Dog-fighting in space is confirmed for 4-player co-op in campaign only. Bungie are ”extremely proud” of Reach. Kinect ”impossible” to integrate.
”It takes place about midway through the campaign,” explained exec producer Joseph Tung, talking about Halo: Reach’s space dog-fighting in Sabers.
”At this point in the campaign the Covenant are invading Reach in full force. The situation’s getting pretty dire, but the second in command of Noble team has figured out a way to bring the battle to the Covenant.”
We get to board the cockpit of a Saber craft and watch as it rockets out into orbit of the planet, giving the reins over to the player. Sage Merrill designed the mission and has worked on Crimson Skies before, which clearly influenced the sequence.
”We looked at lots of other flight games that were out there,” said Tung.
”We didn’t want to make a flight simulator for Reach, we wanted to make a very accessible, easy-to-use and fun-to-play space mission. Sage did an amazing job in nailing the Saber in that regard.” No worrying about pitch and yaw so much then.
The Saber packs lasers, targeting missiles with meters for shield and hull integrity.
”The Saber is limited to Campaign,” said Bungie’s Eric Osborne. ”The whole mission isn’t Saber; and there’s something after that we’re not revealing.” Tung added: “You can play four-player co-op and everyone will have their own Saber in campaign.”
Halo: Reach is studio Bungie’s swansong in the mega franchise they created way back when for the original Xbox and PC. Naturally emotions are a little flowing over at the developer headquarters and they want this to be the greatest they’ve ever done.
”The team is extremely proud of the game. There’s always stuff that falls by the wayside, but I think we got everything in that’s critical to the game and more,” added Tung.
Kinect won’t be supported with Reach simply because it arrived too late. ”I wouldn’t say it’s not suited, but for us Kinect came online when we were already a year and a half into production and it was impossible to think about integrating it at that point.”
”Reach is absolutely a full-fledged project at Bungie. The number of features you’re going to see overall is greater than any other project we’ve shipped.” Halo: Reach releases exclusively on Xbox 360 September 14th. Firefight online modes are included.
Source: Eurogamer
