Halo Reach..Bungie bring emotion to the table to end their time on the project

For the last few days I have been spending time going through the campaign for Halo Reach. For those that havent played it and don't want it ruined then maybe dont read ahead to avoid possible spoilers, you cant say you havent been warned! So Reach comes asBungies last game in the Halo series with them moving on to greener pastures and leaving the series in the hands of Microsoft. Reach itself in the games timeline comes before the previous games which were part of a Halo Trilogy. For those unfamiliar with the game the previous games making up the Halo trilogy see you taking the role of Master Chief, a super-human soldier who fights for humanity to fight off the attacks of an alien race known as the Covenant who are trying to . Halo itself is a FPS and is considered to be one of if not the best FPS on a games console and has a huge franchise behind it.

Halo Reach takes a new approach and acts as a prequel to the trilogy and see's you taking on the role of Noble 6 an unnamed solider who is part of the Noble Team who are a group of 6 elite soldiers. Unlike the original Halo games you are now part of a team and its this team who end up trying to stop the advancing attacks of the Covenant after initially going to check on a space station who they have lost contact with. The game progresses in various locations as you try and stop the Covenants advances however its apparent during the game that they are huge in numbers and the battle will be hard for a simple team of 6. As the game is a prequel you go into the game more or less already aware of the main outcome of the game and what follows on in the plot afterwards however Bungie still manages to engross you in the storyline and your teams survival. In the other Halo games you feel you are the mighty Master Chief, almost invincible and how all the older soldiers see you as this elite soldier who will save the day. In Reach you find yourself part of a team who have this huge task in front of them and as you get further into the story you feel the tension and drama knowing that more than likely you arent going to succeed in this mission. A few levels into the game and Noble team has its first casualty in a heroic sarficice for humanity and you cant help but get dragged into the story watching the cut scene as your team leave one of their own behind. Not long after you lose another member of your team as they get taken out by a sniper and you get drawn into this struggle your team faces as you get slowly wiped out by the Covenant. For the first time in a long time in a game I found the further I got into a game the more dramatic it got and you had this emotion and feeling of a lack of hope and despair rather than the usual feeling of good over coming evil.

Usually in games you tend to be the hero and emerge the victor, saving the planet or some damsel in distress and disappearing into the sunset and the enternal struggle in the game for shifts from the side of evil to the side of good and you find yourself on the winning side. With Reach this isnt the case, as you reach the final levels of the game your team has been decimated leaving just your character Noble 6 defending a ship which flees the planet with a small number of people and possibly humanitys only hope of survival onboard. It's at this stage the main plot ends however there is one final level left which really caps the wiping out of your team as you are left in what is basically a survival mission facing waves of oncoming covenant. As they attack your characted you can see the visor on his helmet begin to shatter with each hit you take, weaking your armour until eventually you take off your helmet and fall to the ground having taking on too much damage and being overpowered. The cut scene shows your fallen character laying on the ground dead, the final member of Noble team slain. No walking off into the sunset, no rescuing the damsel in distress. Instead this feeling of failure in some sense that your whole team has died yet at the same time you know you have done your job in completing the game and the mission of getting the people off the planet which starts off the main Halo trilogy which follows.

I found the music and tone throughout the game really tried to make an emotional affect on you, this feeling that your team had no hope in their mission as they got wiped out. You finish the game and instead of the normal happy ending you are faced with your characted lying on the ground riddled with bullets, dead after sacrificing themself in one final shoot out. Even though it was a prequel and the story was somewhat predetermined I think Bungie really emphasized these emotions between the player and the characters themselves. You get wrapped up in the story and feel the loss of each of your team knowing your group is getting smaller as you go. When the credits role they include a thank you from Bungie to all the fans and players who have put hours into playing the Halo games and I think the ending somewhat related to their own goodbye to the franchise having left to develop other games for Activision.

Having also played Red Dead Redemption which has some similar parts to the game its interesting to see how the story developers have brought these emotions into the game and turned the whole happy ever after on its head. No longer is it set in stone that good will conquer evil and you will reach the end of the game as the hero emerging victorious living to fight another day!

Ludology Class

So the first steps into the Msc in Digital Games began with Ludology and as part of our first class we had to develop a board game using only a few raw materials. These consisted of a dice and then 7 items which you could choose from a collection of bits and bobs like lego blocks and straws. We had 15 minutes to come up with an idea and I think at this hour of the morning my mind was still trailing behind and the creative brain cells we still struggling to get going. I went for a simple tower building game using the dice to take turns and depending on whether you threw odd or even you either got to place a piece of lego as part of building your tower or passed your go. After getting your tower to a certain height you had to then throw a 6 to be able to finish your tower with the last piece.

The other part of the session was to then pass the game to the person next to you to compare games and then decide on a final game to run with and then try and improve it before passing it to another group and swapping your game with theirs so you could have a go at theirs. Myself and Peter used his game which was basically a race to build a cake. You moved around the board trying to collect ingredients to back a cake and needed to collect one of each type of the main ingredients to be able to progress to a seperate path on the board which would allow you to possibly land on one of the squares which would let you bake your cake and finish the game. The game itself was like many board games based on the luck of the dice and being able to land on the right squares to achieve the main goal and win the game.

From playing the other game and seeing and reading about the other games people made I found it interesting to see how everyone went for a different topic or idea for a game and how they related it to something they were interested in or passionate about perhaps or to a similar type of board game they liked playing. While its natural to go for something you are interested in I think it made me think about how when making a game you have to consider who the game is aimed at and the market it would have or general interest. If the topic of the game is too specific then will it only interest a small group of people, if its too generic then will people be interested enough to want to play it over another game and try it out. I found it interesting listening to peoples comments at the end about what they learned and for me how your whole thought process on gaming opens up to so many other factors that you dont really think about when you are sitting playing your favourite game on the xbox!

This Blog

So this week I started my MSc in Digital Games in DIT and as part of it we have to keep a games journal. I plan to record anything related to the elements of my course and also my thoughts on games I play and what draws me to certain types of games or puts me off playing others.