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Halo: Reach Campaign Unveiled
Marcus Lehto of Bungie spent his time on stage at Microsoft revealing the Reach campaign mode.
As the demo begins, the camera zooms down through outer space towards the planet of Reach, until we finally see Noble Team as they offload from a transport to begin a mission. The view shifts to first-person, and we see the world through the eyes of Noble-6. The rest of the squad fans out in front of him as they proceed into the dangers ahead.
Almost immediately, Covenant drop pods send enemy soldiers surging down to the ground. As savage Elites leap from the pods, Noble-6 engages the enemy and immediately finds his shields draining. Luckily, he's got the rest of the squad backing him up with some extreme firepower, and they make short work of the first enemies.
The next battle was more involved, including Covenant troops leaping down from an aerial drop ship, and Ghost vehicles coming out to play. In one awesome exchange, a Ghost charged towards a Spartan, who would certainly have been smeared until they used an armor ability to drop into a kneeling shield for protection. As they did, Noble-6 fired an explosive that took out the vehicle.
After a frenzied firefight outside a large facility, Noble team breaches the interior. Noble-6 got a great kill on an Elite with his back to him, showing off the cool new execution moves.
The most exciting new feature on display came next. Noble-6 ascended a launch platform and seated himself in a Saber space vehicle. In a brief cinematic sequence, the Saber went hurtling into orbit, and the view suddenly shifted to a third-person space combat style. Amid a frenzy of Covenant plasma fire, Noble-6 proceeded to blow away the enemy with the surface of Reach glimmering far below.
Throughout the high octane demo that unfolded, we heard some fantastic new music from Bungie's audio kings, and the tech on display looked great. The new space combat options also present all sorts of intriguing possibilities - not the least of these is the potential for outer space multiplayer battles.
Stay tuned in the coming days for more on Halo: Reach, or get caught up on Halo: Reach by checking out our original game hub page from our cover story on the game.
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