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An Early Look At Halo: Reach

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-go-gadget-arms? dept.

KatanAlpha writes "Based on all the information coming out about Halo: Reach, it seems that Bungie's basic philosophy has been: 'The sequels to the first Halo sucked. Let's fix that.' We've already seen a little bit of this with Halo: ODST, wherein Bungie returned to some of the core elements of Halo gameplay and ditched many of the changes introduced in Halo 2 and 3. Reach seems to continue this idea while trying to invigorate the franchise by introducing greatly improved graphics and additional gameplay mechanics."

2 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Story" People vs. Game-Playing People by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 0, Troll

    there are a series of books about halo

    There are a series of books about "Barbie" and the "Disney Fairies," too. Doesn't mean they're any good, just means there is a targeted audience for the follow-on merchandise.

    And I read the first "Halo" book, about a year and a half ago, just to see if there had been a sea change in video game book tie-ins. There was not a single idea or character or plot line in the book that has not been done better -- and done to death -- in legit science fiction. Thirty years ago.

    I'm a fast reader, but life is just too short...

  2. Re:Meh! by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 0, Troll

    And to your parent poster, I doubt that Microsoft had anything to do with the story. And lest we forget, Halo was originally to be a Mac game....

    The books were commissioned by Microsoft as part as their "brand tie-in" campaign for Halo. As far as I know Bungie had no book deals for Marathon and had no plans to do so for Halo before Microsoft bought them. Also the game itself had rather ambiguous references to the SPARTAN program, never defining its nature. All the attempts at glorification of the truly repulsive, vicious, sadistic, fascist nonsense is mainly in the accompanying books.

    Any of the Halo books written by Eric Nylund are actually pretty good reads. The novelization of the original game is crap.

    Nylund for example explicitly thanks Microsoft insiders at Microsoft's "Central Command" and its "Intelligence Officers" etc for "guidance" in the foreword of his Halo books, pretty much openly exposing what sort of thinking is going on at Microsoft where wanna-be fascist idiots are fancying themselves as a military-style operation, not leaving much to imagination or speculation.