Halo: Reach co-op difficulty scales

By Tom Bramwell Published 25 June, 2010

No need to manually change settings.

Bungie has said that Halo: Reach will feature scalable difficulty in co-op.

According to the studio's Brian Jarrard, speaking to Kotaku, enemies will toughen up when faced with two, three or four players rather than a lone Spartan.

In previous games, groups of players would need to increase the difficulty level manually to make the game more challenging, but in Reach the effect will be the same - also meaning that higher difficulty levels will be even more difficult.

Along with a sizable campaign starring a group of Spartans on the doomed human colony of Reach, the game features rethought multiplayer and an updated version of Halo 3: ODST's Firefight mode.

Halo: Reach is due out on 14th September. It's Bungie's last Halo game. Sniff.

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About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • muscleblade #1 2 years ago

    Oh no. Legendary might be really difficult this time then. It wasnt hard at all with three players in Halo 3.

  • altitude2k #2 2 years ago

    @muscleblade

    To be fair, it wasn't particularly difficult to complete it on Legendary in single-player. I'm hoping for something more along the lines of the Halo 2 Legendary difficulty.

  • Armoured_Gideon #3 2 years ago

    @Igotheader

    The later version Xboxes for sale generally seem to have a much higher reliability rate (Jasper models.) It's not as much of a risk these days as in 06-07, so if you really want to play it, you should at least consider it. Of course I'll cover myself by saying it hasn't banished the possibility entirely.

  • metalangel #4 2 years ago

    Why not just let us choose our difficulty instead of forcing it on us?

  • miiiguel #5 2 years ago

    The main reason why Legenday in coop wasn't dificult is because of the checkpoint system. Better played with the Iron skull on.

  • DoctorFraud #6 2 years ago

    "Why not just let us choose our difficulty instead of forcing it on us? "

    You do choose from the regular diffculty level, but it scales to the number of players within that difficulty level.

  • miiiguel #7 2 years ago

    Guess it'll be like Borderlands, which has a fairly good system.

  • Tricky #8 2 years ago

    And you've got to hope that MS have had a good think about the reliability issues with the new Xbox 360 design - wait for one of those.

  • metalangel #9 2 years ago

    @DoctorFraud: That's what I mean, why let us choose if it gets fiddled further behind the scenes? I'd be interested to see how a higher difficulty with 3 players will compare to a lower one with 4.

  • CaptainQuint #10 2 years ago

    Winning game is full of win.

  • BadDevotions #11 2 years ago

    i must be really shit at halo then - i found legendary halo3 quite a challenge on single player :S .ODST i found easier on legendary for some reason.

  • OldMan #12 2 years ago

    "To be fair, it wasn't particularly difficult to complete it on Legendary in single-player."

    Really? If I ever meet you in MP, I hope you're on my team.

  • Raznilof #13 2 years ago

    @altitude, I never finished halo 2 in legendary because they had that "new" thing where seeing a sniper meant instant death and having your friend die in co-op meant a co-op re-spawn. Never understood why they had done that as it completely ruined the experience (well, that and talking enemies, brutes, the whole need for a story, that rediculous grave mind thing.).

    I am replaying Halo 1 at the moment (unreal, half-life 2, halo... all games I replay every so many years ; ) and it's by far the most difficult and well balanced game of them all. ODST got a lot of flack, but in my opinion it was the first halo that felt like the original halo again.

    But agreed, legendary should be just that.

    @igothater, even if it does, you'll have a new one within a week for the next three years. Yes, they have been (and to a degree still are) unreliable but the games and the whole xbox live experience is good.
    Besides, the newer jaspers (out since last year) are already quieter and more reliable. It's surely not the built quality of a ps3 but the whole reliability argument shouldn't keep you from getting one as Microsoft has built an excellent customer service around it. Still no fun when they do die of course.

  • BiffTanner #14 2 years ago

    Thank god for that, it was silly playing halo 3 on legendary when helping a few mates complete it, that it turned from pretty challenging with 1-2 people to a walk through with 4 people where you feared nothing.

  • mcmonkeyplc #15 2 years ago

    Yeah with 4 on legendary we basically just ripped the Covie scum to part. It was AWESOME!

  • RedSparrows #16 2 years ago

    Good stuff.

    You could always pop on a skull or two on H3 - no excuse if you found it too easy. Iron and Mythic = more than enough trouble.