The Ultimate Halo: Reach Critique

Always love and appreciate your analysis. Btw, we intended infinite spawning of Covenant on the beach in Long Night of Solace. Something or someone changed it.

To this day “Slipspace Rupture Detected” is the most blood chilling moment for me

Being a Hungarian i remember when I first played Reach and I heard the civilians speak my language. That some places are named after Hungarian cities I giggled and laughed so much in joy. Later I learned that Reach was originally first settled by Hungarians made me love Reach even more, not to mention that Jorge is from Reach which means he could be of Hungarian descent made me love him a lot more and now he is one of my all time favourite Halo characters. So let me translate some of the Hungarian in the game and help with pronunciations a bit. The farmers: "Mi nem csináltunk semmit" ( we didn't do anything) "Nem akartok meghalni?" ( you don't wanna die) (akartok is you but in it's prulal form) Jorge: "Mit keresetek itt?!" (what are you doing here?!) quite obvious because Carter asked him to say that. "Tegnap este a barátomat és a családját, se költözés." ( last night my friend and his family no moving ( as in moving house ) let me note that this is said with a pretty bad grammar plus I cant make out what he is saying after "se költözés" Jorge: 'Azt mondtam befelé, gyerünk!" ( I said get inside, now!") It's funny that the farmer did not say that his friend and his family was kidnapped or killed or he might have but the voice actor swallowed all his words after the "se költözés" part. The girl named Sára: "Ne, menjen innen! Ne, hagyon békén! Kérem ne! Jaj ne!" (No, go away! No leave me alone! Please no! Oh no!) the "Oh no" makes me laugh with that thick and fake slavic accent, which makes no sense to have, but for some reason they always portray us with a weird slavic accent. "Még.....itt vannak." ( They.....are still here.) After she is rescued Jorge: "Engem Jorgenak hívnak." (My name is Jorge) ( A more literal translation would be: They call me Jorge) Sára: "Sára." (of course) Jorge: "Sára? Szép, határozott név." (Sára? A nice and firm name) ( unfortunately "határozott" can be translated into a lot of words in English so I chose what sounded the best for me) The part after this is funny because Sára says "Tengeri" when she should be saying Hungary though the country on Reach might actually be called Tengeri, which is once again funny because "Tengeri" means some like "Of the sea" or "From the sea" as in something that lives or comes from the sea. So now for some pronounciations. The "S" in Hungarian is pronounced as the English "Sh" as in Shovel. The "G" in Hungarian is pronounced as the "g" in garden. The "Á" is simply just say Ah. The "E" is pronounced as the "e" in elevator Hope that helps a little with Visegrád and Sopron There is also Farkas lake which means Wolf lake. Lake in Hungarian is called Tó which is pronounced as Tow. Those are the things I could remember that are in the game, I hope I helped a little and sorry for any grammatical errors, I'm sure there are a lot of them. And of course thank you for the great video.

Man could you imagine if you didn’t face any enemy’s until the elites ambush you at the end of winter contingency

With Kats death, I always thought of it as not everyone gets a 'good' death, this is war, not everyone who dies has a heroic death like Jorge, sometimes it's unfair. in a blink they're gone and that no-one, not even a spartan with all the training and state of the art armour can prevent that. Just cut down in the middle of a sentence. Another point is to show just how ruthless the Covenant are, they were pulling out all their units, about to glass the city, but a phantom spotted some Spartans retreating and decided to stop just to shoot them in the back, the city was about to get glassed, the covenant had no idea there was a bunker there, so it would be safe to assume they would die in the glassing, however the elite wanted to get that shot in.

I’m kinda glad the Exodus fly by is a chain gun and not a grenade launcher falcon. You barely get to kill anything with the chain gun as you witness the sheer chaos. Which just pushes the metaphor of hopelessly helping

Finally playing Reach when it came out on the PC, it made me sad for what we could have had if Bungie had remained a game developer instead of a live-service provider. When compared to the mainline trilogy, it showed that they were capable of more than just a campy sci-fi shooter with some real emotional depth.

I can elaborate on the "Latchkey" discovery a bit as it's something you may really need to delve into if you want to get the full story. Rather it's a fan theory supported with supporting lore from the Fall of Reach novel and the game that honestly ties the two up together quite nicely. In the novel Reach is the strongest military outpost Humanity has left. The original plan to end the war is to use Reach as a staging ground for Operation: Red Flag in which the UNSC would use hundreds of Spartans and specially modified ship to capturing a Covenant-Hierarch and bring the Covenant to the negotiating table. That of course is stopped by the Covenants discovery of Reach, after a space battle and the Long-Night-of-Solace Battlegroup searching for Forerunner tech. When Reach starts to get hot, the UNSC hopes that they can destroy the Super-Carrier without Reach being compromised. After its destruction with the Fleet of Particular Justice and the soon to be Arbiter arriving, they hope Red Flag has just arrived on their door step and commit most of the forces to the battle. When it's clear Reach and everyone there are simply being annihilated, they switch to retreating and evacuation all the resources of Red Flag that haven't been destroyed. Including the experimental-ship and her Captain. The Latchkey the Halsey and Cortana found from that Forerunner ship thanks to the scientist the was probably coordinates, and little did they know or perhaps they even did, that on the other side of it was going to be Halo. So why not send an the remains of Red Flag which were trying to escape anyway, to try and salvage victory from a back-breaking defeat.: Experimental Ship and Good Captain - Keyes and the Autumn AI with critical knowledge about the Forerunners - Cortana and why she's so important Hundreds of Spartans - John-117 considering he's all that's left/aboard the Autumn (not entirely true but I digress). If you don't believe me consider this. Both in the books and games, Cortana is patterned off of Halsey's mind. Both show traits and characteristics of acting without others authority for doing what is right, in almost all of the games. Would Halsey, someone who interferes with military operations twice in the game and more than a few times in the lore, simply allow an opportunity for humanity to regain a fighting advantage simply slip by? Finding Halo wasn't an accident. Bringing the Covenant along for the discovery was.

The target locator actually recharges as you proceed into each of the areas, for 3 times to be exact (once at AA gun, once at the COMMs array, and once when you head back to the SWORD base).

Love Halo Reach! First played it with my Stepbrother Alex when it first released. RIP Alex. Still miss you bro.

I actually think the cutscene at the start of tip of the spear was great. It might not be how future wars would be fought but it's exactly how they're fought in halo wars 1 and 2. I grew up on those games nearly as much as mainline halo games so seeing the same battles I used to control in halo wars being recreated in a cutscene linked both series together for me

Honestly I'm with Raycevick where I think that Winter Contingency would have been better if the mission was played in reverse. You fly right to the relay station, infiltrate it and then you're ambushed by the Elite Zealot squad. Massive panic that the Covenant are on Reach and then you spend the rest of the mission chasing down the fleeing Zealots as they evacuate with their intel to stop them reporting back to The Covenant.

I was running out of Halo Reach reviews to watch through for the 50th time. This is a long one, and a good one. Thanks!

I like the subtle nod to Marty O Donnell at 1:27:52 as one of your marines is Lt. O Donnell and their little callsign is MRTY

"It's good," alright everyone, pack it up, let's go home. 😜

10 years later and Kats death still hits hard 💔 Jorge was noble but Kats had finality to it

Someone may have already said it in the comments, sorry for not checking that thoroughly. Something you didn't touch on about the introduction cutscene that I feel is really important is the helmet. You buy Reach, at the time or later. The first thing you do isn't launching the campaign. "Wow, I get to make my own Spartan for this campaign????!?" So you open the customisation menu, and make your own Spartan. You do the armour, the helmet, the colour, THEN you launch the campaign. And the first thing you see in the opening is a clear shot of the super-cool Spartan you made, probably KIA. That hits HARD. Love it.

I wonder if the lone wolf line was also meant to be a bit of a nod to the fact that the player likely played the previous games, where chief does a whole lot of missions and makes a lot of important milestones in the war all in his own.

This is excellently timed, I just finished Reach for the first time yesterday and ADORE it!

Reach was my first Halo campaign. Because of it, it's my favorite halo campaign. The fact that it was a prequel and featured different characters helped too, I didnt feel like I was out of the loop in the story of master chief and the main halo games. And not knowing the story of reach beforehand caused it to leave a lasting impact. My only complaint was that the first zealot cutscene wasnt the games introduction to the elites or better yet the Covenant.