Fatal Death Squad Offical WebSite: New Halo 3: ODST Info

Halo 3: ODST Preview
Bungie and Microsoft take us through the ambitious expansion.
by Martin Robinson, IGN UK

UK, July 24, 2009 - This week has seen a pretty special anniversary pass. Well, make that two of them; July 21 might have marked 40 years since Armstrong and Aldrin first set foot on the moon, but it also marked the passing of ten years since the world got its first glimpse of another universe. Apple's Steve Jobs introduced a little-known game called Halo to an expectant crowd at 1999's Mac World. This was supposed to be the title that established the Mac's gaming credentials, but - a twist of irony and one canny acquisition later - it went on to become the foundation for Microsoft's attack on the games industry, in the process becoming synonymous with the Xbox brand.

Since Master Chief crash-landed on the exquisite ring world that hosted the first Halo, it's been a journey that's been labelled by some as this generation's Star Wars, and one that's been orchestrated expertly by developers Bungie. Ten years on, and they've shown no sign of tiring of the universe, as the studio's Lars Bakken testifies; "I can tell you that the guys that did work on Halo 1, which is a decent chunk of the ODST team, they have all individually said to me that ODST is probably the game they're most proud of in their history there - so that should tell you something."

ODST is one of the most curious offshoots of the Halo universe to date - whereas Bungie's numbered efforts in the series have been full-blooded, triple A blockbusters, ODST seems to be suffering something of a personality crisis. First announced as an add-on for Halo 3, its diminutive price tag reflected a dip in scale from the epic canvas on which Halo 3 was painted. Six months later however, it has grown to a full price affair.

"Over the course of development it got a lot bigger than we were anticipating," says Bakken. "We thought of it more as an expansion and then it grew well beyond that. We didn't really talk about it until E3 this year, and it's something internally that Microsoft saw and said; 'What are you talking about - this is a full game.'"

Microsoft Game Studio's Ryan Crosby chimes in; "The scope changed significantly as we went along, and every time we saw it the game got longer, the spaces got bigger, new things were added. Certainly when you sit down with it, it's a lot more than just an expansion pack."

A look at the campaign's first minutes confirms this. A typically spectacular opening sees the player introduced to the merry troop that are the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, and - like the games before it in the series - it is gratuitous in its borrowings from James Cameron's Aliens, with each of the crew seemingly descendants of the dirty dozen now spouting their witticisms in space. But also like previous Halos, it's clear that no-one delivers downbeat space opera quite like Bungie, who rattle through the clichés with such conviction that it almost feels fresh.

Having suffered a slipshod landing on the city of New Mombasa, the rookie wakes from a six hour slumber without his compatriots, from where the campaign is given over to piecing together the mystery of their disappearance.

New Mombasa is far removed from the typical Halo backdrop.

At this point, what's most striking about Halo 3: ODST is not what's new but what's been taken away. Most explicitly this is apparent in the new lead, one who notably lacks the superhuman abilities of the Master Chief. "When we were trying to make the ODST feel different, one of the things we wanted to do was take away some of the Spartan abilities," explains Bakken. "So dual wield is gone, regenerating health is gone, the motion tracker has gone - there's alot of little things like that that make the ODST feel different. He's not as powerful as a Spartan."

But it's not just in the rookie's more grounded talents that it feels like something's missing; gone too are the lurid alien vistas that have lent the series the aesthetic of classic pulp sci-fi, replaced instead with the urban setting of New Mombasa. It's a return to the cityscapes that framed some of Halo 2's finer moments, though its vast scale and open world nature leaves us quizzical as to how well it will cope with the choreographed battles that have defined the series.

More typical Halo fare will likely be housed in the game's flashbacks, which gives players control of their fallen comrades in a series of self-contained episodes. The only one to be shown to date stars demolitions expert Dutch, and takes a suitably explosive slant - we'd expect the other episodes to take similarly diverse approaches to Halo's run and gun formula.

It's these episodes and the way in which they're presented that offer what looks like ODST's most interesting feature - its structure, which seems more akin to that of a player-led 'whodunit' than the more prescribed fireworks of previous games. As Bakken tells us, though, there's been some compromise: "Originally when we were making the game, at first we'd drop you in and you had the entire city open to you, and we found very quickly that that was too much, people were becoming inundated and they didn't know what to do," he says. "Now, in the final game, there's a little more of a narrow path in the beginning, so the first couple of missions are always in the same order, but at that point we open up the whole city and the rest of the game is played in the order that you see fit."

It's Halo, but not as you know it.

A novel and brave approach, then, and one that should help differentiate the game from the growing muddle of lore that culminated in Halo 3, a game whose plot was near interminable to all but the most dedicated series fans. Indeed, the shift of focus away from the superhuman Master Chief will lend the game, in Ryan Crosby's words, 'humanity', something that's underlined by the exaggerated personalities of the ODST crew.

These personalities tie into one of the game's new features, which sees the player delivering the kind of trash talk that's associated with some of the more gung-ho shooters. While first-person dialogue won't be so prevalent when the player is in charge of the rookie, they'll feature heavily when playing through as the other ODSTs. Sci-fi stalwarts Nathan Fillion and Tricia Helfer provide some of the voice work, and in typical Bungie fashion it's carefully woven into the fabric of the game.

They'll also feature in the new multiplayer mode Firefight, which we've sampled before. Four players go up against wave upon wave of enemy, and one of the more obvious reference points is Gears of War 2's Horde mode. Bakken's happy to address the similarities. "Because we play a lot of games internally at Bungie, we're definitely inspired by a lot of things that are out there," he answers. "With Firefight, the idea's been around for a long time, and it's something that we were originally going to do for Halo 3 but got cut because we ran out of time, so it came back up again when we started working on ODST. We looked at everything else that's out there, and one of the things that makes Firefight different is the fact that it's in the Halo universe and it's in the Halo sandbox, so you've got access to all the vehicles and all the weapons. We haven't showed it yet, but there's levels where you can get Warthogs, so you can imagine the difference in terms of scale that you get in Halo."|

It's certainly intoxicating stuff, and an extended hands-on with Alpha Zone - an all-new map - is a thrilling reminder that, for the mode's superficial similarities to the competition, Bungie are unrivalled in their mastery of multiplayer. While the ODSTs might not be as amped as the Master Chief in terms of combat, they've clearly been the subject of some exquisite balancing, with their scoped pistol and enhanced vision proving extremely useful.

ODST are a charactersome bunch.

Indeed, ODST is everything you'd expect from one of the most reliable brands in videogaming, with Bungie again looking to move the first person shooter forward while expanding its remarkable universe. It's a partnership that's going to continue with the still enigmatic Halo Reach, but following that the relationship is set to end. "After Reach that's it for us," says Bakken, "We're already working on a new IP that we can't talk about yet. Reach is it for us."

With Bungie departing the series and the Xbox 360's appeal being broadened with the likes of Natal, we wonder whether there's room for Halo in Microsoft's vision of the console's future. "I think that the Halo franchise is intrinsically tied to the Xbox identity," responds Ryan Crosby, "I don't think that you can separate those two - the approach to broadening is a good one and a smart one, but I think that there is still going to be core fans who want to play the shooters, and we intend to give them the best games we could possibly give them." And ten years on, Halo can still lay claim to being the very best there is.

Posted by FDScaboose22 on Monday 03 August 2009 - 23:50:32

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