Halo: Reach is one of the most anticipated games of the year. Let's be frank: That pesky Kratos fella aside, it's the most anticipated game of the year.
CVG recently sat down with the game's creative director Marcus Lehto and community boss Brian Jarrard to get the full story behind the mammoth release.
In this first part of our interview, the pair discuss the legacy of Halo - and whether Reach can match up to its classic predecessors...
What makes Reach not just a sequel? Why isn't it 'Halo 4'? Marcus Lehto:When we were coming up with ideas and dreaming up what we were going to do after Halo 3 ended, we had a team break off. They were working on ODST and I took the other team and we started conjuring up all of the possibilities set in front of us.
Sure, we could have continued on with the series and thought of some other crazy paths, but what we really wanted to do - and this was an idea that came across the plate early on for us and that we immediately fell in love with - was the idea of going back to before the first game.
We wanted to make a prequel to the original series, back to the time before Master Chief, back to the origins. And Reach, as a fictional planet, was just a great candidate [to] play around with. It's such a rich world, with such a great fiction surrounding it. We were like: "Okay, that's it. We've just got a lot of things we can do there so we can build an immense story with it."
Does it feel different than any other Halo game? Is it scarier? ML: Sure. I mean at the core it's a Halo game. We're not going to disturb the foundation of what's so good about Halo and what our fans have come to love - but totally this is different.
We're telling this story about the fall of a planet with 700 million people that died. It's a scary story overall, with the Covenant having come down on you and blasted the entire place. From the beginning you know the end. That's part of what's so intriguing about the story within [and] what's going to be interesting about all the characters on each side, what's going to be interesting about the things that they dealt with, the things that they were faced with, the troubles and the horrors that they saw during the fall of Reach.
And we wanted to take it, visually, just a little bit darker, you know. We don't want to go like, saturated in darkness and warring worlds - it's still vibrant and light.
But we want people to fall in love with the planet and make it feel like, this is a real place, people really live here, there are actually cultures that live on this planet.
By the time you make your way through the campaign and unveil the story you actually have a sense for what this planet was and actually care about it more. Things you see along the way are pretty scary as a result.
So it is a darker tone overall, absolutely. We're taking a more serious approach with how we handle our dialogue and how we handle the Covenant itself - to make it kind of fresh and new and terrifying. It's definitely one of the major roles of the game.
You came out earlier and said this is going to be your last ever Halo game, is that correct? Does that put you under added pressure? Brian Jarrad: Yeah. I mean, officially we can say that our next game after this is not a Halo game at all. It's going to be a brand new world a brand new experience from Bungie, something that, when the time comes, we're going to be super excited to talk about.
You know, it might be premature to say we'll never ever, ever make Halo again. We sort of have a little special place for Halo in our hearts. But for the foreseeable future, I mean, this is it. I think you're right, there is a degree of pressure there but I also think that inspires our team.
If we don't ever come back to Halo again, we better damn well make sure that our last game is the best one ever. Let's set that bar really high and at least leave our fans something really special.
Would you say some elements of the title are like a re-imagining of bits of of Combat Evolved? ML: It's absolutely fair to say that. Taking the fiction back to the events just prior to Combat Evolved, we have all the right candidates in front of us. We knew that at that time the Elites were the ones in command. We wanted to re-imagine them and make them feel a little bit more fresh and new to the players - and it's the same with the Covenant.
We've taken a new look at the characters, we've rebuilt them from the ground up in some cases - animating them differently. But we've still kept that core, some of that elegance we saw back in Combat Evolved.
BJ: At the beginning, Bungie looked at not only Combat Evolved but every Halo game. We sort of dissected what the core of the game was, what things really defined the experience. We wanted to carry that forward and keep building on it.
Not only does [Halo Reach] have the Elites from Halo: Combat Evolved but I think we hear from our fans there was an air of mystery and wonder and exploration about that game - the openness of it the encounters and the environments.
That was definitely one of the original goals for Reach - to kind of get back to that awe-inspiring sense of mystery and exploration, but still carry everything forward - from the characterisation of ODST and we how we spent more time on the story in that game to all the community online innovations we brought in with Halo 2 and 3.
Ideally, it's taking the best of what we've done. It's a Halo Greatest hits, really.
ML: There have been some amazing memories from over this past decade. I was there on the very first day of Halo, back in the Fall of 1997 when we started this, when it was just me and two other guys.
We've seen it grow beyond our wildest dreams. And we're definitely taking all of the best parts of the series and packing it into Reach.
Check back for part two of our interview tomorrow, where we discuss the future - both for Bungie and for the Halo series
I hope MC pops up again in Reach if this is truelly "there last halo 360 game" i want master chief just to rear his head and save you and a whole team of other spartans by himself ect. cann't wait of Reach although i won't by on day 1 it will be a get and no matter what it will be a great game
mass effect was most anticipated by harcore fans as sadly how ever brutal and awesome GOW3 will be they cannot really improve on GOW2 in anyway really. and thus will be a small let down. this is post script by the way
I think Mass Effect 2 has already claimed my GOTY- and it's only February- but I'm sure Halo: Reach will rank right up there... but Alan Wake's looking pretty awesome too... and I'm loving the look of Splinter Cell so far and... and... the possibility of Gears 3 and Fable 3... AND- (passes out).
Yeah, the open battles were fantastic. I still remeber the end of the reversed control room level where there was a tonne of Elites (including the invisible) among Coventnant forces along with 2 tanks fighting the Flood. It was a great tactical battle in deciding which to take out first (Tanks with a rocket launcher or Elites with a sniper rifle etc).
I was disappointed with the sequels though and thought Xbox 360 would do more than 2 Scarabs and some Phantoms in its biggest open battle.
Reach should be amazing and one thats top of my list (Just need another Xbox 360 now).
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