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The internet has been salivating over the new Halo Reach Multiplayer video for over a full day now, and although I’m sure there are plenty of in-depth examinations out there, I wanted to give it a rundown myself – pointing out things I found interesting and/or exciting. Pictures with observations are in the full article below.

The clip begins with this shot of an Elite using the gunner-seat of a Scorpion tank. Nothing really out of the ordinary (for multiplayer at least), right? Well, throughout the video, I never saw Elites and Spartans sporting the same color, i.e. on the same team. Since at this point in the Halo lore, Elites are still enemies, does this preclude the possibility of mixed-race teams (or is it mixed-species? Need to be politically correct for the aliens, ya know…) More on this later.

Here is an example of one of the new fluid melee moves in the game which will replace the old bland canned-animations of the past three Halo games. It looks as if these will be quick enough not to impact gameplay that heavily, although I would welcome a second or so of animation for a melee attack. Perhaps that would cause players to commit to their attacks a little more instead of running around swinging their weapons like excited puppies with cerebral palsy, hopped up on caffeine. Notice the motion-blur too! (This may be a combination of a new visual effect and playback in Quicktime though.)

This Elite is in the middle of a rolling dive off of this elevated beam. Later on in the video, another elite is shown using this same move to dodge some incoming fire. As far as I can tell, these players did not have any special armor-kits, so this move may be a more broad change to the gameplay mechanics. Sprinting has been confirmed by Bungie via an armor item though, so I may be wrong here. It would have to be awfully useful for someone to choose this over some of the more exciting items (i.e. active camo, jetpack, etc.)

And here are a few examples of those loadout kits mentioned above. You can clearly see three Spartans here each with different kits. Clockwise left to right, we see active camouflage , a jetpack, and the third player looks to be sprinting – notice how his shoulders are lowered and the speed with which he moves past the edge of the screen (well, in the video… not this picture obviously.)

This picture doesn’t reveal anything radically new, I just thought the level of detail in the textures and geometry were impressive. If this is how they look in Bungie’s release candidate, imagine how sweet the final game will look. I wonder if the 360 is getting pushed to (or near) its final limit with Reach.

ZOMG! Jetpacks! Tribes! Although, I doubt the jetpacks will have the range of the aforementioned beloved game, I can already see the epic air battles (and specific gametypes) that will ensue. Imagine the possibilities in Forge as well – first person platformer deathmatch anyone?)

This text is blurred out, and I’m not sure why. The top line seems to say that someone was stuck (by a plasma grenade, but I can’t even begin to decipher the bottom line. Anybody out there with some forensic photoshop skills want to try parsing this out? Also, notice the icon on top of the radar – that appears to be the loadout/deployable item, and it seems this particular one (jetpack?) is still about 3/4 away from becoming active again.

In these two images, you can see a Spartan with a heavy backpack being rammed by a Ghost, but in the last millisecond before his shields are gone, the camera quickly pans back to show him pound his fist (or perhaps an item) into the ground, creating a vicious shockwave that flips and destroys the Ghost – its function simulating the Trip-mine, only with more immediacy. It reminded me of the Halo 3 teaser where Master Chief deployed the Bubble Shield by slamming it into the ground, so perhaps that will be the default animation for the ground based deployables, which is definitely better than the sissy underhand toss the Spartans employed in the last game.

The pistol is back baby! From what I’ve read thus far, it’s not overpowered like the Halo 1 pistol, but is still a force to be reckoned with. In this scene it displayed pinpoint accuracy and major stopping power, taking out the jetpackin’ Spartan with a quick headshot.

In some of the early Halo 3 multiplayer screens, they showed Spartans with different colored armor sections, while the final game (and even the beta) only allowed the secondary stripe and helmet-section color. It looks like they may try again with Halo Reach as is evidenced by the orange-headed and -torsoed Spartan with green arms and legs. Another thing I noticed in this trailer is that all of the Spartans seem to have the same helmet as Noble 6. I’m sure the other variants from Halo 3 will make it back, but I’m also pretty sure there will be all new ones as well, but Bungie is playing that very close to the chest. I wouldn’t be surprised if the beta only has this (Mark IV or modified Mark V?) helmet.

As I mentioned before, there are new melee and assassination animations. This time they just chose to put a flashy 3D title in the scene to really drive the point home.

These two images show an assassination in progress, but what puzzles me is the blur hovering over the Spartan’s head. At first I thought it was censoring something on the Elite, but it follows the Spartan’s head. I’m not sure what would be so small or important that it need to be blurred, so I’m chalking this one up to a texture/animation bug.

I’m guessing that the Invasion gametype will be a further refinement of Infection from Halo 3 (which was built off of a popular honor-based Zombie gametype created by fans in Halo 2). It looks like this one will feature Elites as the “infecting” class, gradually growing in numbers as they take down teams of Spartans. Another possibility is that it could be an iteration of Firefight from ODST, with A.I. controlled Covenant swarming in continously against human players.

Above is the new Grenade launcher, which I’m assuming will be the Human answer to the Brute-shot (but will Brutes even be in Reach?)

This weapon looks like a cross between a Fuel-rod cannon and Missle launcher. Notice how the reticule shows that it is locked on to the Warthog below. Immediately after this image, the gun looses three homing plasma streams that impact very quickly.

Here’s what appears to be another new gametype, probably akin to something like Juggernaut where one player is hunted by the others – of course, I’m sure there will be more of a twist to it than that, aside from the flaming skulls that flow like a fountain from the killed player.

Active Roster – what could this mean? I’m assuming this is a synonym for some sort of clan support that was sorely missed in Halo 3 (which I realize was more of an issue with Xbox Live than Halo, but now that almost all original Xboxes are off LIVE and/or won’t be supported soon, I’m guessing we could see some sort of service-wide clan system, perhaps one that could even span multiple games. I’m also overly optimistic when it comes to these things though.)

Does this ‘Spartans vs. Elites’ title simply mean that multiplayer matches will consist of a player-model choice (as in the past two Halo games), or is this a hint at something larger, like a full on multiplayer mode that could be more canonical and/or lore-infused? (Since having Spartans and Elites team up breaks that sort of thing, at least in this era of the story.)

Here we see two players about to be double-killed by the third Spartan aiming a rocket launcher in their, and a generator’s, direction. Immediately after this some game text appears that says, “Generator destoryed,” so once again, I’m assuming this is a new gametype where players build and defend generators while others try to destroy them.

Finally, Bungie throws something at us on which I can’t even begin to make predictions. What is ‘The Arena’? You got me.

And of course, we end with the date in which the Multiplayer beta will begin, which cannot get here soon enough, especially after the sweet-sauce Bungie so lovingly sprayed at us with this teaser video.

And that’s it. Feel free to post comments.

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