Halo Reach is going to be a different game.  Its going to be the pinnacle of Bungie trying to take back the first person shooter genre from rivals like Infinity Ward and Valve.  Not much is known about the game until the beta comes out this spring.  Still that doesn't keep me from comparing screen shots to other Halo games and other first person shooter games that could be an influence on Bungie's new flag ship title.



All my comparisons are going to be pure speculation seeing as how I have not played the game.  But still that doesn't completely keep us from knowing what Halo Reach might be.  We can easily tell that the Spartans that make up Reach are vastly different from each other and from the protagonist in the first 3 Halo games, Master Chief.



With the different designs going into all of the 6 main characters we have seen so far, you can kind of determine there play style.  I noticed this the most when I looked at Game Informers cover for issue 202 pictured above.  Clearly these Spartans all have there own defined roles among this group.  An archetype if you want to put it that way.



The Tank.  With his Huge armor and machine gun looking weapon he has to be the slow moving, tons of health, murdering tank.  The reason I included the Demo man, Solider, and the Heavy from Team Fortress 2 is because I really expect him to be a hybrid of all three.  Reach isn't going to have as many classes as TF2 does so theirs needs to be more flexible. 

I think the flexibility will come from choosing your weapons at the start of the game along with the possibility of picking (rumored) perks.  Just think about how rewarding it can be to find that perfect class in Modern Warfare.  A way to play the game that some what is unique to how YOU want to play it.  This is something that Reach has to answer.  So lets say you could have 3 custom classes set-ups in Halo Reach.  For this tank guy maybe there are three different weapons that could lend them selves to 3 different play styles.  That would offer a lot of players more choice and more importantly a richer gaming experience.



Spy or Scout.  How could this person not either be super fast or have a cloaking on command skill.  She has only been seen carrying the very awesome Halo 1 human pistol.  Even her visor indicates that she could be a super fast or sneaky class.  Her visor is really large.  It has to be for awesome vision while running super fast right?  Also in ODST Bungie played around with different visor modes. Perhaps she could have some.



Again the flexibility and balance would have to be there for this class.  We wouldn't want people sprinting around while being cloaked and just back smacking everyone.  I could see her being able to use the ODST pistol perhaps if she leaning more towards spy than scout.  Or the normal human pistol for some extra damage. Also from the trailer you can see that she has at least 1 fake arm.  Perhaps she could get different biotic arms that would do different things.



Sniper. This is the easiest one to pin down.  He is clearly the sniper.  Maybe we will have some spy skills thrown in there with his strange hood thing.  But he is clearly the guy you want to use when you want to pick people off from really far away. So lets just move on shall we.



The Commander. This is by far the most intresting and the hardest to nail down.  He is addressed in the "Welcome to Reach" trailer as the Commander.  I am not really sure if we would be a playable class in multi-player.  More than likely he will have a huge presence in single player but every thing about his archetype would all be guess work.  But that's what were doing here.

So let's just say that he is a multi-player class.  What if you could you assign objectives to the rest of your squad.  By telling them to take this point or to defend this flag.  If you look closely at his left hand (pictured) you can see a small screen of some kind.  Perhaps this lets you bring up a map type feature to issue these commands.  Or maybe lets say your tank class on your team gets 10 kills in a row letting you use some kind of kill streak reward as the commander a la Modern Warfare 2.  I mean sure MW2 lets every person gets to call in there own kill streak rewards but just think how much more team work would come out of the game by letting 1 (leader) person do it.



Rusher.  The images of this guy make me think he is extremely aggressive.  Looks as if he can wield everything from shotguns to assault rifles (and maybe an awesome hooked knife).  I don't really who he would be based off.  He also has some grenade looking type rounds around his waist and if you look at the image with the assault rifle it look like there could be a grenade launcher mounted on the bottom of the gun.



There is another character featured in the trailer.  The sniper refers to him as the "new number 6".  It is speculated that he is your character in single player.  In the video he just looks a lot like Master Chief.  I just don't know where he would fit.  They tell him in the trailer to "leave that lone wolf stuff behind".  My long shot guess is that he dies in the end of Halo Reach.

Another thing to look at in Halo Reach is that all of the classes have something different about there arms.  The rusher has a hooked knife on his shoulder, spy/scout girl has at least 1 robotic arm, and the commander has some kind of screen.  Could these all effect game play are will they just be cosmetic.

One thing I know that's true about Halo Reach though, is that I cannot wait to check out the beta this Spring.

What do you think?  Think were way off base or like are ideas?  Leave us a comment below or email us at  feedback@finalresist4nce.com

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