Halo Reach: What We Know So Far

Already, Halo has the kind of lore filled with crazy words like "Jiralhanae"; and it's where "Reach" isn't just a verb, but a vital military colony with a significant role in the overall canon. To that end, in anticipation of a hefty info-dump for Bungie's next game, Halo: Reach, at Microsoft's X10 event next week, we've compiled the details known-to-date as provided by Game Informer, Edge, and, well, Bungie.

The Premise

And by crazy, we're talking large scale battle scenarios (via a recent interview that Edge conducted with mission lead Niles Sankey and campaign lead Chris Opahl). In that interview, Sankey notes, "We made a push into making the battles bigger than you've ever seen in Halo before. [...] In other games you'll see these great battle cut-scenes which you can't interact with. Here, we're really trying to stay true to Halo to have these epic battlescapes that the player does affect."

Interestingly, despite the somewhat dark premise creative director Marcus Lehto (in a different interview with Edge) notes, "The actions of you and Noble Team, the sacrifices and pain that you go through, ultimately enable the events that transpire through Halo: Combat Evolved, and Halo 2 and 3. Without your efforts that would never happen."

Meet Noble Team

One thing to note about Noble Team is that it's mostly composed of Spartan-IIIs (for reference, Master Chief was a much more powerful Spartan-II); this means they're heftier and better trained than the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers in Halo 3: ODST, but they individually don't quite have the sheer "one versus many" firepower of Master Chief. Here's a quick rundown of the six-Spartan Noble Team, courtesy of Bungie itself (along with gameplay and story speculations from us).

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Commander Carter-259 (Noble 1): Team leader, and stand-up guy. He's one of the only two original members of Noble Team (since Spartan teams tend to be sent on suicide missions with high fatalities). Another interesting aspect of his profile is that he's charismatic and "capable of interacting with non-Spartans effectively," which is something we'll touch on in a bit. It also looks like he uses the new Designated Marksman Rifle: a middle-firearm between the sniper rifle and the battle rifle (per Game Informer).

Lieutenant Commander Kat-320 (Noble 2): Second-in-command of Noble Team, and a clear example of how the Spartan program has no gender bias. Her Bungie profile points out that she's a "brilliant cryptanalyst," which to us translates into possible moments where you'll be covering her as she grabs valuable intel. The Game Informer write-up also points out that she has a cybernetic right arm -- an example of her dedication where she literally lost a limb for the team. She wields a traditional Assault Rifle.

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