Something I posted on Bungie's forum. I believe all those Spartans we saw, except for Lone Wolf, are Spartan IIIs of Alpha Company who survived Operation PROMETHEUS.

Very interesting read, i'm cant wait to find out who the hell the Noble team are.

I'm on the Halo Reach forums aswell.

You're saying they're all Spartan IIIs expect #6, there are people saying that the Noble Team are all Spartan II's, only #6 is a Spartan III but he/she was good enough to work with Spartan IIs.

I havent read the books so all this speculation is rather confusing, I'll just wait till Jan when they release more info lol.

Nah, #6 is absolutely a spartan III, but I firmly believe that all of noble team, except #6 are Spartan IIIs from Alpha Company

All of Alpha Company was suppose to have died on Operation PROMETHEUS.

I believe Lone Wolf to be from Beta Company.

I hope I won't have to read the book to understand what the heck is going on.

You most likely won't need to, but I guarantee that your having read the book will surely enhance your experience.

Halo : Fall of Reach and Halo : Ghosts of the Onyx are absolutely required reading to get the most of Halo Reach the game. Also, reading them won't feel like a chore, believe it or not.

I didn't appreciate the Halo series as much as I do now, until I read those books. You get a true understanding for what the heck makes a Spartan so amazing, what types of augmentations they underwent, just how mindblowingly amazing Mjolnir armor truly is. I learned things about Spartans and the Mjolnir armor that you absolutely never learn from the games, and it makes you all the more excited to play anything Halo related.

It's too bad the games have never really given the same kind of care to such things.

Honestly, after re-thinking all of the games, Halo : Combat Evolved easily did the best job of this. A number of the things present in Fall of Reach are present and accounted for in Halo : CE. Keyes' tendency to play with or chew on that pipe of his, was also present in Halo : CE, at the start of the game I believe.

It, overall, just gave off a very similar vibe to the book I thought. The part where the chief looks at the helmet footage to see what happened before he got there also gave off a pretty nice vibe.

Still, a Mass Effect-level of additional info would be awesome.

Halo Effect RPG Bring It!!!!

I think it would be pretty cool to utilize the sheer depth of lore available at Bungie's disposal with regards to the Halo franchise. Perhaps either leaving around scattered records/documents a la Bioshock/Batman: AA for your character to find, which detail the Spartans' history or whatever, or simply having a kind of codex as seen in Mass Effect.

Bioware, with what they are doing with Mass Effect, would blow minds with a Halo RPG.

Grabbing abandoned military AIs would be a good way to do that, most of them are pretty basic.

I honestly think something in the vein of what Bioware does with the Mass Effect series is the most obvious progression or branch off point for the Halo franchise, if I ever saw it. It allows those numerous story driven moments of curruption or ultra secrecy inside the UNSC or ONI Section 3 to truly come through without feeling as if they're doing too much for a shooter.

Hell, it would be a perfect opportunity to toss in that cam probe that Master Chief uses so often in the books, and hooks directly to his helmet to see if an area is safe before he or his team moves in. There's so much potential for it. As a matter of fact, it could be like putting one of their major books around the Halo universe, a new one, of course -- in game form -- not so different from Mass Effect.

I'm reading through First Strike now -- and man, the level of potential is just mind blowing -- mind blowing.

Don't get too bent out of shape. I ultimately don't really care so much about how exactly they achieve whatever impressive, or lack there of, look they'll achieve with this game, but what I do know for a certainty is that there are games currently available that are doing such a fantastic job from a visual standpoint, that I don't find what I see in that Reach cutscene as unachievable as some may think.

Will it look every bit as good as that? Who knows. I have no idea what the Xbox 360 title "Halo : Reach" will look like visually when all is said and done. I do, however, know that there are games currently release with more impressive looking cutscenes than that one. I don't doubt that you're totally correct in stating that better art and better pairing of assets with technology have a great deal to with why I or any other will feel that things we've seen from other games look even better. Can't really disagree with that.

With that said, I look at games like Assassin's Creed 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum, and think to myself that if Reach is anywhere as well off in the aliasing department as those two games are, then that alone will go a long way. I can't believe how technically impressive AC2 is, and yet has so little signs of aliasing. Also, we have to consider what it is we are talking about here. In Bungie's case, I surely understand the doubt. It sure as heck won't be the first time that they say "this is the bar they are reaching for in actual gamplay" or "this is real-time" only when see the same scene in the actual retail version of the game, it doesn't look anywhere quite as good.

There's no way gameplay will look that good. However, If Bungie wants Reach's cutscenes to look that good, they can absolutely do that, probably not in real-time, but they can do it. That wasn't some gameplay section of Halo Reach; it was, according to Bungie, just a highly modified cutscene. There are cutscenes in games this generation, on this console, that look leaps superior to that Reach cutscene. Hey, maybe very few of them are pulling that crap off in real-time, perhaps they are just using in-game assets with various added effects and are spitting it back out to us gamers in the form of a high quality video, all the while claiming it's "real-time" when it isn't, but hey at least it looks impressive either way. I'd love for the cutscene to be possible in real-time, but if it isn't, I say go ahead and use the exact same tricks so many other devs are obviously using in their games. If a lot of the insane cutscenes in Batman Arkham Asylum and Force Unleashed are real-time, then a lot of devs have a lot of catching up to do :)

All I really want from what I saw in that reach trailer is a few things, really. I know we won't get something that looks that unbelievably clean, it won't happen, I know that. Not because it isn't possible -- other devs have already done it this gen, I know, I have the games. It probably won't happen because Bungie apparently seems to pride themselves on their cutscenes being true real-time without any tricks in their final retail builds.

All I really want is that awesome animation, that is light years ahead of the stuff in Halo 3. I would also like to see those awesome character models, or at least models that come very close to that. Don't want another random switch from what I saw in the original Halo 3 reveal trailer. The face models are fantastic and believable now. The cutscene was handled better than just about every single cutscene in the entirety of Halo 3.

Can you imagine what this Halo 3 cutscene could've looked like with Reach's quality?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPEYImyvKBY

To hell with the graphics from the reach cutscene. Just the better character modeling and animation alone would've skyrocketed this cutscene.

Alright, calm it Kermit!

You seem determined to rain on this parade, so to speak? :P

I agree opt is does not matter how they get the look as long as it's close using the same models and animations I'll be very happy

Bungie also talked about the specific facial animations being some new tech they are using, so that leaves no excuse for it not being in final game.

+1 agree

Game Informer Jan 10th is what im hearing may have the story?

lol! It seems that Bungie always gets a free pass

Yet Bungie games always deliver :)