compared to that of our prior Halo games, there's no denying that with a powerful new technical foundation, our incredibly talented art team is pulling out all the stops and pushing our content to brand new heights.
At this stage in development, the most obvious and striking examples of the asset evolution can be found in Reach's sandbox. Thanks to some handy comparison imagery and insights provided by 3D Art Lead Scott Shepherd we can get a better sense of exactly how much improvement is in store for Reach.
What's Old is New
From the beginning, the Bungie team had the goal of really raising the bar and building the defining game in our Halo series, improving and evolving literally every system and asset from our decade's worth of development. The Halo series has spawned a number of iconic sandbox elements and many of them will be making a return in Reach, albeit with brand new visual fidelity.
To save time in production the original plan for the team was to carry over the existing assets from Halo 3 and add a few new polygons here and there and rework some textures to bring them up to the Reach bar. That didn't last long. As Scott explains, "the more we started looking into this, the more we found that realistically we could rebuild each asset from scratch with a huge increase in quality without significantly investing more time."
As new technical systems came online, the Bungie 3D Art team began to rebuild these timeless assets with impressive results.
"In some cases we were able to quadruple the budgets of the original Halo 3 assets, really creating an aesthetic that fits perfectly in the Halo Universe but is 100% unique to Reach and and clearly demonstrates what Bungie is capable of," says Scott.
The image below shows the Assault Rifle as it first appeared in Halo: Combat Evolved then in Halo 3 and finally the new hotness that's coming to Reach. For perspective, the texture resolution is double and the number of polygons is over four times the last incarnation. The AR in Reach actually has more polygons than an entire Marine character did in Halo 3.

(click to enlarge)
But how does the art team harness this new horsepower and create something new without losing ties to the original? As Scott puts it, "it's definitely a balancing act to make something fresh and new but still remain faithful to the parts of it that people love."
"The Assault Rifle is a great example of this where at the start we nearly completely redesigned it. After we put it in the game we got a lot of feedback that while it looked really cool, it just didn't really feel like the AR that people knew and loved. So we actually ended up dialing it back and re-introducing some of the things that made the AR so iconic."
This same process has been followed for all of the "returning" staples. "The rule we've put in place is to always remain faithful to the spirit of the original asset, if not to the letter." Scott continues, "this allows for a high degree of artist creativity and some surprises while still carrying the impact and history of something people have grown attached to over the last decade."

(click to enlarge)
It wouldn't be a Halo game without the Warthog and the new Hog carries forward a tradition upgrades spanning every one of Bungie's titles. (from left: Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3 and Halo: Reach). Click the image above to see the larger resolution to really appreciate the attention to detail that's going into the Reach Warthog.
A Grunt Ten Years in the Making
Working on a prequel to the existing Halo saga has provided some new and exciting challenges and opportunities for our entire team. On the art side, it means going back and having some fun visualizing enemies and weapons that predate the later models seen in the more recent games.
In the case of the newly designed Grunt, inspiration came from a logical place - the early Shiek Wang concept sketches created over ten years ago as Halo: Combat Evolved was taking shape inside a Chicago office building.
Scott explains it further, "We really wanted to push the visual distinction of variants in Reach. One day Eric, one of our artists, and I were flipping through one of the old Art of Halo books and saw a sketch for a Grunt concept that really liked." That Grunt variant, on the far right in the image below, is internally referred to as the "pony keg" Grunt. "Just goes to show you that good design can really be timeless," notes Scott.

(click to enlarge)
I asked Scott which of the returning, newly improved assets has seen the most significant overhaul and it wasn't something he could easily answer.
"This is tough to answer as I feel everything has gotten a pretty significant overhaul. Some of the most obvious are of course the Spartans and Elites. Being the two primary focal points for this story, we really wanted to show off these characters in the best possible light," explains Scott.
The Return of the Elite
From a gameplay perspective it seems safe to say that both internally and externally, everyone is excited about fighting Elites again. These agile, cunning foes really came to define Halo combat and our designers are already hard at work making sure they are every bit as formidable and fun as you remember (and more so).
On the art side, the Elites were treated differently than some of the other returning 3D assets. According to Scott, "we really wanted the Elites to feel more menacing physically." This began with a major re-design starting from a brand new skeleton and new proportions.
"The new Elites got significantly larger, with a greater sense of weight and are much more 'animalistic'," explains Scott. "A lot of this was driven by the animation team and their vision for how the Elite should move."
You can see the result below and the progress that's been made to the model in each game since it originally debuted in Halo: CE.

(click to enlarge)
While the new Elite and Spartan models do indeed kick much ass, and are clearly the star players in Reach, it was the progression of the troopers that were most striking to me, personally. I certainly didn't recall ole Commander Keyes being so simple and blocky back in the day but it seems like just yesterday we were all sitting around our desks marveling at the new and improved Marine in Halo 3. And now looking back they all pale in comparison to the level of fidelity and detail the Reach team is bringing to the game.
It's unknown yet if we'll have the pleasure of seeing a newly realized , higher resolution Robt McLees or Marcus Lehto trooper, first made famous back in Halo: CE when their real faces were mapped onto soldiers. (Also resulting in some highly collectible action figures.)

(click to enlarge)
Team Evolved
With such a big technical leap forward in terms of the game engine and our own tools, the assets appearing in Reach are definitely going to look better than every before but the tech is only part of the equation. It's the twelve full-time and up to a dozen more contract personnel who wield these tools and this power that are ultimately responsible for the outcome.
As Scott explains, "the tools and tech have grown significantly, in some cases up to four times as many polygons and double the texture resolution, but I really feel the strength of our team has grown just as much."
By infusing talented new hires and improving upon existing infrastructure the art team is "more comfortable with our tools, our hardware and our abilities to make really incredible art," says Scott.
Looking Forward
Of course there's a lot more to Halo: Reach than just much prettier looking versions of existing 3D assets. There's new stuff in store, too. So far you've already seen glimpses of new weapons like the DMR and Needle Rifle as well as the new "Warthog of the sky," the Falcon. Each new item is built with the same painstaking attention to detail as the re-imagined originals, while staying true to the design team's goals and vision for gameplay.
In the weeks ahead we'll be looking closer at these new sandbox additions as well as the major advancements and investments being made in animation and how the team will be bringing these characters, weapons and vehicles to life like never before.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=24541

Chairman Meow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzDJD5yWtzo

Chairman Meow

Mythbusters:

Myth: That cross hair in the first person screenshot is way off to the left! It totally means <insert wild gameplay speculation here>!
Truth: Sorry folks, you won’t be perpetually leaning to the left nor will you be navigating multiple cross-hairs for various purposes. Truth be told, it’s just a good ole fashioned bug. Bug #15163 to be exact.

Myth: I read that every weapon in Reach will now be “hit scan.” Hell yeah!
Truth: Here’s the real scoop, straight from Sage Merrill, sandbox Design Lead for Reach:
“Most of the primary human weapons were moved to hit scan while the Covenant weapons remain as various speed projectiles.”
Currently the Magnum, DMR, Assault Rifle and Sniper Rifle are all hit scan, but other weapons such as the Shotgun and Rocket Launcher are, for obvious reasons, not. When the beta hits this spring you’ll be able to get up close and personal and see for yourself.

Myth: Reach is being built for Natal! (See that crosshair to the left as proof!)
Truth: Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind.

Myth: Reach environments don’t have any decorators and a lot of those textures we saw in screenshots seem like they could use some work!
Truth: The screenshots that recently surfaced were taken from a pre-alpha build that was created last November. A lot of work has happened since then and a lot more work is yet to come. The environment art team is continuing to polish and beautify everything, including adding plenty of decorators. We’ll hopefully be able to share some progress soon.

Myth: The HUD in Reach is yellow!?
Truth: The same pre-alpha build that didn’t feature final textures, geometry or decorators also included one of many earlier iterations of the HUD (which even today is still getting tweaked and refined). As of now it’s no longer yellow and sources say it won’t be returning, either.
Editor’s Note: We did drop in on David Candland, Bungie’s Lead UI designer earlier in the week to ask if HUD customization is something he’s ever considered implementing and the answer is yes. The problem with the multi-colored approach, it turns out, is that it can often blend into the color palette on display in a given environment, rendering it effectively unreadable. Since those color palettes can change dramatically from space to space (and even from room to room), it’s more problematic than just hooking up the technology and hoping for the best.



Myth: Bungie pixelated some super top secret stuff in one of the screenshots.
Truth: Here’s how it really went down:
Sketch: Dammit, I really like this screenshot and it’s the only passable first person asset we have right now, but it’s got all this extra UI text in it that’s not in campaign.
Urk: Just pixelate it. Everybody will think we’re hiding super top secret stuff.
Sketch: lol

Myth: The Assault Rifle has a 600 round capacity and the Magnum tops out at 50!
Truth: That’s what it shows in the screenshots, fo sho, but you should always take that stuff with a grain of salt. Not only are all of those parameters in flux as the team continues to test and tweak, but when us community dudes get into a build, we’re often turning on all kinds of freaky cheats to make sure we can get the right shots in time to deliver. If that means we want to rip through a sequence without having to scrub for ammo, we might flip some dials of our own.

Myth: Some of the high resolution assets released on Bungie.net feature flipped and mirrored art. Bungie is lazy!
Truth: Astute observers noticed that the weapons on display in our high resolution galleries feature flipped/mirrored art. Seems a few people weren’t too happy with that. Seems even a few went as far as to call our team lazy. Suffice to say, those people are jerks and the texture issue on display was identified long before we published the shots. It’s definitely gonna be fixed for ship.



Myth: Sketch called the Falcon, the “Warthog of the Skies.” Does that mean we’re going to get to pilot it in campaign and multiplayer?
Truth: Yup.

http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU_012910[/quote]

Chairman Meow

Weapon Sound Clips:

Korvanica

sounds nice,,, always did love the halo sniper sound.... its class!

Zippitydoo

Can't believe I got excited over a few sound clips... but I did. They sound pretty awesome, the unknown one is pretty interesting!

manic mailman

i hope to god reach outshines all the halo games bungie have been harping on enough about it! im a self professed halo fan so i really want it to be the defining game of them all

Gamer Bhoy 89

lol I sold ODST , forgetting about Halo Reach..But I still have that Multiplayer Disc....

Will i be able to play Halo Reach on that Multiplayer disc or am i buggered, and will need to have the ODST disc because a really can't remember where the Halo Reach beta is gonna appear on the games.

yes i am a moron for asking this lol

manic mailman

gamercfc wrote: »

lol I sold ODST , forgetting about Halo Reach..But I still have that Multiplayer Disc....

Will i be able to play Halo Reach on that Multiplayer disc or am i buggered, and will need to have the ODST disc because a really can't remember where the Halo Reach beta is gonna appear on the games.

yes i am a moron for asking this lol

ouch unlucky!your gonna need the campaign/firefight disc to get access to the beta (which wil appear in the "extras" tab when it goes live)