Tag Archives: Halo 3

Halo Fest 2020 – ODST

When Halo 3: ODST was shown at E3 2009 I wasted no time preordering it, though I did have some minor reservations. I mean, the game was essentially a standalone expansion pack for Halo 3, a game which reasonably wrapped up the trilogy, and this game wouldn’t even feature the iconic Master Chief! Halo 3 was also 2 years old at this point, despite the undeniable staying power of its excellent multiplayer. Still, the reviews ended up being absolutely glowing, with the biggest criticism being the sticker price. Today ODST is still as celebrated for the interesting deviations it made from the core series as it was at release. On top of everything I’ll go into below, I also fondly look back on it for first introducing the “Firefight” gamemode, a “Horde mode” like cooperative wave survival mode that my brother became particularly enamored with.

Over 10 years later, I was able to easily play Halo 3: ODST again as part of the Master Chief Collection on my Xbox Series X. As with Halo 3’s MCC port, ODST didn’t receive the ridiculously thorough remaster treatment of the Halo: CE and Halo 2 anniversary editions, but the fact that it still looks so stunning today with little more than some upscaling speaks volumes about Bungie’s expertise. They were clearly at the top of their game with Halo 3: ODST, and it ages even better than Halo 3 as a result.

The boys!
“The boys!”

Since so many of ODST’s gameplay elements are related to its story, and this is a side story taking place out of chronological order from the main series anyway, I’ll start by recapping the plot. Unlike Halo Wars, which took place before the events depicted in the main Halo games and has little direct relation to their plots, Halo 3: ODST actually takes place during events depicted in Halo 2. Aside from that, it is still very much its own story, however, and while I’m fairly vague in these plot summaries they absolutely do still contain spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you want to avoid spoilage.

The Story: Breaching Earth’s defenses, the Prophet of Regret’s carrier has taken up position over New Mombasa while Covenant forces terrorize the city streets below. In a desperate move that could help turn the tide of the war, multiple squads of the UNSC’s elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODSTs) are ordered to drop onto the ship and capture the Covenant leader. ODST fireteam Alpha-9, led by Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck, is attached to Office of Naval Intelligence officer Captain Veronica Dare for the assault. As the fireteam prepares to drop, Capt. Dare unexpectedly orders them to adjust their drop locations to land in the city instead. As they drop, Regret’s ship performs a surprise low orbit slipspace jump, resulting in a destructive shockwave that sends the fireteam’s drop pods wildly off course. The members of Alpha-9, now completely scattered, individually make their ways through the wreckage of the Covenant occupied mega-city to regroup. One of the members of the fireteam, picking up Dare’s radio signal and subtly guided by Vergil, the city’s Superintendent AI, locates Capt. Dare as she attempts to infiltrate the city’s underground data center. Upon reaching the data center’s core, Dare reveals the true purpose of her mission: to secure the Superintendent AI. The pair quickly discover that the Superintendent AI has been taken over by a Covenant defector. This Huragok, a rarely encountered species of alien dubbed “Engineers” which the Covenant use as biological supercomputers, could be extremely valuable in learning the purpose of Regret’s attack. Escorting this renegade Engineer back up to the surface and fending off multiple Covenant attacks along the way, they eventually meet up with Buck and the rest of his fireteam and make a hasty escape from the city.

Holding out against a ton of Covenant air with nothing but a huge pile of heavy weapons.
“Holding out against a ton of Covenant air with nothing but a huge pile of heavy weapons.”

Structurally, ODST plays unlike any other Halo game. You initially assume the role of the new member of the fireteam referred to as “the Rookie”. By the time the Rookie wakes up after his violent landing quite a few hours have passed and you’re tasked with wandering the dark, deserted streets of New Mombasa searching for signs of what happened to the rest of Alpha-9. Each of the clues you find results in a flashback mission switching you from your silent protagonist to one of his much more developed (and talkative) squadmates. These missions are structured more like your typical Halo mission and, taking place in different areas and at different times, allow Bungie to really mix up the scenery and the action. Once a mission is complete, you’re sent back to rejoin the Rookie in New Mombasa, with these sections ultimately functioning as something of an abstracted hub area. Very cool.

The Rookie surveying the New Mombasa streets.
“The Rookie surveying the New Mombasa streets.”

The New Mombasa streets area has a couple of other interesting tricks up its sleeve. First, the expansive map is more or less wide open. While you’re guided to the location of each subsequent clue, it’s only by a waypoint, and there will be multiple ways to reach it. You’ll probably end up taking different routes whether you want to or not, as navigating the maze-like city streets isn’t easy, often requiring the use of the in-game map. Along the way you can choose whether to engage the Covenant patrols you encounter or attempt to sneak around them entirely. You can even find the aforementioned clues and play their associated missions totally out of order if you want to.

More importantly, these New Mombasa sections have an absolutely unique tone. As the Rookie, you’re all alone in the dark, rainy city streets. Remnants of the day’s earlier conflict surround you: ruined buildings, destroyed vehicles, and dead UNSC and Covenant soldiers alike. It conjures a lonely, bleak feeling. The Superintendent AI’s poltergeist-like attempts to guide you only add a further creepy layer to this. There’s also something of a light survival feel to these sections, as ammo is scarce; your UNSC weapons will probably be depleted after your first few encounters, forcing you to scrounge for Covenant weapons and ammo. The pacing is altered by all of this too. In the proceeding Halo games you’re shuffled from mission to mission with an urgency that is, I suppose, appropriate to the epic task at hand. You know, saving the planet and whatnot. In the New Mombasa streets, however, there is no such urgency. You’re just one person, completely isolated. It all feels very grounded and very personal.

A squadron of Banshees fly by the remains of the space elevator.
“A squadron of Banshees fly by the remains of the space elevator.”

The graphics and sound are a large component of why this all works. The lighting and shading certainly conjure a particular mood, but with ODST’s soundtrack they’ve incorporated a greatly expanded variety of different musical influences, from the more traditional Halo sounding orchestral tracks and electronic ambiance to smoky jazz-inspired, piano and saxophone laden pieces that sell the game’s intentionally film noir vibe. Halo has always had extremely strong soundwork, but ODST is really something else entirely. Anyone who thinks Marty O’Donnell is a one trick pony really needs to stop what they’re doing and go give the ODST soundtrack a listen. Right now!

Gameplay wise, Halo 3: ODST is built directly on top of Halo 3 and plays more or less the same, but it’s hard to mark the game down for that. I mean, that is one damn fine foundation. Some of the few differences between the two games relate to the fact that you’re not playing a literal supersoldier like Master Chief. I recall Bungie making statements before ODST’s release that perhaps oversold that just a little; that as a normal human, you’d be weaker and less capable and that suddenly even the previously laughable grunts would be fearsome opponents. That sort of thing. Instead, there is another new health system, this one feeling similar to Halo: CE’s with a shield-like recharging “stamina” layer and a core health pool that is only refilled with health packs. Unlike Halo: CE, however, these health packs are relatively plentiful. There’s also no hijacking vehicles, no dual wielding, no use of Halo 3’s special equipment, and no radar.

New Mombasa Streets: VISR off.
“New Mombasa Streets: VISR off.”

New Mombasa Streets: VISR on.
“New Mombasa Streets: VISR on.”

Bungie giveth as well. As an ODST your standard armaments are a new silenced version of the submachine gun and, something of a throwback to Halo: CE, a lovely new silenced magnum pistol. There’s also the VISR mode which serves as both a sort of night vision and also highlights friendlies, enemies, and certain objects with a thin colored outline on your HUD. The only negative to VSIR mode is that there’s no real reason to ever turn it off, and leaving it on means seeing only one, lesser version of the game’s lighting.

The VISR mode’s ability to highlight objects is key to ODST’s single collectible system: audio logs. Similar to the terminals of previous games, these logs are hidden throughout the New Mombasa streets. Interestingly, rather than typical voice memo type recordings, these are audio and still images recorded from security systems scattered around the city and tell the story of a single character, Sadie, and her attempt to meet up with her father as the fighting erupts. This story links directly into ODST’s overall plot, giving some insight into the Vergil AI and its fate. While I remember liking these audio logs, I could barely stand them this time around. The script feels unnatural and the voice acting and sound effects come across like a old time radio play. Sadie’s main nemesis in the story, the city’s police commissioner, is a particularly ridiculous mustache twirling villain stereotype that I just couldn’t take seriously.

At least that’s not an issue the campaign has! The voice cast is excellent, with notable TV actors including several of the core cast of Firefly with Nathan Fillion, who Buck is both voiced by and modeled after, and Battlestar Galactica’s Number Six, Tricia Helfer, voicing Veronica Dare. Say what you will about Buck’s sarcastic attitude or he and Dare’s relationship issues, but in the brief time we spend with these characters they express a lot more personality than we ever got from Master Chief, and the strong cast only helps that.

Dutch's level is a total throwback to previous games.
“Dutch’s level is a total throwback to previous games.”

I beat the game on “Heroic” difficulty, and even with the aforementioned lack of ammo and other constraints I found it to be one of the easiest campaigns so far. That’s not to say there weren’t some intense moments. The first time I ran into a Hunter I struggled like hell to take him down, depleting all of my grenades and most of my ammo in the process, only to have his buddy saunter into the room just as I was catching my breath. Sheer panic. There was also a lot more variety in the action than I’d remembered, with missions featuring a tank section, a wide open Warthog-centric level, some Banshee flying including a unique Scarab fight, and even yet another Warthog run-like level towards the end of the game. Even with its relatively short length, there’s definitely enough to make it feel like a full Halo game. While a part of me does have to wonder if you had to have played the previous games in the franchise to really appreciate it to its full extent, I personally think Halo 3: ODST is something of a masterpiece and is easily one of the strongest games in the series.

We are ODST!
“We are ODST!”

Just a quick footnote, but similar to Halo 3’s “Landfall”, ODST’s considerable promotion efforts included the absolutely awesome The Life. This live-action short shows the journey of an ODST from a young recruit to a battle hardened veteran. Compelling and absolutely worth a quick watch if you’re a Halo fan and haven’t seen it!

Halo Fest 2020 – Halo 3

The Story So Far: Taking blame for the loss of Halo Installation 04, an Elite commander is tried for heresy. He’s given the opportunity to become the Arbiter, a position that serves at the Covenant leadership’s behest to embark on special, typically suicidal missions in order to atone for his failures. The Arbiter is then dispatched to recover 343 Guilty Spark. Meanwhile, a small Covenant fleet led by one of the Covenant leaders, the Prophet of Regret, arrives near Earth. During the ensuing battle, Regret’s ship gets through Earth’s defenses and begins to assault the city of New Mombasa. As the battle turns, Regret retreats, making a slipspace jump right above the city. The UNSC frigate that Master Chief and Cortana are on manages to jump along with them, arriving at another Halo installation. Master Chief and the small UNSC force with him head to the surface to prevent this new Halo from being activated and the Master Chief manages to kill the Prophet of Regret. The main Covenant fleet jumps in and the Arbiter is dispatched to intervene. While successful in stopping the humans, the Arbiter is then betrayed by Tartarus, the commander of the Brutes, as they assume the Elite’s power within the Covenant. As a civil war between the Brutes and the Elites breaks out, both the Master Chief and the Arbiter find themselves held captive by an intelligent Flood creature called the Gravemind. The Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that he’s been lied to and then sends them both to stop the activation of the Halo installation; Master Chief to the Covenant’s mobile capital city High Charity and the Arbiter to stop Tartarus on the Halo installation. The Arbiter, teaming up with some of the remaining UNSC forces, succeeds in stopping Tartarus though, interrupting the activation already in progress, a failsafe system engages, threatening to remotely activate all of the remaining Halos. As the Flood begin to overrun High Charity, Master Chief tracks the last of the Covenant leaders, the Prophet of Truth, to an ancient Forerunner dreadnought in the city. The Master Chief manages to hitch a ride just as the ship takes off and jumps to Earth while Cortana remains behind to finish dealing with the Halo installation, and inadvertently, the Gravemind.

Unlike Halo 2, I was actually anticipating the release of Halo 3. As mentioned in my last post, I was actively working on finishing off the original Xbox games on my backlog before finally migrating to the Xbox 360, and I capped off the effort by purposely lining up another playthrough of Halo: CE and my first real playthrough of Halo 2 with the release of Halo 3. This felt like the perfect transition from one generation to the next and I certainly wasn’t disappointed with the last installment of the trilogy. Probably more significantly, Halo 3 also became a highly social game between me and a few different groups of friends which continued on to some degree through the life of Halo: Reach. So many Xbox Live Slayer matches, innumerable in-person get-togethers for couch matches, custom game types and house rules, custom maps via Forge, coop over Live, etc. Halo 3’s multiplayer was for me, I suppose, what Halo 2’s was for so many Halo fans, and I look back on those times quite fondly.

Master Chief and the Arbiter, back together again!
“Master Chief and the Arbiter, back together again!”

So, playing the campaign for only the second time, I once again relied on the Master Chief Collection for Xbox One. This time I played it on my new Series X, which on my 1080p TV, only really benefits me in Halo 3 by way of quicker loading times. In any case, I mentioned last time that I was worried about playing this game right after playing the beautifully remastered version of Halo 2, but I’m glad to report that I have zero regrets. Despite lacking the extra layer of graphical flourish that Halo 2 Anniversary brought, Halo 3 still looks absolutely gorgeous today. Its only major shortcomings come down to some fairly hideous human faces and some jerky character animation during cutscenes, neither of which are an issue for the vast majority of the game.

As far as the game itself goes, I don’t know if it was actually a stated design goal for Halo 3, but if Halo 2 was “quite a different animal than the original Halo: Combat Evolved” (as I said in my Halo 2 post) than Halo 3 seemed to make purposeful efforts to find a middle ground between the two games, taking a lot of the best additions and changes brought by Halo 2 and smoothing over the rough edges just a bit, often taking a half step back towards Halo: CE. It’s not incredibly easy to summarize, but it feels blatant to me when playing the three games back to back like this.

Ahhh, my beloved AR. Fits like an old glove!
“Ahhh, my beloved AR. Fits like an old glove!”

Any weapon I had complaints about in Halo 2 feel much improved for one. The shotgun, being one I explicitly mentioned last time, is a perfect example of a “half step back” Halo 3 takes – while the rate of fire is still lower than Halo: CE’s shotgun, it definitely feels faster than Halo 2’s, and its range feels a lot closer to Halo: CE’s as well. Additionally, dual wielding no longer comes off like a gimmick that Bungie really wants you to test out, but just a handy thing you can do when it feels advantageous to do so. Oh, and the damn assault rifle is back! Melee feels reasonably powerful again too! Hoo-fucking-ray! While vehicle damage is largely unchanged, vehicles do at least seem a bit more resilient this time around – no more hopping into a vehicle to have it shot to pieces all around you within seconds.

Of course Bungie added some new things as well. Halo 2’s selection of weapons is further expanded with more Brute weapons such as the Mauler, the Spiker, the Spike Grenade, and the Gravity Hammer, and there’s some other goodies like the legendary Spartan Laser. There’s also the lovely addition of being able to pull mounted guns from their mounts and lug them with you which can’t go without mention despite being more cool than actually useful most times. Of course we get several new vehicles as well, like the UNSC’s Mongoose ATV and Hornet aircraft. Halo 3 also adds the concept of deployable equipment to go alongside the previously available power-ups. The relatively long list of these includes things like Bubble Shields, Power Drains, Trip Mines, and Gravity Lifts that you can toss out with various effects. These were pretty damn divisive (but pretty damn fun) when it came to multiplayer, but in terms of single player, while they can mix up encounters in some very cool ways, they always felt a little underwhelming to me. Having such a variety of equipment but only being able to hold one at a time meant certain effects couldn’t necessarily be relied upon, which in turned caused me to use them a lot less than I probably should have.

You'd better get used to blowing up Scarabs.
“You’d better get used to blowing up Scarabs.”

Level design was another area of improvement though. Both Halo 3’s open and more linear sections felt more open and more filled with possibilities than Halo 2’s. The pacing, both moment to moment and level to level, felt a lot more even to me as well. You could perhaps argue that Halo 3’s campaign was less “epic” than Halo 2’s, where each level felt more like its own interesting set piece. Hell, not counting the Scarab sections, Halo 3 didn’t even have any real “boss” battles to speak of, save for the very end of the game. You also don’t play as the Arbiter (though he’s often fighting alongside you, available for a second player to jump into when playing cooperatively) which loses that additional perspective on events in the story. Still, while Halo 2 might have had more big, memorable moments, Halo 3 was so much more playable and, well, fun. That extends to difficulty too. Playing through the campaign on “Heroic” again, this time I barely suffered for my choice – gone were the ridiculously bullet sponginess of the Brutes, the overabundance of enemies (except for when it made thematic sense, like in the level “Cortana”) and many of the cheaper feeling, frustration fueling deaths.

Flood extermination.
“Flood extermination.”

I’ll sum up Halo 3’s story when I post about Halo 4, but I did want to talk about an underappreciated character real quick: the Gravemind. In Halo: CE when we were originally introduced to the Flood they seemed to be little more than parasites and the mindless zombies they produced. Sure, there was obviously some sort of rudimentary (perhaps hive) intelligence there, but what we got in Halo 2 with the Gravemind was so much more sinister. Whether you realized it or not at the time, throughout the plots of both Halo 2 and Halo 3, the Gravemind successfully manipulated so much of what was occurring. For instance, in Halo 2, while it’s not explicitly explained, it seems clear that it had assumed control of Halo Installation 05 after capturing its caretaker AI, then it was able to capture the In Amber Clad specifically to spread itself to (and take over) High Charity. It then captured and interrogated Cortana, all but completely corrupting her programming and turning her, which surely led to much of what the Flood was able to accomplish in Halo 3. I liked fighting the Flood much more in Halo 3, actually – the new “pure form” was pretty damn cool, for one.

Warthog Run, version 2.0
“Warthog Run, version 2.0”

In so many respects Halo 3 feels like an attempt to make the sequel that some fans of Combat Evolved (like yours truly) wanted but didn’t quite get with Halo 2. Beyond all of the gameplay shifts back towards Halo: CE I mentioned above, there are even more, like how much more time was spent fighting on Earth this time around, addressing a complaint I and others had around Halo 2’s campaign, and how much more active and chattier your UNSC marine companions are. Then there’s all of the Easter eggs and intentional references to the previous games Halo 3 makes, like re-delivered lines and rehashed levels; Hell, the game ends with another (much improved) Warthog run sequence ala Halo: CE. As a fan of the first Halo, of course this all feels like an improvement to me, but more importantly, it was all just so goddamn fun to play through again. It’s the first one of these that, even before finishing, I felt compelled to play more of. Somehow I didn’t have that many fond memories of Halo 3’s campaign going into this, but man, I really loved it this time. Throw in all of the additional multiplayer features and things like Forge and Theater, and this is easily one of the best games in the series, and one of my favorites.

Special delivery!
“Special delivery!”

As an aside, Halo 3 also marks the start of live-action Halo content with what is known as “Halo: Landfall” as well as these “Believe” ad campaign shorts. Landfall is made up of three parts that show us some UNSC marines fighting Covenant forces on earth while attempting to locate Master Chief, while Believe shows brief interviews with veteran of those same battles recounting their experiences. While neat, they’re hardly essential, but as I plan on covering some other official Halo related video productions when we get to them, I thought it these were a worthy footnote.

All screenshots by me!? Thanks to the Xbox Series X controller’s new share button I’m finally able to easily grab good screenshots from my Xbox. Fuck yes! I’ve been bitching about this forever.