Leading up to the Multiplayer Beta, a lot of information has recently been hitting the internet regarding Halo: Reach. So many little nuggets of information are coming in from so many sources that it’s hard to keep up. To make your life a bit easier, I present to you the Halo: Reach Compendium, an exhaustive but concise collection of every detail you would ever want to know about Halo: Reach. It will come in three parts. This one, the first, will serve as an introduction and provide information on the game’s campaign and weapons.

The first thing that you need to know is that the Halo: Reach Multiplayer Beta starts on May 3rd, 2010. To get in on the Beta you’ll need a copy of Halo 3: ODST. Once the Beta goes live you’ll access it through an option in the ODST menu, similar to how the Halo 3 Beta was accessed via Crackdown. A high-speed internet connection and an Xbox LIVE Gold Account are required. You’ll also need 1.2 Gigabytes of free space on your 360 hard drive.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the really juicy stuff. The Halo: Reach Compendium is organized neatly for your convenience into eight sections: Campaign, Weapons, Armor Abilities, Player Investment System, Matchmaking System, Gametypes, Maps, Uncategorized, and Conclusions. The Uncategorized section consists of things that don’t fit with the other topics and don’t merit their own sections. In Conclusions I’ll take all the information we know so far and present my own theories in an attempt to fill in the blanks.

Campaign

Halo: Reach will be a prequel to the original Halo trilogy. It follows a group of Spartans who are on the planet Reach when it is attacked by the Covenant. Reach is the most important human world other than Earth, and is the planet that the Pillar of Autumn is fleeing from in the beginning of Halo: CE. It houses the UNSC’s largest shipyard and is where the Master Chief and the other Spartan IIs were trained.

You’ll be playing as a Spartan III this time around, though. The Spartan IIIs were the UNSC’s attempt at making super soldiers much more cheaply and efficiently. It worked. Many more of them were created in a shorter time than the Spartan IIs. But, because of this, they were more expendable. The Spartan IIIs were used as living fire-and-forget weapons and often sent on suicide missions.

-Noble Team-

The particular Spartan III that you’ll be playing in Halo: Reach is ambiguously called Noble Six. He (or she) is the sixth member of Noble Team, recently transferred there to replace another fallen Spartan. Noble Six is purposefully made a blank slate so players can put themselves into the role of the Spartan. You’ll even be able to customize his/her armor, but we’ll address that more in the Player Investment System section of the Compendium. Apparently though, Noble Six does have a reputation as a lone wolf, as mentioned in this Halo: Reach trailer.

Rank: Lieutenant

Service #: S-312

(P)MOS: 158A

Carter is Noble Team’s leader. Charismatic, reassuring, and cool under pressure.

Rank: Commander

Service #: S-259

(P)MOS: 180A

Born: 8/27/2520

Birthplace: Durban, Biko

Height: 208.3 cm

Weight: 113.4 kg

Catherine, or Kat, is Noble Team’s hacker. She has an artificial arm and is a great cryptanalyst, but has a tendency to look a little deeper into systems than is required. Her analytic mind also makes her a great tactician.

Rank: Lieutenant Commander

Service #:S-320

(P)MOS: 18E

Born: 1/30/2530

Birthplace: Monastir, New Harmony

Height: 205.7 cm

Weight: 97.5 kg

Jorge is the only Spartan II in Noble Team. He’s vocal with his opinions that human colonies should rule themselves, but is just as critical of the insurrectionists.

Rank: Chief Warrant Officer

Service #: S-052

(P)MOS: SO

Born: 03/05/2511

Birthplace: Palhaza, Reach

Height: 223.5 cm

Weight: 145.2 kg

Emile is the strong silent type. He is detail oriented and audacious. Likes close combat. Isn’t particularly good at interacting with non-Spartans.

Rank: Warrant Officer

Service #: S-239

(P)MOS: 18B

Born: 03/11/2523

Birthplace: Luxor, Eridanus II

Height: 208.4 cm

Weight: 106.5

Jun is Noble Team’s sniper. He’s a talkative Spartan that’s excellent at what he does, but isn’t cocky.

Rank: Warrant Officer

Service #: S-266

(P)MOS: 180B

Born: 02/28/2524

Birthplace: Tyumen, New Harmony

Height: 210.5 cm

Weight: 111.1 kg

No more information about Noble Team has been revealed yet. It is unknown why they are on Reach when the Covenant attack, or what their mission is after the invasion begins.

-Campaign Vehicles-

Noble Team’s aerial transport vehicle is the Falcon. There is no word whether it will be flyable by the player at any point in the game, but I doubt it. It’s most likely just Halo: Reach’s answer to the Pelican.

You won’t just be confined to UNSC sanctioned transportation, however. You’ll be able to commandeer civilian vehicles to splatter Grunts with.

-Enemies-

Regarding the enemies you’ll be facing in the campaign, the Elites are back as the main bad guys, which makes perfect sense with where this game sits in the Halo timeline.

A new enemy race has also been revealed, the Skirmisher. These scary little guys are “cousins” to the Jackal, and specialize in flanking their enemies using pack tactics.

Bungie has been vocal about their plan to give Halo: Reach a darker and more foreboding atmosphere than other Halo games have had. “From the beginning, you know the end” is a line straight from the first teaser trailer for the game. Reach is destined to fall, and its surface will be melted to glass. They want the Covenant to be frightening again, and one way they are doing that is by making their speech incomprehensible to humans. Everything won’t be instantly translated for you anymore.

That’s about all the facts we have on the Halo: Reach campaign so far. Not enough for you? I know, me neither. Here are a few screenshots to alleviate your pain. After those amazing images, you’ll find the Weapons section of the Compendium.

Weapons

The weapons are arguably the most important part of a Halo FPS game. Halo: Reach brings several changes to how old weapons work and introduces a slew of completely new armaments.

-General Changes-

Dual-wielding is gone. You will only be able to use one weapon at a time.

The reticules of some weapons now expand as they are fired to show how the accuracy decreases.

Spraying weapons and tracking weapons now have a secondary ghost reticule which indicates where you need to aim to hit a moving target.

A number of small things have changed about the grenades. There are only two grenade types in Reach: the Frag and Plasma. Bungie has decided to get rid of the Flame and Spike grenades in an attempt to simplify things. The Plasma and Frag grenades have been strengthened and made more visible. If a grenade goes off close enough to hurt, but not close enough to kill, it will temporarily leave your ears ringing. Also, thrown grenades do a small bit of damage if they smack directly into an enemy.

-Returning Weapons-

Magnum

The M6G human pistol in Reach is very much like the pistol from Halo: CE. It has a 2x zoom and kills a fully shielded enemy in five headshots. It can be fired very quickly but the accuracy decreases dramatically if it is.

Rocket Launcher

The vehicle lock-on returns from Halo 2, but the rocket’s don’t appear to track as strongly.

Needler

Is more powerful now since it cannot be dual-wielded.

Assault Rifle

Looks quite different and seems to be a bit more powerful with a longer range.

Below is a list of all the other returning weapons which have no real discernible difference when compared to Halo 3.

Energy Sword

Gravity Hammer

Shotgun

Plasma Pistol

Sniper Rifle

-New Weapons-

The Designated Marksman Rifle is like the Battle Rifle from previous Halo games but instead of firing bursts of three rounds, it’s a single shot weapon. It is effective at both medium and long ranges thanks to the scope it features. Five headshots from this baby will kill an enemy. Sound familiar? It fires the same round as the Magnum but takes slightly longer to fire and is more accurate.

Bungie employees themselves have dubbed this sexy thing the Pro Tube. As you would guess from its official name, it launches grenades. Frag grenades. If you pull the trigger normally, said launched grenade will bounce off of floors, walls, and other objects until either its fuse runs out or it hits an enemy, in which case it then explodes. There is another way to fire this weapon, though. When you hold down the trigger the grenade will not explode until you let go. Then when it does, it releases a small EMP blast which can immobilize any vehicle or damage the shields of any enemy nearby. This delayed detonation feature makes the Grenade Launcher useful for setting traps for enemies or air bursting flying vehicles (or jetpacking noobs).

The Covenant’s accurate rifle weapon. It fires sharp pink shards, like the Needler, but they seem to have much weaker tracking. It only takes a few shots after an enemy’s shield has been depleted for the needles embedded in them to super-combine and explode in a pink cloud of death.

A rapid fire energy weapon similar to the classic Covenant Plasma Rifle. It differs from the Plasma Rifle in that it is a bit more powerful and fires more slowly as it overheats. It must be allowed to cool down before its rate of fire returns to normal. For balancing reasons, the Plasma Repeater will only be available to use in the multiplayer. The enemy Elites in the campaign will be armed with the Plasma Rifle that Halo fans are used to seeing in their hands.

The Focus Rifle is a combination of two older Halo weapons; the Sentinel Beam and the Beam Rifle. It is a sniper weapon that fires a continuous stream of directed energy toward its target. It overloads quickly but can be very dangerous in the right hands.

A grenade launcher of alien design. The Plasma Launcher locks on to both vehicles and enemies on foot. It can launch up to four Plasma grenades which track the target. The longer the trigger is held down, the more grenades can be fired at one time. It has a good range but takes a long time to charge up.

That’s it for the Halo: Reach Compendium Part 1. Part 2 will be coming soon and will cover the sections on Armor Abilities, the Player Investment System, and the Matchmaking System.

Did I miss anything? Please let me know by shooting an email to christian@gamingdead.com.