Bungie Explains (Internally) Controversial Halo: Reach Ending

[Gralian]

I thought the ending was executed perfectly. Not too cheesy, not too dramatic, but powerful where it needed to be. When Six was told to get on that Pelican, it didn't take him long to say "you go on ahead sir" and man that gun. But he didn't do it with the 'I'M A PATRIOT ./PROUD' act, he didn't do it with a heavy conscience. He did it as a Spartan and he did it knowing that he was going to die a man. (Or woman, i'm using the term 'he' because that was my Six) This wasn't some Metal Gear bullshit about sacrificing oneself for their country, nation or people, nor was it some Master Chief 'Nothing i do ever fazes me' man of steel stuff either. It was purely acceptance of the situation and what's the come. Manning that MAC gun and firing the orbital round into the gut of that super carrier was the player's final 'fuck you' to the covenant. When they come to put you down like an animal that's gone feral, it's very subdued. They aren't hunting you vindictively and you're not meant to feel like they're killing you out of spite. The solemn atmosphere and minimalist surroundings amplified by the ever increasing but not too busy Covenant forces reinforce this. Six didn't go down kicking and screaming, it's like watching someone gently suffocate a victim to end their suffering. The covenant probably didn't even need to kill Six in the manner they did as the planet was going to be glassed anyway; it was a matter of honour and recognising a worthy and honourable opponent. That's how i like to see it, anyway. When we, the player, look through the visor at Six fighting for his life right up until he's killed, it's like we (the 'soul') have left the body of Six. It's powerful stuff. The very fact Six went down fighting means that his sacrifice of staying behind wasn't cheapened by an overkill laser beam from space. He went down like a soldier, something which has been seen as a strong positive in culture for a long time, that it's 'honourable to die on one's feet than to bend on one's knees'.

 

[mjc0961]

That's a spoiler? Bungie gave that away when they said the game is a prequel to Halo. Still, in the interest of not getting modded...

Spoiler

In Halo, Master Chief is the only spartan left. In Reach, which is announced as a prequel to Halo, you play as spartans. OH GEE I WONDER WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SPARTANS IN REACH I CAN NOT GUESS.

Seriously, I don't even play this series (Halo 1 soured me on it quit badly with its putrid level design) and I know this.

 

[Chunga the Great]

I think it was quite good actually, and I NEVER like Halo campaigns. I held out until I was down to 1 mag on an AR and a magnum. I emptied the mag as the elites were closing in and I was backed into a corner. I got a few of them with the magnum, but it was futile. It really reminded me of Blackhawk Down...

 

[Badger Kyre]

I suppose it's an audience thing -

Would 300, Alamo, Braveheart, Calgary Hill, all been somehow "better" if the protagonists survived? Titanic?

It's worth noting that two movies that changed their ending because of "test audiences" come immediately to my mind - True Romance and Stigmata.

I see thsi often OFTEn in discussions of RPG's, and similarly;

I remember when the Death of Elektra was "so controversial" - and not just internally, in comics.
Killing characters just wasn't done.

dare i suggest that dealing with death requires more maturity than most of our culture can muster?

 

[Theninja'skatana]

Noble six living would've been nice to think he or she is still kickin more ass than chuck norris thinks he does nowadays. (I'm gonna regret that)
But Noble six's death made more sense in terms of story

 

[Miles Tormani]

I think the reason it was so controversial is because of the way it was done. First off, they cut away all bullshit and said "You're fucking dead, and your friends too." (Note all the Spartan corpses in the area when you're fighting the Covenant off.) Second, they had the balls to do this within gameplay, and show from the cracked visor that this death was not going to send you back to a checkpoint or give you a respawn.

They even managed to make it work well in co-op, because like I said, there's no respawn, and after the last man standing takes his final blow, the cutscene shows that Spartan instead of yours.

I like Kat's death. I mean, 6's was incredibly moving, but Kat's provided a wake-up slap. I highly doubt anyone saw it coming, which was the point. Not EVERYONE can die in a blaze of glory. Kat died to remind people that you're fighting a dangerous enemy and you can die at any time. Very, very good mix-up.

Also, her shields were down because of the nearby nuclear explosion, which would have also caused an EMP of sorts.

I never thought of it that way. I was too busy yelling at my TV and my co-op party demanding to know why the hell a Needle Rifle round was enough to kill her. I was saying stuff like why couldn't it be something that was stronger, like a sniper round, or even a cameo of a beam rifle.

An EMP disabling her shields would make sense, though. A Needle Rifle headshot is a one-hit kill after your shields are down, so...

 

[Chicago Ted]

it would of been better had a covenant ship started glassing the area instead of the waves of enemies.

the current ending is pretty bad in my opinion, sure the planets doomed, so why let us fight for an extra five minutes?

So you would have preferred standing there twiddling your thumbs while giant death lasers move towards you? Sounds fun.

They let you fight for longer because that entire level is incredibly powerful. I'll paste some stuff I've previously written on the subject:
Especially the level after the credits. That was absolutely masterful. you're alone for the first time in the game, surrounded by Covenant and just given the objective; 'Survive'. At first I was excited, preparing to make the fuckers pay, and pay hard. But after a few minutes I just lost the will for it. The team is dead, the planet is broken, I'm possibly the last remaining piece of resistance on the planet. The environment is covered in thick fog, and you can see countless Covenant moving within it, as well as dropships circling overhead. The cracks started appearing in my visor and I just thought 'what's the point?' It's not going to achieve anything, we've lost. So I just charged at the nearest Elite, took him down with a left hook and then gave in. It was absolutely fantastic, and yet so simple.

If you hate it, then that's fine, it's entirely subjective. But your alternative is, frankly, objectively shit.

I'll say that I would have much rather prefered to go out by being glassed then being over run.

Hell, I was annoyed by the fact that this happened, especially because I was playing on Legendary alone, and being stranded on that little tower with Covenant coming down around smacked me as saying "Run for it!". I jumped from the tower, and ran in one direction, hoping to get enough distance between me and the drop ships, so I could find an alternative bit of cover, or something where I could at least mount an initial defence from where I could pull back easy. Surprise to me when suddenly a cut scene pops up and I'm killed without firing a shot. That right there was a slap in the face to me.

However, it would have been a great ending if they had changed it so you had the option to run or something as well from being glassed. Hell, think about it. IF you were going out by being glassed, it would mean that the Covenant forces couldn't stop you with just a large number of troops, but had to resort to directly blasting you from orbit, with their own troops keeping you pinned so you couldn't escape the blast. I would have liked it much more if suddenly through the fighting, you looked up or something, and saw a Capital ship positioned directly over you and charing its guns.

I just like the idea of being so strong, that they had to blast you with their most powerful weapons to effectively take you out.

I'll also say though, that this game hardly made me feel a damn thing. I hardly got attached to any character and felt most of their deaths were rather dull. Jorge's just struck me as stupid (Not because it was made futile, but because I remember their being marines with us as well on that damn ship and leaving a Spartan behind instead of one of them to detonate it struck me as just damn stupid), Kat's was predictible (the second she got alone with you in the elevator after the other one went down, I said that she was going to be killed, and when it opened, I figured it would be by a sniper, seriously, I just saw that one coming), Jun's... Well Jun lived by I hated him, Carter's was fairly bland. Emile's was the only one I really liked and cared about. I knew he would be dead, but he was the only character who's death really hit me.

Honestly though, I really don't see why people are saying it was deep, or meaningfull. I really just saw it as 'Eh, least the multiplayer will keep me entertained for a while'. I'll be honest, I had much more fun with the characters from ODST as opposed to Reach.

 

[Kelethor]

I like to think that, after binging through Reach's campaign on my friend's Xbox, A little bit of me died on reach. Understand that this is the first Halo "story" Iv ever played. Iv only ever played a bit of multiplayer, and that was only at a friend's console. the whole thing just sorta...seemed so pointless. I felt defeated. Me, The winner! I felt defeated after finishing the campaign. "this isn't how Its supposed to be" I told myself! Im supposed to save the day, The planet, and the princess! isn't that how this shit ends!?"

Well, Apparently it isn't. I think that is this game's Greatest success. That despite the fact that we have Completed or "Beaten" the campaign, we have accomplished nothing. despite all our efforts, Reach is still fucked. our team is dead, and everyone we knew or cared about is dead at the hands of a ruthless, psychotic alien race.

Reach was an absolute fantastic experience, and I look forward to going through the other Halo's.

 

[DarkDain]

Some of them did survive, its in the book. They took refuge in the tunnel bases in the mountains.

 

[kaizen2468]

Crisis Core: FF7 had the same thing at the end sort of.

 

[Midniqht]

I'm not a Halo fanboy by any definition so I don't know all the lore nor have I read through the books or anything like that, but I did play through this one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the developer commentary says that Jun survived, doesn't that completely break the whole story of "OMG Master Chief is the last Spartan"? I think they should've killed Jun off if they wanted the story to be consistent.

 

[8-Bit Grin]

Reach is certainly shaping up to be the one and only Halo game I might enjoy.

Here's hoping.

 

[The87Italians]

I'm not a Halo fanboy by any definition, but I did play through this one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the developer commentary says that Jun survived, doesn't that completely break the whole story of "OMG Master Chief is the last Spartan"? I think they should've killed Jun off if they wanted the story to be consistent.

Read some of the other posts. If you read the books, you'd know he isn't really the last Spartan alive.

 

[Midniqht]

I'm not a Halo fanboy by any definition, but I did play through this one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the developer commentary says that Jun survived, doesn't that completely break the whole story of "OMG Master Chief is the last Spartan"? I think they should've killed Jun off if they wanted the story to be consistent.

Read some of the other posts. If you read the books, you'd know he isn't really the last Spartan alive.

I haven't read the books, nor will I ever, most likely. I played the first 2 Halo games, abandoned the series as a whole, and decided to give Reach a chance. I'm hardly the shining example of someone who knows who all lives and "what really happened". Besides, weren't the books and such written *after* the original game? I'm going only based on what I know from just the first game. It seems like they kind of cheated the story by writing all this stuff afterwards about Spartans surviving, just because it'd be the kind of thing that would sell the books or something. Just me?

 

[Brotherofwill]

Square did it first with Crisis Core. Funny how people seem to come up with the same stuff but from different kinds of places.

What do you mean, a last stand type ending? That idea has been around for centuries, Bungie or Square didn't 'come up' with it.

I really liked the ending. It was a bit of a cop-out that it cut to video after you died, but that's understandable. Good to see they atleast gave the player some kind of control. I still think the best type of last stand ending in recent media is in Scarface.

DANGER++++++SPOILERS++++++DANGER++++ULTRA-VIOLENCE+++++++DANGER+++++++SPOILERS

 

[mattttherman3]

Having not read anything up to the release of Halo Reach(to avoid spoilers) I honestly thought when I recieved Cortana that I was the Chief, until Noble 3 died. By the way, They should have shown Noble 4 dying as well.

 

[awsome117]

I'm just going to say it. As a huge halo fan, the campaign was disappointing (read on please) as it ultimately took established canon, and just beat it to death with a stick, and shoved the corpse in a fire, and then launched the fire into the sun.

However, it was a good (somewhat lacking on the more emotional than I thought it would be) and enjoyable campaign.

I have to say, only three of the deaths moved me; which were Kat's, Jorge's, and You (Noble 6). Carter and Emile were "eh too bad I guess" and Jun I guess lived.

Ending was the best part of the game. By far, and I loved it's ending.