Today’s game is Halo Reach. And when i say Halo Reach, i mean the entire campaign on Heroic in one night. It was a fun experience. I’ve already talked tons about Reach before, so instead i wanted to do today as a little montage reel of moments with my friends from it instead. We redid our spartans for this and even made our own little lore for them off of the things we did in game.
We have my Spartan who is a rampant arsonist and she may be a little bit of a war criminal (We say this because she pinned an elite into a wall with a Banshee and fired on them for a solid minute), she’s the one with the spartan armor colored like a tiger (Because tigers are the best big cats, obviously). We have Great Value Master Chief (GVMC) who is a little too quick too fire (He’s named that because he looks vaguely like master chief but not quite), he’s of course, the one who’s all green. Then we have my friend who we’re pretty sure is just an old person or a Lizard they shoved into some spartan armor and called it a day *(we say this because his sense of direction was abysmal and he couldn’t remember how to drive). he’s the one in the lavender armor (He’s lavender because he likes the color lavender).
In the main screenshot i’m air striking GVMC, who just meleed Lavender. I was originally aiming for the tank, but then saw an opportunity to air strike my teammates and the tanks, and went for that instead.
Later in the game i blew up Lavender in a Forklift for fun. He of course, killed me in revenge and took my sniper. So i killed him back. I didn’t want him taking the sniper so i threw myself off the ledge to stop him from getting it.
He later got revenge by convincing GVMC to ram me off a cliff in his Ghost. I managed to switch things up though and slip GVMC off the cliff instead, before Ramming Lavender with the truck for revenge. If you’ll notice something, it’s that we have an issue of keeping the fight going. It’s all in good fun, but we very much fought until the end of the game.
Like here for example at the mining Depot. Lavender hopped in the turret to take out the Zealot, and me and GVMC started fighting again. I accidentally stickied Lavender. And of course, he joined in the scuffle. It’s a miracle we all 3 didn’t die and have to reload from a check point.
During Exodus me and Lavender were playing Sniper while guarding the lift. I was spotting him and a Jackal came in, so i meleed them. And then meleed them again, and again, and again, and… you get the point. This was because my control died and the input got stuck being held down. We chalked it up to my Spartan’s own actions though.
Finally this brings us to Pillar of Autumn. Somehow, we laid aside our grudges and actually worked to achieve the goal. I chalk it up to the vibes being so perfect we couldn’t help but go “This is the moment”. This of course, lasted a whole 5 minutes as Lavender promptly drove me off the cliff in a Mongoose and we went back to fighting. BUT! We made peace and kept on our goal of delivering Cortana. And you know what? We did it. All in record time for us. We even made par time on some levels. We’re just missing Par time on 4 levels now.
There’s a whole bunch of screenshots i didn’t post here if anyone wanted to see them. Most of them arent great but i did want to share them just in case. They’re here and here (Both are pixelfed links).
Reach is my favorite Halo game. To be completely honest, I always wanted more from the story telling in most Halo games, as you’re usually just a one man army with nobody else to care about. Sure, maybe there’s some high stakes overarching story, and you often have some regular soldiers helping you out, but it’s not something I ever really think about during a mission. I’m just here to shoot aliens, and my allies are meat shields who will not be missed. Which is fine, but when I played Reach for the first time and watched characters I came to like actually die, I loved it. It’s funny too, because in the lore Master Chief is a competent commander that prefers fighting with a squad, while Noble Six is a total lone wolf that always fights alone, and yet their games play opposite that.
I love this. Every time I play Halo with somebody, this type of shit goes down. Somebody does something and then suddenly it’s just a free for all, and by the end of it, we’re more worried about fucking the other person over than whatever we originally wanted to do.
If talking just general favorites, i’d have to say Reach is tied with 3 for me. 3 just feels like a general all around good experience. Reach is so fucking good though. Like you said, we come to care for the characters. It kind of does this tightrope act of Hope and Hopelessness, and at the very end it gives a little hope while making a sacrifice.
I love that Noble 6 is your multiplayer character too, it really serves to make it feel a lot more personal which helps to aid the themes. You’re not Master Chief with a history and Epic feats, you’re just… you (or a stand in of some sort). It’s not Noble 6 getting close to everyone, it’s you getting close. It’s not noble 6 making the sacrifice for the pillar of autumn to escape, it’s you. At least in a philosophical sense, or at least that’s how i always viewed it. Even my spartan is a reflection of myself in a way (For example the tiger themed paint job is because i think Tigers are the coolest big cat).
Also, yeah. I agree with that. Halo does a good job making you and your buddy’s fuck eachother over and become the enemy. It’s admirable that it can juggle both that and the good story telling.