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Lies

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This Our New Number Six?

By Lies 31 Comments

AKA: Lies explains the Halo Reach trailer to you in excruciating detail

 
So with the VGAs yesterday, we all got our first glimpse at Halo: Reach, and it largely confirmed what we already guessed.
  1. SPARTANS!
  2. "No more of that lone wolf stuff"
  3. In-engine (likely touched up a bit, but certainly not pre-rendered)
Are the key takeaways from this reveal, but there's plenty more hidden beneath the surface for those willing to look. And for those not willing to look you can read this summary.
 
We open with a shot of a Spartan in a Warthog rolling through a valley into a staging camp of some sort. He unloads and walks into the command center- note the new Battle Rifle on his back- elevated scope matches up with the leaked pictures from earlier.

 Despite the ODST-esque helmet, he's a Spartan
 Despite the ODST-esque helmet, he's a Spartan
Right about here we start getting introduced to the Spartans who will be your teammates- sniper archetype, followed by Army of Two protagonist and a female Spartan, Kat-320, with a mechanical arm.

 That skull is actually scratched into his helmet. Must have cost the UNSC millions
 That skull is actually scratched into his helmet. Must have cost the UNSC millions

 Although this lady has a mechanical arm, most Spartans are just augmented humans
 Although this lady has a mechanical arm, most Spartans are just augmented humans
The faces in Reach look orders of magnitude better than what we saw in ODST, so that's good, although they're likely to be under helmets most of the time. The trailer plays across the final two squad members- Jorge-052 and Carter-259. Then we come probably the most important line in the trailer. "Didn't think anyone survived Pegasi, sir". Pegasi Delta was an operation undertook by Spartan-III Beta company seven years before Reach that resulted in near total casualties. Master Chief was a Spartan-II, not a Spartan-III, so this is something new.
 
Spartan-III was the successor project to Spartan-II, designed to make more expendable, easier to train soldiers, although Spartan-IIIs were generally less skilled and had worse equipment than S-IIs. At the time of the battle of Reach, six hundred Spartan-III's had been trained. Only three were still alive at the time of the battle- our lone wolf friend from the trailer, and two who were off training more Spartan-IIIs. The weaker Spartan-III with his different equipment could provide something new- Spartan-III SPI armor had a camouflage features in exchange for less protection, but this guy looks like he's wearing different armor, so it's hard to tell from the trailer. He may have just upgraded to MJOLNIR. Pretty much everyone is wearing modified armor anyways- not a one is using the standard suit.

 Bungie's really taken the idea of armor permutations from H3 multiplayer and run with it
 Bungie's really taken the idea of armor permutations from H3 multiplayer and run with it
  So Lone Wolf is a Spartan-III, something we have never seen in a Halo game before. The rest of the squad, however, is Spartan-IIs, same sort of badasses as the Master Chief- they're too old to be S-IIIs and their ID numbers are wrong. Some of these guys are Class-II Spartan IIs though, judging from the ID numbers- the original class only had 150 members, so Carter-259 and Kat-320 cannot be from that class of Spartans. This means that theoretically there could be over 100 other Spartans running around on Reach at this time, although we likely won't see them.  Jorge-052 is probably a member of the original class according to the ID numbers and likely knows Master Chief. We don't know the ID numbers for the sniper or Army of Two protagonist, so we can't tell which class they're from, but it's likely class II because most all of the original Spartans have been accounted for.
 
You can see the Carter-259 on his armor, clearly identifying him as a Class-II
You can see the Carter-259 on his armor, clearly identifying him as a Class-II
A radio transmission comes over: "Victor Contingency has been declared"- Reach is under attack. The Spartans head to aircraft- Carter and Lone Wolf link up with the sniper, who asks: "This our new number six?" and they head off into the distance where something goes up in a huge explosion- you can also see a Covenant Carrier hidden in the clouds. Throughout the whole trailer, Lone Wolf never speaks- pretty clearly setting him up to be the silent protagonist of the game.
 
Although I've heard many people say they were underwhelmed with this reveal, there's actually a good amount of meat to it. And consider that this is actually part of the opening cinematic to the game, not just a flash trailer like the H2 + H3 announcement ones. In summation:
  1. Lone Wolf is a Spartan-III, first we've ever seen in a game and quite likely the silent protagonist
  2. The existence of Noble team pretty much confirms Spartan Class-II
  3. Squad-based gameplay is even more confirmed "No more lone wolf stuff" is pretty much a direct message
  4. Elites are back as enemies :D
  5. The teaser image only shows five Spartans, but the trailer gives us six. Lone Wolf is conspicuously MIA
  6. This is not the story from the book, but a separate one running concurrently
  7. MC definitely not showing up- aside from being in space, he's rolling with Class-I at this point and likely isn't even aware of Noble Team
SPARTANS!
SPARTANS!
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