Bungie and the no-win scenario

 

Sometimes it feels like Bungie has been the luckiest and unluckiest video game company for the exact same play they made- creating their timely split into their own twisted Kobayahsi Maru. Although, I guess maybe the five years of burning success so powerful it lead the rest of the industry off a cliff in pursuit could be considered an undeniable grace period. Maybe atrophy truly is the inevitable path of all and we shouldn't be surprised when the thing we love rots and fades to dust. Which can be evidenced by how many series and franchises run out of steam and become unbearable the more they stick around, whilst the graceful bow-outs remain beloved in our hearts and minds. Star Wars is a cringey joke and Avatar the Last Airbender is considered a timeless masterpiece. But I'm getting off track here.

On one hand, Bungie were responsible for one of the most influential First Person Shooter video game franchises of history. Twice. Halo proved to be the progenitor of many of the standards of online competitive shooters that are still sought after to this day, establishing an unforgettable protagonist and branding for their partner console developer for the foreseeable future. They rode that franchise for over a decade, ending with what many consider to be the pinnacle of the franchise as their last main line entry (Halo 3) and what I think is the pinnacle of the campaigns in their side-game release. (Halo Reach) Literally one exact entry before the franchise started going off a cliff with the rough-narrative of Halo 4, affixed with that terrible new faction that marked the beginning never ending spiral of Halo. So 'Lucky Bungie', right?

'Destiny' was Bungie's next port of call and it proved to be their smash hit slam dunk for years, until they decided to throw it to the wayside in order to drum up Destiny 2... which was an even bigger success story! It truly cannot be overstated how influential Bungie were during this period of their life, either. Destiny created the Live Service meta that we're all living under today- with the exception of the battle-pass standard that was borne from over exposure during the 'Fortnite' days. Bungie created the idea of the pseudo-MMO, which didn't over stuff itself with all the 'complex connective infrastructure' or 'social connection facilitating' of a proper MMO but leveraged the constant support and updates to keep an engaged audience coming back and feeding into the product through microtransaction purchases.

But now it seems that very same industry that Bungie helped kickstart is turning into such a minefield that it might have just blown up Bungie themselves. Just as we've seen from the studio after studio twisted into pathetic attempts to copy them, from Avengers to Suicide Squad, this really is an industry of 'all or nothing' that puts everyone on the edge of their jobs with each new release. We've seen companies scarred by their time trying to kick off a Live Service, and the lucky one's get to brush themselves off and slip into an entirely new project stained with only the failure of their time in the mud pit. Destiny, on the otherhand, might just have taken the spirit of Bungie with them if we read most gloomily into the newest developments.

I am talking of course about the several hundreds of layoffs that Bungie, a not-particular giant developer, suffered just very recently under the provision of Sony and all the chaos that has occurred in it's wake. Bungie has lost staff from every corner of their company, stripping economically from every team in a wind-down that couldn't come at a more un-opportune time considering they are, following the competition of Destiny 2's core narrative, moving on to at least two new games in the near to near-distant future. This really the time they should be bulking up, but whether at the insistence of Sony or internal pressure from Investors- Bungie is losing that which gives it that iconic identity- it's talented staff.

Much has come out in the time since- especially considering everyone has had their hands on their hips wandering why exactly this is happening in the wake of Destiny's latest update 'The Final Shape' which by all accounts was a slam-dunk finale for the franchise. Well, it would seem that 'The Final Shape' comes in the aftermath of 'Lightfall', which was the update for which I tried to get back into Destiny only to realise how hopelessly anti-newcomer it was and dropping the thing after a couple of days. (And I played Destiny 1 literally religiously back in the day- they screwed the on-boarding process beyond relief!) Lightfall was an absolute disaster that decimated public sentiment and although it sold, the lost value from it's reception ended up scarring Bungie further than we could have ever imagined.

Reports now say that no matter how well 'The Final Shape' performed, Bungie was due for serious cuts to it's staff anyway. In essence they only kept people around long enough to complete their work on the game before kicking them to the curb with the power of god- creating another horrendously bizarre visual of a seemingly successful product resulting in mass layoffs. (Thanks for starting that trend, Microsoft!) Now I'd say public sentiment is more shaky than it has ever been before, with people wandering if there is even a future for Destiny from this point forward- or if the game is going to enter a holding pattern of no expansions for the foreseeable future. And to be honest- doesn't that seem like exactly what they're planning? Keeping the team around just long enough to finish the narrative and then gutting them? Sounds like 'wrap up' behaviour to me!

Of course in this most volatile time it's easy to point fingers. Fingers at the fans for not supporting the game at a troubling time and instead jumping on the reactionary train, fingers at the executives for refusing to take paycuts in hopes of saving some of the layoffs because (I quote) "We're not that sort of company", (yikes!) and fingers at Sony for being the paymasters that should really be taking care of one of their biggest currently in-house studios instead of putting them to task like this- especially considering they simultaneously expect Bungie to be leading their online-gaming efforts for the foreseeable future. (Or does Sony really expect Concord to pop off? A game of such negative rizz I had to look up it's name? Fat chance there!) But at the end of the day, maybe we should point the finger at karma itself- for coming to reap what it's sown.

Is Destiny depreciating?

The Mountains fall.

You'll often here me talk about the unshakable titans of the gaming industry that are infallible and never wrong, especially when they're wrong. I'm talking about foundational institutions like Call of Duty, like Assassin's Creed, like Fifa- franchises that could roll up to your home and shoot your mother in the face and you'd still buy their next title because we're that conditioned to bow down before them- sad as that is. (Hell, I'm playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla currently despite having an absolutely miserable time slogging through that swig of pre-digested pig swill that was Odyssey.) Games like that don't live in the same world as ours. They don't show weakness, never bleed and will never die. For a time I considered Destiny to be one among their number, but it seems I spoke too quickly because from everything we're seeing Destiny is heading along the path of destruction- which very well could just be the spark of a new beginning- but it could also just be a death knell.

Destiny is an important game to the games industry, not just to Bungie who own it. Why? Because it's the single most successful thesis in favour of the 'Live Service' model of business which is the favourite keyword of every heavy-set games industry executive of the day. Destiny introduced the concept to a lot of us, popularised the 'always adding content, keep weekly player numbers' mind set and raked in a simply vile amount of capital doing so. They even lied and re-released the game again- pretending they didn't promise not to do exactly that when launching Destiny 1, and still managed to stay a juggernaut for the industry. Hell, until Cyberpunk rolled around Destiny was testers favourite benchmarking game, it still has a highly competitive 'first raid competition' community every time a new one drops- and some truly insane people out there make entire online communities deciphering the half-vomit fan fiction train wreck this franchise calls a plot. (Okay it's not... actually, the more I think about it- it actually is that bad. Yeah... Destiny lore blows.)

So you can imagine what an absolute shock to the system it was to learn that Destiny's Bungie just laid off 8% of it's workforce, about 100 people, in it's personal contribution to the worker firing frenzy that the tech sector is going on throughout 2023. 100 People? How? Isn't the game painfully successful? Doesn't Bungie have enough money to pay for the upkeep of it's many many staff, or at the very least have enough to not have to surprise lay-off people one day before they lose medical coverage so that the company can... seriously do they get anything out of doing that? Or is that just the sadistically inhuman flair for the revolting evil that lies at the hearts of every executive bleeding out for no reason? My question stands: what could be going on in the world of Destiny to justify the letting go of so many staff? Well- given the numbers Bungie pulls there actually is no justification whatsoever, but what would the executives put down as their reasoning when email their prep lawyers in case of any sudden 'wrongful termination' lawsuits? (They've already got one on the way.)

Well the last expansion apparently didn't do so hot. That sounds like a bit of a nothing burger to a company as big as Bungie: "One expansion wasn't well received, big whoop." But when you start to unpack the situation, and remember that Destiny is Bungie's only active game franchise, and that their next game Marathon has been pushed back to 2025 at the earliest and that Destiny is hard-designed to reject new comers to the franchise has roughly as possible so it's imperative they keep the players that they have. Then the concerns start to make a little more sense. If an multi-year developed expansion that was supposed to carry the game for at least 12 months ended up burning out the player base, then Bungie will fill every hit to their only income source being drained. The Executives might have to start diving into the Scrooge McDuck money vault in order to pay for the second Swedish Villa that houses their third family and the maid who is secretly also their fourth mistress. Nah, can't have that- gotta start axing people. It's the only way!

When taking a brief glance over the laid-off staff you'll notice another depressingly familiar trend- a lot of the people gone are exactly the kind of people management would be targeting, and exactly who you don't want gone from a franchise you're trying to revivify. So yes, we're seeing senior talent, the woman responsible for the Halo logo and... wait, no. There's no way! Michael Salvatori? The Michael Salvatori is gone? Okay, I need to preface this bit quickly. Through all my times with Destiny, during the worst of the worst when the original game forced me out of playing the online and held a gun to it's head with a £50 bribe fee- when I swore off the game and jeered at it's descent into mediocrity throughout the long life of two- there was one aspect of Destiny I could never so much as frown at. One gratis so unbelievably brilliant in it's conception, execution and, yes, composition- that I've kept both game's soundtrack on my phone for years now despite never playing them. It's the music, obviously. Destiny's music is cinematically sublime, deserving of a better game to serve alongside. And now it's gone. Vanquished. Caput. Because Michael Salvatori was it's composer.

And to be clear, as far as anyone can tell this isn't a situation of Michael volunteering retiring out of solidarity to his axed colleagues- during the one email exchange we've seen, Salvatori offered his heart to all those that had been let go 'As well'. All this happening whilst their next expansion, the Final Shape, has gone back into emergency development after the recent internal review process only 'whelmed' testers. Bungie staff are terrified that the next expansion is going to cement them down the path losing touch with their piggy banks- I mean fans- and yet they're in the midst of ripping out the heart of the franchise along the way. Staff who understand the game, artists who breathed life into the game, they probably would have sacked Lance Reddick if the man hadn't passed away first. (He'd probably be too expensive!)

After the Sony acquisition things were supposed to be different. Staff were promised that management would fight to make sure they all kept their jobs and that no one would be culled by the Sony scythe in some vapid attempt to assert dominance over the studio. And for what it's worth they were right, Sony never got the chance to start chopping off Studio heads because apparently this is all Bungie Management's doing alone! So all of that scummy 'cutting people off at the very last day before their health insurance coverage runs out' and 'scheduling job cutting meetings the very morning of the event so that no one could prepare'. Or how about 'Letting staff go so that they aren't entitled to options'. That was performed by people who knew their victims. They probably recognised the faces of those they were throwing in the gutter to step over, maybe even met their families, maybe even played enough mental gymnastics about in that warped vacant cage of twisted blackened steel they call the seat of their soul to call themselves their 'friends'. Yet this is how they treated them.

This is an increasingly common story in the games industry currently, even as profits are soaring to untold degrees, cost cutting measures are being made at the slightest set-back and it's getting enough to put everyone on edge as the illusion we call 'job security' is starting to show it's arse. And here's a little   secret: putting artists on edge is not the best way of getting great work out of them... okay, that's not entirely true, a little bit of pressure is exactly what they need: but making them constantly terrified that they're going to lose everything at any moment is certainly not a 'little bit of pressure'. We're heard the doomsayers call about the impending video game crash for a while now, but I don't think that's where we headed. I think we're headed for a slow dissolution of the AAA class as more and more devs peel away into indie studios or into more secure industries altogether, and the when the studios lose all the people they need to keep up their death march development pace and start eating their own tails in order to stay alive, those cold-blooded creepy crooks will have no one to blame but their own rat-ridden 'ideals'. 

Destiny 2 is a mess

What a disaster...

Once upon a time I was a true believer in the vision of Bungie's Destiny. What they sold it as, what they wanted to be, and how we as the players were meant to fit into that vision. A single video game updated over the space of a decade with new stories, expanding scope and systems and an ongoing narrative as we became 'legend'. Of course, then the team gaslit the entire world by releasing a sequel and pretending they never said the 'ten years' thing, but I had fallen out of love with Destiny long before that period. My heart was broken when they got a bit too greedy for their own good and locked me out of the multiplayer under a £50 DLC gate. It took nearly a decade of nursing that wound for me to finally get around to Destiny 2 and take a gander at what it was I was missing, and I came away totally astounded about what an honestly pathetically badly designed mess Destiny 2 is. For a AAA studio with the pedigree of Bungie they should be ashamed over what they call their 'flagship product'.

Let me start by harping on an old issue people have mentioned for quite a while- the utterly moronic way that Bungie choose to 'maintain' their content over the years. As a full throated live service Bungie was of course married to the idea of brief content infusions for events such as seasons or major world events. No great surprise there. Where Bungie pushed themselves beyond taste, however, was in employing that same tactic for core story content. Yes, log on to Destiny 2 for the first time today and be in wonder for the fact you cannot experience the main story of base Destiny 2. That tailor-made campaign about fighting to reclaim the Traveller? Yeah, you get to see it in a half-hearted recap montage, the actual missions themselves are no more. So what's in it's place? Remember the Destiny 1 intro? Slow and cumbersome as it is? Yeah, they copy-and-pasted that with some minor reworks to slide into the new story. Honestly just lazy.

What gets me is that this intro being recycled only really makes sense for someone fresh to the universe of Destiny altogether, as it tells the story of the Guardian being born. When I started Destiny 2 I was greeted to a greatest hits compilation of my achievements in the first game alongside the dates I did them which made me feel very old; essentially meaning Bungie had the means to recognise I was a returning player. But instead of playing a campaign designed to be for returning players, I had to replay my own birth again. See how off-putting that is? On the most basic level of immersion the team has stumbled and failed, and yes: I recognise that Bungie have promised not to remove content anymore with the same energy of a rampant alcoholic promising they won't drink and drive again after causing their second collision casualty- (They shouldn't have needed to be told in the first place) for some reason they refuse to restore what is already gone. What, do Bungie have a 'delete all files when done' policy? Actually, their standards have slipped so far, I wouldn't be surprised.

So Destiny 2 expects its players to be up-to-date with events- even if they're brand spanking new to the game in question. And how do they maintain this standard? What would be the laziest way possible? Well the laziest way would be massive screens of text, thankfully they don't stoop that low- instead we got verbal context dumps. Slideshows and lectures, spitting names and places and events at you with a rapidity that, guess what, makes it all sound like fantasy gibberish. I didn't just play Density 1, I studied that sucker! I got the third party app to read all the codex entries and watched lore videos speculating on why a certain banner was flying from a particular rampant on bloody Venus- I was in the lore trenches! And I can't follow these slide-show presentations for the life of me. What the heck is a totally fresh player supposed to think apart from "Uh oh, I'm not welcome here, am I?"

Destiny 2 borrows from a trend that a lot of modern games have championed, where the UI and presentation is so overstuffed that new players are quickly overwhelmed. And it's depressing to see this issue when Destiny 1 mastered a gorgeously minimalist UX with it's cursor-pointer map, linear progression quests and constrained Tower playspace. I imagine Destiny 2 must have started out like that too, but over the years they've added counters and menus and sub-menus and reminders and context bars and new vendors and new currencies and just so much stuff. Stuff piled ontop of stuff until the result is an ugly confusing mess. Better hope you were there to learn these additions one-by-one because if not... good luck!

But that's just the experience of people who play the base free-to-play package, what about the lunatics who decide they want to throw down some cold hard cash? What do they get for their sacrifice? Well I wanted to experience some of the campaigns, and so I made the fool's gambit of buying the DLC in a package deal, and maybe you shouldn't be selling a package deal for your game if you absolutely cannot figure out how to present that to the player. Whilst getting to grips with Destiny 2, figuring out the tutorial and realising that this game boasts an even looser grip on it's narrative than the first game had, I had to turn off and do something else after a while. And when I came back I was greeted to the most mind numbing design decision of all time.

You see, Destiny 2 didn't load me back up to the tutorial world I was cutting my teeth on. They threw me into Venus, in the starting mission of one of the expansions- after waterboarding me with a lore dump I only realised 2 minutes in was essentially spoiling all major narrative events that had happened before that canonical point. Confused, I exited out the game and loaded back in. What did I get? Another intro cutscene for a different expansion and I was thrown into that campaign. There's no choice, each expansion is forced upon the player before they've had any chance to figure out the basics of the game so that they have no chance to naturally experience the world, get to know the story and their place within it a little bit, and then naturally move onto the new content. Destiny 2 just dumps every possible rule of cohesive and non-intrusive design out of the window.

And I know the reason why. That constant content grind where every single update needs to be immediately followed up with something shiny and new- typically something that glitters on the item store to make a quick buck. All of Bungie's effort is sunk into trying to keep concurrent players buying and spending their time glued to Destiny, they couldn't even spare the brain power to concieve of what a new player has to go through. That layer of new gamer unfriendlyness is a huge barrier to the continued growth of a franchise that is Bungie's only gratis at this point in time, and by the time Destiny 3 rolls around I wonder if they'll still retain the knowledge for being welcoming to new customers. The state of Destiny 2, how it presents itself and what it has become, is a disgrace to a once legendary studio that seems to have shed all it's once glistening talent. I miss the Halo Bungie, man... 

Character Six

What do the numbers mean, Mason?

What do you think of the number six? It's just a number right- same as any other? Wrong! Six is regal, it's ascendant! Six is the number of heroes and protagonists! Or at least, that's what I've been led to believe by a very particular trend amidst entirely unrelated games that I may just be purely imagining. Am I the only one who's noticed this? The fact that whenever you're presented with a vague protagonist who's designation is a single number, the go-to pick appears to be Six? Why? It's one below the most common picked number in the world, I suppose; and calling a player 'Number one' would be too obvious, I guess. But still- Six? Is it the curve of the loop? Half an ouroboros, simulating the cyclical nature of gameplay systems designed to keep the player in a cycle of dopamine hits and craving periods? Am I conjuring a conspiracy out of nothing? No I am not- and let me prove it to you.

Do you remember the Aliens Vs Predator game? No- the one on the Xbox 360! I can only assume most people don't given the fact that it's often totally ignored in lists of prominent Alien-franchise games despite it easily being my favourite. (I haven't played very many, but I'm decently sold on my game's quality anyway.) It was a game consisting of three campaigns, one as a Marine, one as a Predator and one as an Alien. All featured wildly differing playstyles of which my favourite was the Alien playthrough. Not just for the hide-and-seek style of gameplay and the ability to climb up walls, but also for the curious insight into what it was like to see the world through the carapace of a Xenomorph. Of course, the problem with making a protagonist out of an Alien is that they're all designed to look the same so your character would be lost in group settings. Unless... unless the story begins with your Alien being birthed in a test facility wherein you're designated a test number which is burned into your skull for life!

Yes, as you've likely guess that number is Six and for the Alien gameplay campaign you play as 'Alien Six'. There's nothing especially unique or special about Six apart from the fact he's controlled by the player; the game hardly bothers to pay any lip service to the fact he was born in captivity. In fact, when it's all said and done; there's nothing personally unique about Six apart from his number on his head. We could have been placed in the skin of a totally different Alien for every mission and nothing of value would have been lost from the narrative. So why bother? Because we like to think there's narrative consistency, and that we're following one scrappy lad on his journey from captivity to bringing the Weyland-Yutani corporation to it's knees! And for some reason that hero can only be entwined with the player if he has a big Six on his head... apparently...

A much more famous example of this sort of trend that I'm sure most people are familiar with, is the very last all around good Halo game made before the franchise was sold off to it's slow assassins. 'Halo: Reach' is the game that slapped the action out of the hands of Master Chief as he floated through space and brought us instead to before the events of 'Combat Evolved' to the legendary fall of Reach to the Covenant. New locations meant a new protagonist, and this one would be placed in such a position as to be the avatar of the player character rather than another player in this Sci-fi universe. That Spartan would be inducted into Noble Team at the beginning of the story, and thus inherit the recently 'vacated' moniker of Noble Six.

Six has a very special place in the hearts of the community, probably because he or she was designed to quite literally be the player. Whereas Master Chief has a history and a cool voice and personal relationships (or 'relationship' to be more accurate.) Six was a purposefully designed enigma with a secretive past, very few voices lines, and now relationships outside the one's you form in battle throughout the course of the narrative. He or she was a blank puppet for the audiences hand to slip inside of, and thus that character became synonymous to them. And again, he or she just happened to be assigned the 'Six' call-sign. Now not just emblematic of a hero, but emblematic of a character who literally represents the player and community! How illuminating!

And finally there's my favourite example of this inexplicable 'Six' trope. The legendary protagonist of the greatest Fallout game ever made; Fallout New Vegas. This game follows the exploits of a courier working in the Mojave Wasteland, who found themselves tangled up in affairs above their station and being shot in the head and left for dead. Now an uninitiated player might go through the entire game and never connect the significance between the number 'Six' and the player character, but anyone even slightly ingratiated into the community would know that of the many couriers sent on the job that ended up getting you buried, the player was the Sixth. Thus they are forever known within the community with the immutable title; Courier Six.

Imagine having your name and identity totally supplanted by a job you used to do and the designation you just happen to have had assigned during your most traumatic on-the-job injury! And all because the Fallout creators constantly want to make the player character known as 'The Vault Dweller', despite that being the moniker of the original Fallout protagonist, leaving it up the community to decide their new name. Fallout 3 was 'The Lone Wanderer', New Vegas is 'Courier Six', 4 is 'The Sole Survivor'. Of course, Six's name goes a step further. Every single mod on the Nexus seems to have been brought so readily into the community name that in many mods the player is literally just referred to as 'Six'; over their chosen name. (Because some of these mods are voiced and that's a pithy away around addressing the player without using their name.) This time a 'Six' title dangled before, and widely adopted by an entire loving community.

Six is just a simple number, but to video game creatives it is so much more. It is the everything number, used to denote the most important commodity any entertainment venture can gain: it's audience. Whatever it is that is so special about Six, it is clear that the number resonates on a deeper intrinsic level with all who witness it, to the point many are proud to wear it on their chests and back as a symbol of pride and power! Six is a statement. A primalist cry into the unforgiving void that we are real and we exist, and that Six is our creed, Six is our designation and Six is our future. Inside of Six lies all of humanity, condensed into the point of a needle and spun into a whirling pool of dreams. Or this is all a coincidence and I'm crazy.

Oh! So Sony is buying stuff now? Okay.

 Destiny Dark

Okay, now it's time to start ringing those "Monopoly!" alarms, because we are on the verge of something very troubling indeed. It seems I'm not the only who thinks so either, as the FTC are at least looking into that whole 69 Billion dollar Activision deal that was written up from earlier this year, although it's questionable what will actually get done considering most in positions of power over in that country are so uniformed about the world of gaming that they're still trying to figure out how people are fitting an entire arcade cabinet in their little living rooms. But that doesn't stop the actual industry consumers, folks like you and I, considering the impact of having two or three large companies gobble up the world's supply of game design talent and independent studios in order to put them all to work as cogs in some grotesque exclusivity pumping machine. And yes, I know the various promises everyone is making, but we all know how this will really end up going, now don't we?

So in a move that shouldn't really surprise anyone at this point, but which still caught me blinking the morning gunk out of my eye so kinda blindsided me, Sony have declared their intentions to buy Bungie for a little under 4 billion dollars. And saying 'a little under' when talking in the billion sounds wrong, but in the grand scheme of things perspective just goes out the window. (It was 3.6 billion, by the way.) Now my first raw reaction to this news was "Oh my god, Sony just bought Halo!" before remembering that is absolutely not how that works, Halo is owned by Microsoft through 343 and has been that way for a long time now. Still, Sony get another potentially just as huge series (maybe not in number of games but certainly in popularity and potential to compete) in Destiny. And with that the huge purchase bar sort of makes sense. 3.6 Billion for a half a billion dollar-to-make franchise? It seems somewhat reasonable. (I actually don't know how much was spent on each game there, maybe Bungie still have some of those initial development funds left over and this shows a great appreciation in value on Bungie's end.)

And right away I think we can all look at this deal and agree it's a bit- ironic, wouldn't you say? Not in a 'big bad guy about to monologue about the futility of the hero's compunctions' kind of way, but in a 'how funny you ended up going out with my ex after all we've been through' sort of way. Bungie hit it's big stride working alongside Microsoft in order to give the Xbox one of it's flagship, icon-generating, series back in the early 2000s. They were Microsoft's bulwark against the slightly more established and industry-connected 'Sony' of the time, and together they wriggled a place in the current gaming Triumvirate we all still venerate to this day. After that golden period, Bungie moved on to become independent developers working on publishing through Activision Blizzard. Yes, the very same Activision Blizzard that Microsoft just bought! However that relationship broke down a year or so ago so Bungie just narrowly missed falling under the umbrella of their old masters once more.

It's within these independent years, however, that the seeds began to be planted which makes the news of this year not the most 'out of nowhere' twist of all time. You see, whereas one might think that Bungie would cater towards the Microsoft ecosystem with their new series, given the decade of hard forged experience they had with Xbox, in truth it was Sony and Playstation which would come to enjoy the majority of Destiny's love. It's hard to say exactly why this is, but given that the COD series trended to the same way until Microsoft recently snatched it up, I'd put my suspicions on 'influence from Activision Blizzard'. (It was Bobby Kotick in the dining room with a contract stipulation.) Playstation would get early access to weapons, preferential treatment and even an exclusive Atrike dungeon and multiplayer map! That stuff would make it's way to Xbox, but in a few weeks before Destiny 2 launched. (Well thank you so much, Bungie; giving us the table scraps the day before you move out. How utterly magnanimous.)

With this incorporation into Sony proper, it's safe to say that we're going to be seeing more deals like that trickling forward in every substantial future Destiny release as well as whatever game series Bungie looks to make in the near future. (I suspect we might be seeing a more single-player premium-focused brand-new exclusive from Bungie now, as that seems to be the cost of entry into a Sony relationship.) And to be clear, Sony have mirrored the same statements made by Xbox in that both promise neither of these series' (COD or Destiny) are going to suddenly be pulled from competitor's consoles. Not sure if I believe all that, but assuming it's true, this means we're definitely going to start seeing modes, and dungeons and basic game elements, get stripped away from these games so they can provided to the audience of their respective chief pay master's audiences as 'bonuses'. That's just business-based design choices 101; it's inevitable.

How it this going to effect the landscape for gamers in general? Well it's going to make the experience of cross platform users even more disparate than it already is and encourage this fetid sense of class differences between the two that already permeates. It's clear that these tactics are nothing that Microsoft or Sony have marked themselves too good for, and the experience of one side or the other is going to suffer for the cause of corporate mandates. I remember learning of the Strike being kept out of my copy of Destiny and feeling like a second class citizen within this game ecosystem. As in, just because I didn't 'buy the right console', suddenly my money just wasn't as valuable as other player's. A game already lacking in content was now even more sparse for me, someone who loved to go on all the new Strikes. At the end of the day, it's all too easy for some players  (often large swathes of them) to end up as the losers in these territorial bouts, and it really shouldn't be this way.

In Belgium there was a little headline doing the rounds wherein a store that was selling Playstation 5s attached a warning to the isle telling people not of scalping, not enforcing a one-console-per-player mandate, but ensuring people knew that Activision was now owned by Microsoft, and if that would effect the purchasing decisions that would be something people needed to know. It's always a shame when these supposedly huge and confidant companies need to resort to underhanded guerrilla tactics in order to influence players to their consoles, rather than trust in the merits of their machines in what is supposedly meant to be the most 'diverse contrast in console hardware ever in a generation', but it's a forgone conclusion that this is how console makers work at this point. Even brick and mortar retailers recognise and are informing their customers that this is the way these manufacturers are, and we as customers need to be wary.

So the rich get richer and the walls that divide us grow one parapet taller, at least out the other end of this Bungie have had a suddenly influx of an obscene amount of money which they can now wisely invest into new ways of nickel and diming players over event engrams and shaders or whatever this free-to-play new Bungie is up to next. And now it's not even facetiously that we ask: which huge gaming consolidation move is going to happen next? You know, Nintendo haven't gotten in on all the action yet, so I'd say my raised eyebrow is on them. If I were the Big N, I'd be eyeing up Square Enix in retribution for the way they betrayed me back over the original Final Fantasy 7 all those years ago, see how they like making some family friendly exclusives in recompense. But I'm not Nintendo, I'm just another penniless gnat watching giants on piles of gold shower themselves with praise, playing some huge obtuse game of strategy and crushing wide swathes of the consumers as they go. (All of which is fine as long as they remember to chant "It's for the players!" eveey fifth move or so.) What a glorious mess we're all perpetually in.

Halo: Reach Review

 Make it count.

And so, by my own perspective, do we finally come full circle all the way around with Halo: Reach; the story at the end and the beginning. For Bungie, this would mark the very last Halo game they would make before the company would move on from the series altogether in order to pursue Destiny, which they're still trucking away at to this day. 343 were created after Halo 3, the original end of the series, in order to make other Halo projects such as the 'Halo: Legends' anime, whilst Bungie finished up their tenure with the series with two stellar spin-off games, 'Halo: ODST' and 'Halo: Reach'. As this was the last go around, I can only guess it made sense within the studio to go back to where it all started; neatly bookending the narrative into a cyclical nature and leading right into the beginning act of 'Halo: Combat Evolved'. Few can deny the poetic nature of such a sentiment.

For me, coming around to play this game again was something of a nostalgic twist to this journey into previously untested waters. I mean I had played ODST before, but so briefly that there wasn't a single shade of the game I remembered on the second go-around. Reach, however, was my entire Halo world before this adventure. The only Halo game I ever owned, and the only one that I would go onto complete. My history started with the canonical first entry in the series and it would eventually end with the first entry in the series. Well, actually I fully intend on playing Halo 4, but that's kind of like a new separate branch of the franchise, original Halo dies here. And with that added layer of nostalgia and a little better understanding of the significance of this entry, (most of the overt lead-ins were fairly obvious even for a newbie back in the day) I come to this spoiler laden review here today. Those who don't wish to spoil things can congregate in the summary at the bottom of this post.

Gameplay

Halo Reach has always served as something of the gold standard for what Halo games should play like for the longest time in my head. Which is why when I was praising the gunplay all the way back in Combat Evolved when I commented on it's similarities to Reach. Now I'm here, I can honestly say that in raw content things feel as responsive and satisfying as Halo 2 Anniversary Edition; which is to say they're pretty much peerless. The feel of the weapons, the sounds, the impact; everything sings with a smoothness that makes you just want to keep playing for hours, and that satisfying 'pop' of kicking down the enemies shields is magical. I didn't even realise that was something I was missing from fighting exclusively Brute-led Covenant for so long now, but I was. Sure, Brutes had shields too in Halo 3 and ODST; but it just doesn't feel quite the same. There's not that special moment where the clouds clear and you go "ping, the next one is going in your skull", you know? 

Speaking of; wow, does it feel nostalgic to enter the battlefield with Elites again! I didn't realise how separated we'd been until the achievement popped up for slaying 1000 Elites and I suddenly realised how I'd received the equivalent Jackal, Grunt and Brute achievements beforehand. Only this time marks the first time in the series they share the battlefield with Brutes, and that marks one the many reasons why I consider Reach to be one of the most challenging Halo's I've played (Probably mixed with the bullet-sponge half of Halo 2) and a lot of that comes down to great enemy variety empowered by noticeably tough AI. Enemies seem to know to press the advantage on me once they've knocked my shields down and have sought cover, use splash damage with their explosives in order to ward me away from a shooting position, and even put headshot-foiling helmets on their Grunts. Wait- someone cared enough about Grunts to give them protection? And it only happens in the Prequel game? Who did the Grunt race piss off so badly that they got their life saving protection withdrawn for the entire rest of the war?

These enemy combinations, married with the glorious selection of weapons that harken back to the first Halo titles (such as the single-shot DMR and original Magnum pistol) made moment-to-moment combat both engaging and so rewarding. Bonus points goes to the whole 'health bar under the shields that needs to be maintained with health packs' gimmick that the team bought back with Reach which hasn't been with their series since Combat Evolved. (And it makes canonical sense too; because this is an earlier generation of Spartan armour to the one introduced at the beginning of Halo 2. Geez, the amount of lore I just had to shift through to confirm that one fact is ungodly.) I say this with a little bit of bias but also a lot of confidence, but I think that this is the best feeling Halo in the entire series so far. Just as smooth as 2's remaster, but with a more satisfying spread of aliens to shoot. The best of all worlds.

Narrative

Even if you've never picked up a Halo book or comic or anime in your life, having played through the series in order up to this point it's impossible not to have heard of Reach. It's the planet that The Pillar of Autumn just escaped from at the beginning of Halo CE, the invasion that Earth's is compared to during 2 (pointedly commenting how that huge attack is nothing compared to what happened on Reach), and appears to be something of a dog whistle rallying cry for civilians across the universe as ODST features several 'Remember Reach' graffiti scrawls across the ruined streets of New Mombasa. It's clear that Reach is important, just as it's clear that it was once the sight of a great defeat for humanity. Meaning that in choosing to tell this story, Bungie not just picked up the idea of telling the origin story of the Halo games, but of telling a story that's has a predetermined 'loss' built into it that audience is very likely to be expecting going in. So how did they do in balancing that and still delivering a satisfying narrative?

I actually think they did a bang up job. From it's heart, the doom driven plot of Reach conveys the desperation of a people slowly coming to terms with the fact that everyone here is going to die, and Reach helps wrap the player up in this thinking with the use of Noble Squad. For the first time in a Halo game, you are enrolled in a squad of Spartans that you stick with for the majority of the game, Noble Squad, and your every operation is conducted with them at your side. (Carter even mentions how this posting will be different to the Lone Wolf antics you'd apparently performed before meeting them, subtly acknowledging the solitude hero of the main Halo games.) Noble are your backbone, your strong arm and a symbol of your unity as you start to investigate the new Covenant attacks popping up all across Reach. Thus, when the attacks start to build up into the biggest invasion that humanity has ever faced and sorties slip from dire to deadly, it makes sense that members of Noble start being picked off one by one, representing how battered and bruised the whole of Reach is becoming and the slow break of humanities frontline. It's supremely well pulled off.

Behind the chaos is the narrative delving into what Reach's secret military research was exploring, an inevitable story branch designed to further justify this story as a prequel to everything to come in Halo; even more than the setting already does. No matter in what direction you approach it, there would be something unescapably dour about playing a game which is destined to end in total failure for the protagonists throughout the story progression, so Bungie tied in this secondary goal to show how the actions of Noble Team, and specifically you, lead to the torch that Master Chief would pick up to eventually defeat the Covenant. It's a little bit contrived, but the emotionally correct choice to make in order to frame this story neatly into the wider narrative. Honestly, I think that even after my play around the whole series, Halo Reach might remain my favourite narrative in the series with some of the best stand-out set-piece moments colouring the story in. The cinematic drop from just beyond the orbit, the fall chaotic of New Alexandria, that iconic final post-epilogue last stand- it's all tonally on-point for a story about being on the losing side, but not suffering total, unrecoverable, defeat. 

Characters

With the characters of Noble team I think Bungie wanted to give another shot at doing the ODST group mechanic but with a better swing at more memorable people. Not only are their personalities certainly distinct and a little bit more nuanced, but their designs carry the instantly recognisable colour scheme and silhouette you need in order to create a cover-worthy team. Carter strikes a more serious leader of the team then Bungie's last attempt, neatly selling the act of a man carrying the responsibility of a team coming against insurmountable threats with a believable heft. Kat marks the intelligent second-in-command with the reliable tactician pluck, and knack for out-of-the-box solutions which the team needs to rely on in a fight so helpless. Jun is the quiet sniper type, characterised by stoicism and the occasional thoughtful observation. Emile is the shotgun wielding edgelord with the aggressive combat-lust you'd expect, and require, from the assault specialist. And Jorge is the large humanitarian with a heart swollen with empathy and a permanent role as mother of the group. Honestly, I liked all of them and appreciate the fact that the game gives us the chance to spend time with each of them one-on-one before the end (Except Carter) and fight alongside the whole squad as a unit for a couple missions.

They make up a great team with just enough intricacies and character to them for you to become attached. Even Noble Six, the protagonist, feels like they have a purpose to their intentionally neutral lines that you can feel in their delivery. Now none of these characters are hugely fleshed out, of course, this is still a Halo game where the focus is less on character driven drama and more the action- but for what bonding time we did have with the team, I think Bungie spent each second very well for building that all important rapport that made each's death ring with appropriate sadness. You won't bawl your eyes out about any of them, but that hollowness as another body hits the floor always hits home. (Oh, and Kat's death was especially clever with it's shocking, intentionally non-cinematic abruptness; ensuring the audience is just as emotionally battered by the war as the team are.)

The only other major characters from this game would be Colonel Holland, whom is more of the floating voice on the end of the radio, and Doctor Halsey; an eminently important character in Halo lore that is only showing up in person now. Halsey doesn't get much screentime, but still she does a great job in establishing that hard-shelled and emotionally dim edifice of a woman who orchestrated some truly messed up operations during her career in order to get results. It's never explored explicitly in this game, but you can pick up on the morally-dubious-scientist vibe coming off her from the very first encounter, and I love the ability to exude personality like that. I found her mere aura enthralling. Cameo shout-outs go to Captain Keyes, glad to see his small appearance and not-at-all surprised to see him fly down in an active war zone, in person, just to make a drop-off; and Cortana, who says literally nothing. (Her only voice line is recycled words from the beginning of Halo Combat Evolved.) At least we get to see an example of why she, in Halo 3's ponderous introduction scene, said the defining factor for the Spartan she picked is 'luck'; cool way to call back to that line by making the player character of Reach the unlucky last Spartan who had to stay behind.

Level Design

Reach's levels are designed to a standard just above what was established in Halo ODST and 3, which is to say that they are grand with at least one set-piece moment or iconic battle for all of them often with a little extra spice. Some missions have a lot more verticality in their design to them then we're typically used to, 'Oni: Sword Base' in particular, and some levels capture that sprawling wide-open, almost free-form, design we haven't seen too much of in this series since Combat Evolved. (Like both levels set in 'New Alexandria'.) There's even a series-first thrown in there where we get to blast off from the confines of terrestrial gravity and have a duel in space! Followed by your prototypical Covenant-ship assault mission- but with boarding and execution happening in space! It's another adventure with twists and turns at every moment to keep us hooked and never bored.

Whatsmore, the enemy spread throughout these levels are some of the toughest I think the series has ever put together, which I think was probably due both to conscious effort from the team to represent the fall of Reach alongside a genuine side-effect of improved enemy AI and design. The slight buff to Grunts alone really shakes up the balance of the battle just enough to make you more susceptible to Elites and their flanking strategies, Jackals simply slay with their roaming packs of sniper killers baring down on you with deadly efficiency, Hunters have taken a bunch of painkillers before deployment because they are absolutely hell to take down with typical methods (shotgun to the back is no longer a one-shot) and Brutes- actually the Brutes were a total push over in Reach. Maybe that was the tradeoff for everything else the game was throwing at us, they made Brutes the teddy bears of the Covenant army.

And of course, I can hardly talk about Reach without mentioning that iconic swan song of a final level. Where Noble Six, last of his team on Reach, finds themselves in a Spartan graveyard where they are forced to fight until the endless waves of Covenant forces overwhelms them. It's a great way to portray a player character death, putting the power in the hands of the player, and an opportunity to go down fighting. The mission is tiny in actuality, but as one long set-piece it sells it's dramatism flawlessly- particularly with the damage received finally cracking the helmet of the hero and distorting the HUD, showing wear and tear, until a stray explosive finally takes you down and the final cutscene of the last stand plays. As far as cinematic gameplay goes in AAA games- this is the way to pull it off and make the player and the story synchronise for one glorious moment. Truly a series-highlight moment.

Music

Reach marks the return of the series to the grander scores of Halo mainline entries, and whilst I enjoyed the oddball musical cues of ODST, Reach brings back the power-house scores that I remembered from Halo CE Anniversary Edition. Soaring scores at the beginning of the game which give way to quieter, but no-less noticeable, pieces during more ponderous moments during the fall of Reach. It's undoubtedly a different musical language to what Halo 2 was attempting, but one which sells the world of this game just as well in my opinion. Maybe Halo 2's best scores will stay with me for longer, but Reach still gave me chills in it's best moments, just from playing the right tracks at the right time. Definitely better then the slightly too bombastic lean of Halo 3. 

Summary

Halo Reach is Bungie's last Halo game, and in my opinion it soars as one of their best. Painting one of the most important and formative moments in Halo lore was always going to be a tall ask, and I think Bungie took that task as seriously as they could to make a game that would stand the test of time. Characters, Music and gameplay reach that level of mastery which Bungie had been eking at for so long and I have trouble deciding at the greater experience between this game and the stellar Halo 2: Anniversary Edition. This was my second playthrough, and I'd loved to play through again someday, because this is the sort of title I would return to time and time again to relive those lingering gameplay heights and echoing story lows. As such it's hard to give a game like this any less than an A Grade, with an easy recommendation to anyone, not just fans of Halo or FPS heads. Reach serves as a perfect in-road to the Halo franchise, just as it was for me, as well as a satisfying bookend to the Halo narrative. Having not made another Halo since, it's gratifying that Bungie went out on such a clear high. But it doesn't end here and next, for the rounding out of the Master Chief collection, I move onto the great waking of the big green man himself in Halo 4. So fingers crossed for 343's first Halo game. (Reach is going to be a tough act to follow.)

Halo 3: ODST Review

Take my advice, Rookie. You ever fall for a woman, make sure she's got balls.

Wow, I am really just blasting through these Halo games, aren't I? The second I'm done with one I'm blasting away at another like no one's business and already am somehow onto the one Halo game that I actually did play back in the day; Reach. (But that's for later) This will come of as something of a truncated review, because a lot of what 'Halo 3: ODST' does is covered in my earlier Halo 3 blog, and the series didn't totally reinvent itself this time around, however that's not say there aren't still some points worth going over in all of my usual categories. So join me in defining specifically what made 'Halo 3 ODST', in my opinion, a more satisfying campaign than raw Halo 3. (By a smidge) I know, quite the scandalous take to throw out there, but hopefully you'll get the chance to see what I mean in this lightly sprinkled spoiler review. If you don't wish to see the spoilers, the summary at the bottom of this blog is the place for you. Thanks bunches.

Firstly, this is a game that tells a story from the perspective of one of the many ant-like-marines that Master Chief totally ignores in the best case scenario, or indirectly gets killed in most scenarios, all mere roadbumps on his journey to rescue his blue AI girlfriend from the clutches of personified space Covid. The Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, or ODST, are special forces units that don't get fitted with special spartan armour and cyborg implants, and the ways in which Bungie tweaked the gameplay in order to ground the players in comparison to their Master Chief antics is the core of what makes this experience so stark to all of the Halo games. This is the only Halo first person shooter game in which you aren't in direct control of a Spartan the whole time. (Or decent Spartan equivalent; through the Arbiter) and after feeling some of that vulnerability I, in the sado-machoistic way that I often do, felt myself really gelling with that style of gameplay and honestly wishing that there were more games in that vein.

Gameplay

At it's core this part of the review can be summarised fairly easily. You remember Halo 3? This game plays exactly like that. Very solid first person controls, an array of enemies that prove more varied and challenging than typical first person fodder and solid overall gunplay. The improvements and tweaks here are minor but welcome, such as a few new weapons, (with functionally useless silencers) no power-up bonus equipment whatsoever, the ability to hold up to three explosives of each type instead of Chief's two (All those pockets in the marines suits are useful for something!) and slightly less hop power behind those meaty non-super powered legs. The details behind the way that the game controls are where Bungie put in little tweaks to the core game in order to hammer home the human nature of these characters in comparison to the Green Demon of Master Chief. Such as the new health system which relies on 'Stamina' rather than shields (Apparently grunts can shake off damage as long as they've got the 'stamina' to withstand it) and the return of limited health and health packs from 'Halo: CE'. Stamina restoration is slow and causes you to play much more cautiously, and the urban environment allows for much more natural reasons to pepper the levels with health packs. Although, to be fair, I did see one pack inside of dentist's station. Not sure what kind of services they're offering there, but if it requires a first aid kit to be constantly on hand, maybe I don't want to.

This more grounded approach plays alongside generally more sedate selections for the enemies that are thrown at you, which still play very much they way they did in Halo 3 (Brutes that have armour which need to shot off before a finishing blow) and are paired off with much less unpassable odds. Which does feel a bit like a free-pass because the ODST marines don't feel that much weaker than Chief. Yeah, there were a few heavier encounters when the game forced you to hide behind cover and cower like the squishy human that you are, but as long as you know how to deal with them it wasn't too much of an ask to mow down squadrons of Brutes with a Needler or the like. Also, I respect the restraint of the team to bring back the improved vehicle controls of 3 but not add in another bloody moon-buggy obstacle course level. Thank god, I am so done with that trend.

Narrative

This title follows the exploits of the ODST marines, an elite squad of drop shock troopers that are said to be the best of the best. And when I say 'said', I mean in the intro screen. That's right, Bungie actually told me something straight up without sticking it in a comic book and expecting me to find it! Wow, this is a real breakthrough in the therapy, team! I'm glad basic storytelling techniques such a single screen of introductory text has entered their repertoire of presentation, I wasn't significantly contextually loss throughout this entire story! (Can you even imagine that?) Of course, I still didn't realise until the final epilogue that this story is supposed to be set in the time during Halo 2 whilst Earth is being bombarded and actually before The Prophet of Truth turned up in his forerunner ship at the beginning of 3; but I'm sure that's just my own stupidity. I mean, why would I possibly expect this narrative to run parallel with Halo 3? The narrative of 'Halo 3: ODST'? I must just be being unreasonable.

Through breadth, the journey of this story is actually fairly straight forward for a military sci-fi shooter game, less about the 'fate of the universe' and more about the struggle of Humans under siege from an overwhelming alien force. And with that simplicity comes a greater connection with the individual human cost of this war. The game will have you prowl the empty streets of New Mombasa, picking across abandoned apartments and seeing the angry graffiti sprawled on walls, (Which is often as frustrated with the invaders as they are with the USMC; likely for picking this fight to begin with) It's a humbling perspective and one which we rarely get to see whilst jumping across alien planets and squashing Covenant with Gravity Hammers. That's probably why I found it easier to connect with the characters and people that inhabited this space. I believed them more.

Speaking of, I loved the unique way this game told it's story in comparison to past entries. There's this semi-free roam perspective as the Rookie where you wind up on your own and have to find your teammates by following the traces of their crash several hours earlier. You'll find several personal effects and each will inspire a story mission from that character's perspective. Sure, everyone functionally plays exactly the same to one another; but the novelty of having a different voice ring out of that helmet every once in a while is breaking whole new grounds in this series! Plus, it allows us to get to know, even briefly, each member of the team. If only these games were longer and we could use that new found understanding to appreciate the team in full battle, (You literally never fight together as a complete squad once in the whole game) but Bungie still did the 'play their stories' style of storytelling better than 'Call of Duty: Vanguard' ever did; so that's something at least.

Characters

The ODST team are the heart of this game, as their relationships and drives push the bulk of narrative; and they are... fine. Just fine. Pretty much every member of the group is a typical team-member stereotype from the charming leader type who gets a little stern when giving orders, Buck, to the nagging ex who annoys the heck out of everyone with every sentence, Dare. Dutch and Mikey seem to share a love of blowing things up, although Mickey is the supposed specialist in that regard. Oh, and the Rookie, player insert, character doesn't speak. To this game's credit, they pull of each off these characters very well and makes them likeable, and relying on stereotypes and clichés helps the narrative sell these caricatures in a reasonably speedy fashion so that you get to the action, so I don't knock it. Although I will say that personally, I could not stand Dare (as I said, she was annoying) and Romeo, (because he was a total creep) which is quite some feat considering he was rather clearly voiced by Nolan North. You made me hate a Nolan North character, game, that takes doing!

I just wish that these games were a bit longer because it really did feel like this team just got themselves established by the time the credits rolls around. I'm sure there's some extended universe book that follows their post-war adventures (provided they survived Truth's slipspace shockwave from Halo 3) but I'm here to play. 'Homo Ludens' and all that noise- don't make my enjoyment into a book report, Bungie! Also, and this is totally irrelevant to everything, maybe I totally misheard some important piece of contextualisation, but I felt like Buck's story with Dare was just that he had a one night stand with her years ago and fell totally in love with her. The way they interact makes it sound like they were in a big relationship, with hints about 'things not said' and the like, but then Buck turns around and says "What can I say? It was an incredible night." and the original premise you're told seems to back that up. So I'm just saying that I think Buck needs to learn to let things go, falling hopelessly for the first woman he sleeps with after a single night together certainly raises a flag. Not sure if it's bright red or just slight mauve, but it's a flag.

Level Design

In it's entirety, the campaign of Halo ODST takes place in the city of New Mombasa as it's undergoing assault from the Brute-led Covenant, which sounds like it might get old super fast, but Bungie really knew how to take advantage of their urban environs to keep things interesting. From the shifting times of day starting with the Rookie's perspective in the dark rainy night to the various perspectives of his squadmates throughout the previous day, sun soaked afternoon to moody dusk hours. There's also quite a diversity in urban locations, from wide plaza's with little cover to close-quarters hallway shootouts, to building-top rumbles and sewer bug hives. There's a lot more going on in this game's level design then one would typically expect.

My only real complaint would come in the actual number of these missions because like I've been implying, you only really get to play as the protagonist for two out of the eleven mission. During the rest you're in this semi-free roam state which is unlike anything the series has done before, but also not even remotely groundbreaking to anyone who has played a game other than Halo. (still, I guess we got to see the groundworks for what Bungie wanted to do with Halo CE and what 343 managed with Infinite.) I didn't even mind the few vehicle heavy missions that were in the game because they didn't ask me to drive over bloody ramps. (Okay, there was one ramp but that a cutscene trigger, I couldn't possibly mess it up.) It's odd to think that some Marine's had as exciting missions as Master Chief would later, but I had just as much fun, even if I didn't get the customary ice level.

Music

Just to quickly touch on this, I think the music for ODST was non-typical, understated, and simply fantastically scored. Some of the incidentals made me actually stop playing just to soak in the atmosphere for how different they were from anything else the series had to offer. Big call outs go to the noir jazz track which sounds like something out of Cowboy Bebop, (the good one) and that one piano track that sounded like a mix between the Dark Souls Bonfire theme and Resident Evil 1 save room theme. I mean really sounds like them, as in I'm decently sure it was a send-up to Resident Evil in some obscure fashion. There are of course your typical Halo bombastic themes, but none of them especially stood out this time around; I just hope that 343 have time for some quieter bangers like these when they take ahold of the series.

Summary

'Halo 3: ODST' is a rare new take on the Halo universe that manages to refresh a solid formula to the extent that it can surprise you all over again. The story was grounded and simplified, but managed to worm into your steel-trap heart a bit easier, and Bungie learnt how to convey basic simple exposition. (Which they then totally forgot how to do again when making Destiny. Good looking out, guys.) Despite functionally providing a pretty comparative experience to Halo 3, the small improvements and more personable cast led me to actually enjoy this title just a little bit more, but is that enough to equal a whole integer on the rating grade scale? Unfortunately, I don't think so as this game does falter on some of the merits I just listed, in doing them better than Halo 3 but not spectacularly in their own right. Thus I'm giving Halo 3: ODST a B grade, however, I will be recommending this game because I genuinely was impressed with what I played and think it deserves to be looked at as an essential playthrough for those trudging through the series like I did. It won't blow your socks off, but you'll learn to appreciative it's more human stakes and angles yet, just give it the chance.  

Halo 3 Review

 Wake me, when you need me.

Okay so there's no way that I just sat down and played the entirety of Halo 3 in a single day, now is there? Except, yes that is exactly what I did and now I'm at the end of my rope. I've reached the final embers of the original Master Chief Saga and thus have touched the end of the crazy, noisy, no-good, week that encompassed the entirety of the Halo narrative up until this point. Okay, I know that technically there were a few weeks between the events of 1,2, and 3; but if we wipe away all of the ancillary lore that Bungie loved to drown the critical path of this series in, then I can totally seeing this entire series just being huge binge for crazy Chief and his bag of nutcase adventures. This is very much the tail end of the Halo franchise as it existed back in the day and you can see the way that Bungie saw themselves out the door whilst leaving one foot in the threshold just in case they ever wanted to come back to it. Which some of their breakaway members eventually did under the moniker '343 Industries'. (Don't know why it wasn't 'studio'; that would have made tons more sense.)

This was the first Halo game I played which didn't have a remaster touch up it's rough patches, and the game really does show it. Halo 3 likely won't get an anniversary release anytime soon, (given that 343 totally missed the 10 year anniversary window) which means the game I played is much closer to the original release than 1 and 2 were, and how that informs my grade will give you a back end metric to judge how good of a job that the remasters actually did. Now of course, there are going to be huge spoilers for everything that I can wrap my head around, because Bungie have serious storytelling issues that, judging by Destiny, were never really resolved; but that still means if you haven't ever played Halo 3 and want to experience that for yourself, then it's probably time you consider skipping to the summary, shouldn't you? Now back to my key points.

Gameplay

One of the casualties of the previous remasters right away is the way that the much rawer game that Halo 3 offers is instantly weaker and all the under-the-hood intricacies don't live up to their predecessors. Shooting is nowhere near as good as 'Halo 2: Anniversary Edition', which isn't to say it's terrible or anything, I actually think it's pretty darn good, but there's a considerable step down you have to acknowledge going into this one. The actual visualization of the recoil, the feel of the gun, the sounds, none of it is as crisp as it once was. Yet I feel obliged to insist for everyone that it is, crucially, very much still playable. I still had a ton of fun shooting my way through the game and even found the dual wielding mechanic feeling a little less forced on me this time. It's still there, and the balance is still skewered to disincentive single wield side-arms, but the enemies are typically less overbearingly brutish and 'do or die', when compared to Halo 2 Brutes, and thus you can afford to have a little more fun with your choice of arsenal to fight them.

Power-ups, like what one would expect find in the multiplayer portions of these games, actually show up in the main game quite often now, and fit in a lot neater than you might have expected from such a proposition. Having a deployable shield to chuck down and change the shape of the battlefield added a special little trump card to the combat dynamic that I really had a ton of fun experimenting with, even if I never managed to find a single instance where the 'Grav lift' was helpful. (I guess I wasn't creative enough) The fact that enemies were allowed to use them too added a parallel layer to combat which gave me pause at some otherwise sure-fire encounters and forced me to think on the fly here and there. Now it seems like a no brainer to add these systems into the campaign and, judging by my memory of Reach, that is something the team decided to keep up. (Which I'm stoked for.)

Vehicle manoeuvrability has taken a considerable improvement over what it was in the first two games, which still doesn't make it good, but it allows some of the cool vehicle set-piece moments to drum up some excitement only slightly tainted by the fear of the car doing a sudden 360 flip and getting you killed because of bad physics and crappy controls. There seemed to be a decent number of big car and flying machine moments in this game too, so the improvements were quite needed. Do I think the touch-ups were enough to justify the final challenge being another Warthog obstacle course? Absolutely not, those designers over in Bungie must have been bloody vindictive to force that on their audience once again, what absolute terrors.

Due to story reasons, the regular Elites from the previous games had to be replaced with the Brutes, which presented an obvious balancing concern. Brutes were tough to the line of un-reasonability in Halo 2, and there was no way that Bungie could have enemies that annoying be the bread and butter of all combat. The solution? A  huge nerf to all Brute kind that made them similar to Elites in power level, but different in raw gameplay. Essentially they gave all Brutes bulky armour that can be comfortably shot off with precision aim before a final shot can be dealt. Obviously this means that they're still pretty annoying to fight, and take much more to down than the typical Elite, but throwing you against a room full of them isn't totally unreasonable like it was in 2. (Only mostly so) They changed up the combat dynamic a decent bit, and familiarity in the ranks still kept up thanks to the return of Grunts and Hunters. (Huh, I'm pretty sure they took the Elite's side of the Covenant civil war back in 2... but I guess we'll just ignore that for the sake of balancing.)

Finally for the gameplay section, there are more boss fights in this Halo game, although it might be fairer to say that there is one boss fight repeated about three or four times. The impressive Scarab enemy weapons platform from Halo 2 returns in a slightly more vincible state (only slightly) to serve as all of your boss encounters for this entry. And you know what- I actually think this is the best boss that the series has had yet. It boasts modular weak points, totally changes up the shooting monotony, offers several totally legitimate angles to tackle it- these make for really great challenges! I don't even mind the repetition of them, because it makes for such an impressive and cool set piece moment each time you manage to get the better of one of these behemoths and watch it fizzle up in azure flames, I was never disappointed with these fights. One more repeat of them and I might have become a little leary, but the team knew the right cut-off point.

Narrative

This topic is going to be a sticky one, because I have a lot to say on this front. Firstly, Halo 2 did a fantastic job setting the stakes for this game to hit the ground running, practically ending on an endgame cliffhanger that could have kicked off in roaring flames. Chief was there, aboard the Forerunner ship, ready to confront the Prophet of Truth- this game was destined to start with a bang! And then Halo 3 began with Master Chief falling out of the sky, landing in a heap inside of Africa, and spending the rest of the game chasing down the ship he just ejected himself from. Why? When did this happen? Does the game bother to explain? Of course it doesn't, and here bleeds some of the worst tendencies of Bungie storytelling- the tendency to, you know, not tell the damn story! As I had to learn from reading a freakin' forum post, prior to the release of Halo 3 there was a comic released which depicted Chief directly after the events of 2 (right after "I'm finishing this fight!") trying and failing to assassinate Truth and then being forced to jump off the ship in an emergency exit. Did Bungie bother to explain this in the actual game which was telling the story? Maybe with a cutscene, or even an animatic with panels from that comic? Nah, they don't even mention what happened with dialogue, leaving anyone not following these games with a religious fervour, totally out-of-the-loop.

I know this probably sounds a little strange coming from someone who loves untraditional narratives that don't lay out their stories like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight; but it's so important, even when telling a multimedia story across games and printed media, that each individual story is satisfying in it's own right. Further reading into works around the main line project should lead to a greater understanding and appreciation of the story, not a basic understanding and appreciation. If you have to turn off your game and look online to read a page of lore in order to appreciate what is happening in that game, then you've failed to write a cohesive scene. Halo isn't a game laid out like Dark Souls is, where the discovery of the basic plot is symbiotic with the theme and worldspace. Halo is a traditional action game with Sci-fi trappings, such genres simply scream to have their basic plots be sensibly laid-out, otherwise key important emotional scenes can completely and totally fall apart.

But I've gotten away from myself. Halo 3 flounders and fumbles the momentum set-up from 2 and thus has to build everything from scratch. Not too much of an issue given that these games are pretty exciting and pick up fairly quickly, especially with the state of the world that 2 left things with, but it does feel like some time is wasted. In the 11 missions this game has, 4 of those is spent just trying to make back the ground you lost when Master Chief decided to jump out of a window off-screen. It feels like a poorly contrived plot rug-pull in order to facilitate an ill-fitting follow-up story in my opinion. And though I have enjoyed the Halo 3 narrative quite a bit, enough to binge the whole thing in a single day; I think the game would have been better served with a cleaner rewrite. (Maybe one which remembered that The Arbiter was a main character in the last game and thus probably deserves a mission or two thrown his way. Poor guy.)

Oh, and let me retroactively take back one praise that I gave Bungie in their last game, how they were learning the intricacies of basic world building. Because I just learned that, apparently, Bungie kept a huge piece of the overarching lore totally out of the game in 2, and I only know of it now because of how it's offhandedly implied, and then directly mentioned in 3. Namely that the Forerunners who built the Halo rings, where the ancestors of the human race. A pretty big plotpoint to keep from the script, don't you think? And yet the Prophet of Truth just randomly mentions it midway through this game in a line just dripping with a sense of 'You already know this, obviously. You read all the books and comics, didn't you?' Show Bungie, show your lore! I don't know why I get so worked up over this but it really does annoy the crap out of me. And maybe that's the reason why despite liking this third arc of the core Halo story, and decently enjoying the way things wrapped up, (I would have preferred a more direct encounter with The Gravemind) I just don't think this narrative was as strong as Halo 2's. So that's a bit of shame.

Characters

For pretty much the first time in this series I started to get used to the idea that Master Chief was the badass that the game really wanted to insist that he is. I think it comes from being tasked with doing important missions entirely by himself, equating his worth to that of an entire human battalion, rather than sending him in with a stocked troop and just not acting surprised when he was the last one standing. But Cortana was really the one who stole the show here. Despite having left herself behind to have a prolonged chat with the Gravemind, Cortana seems to telepathically haunt Master Chief throughout the game and force her emotional connection upon the player with stories about why she picked Chief as her Spartan and harping on about the promise he made. (Which, by the way; he technically didn't make the promise to come back. She stopped him.) And I'm not a total heartless scrooge, despite finding Cortana kind of annoying in previous games I did kind of care about her in this game. Their connection felt genuine and when Chief went into the worst place in the galaxy just to get her back, I could totally understand why. The two of them are partners and they're happy to share their icy crypt together.

The Gravemind made a return, although in voice only, to serve as one of the antagonists in this game, and I really did enjoy his performance. He has this creepy 'omniscient' vibe to him, being the heart of the Flood hivemind, and the idea of something as chaotic and ravaging as the Flood having a sentient mind with thoughts and wants operating at the centre of it is a really cool concept. However, in the level when you here the most from him, 'Cortana', he does slip into 'scary hivemind' clichés at times. Raving about being all powerful and slipping out of his 'I can be reasonable' façade of just being a simple virus trying to make way through the universe. Maybe that was an intentional move from the writers part to show the 'monster' beneath the apparent rationale, but for me it just ironed in the creature and smoothed out some dimensions in the process.

The Arbiter and his journey are relegated to mere side stories in this game, with him just being your most commonly reoccurring battle buddy, practically abandoning the interesting exploration of his self redemption and emancipation. (I don't feel like it was totally resolved in 2, but here we are.) And the Prophet of Truth became a cliché badguy. I was hoping we'd get the opportunity to explore more about his race and perhaps their true intentions and desires, but instead we just got the "I'm going to wipe out all life in the Galaxy, just because." One curious little tidbit is that Truth seemed to acknowledge that the Halo ring would indeed kill everyone just before the end, and not embark them on the vague 'great journey' line that he seemed to be selling his congregation, but there doesn't really seem to be much more room to dive into that in the future of the narrative, given that The Arbiter freakin' shanked him and now the Covenant is no more. Oh well... missed opportunities.

343 Guilty Spark is always a welcome addition to the team, especially given that he was actually part of the team in this game, for unclear and arguably somewhat fudged reasons. I don't care, I loved having him aboard and never tire of hearing his high-pitched nattering. A simple character in motive, but soaking in intrigue and curious casual world expanding elements each time he talks, I love his character to bits. Such that I was actually a little distraught having to kill him. Although that was offset by the recent death of my favourite side character, Sergeant Johnson. I mean it was only a matter of time, the guy was pretty much useless and kept throwing himself into dangerous situations, but not getting to hear another one of his ill tempered insult strings with that charismatic wink in his tone almost makes me want to quit this series right here and now. (I hope he shows up in ODST.) Oh, and Amanda's performance was a lot better this time around. If they keep this up I might actually start to like- oh and she's dead. Oh well.

Level Design

In design I think that Halo 3 has been the most modern out of all the games I've played so far. Which is to say that each mission was paced with just the correct amount of content in just the right places to keep me hooked and make me play on and on until the end. Previous Halo games suffered from the odd level that was tad too long (or for Halo 1, over half of the levels) which would tire you out and maybe even bore you for some prolonged bouts of 'defend the position', but for 3 the team seemed to hone in on that golden ration which ruled the entire game's structure. In fact, there were a few missions that I felt were actively too short, such as the first one. But the action was never totally absent, even if there were a couple of mission that felt designed to be more picture galleries as you ran through them rather than deep, complex explorations. (like 'Cortana') Nothing had the scale of 'The Silent Cartographer' from 'Halo: Combat Evolved', however, so that's a bit of a loss in my book. (I quite enjoyed that almost unburnished approach to level design.)

Visually, the stretch of locations you visit might be the least surprising in the series so far. Several mission are in the African jungle, the snow level doesn't hold anything we haven't seen before apart from the best double boss fight in the series to this date and there wasn't even a Covenant ship assault! Well, okay so there technically was- but High Charity was more of a Flood level- which was probably the most unique new environment this game had to offer. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind; this game was more about telling the end of the story rather than taking us on sight-seeing trip across the galaxy; but I didn't get the desire to stop and admire the world quite so often, and that wasn't just due to this being the original release and not touched up in a remaster. The visual bounty wasn't as new and vibrant.

Music

The suite of music was good, as expected from the team, but again it falls a bit short after 2. Now this one I readily admit is unfair, because Halo 2 anniversary Edition intentionally redid a lot of it's scores in order to sound better and fit scenes more, but I can't help but point out how Halo 3's non-remastered OST feels limp in comparison. It's still great on it's own merits, however, and the scenes that are meant to get you pumped still ring in your ears just as rhythmically, but there's no tune nearly as powerful as the howling Precursor theme from 2. Also, and this might be something only I in the entire world felt, but Halo 3 might have played the exact same version of Master Chief's theme just one time too many. Escaping the Halo ring at the end and hearing the same rising riff build up felt a little eye-roll worthy; as if this was just 117's Saturday morning cartoon theme tune now, rather than a roaring moment of musical triumph.

Summary

All in all, Halo 3 is another great entry in the series of Halo games, neatly concluding the original trilogies story, but it fails to capture the magic and grandeur of 2 in it's entirety, regardless of 2's Anniversary touch-ups. But maybe that's too high of a bar anyway, because Halo 2 really was remarkable in it's execution and Halo 3 is no slouch for not matching that. But aside from the gameplay being strong, I'm a story guy deep at heart and unfortunately this is a story where some of Bungie's worst narrative habits sneak into the game to sully the experience. They don't totally upend the enjoyment, but they still manage spoil the story being told through the gameplay. Ultimately I found this whole finale to be decently satisfying, however, and can be confident in giving Halo 3 a right-on-the-dot B Grade. If you're following the Master Chief collection like I was, be aware that this is going to be a noticeable step down from 'Halo 2: Anniversary Edition' on most fronts. Now I look forward to touching on the side games that bridge the Chief's long hibernation, which results in him utterly forgetting how to be ambidextrous for the rest of his career.