3. New Weapons: While we’ve heard a great deal about Noble Team and the overall story, the real details on weapons have been few and far between. Sure, we’ve heard about a designated marksman rifle (DMR), which is kind of like a Battle Rifle blended with a sniper rifle to give the player some medium range punch. Additionally, they’ve spoken of a needle rifle, which is somewhat like the needler except, well, it’s a rifle. But, they haven’t discussed this yet. The image above contains what can only be described as a grenade launcher. Since we haven’t seen them previously, except in the form of the Brute Shot, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was included as Bungie pulls out all the stops on their final Halo title. In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see what other surprises they have in store for us.
2. ODST-style HUD: I missed this at first glance during my initial viewing of the Bungie ViDoc, but it seems as though players will have a form of night vision integrated into their heads-up display a la Halo 3: ODST. While the video footage looked grainy and poor, it was through a few replays and admittedly many screenshots that it became apparent this was the world viewed through NVGs. How can you tell? Well, the dead giveaway is the flare on-screen as a result of the light sources, which gamers got really used to via the VISR system in ODST. See where I’m going with this? Bottom line; don’t rule out night vision as the Heads-up display returns as a defacto visual multi-tool.
1. Open World: This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ViDoc. Not so much because it’s the player driving a vehicle, but because of how it’s been hinted that the game will possess more sandbox-world like qualities that the previous titles. Yes, the original Halo trilogy was more or less linear with very little option for deviation and ODST wasn’t spectacularly better, but this image seems to open the world up for exploration. Just how much of Reach will Bungie let us see on our own? I’m not saying that I’m hoping for a Grand Theft Halo, but being able to delineate what mission objectives I want to complete and when would be pretty interesting, especially if random battles and ambushes occurred as well. That would for all intents, leave me with a Halo game I would be happy playing for years to come and an excellent parting note between Bungie, Halo and the gaming community.
So, what do you think? How excited are you for Halo: Reach and are you counting down the days until it releases let alone the multiplayer beta going live on May 3rd, 2010. Just remember you need ODST to not only play the beta, but brush up on those skills you’ll need to slaughter the Covenant as they pillage their way across Reach. But, until then, keeps yourself satiated in our forums and keep your eyes peeled for PlanetXbox360 for all the latest Halo: Reach news.
