Q.I noticed while playing the multiplayer that the AI was incredibly advanced, especially in the Elites who seem much more ruthless. In layman’s terms how much of a change have you guys made to ensure these improvements?

Sankey: At Bungie, AI is very, very important, and in terms of getting solid AI for the player to fight against, it is very challenging. We always have to make sure that our games stay ahead of the curve and give the best experiences possible. One of the cool things we wanted to do was bring back the Elites, who are cunning and essentially you know, big space ninjas. So this also gave us a chance to improve the Elites, look at their AI and kick them up a notch.
One of the things you may not have noticed while playing is that in co-op, the game is potentially easier because there are more of you and the same amount of Covenant. But we said, ‘hey, you know what? Let’s do this better so that when you have four players joined in co-op, the AI naturally scales and the enemies become more difficult. So in many ways this is the most challenging of the Halo games.

Q.It seems that throughout the game there are a lot of features that echo all the games in the past. Were you trying to make Reach a nostalgic game for the fans?

Sankey: Absolutely, because it naturally fits into the theme of it being a prequel but there’s certainly things about the previous games tat we wanted to bring back to the fold. Things like, exploring wide open frontiers like in Combat Evolved, we said, ‘let’s bring back that for players to experience’.

Battles are epic
So for Reach we felt we had to come full circle to the first Halo because that’s where this story ends and certainly as you play through the Reach campaign we do start to paint a picture of the first game. That was very fun and satisfying for us to do.

Jarrard: We have talked about this in that we wanted to make this game for ourselves and make it the best Halo game we’ve always wanted to play by incorporating all of the features that we’ve enjoyed from over the years.
But we definitely do view this as a final send-off to our fans as well and certainly with all of these new customisation options it’s out hope that by giving our fans such a broad range of tools to work with, that they’ll keep the Halo: Reach experience alive well beyond the time that Bungie is no longer involved.

Your first mission “Noble Actual” sees the squad travelling to a UNSC outpost that has mysteriously fallen silent. The attention to detail as you trek across the Reach farmlands is astounding, from the native fauna that breaks from the undergrowth and runs away as you approach, to the civilians who talk to your squad and reveal information about supposed Covenant activity.

At this point the rain starts and the sweeping orchestral soundtrack takes a sinister turn, truly delivering a sense that something is rotten in the state of Reach. After a few seconds of trekking towards the UNSC outpost, you might have to do a double take and remind yourself that Master Chief is nowhere to be seen.

Everything about the game is reminiscent of the Chief’s outings, from the identical controls, pounding soundtrack and the lush green expanses that smack of Combat Evolved. Once we reach the outpost and the Covenant reveal themselves, we’re suddenly back in 2001, blasting ten shades out of grunts and loving every moment.

From this point, the Spartan’s radio link is awash with desperate reports from Spartan officers all over Reach, each reporting that the Covenant has started attacking. With chaos all around them, the shit truly hits the fan as Noble Squad wades into the fight proper, laying waste to Elites, Banshees and even the odd Phantom here and there. Everyone’s turned up for this final send-off but just as the action reaches its peak, the demonstration comes to a close and we’re left wanting more

If Bungie wanted to make a scripted drag you along for the ride, light featured game i'm sure they could have done a GearsKillZone type looker, but then we would all be complaining.

The game looks great and the feature-set is phenomenal, and i've no doubt the gameplay will put the icing on the cake.

At no point did i say thats what you said

for me and others it looks better than the trailer did then

I like the new look better also, more detail and crisper look.

Also sweet previews :)

I like the new look better also, more detail and crisper look.

Also sweet previews :)

Yeah prefer the new look better but I still miss that warm glow, reading all the previews they all think the game looks amazing.

First up was a presentation showing off the Forge editor, Forge World and the start of the game’s campaign. To put it simply Forge World looks incredible. For those of you not familiar with the Forge mode that appeared in Halo 3 it’s essentially a real-time map editor that allows you to switch between editing and playing. Forge World takes the editor and shows you what it can really do.

Essentially Forge World is a huge empty map designed specifically to be filled with the player’s Forge creations. Don’t worry the Forge editor is still there to some extent in every multiplayer map, Forge World is just taking the concept and putting it on steroids. The world itself is split into five zones designed for building different types of maps, and just to demonstrate what you can really do with the tool Bungie are including some maps built entirely in Forge. Two of these maps will have long time fans very excited with ‘Hemorrhage’ being a remake of the classic map made famous by Red vs. Blue ‘Blood Gulch’, whereas ‘Pinnacle’ is a remake of Halo 2?s ‘Ascension’.

The absolutely huge Forge World aside, Forge itself has had some updates. From what we saw at the event a lot of these are designed to let players build more complex maps, although there doesn’t seem to be any one new ‘killer’ feature added to the editor. Rather they’ve upgraded or added a lot of small features, building out a more comprehensive and usable editor.

With the Forge presentation over Bungie swiftly moved onto showing the campaign. We were only shown the opening stages of the campaign,with your squad investigating a suspected insurgency. Of course anyone who knows their Halo lore will instantly jump to the conclusion that it’s actually a Covenant force, but Bungie still manage to build the suspense. You catch glimpses of fast moving figures out of the corner of your eye and you quickly encounter evidence of firefights.

The story itself looks to be coming together nicely, but the main thing I took away was the graphical fidelity. It just looks great, the water and particle effects in particular. The scale of everything is what impressed me the most, Reach seems huge even if the maps you play in may be a bit more constrained. This also feels a bit more like a ‘living’ world. It doesn’t come close to touching titles like Grand Theft Auto, but you’re not in a world that’s only populated by enemies.

Whilst Reach is a military base, it still has a civilian population. At the game’s start the planet hasn’t turned into a warzone yet, and civilians are still around. In the sequence Bungie were showing your squadmates try and get some information out of a group of farmers who were sheltering from the initial attacks. We were told this won’t be a one off event and that civilians will be part of the story and world. Civilians are nice, but what stood out as more interesting was Reach’s wildlife.

A couple of ostrich looking creatures tagged along with the squad at a few points, making Reach seem more than just some random planet. In fact Bungie seem to have gone quite some way to add a unique character to the planet, as well as making the environment seem inhabited little details in the background make the world seem a little more real than in previous Halo titles.

If forge was the only thing on the disc, and all you could do is play custom forge games, you'd pay $60 for it? Sorry that's nuts :P

People pay that much for 6-8 hour single-player games that offer very little replayability. $60 for kick-ass mp gameplay on countless user-generated mp maps and modes seems far less nuts.

Good point Grift, I'll never understand that myself. No matter how great a game is, if it's only a short single player experience then it's a rental for me. Even Mass Effect 2 and God of War 3 I rented b/c I knew the game wouldn't last me very long, no matter how fun.

I've also never been someone who can replay the same SP over and over again either though. MP is just far far more fun IMO.

Racing games are probably the only game that I can get one or a couple hundred hours out of the SP part of the experience.