14 DAY TRIAL // Halo games have always had it big, but none could reach the popularity of the third one, with Halo 3 breaking records and delivering a shock-and-awe tactic upon the gaming community. With heavy publicity leading up to its launch, as well as promises of greatness to which the title actually lived up, in the autumn of 2007, when it was launched, the Earth stopped spinning for a few hours to get in line and purchase its copy of Halo 3. But when the next game in the series came out, namely Halo ODST, things went as they would for pretty much any other title.
Curious as to how Halo Reach would perform, and what Bungie's expectations were for the game, Kotaku approached the developers, asking them whether or not the title would be a Halo 3 explosive success or if it would fire blanks, like ODST did. And the first thing that Bungie's Community Director, Brian Jarrard, thought that needed to be explained was the very nature of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers game. "I felt ODST was more of niche game, it was a little bit of an experiment," Jarrard said. "We didn't have to stay tried and true to the Halo formula."
And with this in mind, he thinks that the game did incredibly well. "We never expected any of the Halo games to turn into the phenomena that they are today," he explained. "ODST was of a different scale. We were kind of flattered that it turned out to be as big as it did, that there were stores opening at midnight. That was never in the cards when it was being conceived."
As far as Reach goes, while the title goes back to the first Halo, Combat Evolved, for its inspiration, it is still very tied to ODST, since owning the "niche Halo game" is the only way to get into the Reach beta that will start on May 5. "We have been going back to Halo: CE as our primary example and are trying to recapture some of that magic," Jarrad shared. "Reach is supposed to go in that direction and not to redefine what Halo Is supposed to be." But when Reach's beta will come to an end, he can't help but wonder if that day "Will it be national Turn In Your ODST Day?"
As for the beta, if the Halo 3 amassed 800,000 participants, he believes that Reach's testing session could top three million. With a "handful of maps, a variety of gametypes – both new and old – and a nice subset of armor abilities," he believes that the beta would attract a lot of attention. But while the campaign will be able to support a greater number of characters on a single map, he did warn us not to expect "an exponential leap in the number playing in a multiplayer match."