No Halo: Reach reveal this year

By Johnny Minkley Published 24 July, 2009

Prequel will be "big, epic and fun".

Bungie has told Eurogamer that we won't be seeing anymore of Halo: Reach this year, following the game's high-profile announcement during last month's E3 Xbox conference.

"I would bet that we're not going to see it this year, only because we want ODST to shine this year," said Bungie's Lars Bakken, wearing an ODST t-shirt while sat in front of a big board with "ODST" stamped all over it. Gotcha.

In the meantime, however, expect lots of Reach teasing to feature in the imminent Halo 3 standalone expansion. "There are a lot of things like that," Bakken explained. "Like 'Remember Reach' spray-painted on the side of a wall. There's things like that littered all throughout the game that are cool little nods to fans. And that actually makes a lot more sense now that we had announced the Reach game."

Microsoft's Ryan Crosby - who wasn't wearing anything Halo-branded, but probably owns Xbox briefs - added: "Fictionally, Reach obviously happened beforehand and it's sort of one of those moments in the fiction that people would remember - certainly wouldn't forget easily."

As to what we can expect from the Reach experience, Crosby said: "It'll be familiarly Bungie in that it'll be big and epic and fun and people will want to play it."

It's already confirmed as an FPS, and ODST buyers will gain access to next year's beta. Halo: Reach is due for release on Xbox 360 in autumn 2010.

There's lots more Halo on Eurogamer today, in the form of a hands-on preview with ODST multiplayer, and a video interview with Bungie and Microsoft.

Picture of Johnny.

About Johnny Minkley

Eurogamer TV's Johnny Minkley is a veteran journalist with a lifelong passion for games and the games industry. He uses Twitter more than most people use air.

Read more articles from Johnny by visiting the Johnny Minkley archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • smelly #1 3 years ago

    I wanna know when halo kart is coming.

  • thenastypasty #2 3 years ago

    I can't help feeling ODST is just the starter,were as Reach is going to be the main event.

    I will be buying both though.

  • smelly #3 3 years ago

    i felt burned after halo 3 was just more of the same.. not even bothered to read up on what ODST or reach even are. For all i know they could be platformers - that's the level of my interest... Just like if they announced gta5 - after 4 they can get stuffed for ruining my favorite gaming franchise.

  • Petulant_Radish #4 3 years ago

    Smelly, for someone who doesn't like halo you sure like commenting on halo, how many times can you say you don't like it? We get it, that's ok, but stop saying it in every article

  • Syrette #5 3 years ago

    That's nice, smelly. Good for you.

  • Aurifex. #6 3 years ago

    The Fall Of Reach is not a bad book so i hope the game is as good.

  • smelly #7 3 years ago

    >how many times can you say you don't like it?

    Not as much as i stated i didnt like gta4 probably.

    Lets put this into perspective see... Gta3 was the best game ever, Vice city came out and topped it, then SA came out and it was "so so - but still great", then they ruined it with the god awful gta4 game. As a customer this pisses me off, as i've wasted money on it. So when a topic of conversation pops up on a forum about it i mention that i was pissd off by it.

    When halo 3 (and bioshock for that matter) came out, I bought into the hype - read the reviews, read everyone singing it's praises.. bought it.. to find not much had changed, it was more of the same, and i felt ripped off!

    But for some reason, i'm allowed to constantly slag off gta4 (Rightly so imho), but if i slag off halo 3 - that's not allowed because it's an exclusive "best game on the platform" thing. Which upsets a lot of kids.

    It seems weird to me, that the whole point of a forum is to have a DISCUSSION about something. What's the point in a discussion where people only want to hear the side of the argument they agree with? Surely a forum would be very boring if the only posts which existed were "i love this game", "this game is ace", etc etc?

    Now i'm not talking about trolling here. I'm not rushing in and saying "halo sucks" for no other reason than to wind up people who own a different console to me. I own a 360, it gets more use than any of my other gaming systems, fallout 3 is the best game i've played all year and i'm currently getting into saints row 2.

    I'm interested in conversations about games that people liked and i didnt. Especially when i feel that sometimes reviews have been "bought" (bioshock and halo 3 were good games - but not "excellent" 10/10 games - in terms of shooters hl2/l4d were/are miles better). Hell COD4 was better than both of those 2 games by a long mile (even if it did end rather un-satisfactorily for me), the game itself had more imagination/variety/etc than bioshock/halo3 put together.

    Do i get the impression most people here are just think "meh meh meh - he's a fanboy - i'm not listening"?

  • smelly #8 3 years ago

    *Sigh*

    It's called "trying to have a discussion".
    Edited by 1 at 25/07/09 @ 02:49

  • Kirah #9 3 years ago

    Single player campaign needs to be longer than Halo 3, but Reach is a more interesting setting than ODST.

  • Rubarack #10 3 years ago

    It's called "trying to have a discussion".

    What's there to discuss? You bought it expecting it to be different to Halo 2 and were disappointed, I bought it expecting it to be the same as Halo 2 and largely wasn't.

  • Fightclubber #11 3 years ago

    I will never get Halo, possibly one of the dullest most bland fucking games on the market. Guns shit enemies shit story shit levels bland open and empty ermmmm shit.
    I bought halo3 and it felt like was playing a ps2 game with is shonky animations and just general basic blandness. Play fucking half life 2 instead you geeky basterds

  • SleepyDeathFred #12 3 years ago

    Very constructive, fightclubber.

  • smelly #13 3 years ago

    @EarlBasset :

    Yeah.. it's called a "major marketing budget".. Which was kinda the point i was trying to make to people in the other thread...

    It works though.. people see all these articles and stuff and buy into the hype (which may or may not be worth it)... That's money at work.

  • Kazzahdrane #14 3 years ago

    I thought GTA IV was great. And I really enjoyed CoD4 (although I only played it on Veteran so got immense value for money from it - took me 10 months to beat the campaign). Also really enjoyed Bioshock. Thought Halo 3 was ace too, but then I played the campaign on Legendary on day one over Live with 2 friends - no desire to play the fairly samey singleplayer by myself.

    But what do I know? I must be a mindless sheep controlled by marketing men.

    On-topic: I'm quite intruiged to see what Reach actually is. Everyone's assuming it will be an FPS in the same vein as Halo 1/2/3, but I wonder if it might be something completely different. ODST has surprised me by seemingly being fairly open and story-driven, so I'm hoping Bungie decide to go even further out of their recent comfort zone for Reach (and this non-Halo game they're working on).

  • RedSparrows #15 3 years ago

    Well Smelly, I think CoD4 is the most overrated game this generation, having neither the scope, the freedom or the tactical play of Halo. But that's a losing battle too, apparently ;)

    Anyway, hype is dangerous. We're all aware of it. Sometimes, however, some people enjoy the game even if the hype is too much - I'm sure there're some people out there who think Halo is perfect. It's not, but I've had *so much fun* on it that I couldn't care less.

    What am I blabbering about?

    Anyway, I just wanna get my hands on a beta and go from there....

  • subtlesnake #16 3 years ago

    "I'm interested in conversations about games that people liked and i didnt. Especially when i feel that sometimes reviews have been "bought" (bioshock and halo 3 were good games - but not "excellent" 10/10 games - in terms of shooters hl2/l4d were/are miles better). Hell COD4 was better than both of those 2 games by a long mile (even if it did end rather un-satisfactorily for me), the game itself had more imagination/variety/etc than bioshock/halo3 put together."


    But what does it mean to say one game is "better" than another? You go into a game with a very specific set of expectations and assumptions, have a very specific experience, tuned to the gameplay decisions you made and how satisfying or frustrating they were (depending on a whole set of other factors like the difficulty chosen and the random actions of the A.I), and come out of it with a verdict that can only make sense within the context of those variables, which are unique to you.

    Yet, and this is what bothers me so much on the internet, people don't seem to realise, this - or at least they believe that their experience is somehow authoritative, and the game should have been designed for them, as if the very fact that they reacted badly to something means that that element represents bad game design.

    It's perfectly fine not to like a game, even if that game is Halo 3, but if you want to have a meaningful discussion about the issue, you're going to have to more than *assert* your preferences (e.g the story was crap, the gameplay was dull) because those preferences only make sense to you, as someone, who for example might not have followed the story of the previous Halo games, or might not care about the backstory behind the universe. You're going to have to explain why you feel the way you do presenting your *opinion* in the context of your preferences (and not as some objective fact like "Halo 3 is worse than CoD4";), so people can think "ah, I understand where he's coming from, even if I don't agree with him", and so they can understand why they feel the way they do.

    But simple statements of dislike (or like, even) add nothing to the discussion, and presented as objective facts or 'flaws' with the game, they're only going to get people riled up. You didn't like GTA4. That doesn't automatically mean there's something broken about the game, or that the people that gave it good reviews were somehow brainwashed or 'paid off' and the fact you buy into this suggests you have trouble looking beyond your own perspective.

    Halo fans are I think more sensitive to this given the frequency with which their franchise is criticised by those that don't 'get it'.

  • RedSparrows #17 3 years ago

    subtle - I agree with your last paragraph. It seems at times as if there is a dissonance between the praise Halo gets and which people happily apply, and yet it's translated as all being hype by those who dislike it, even when they know it's not a 'bad game', just not to their tastes etc. It's allowed to be slagged off because it's so well praised: it's odd, and it doesn't deserve it when the gameplay mechanics, especially online, are almost tuned to perfection. If you don't like the grenade/headshot gameplay (let alone the cray stuff that occurs, from grenades sticking to others in mid air, mongoose splatters off grav lifts across maps, or just a simple melee hit off the edge of a cliff), fair enough - and if you don't like the occassional AR-charge, that too (hell, I don't ;P).

    Anyway what was I gonna say. 1) That I need to stop turning into a Halo defence force, and 2) I've forgotten :(

  • smelly #18 3 years ago

    cheers subtle.. good point well made. Unlike my points which always seem to suck and annoy people.

    Still 6 "halo" posts on the front page? a new record?

  • AphoticCosmos #19 3 years ago

    Good post, subtle. I agree with all of it, but particularly the last point you make. Halo fans do seems to be more defensive, or at least more vocal, of their franchise than fans of other games are.

    Maybe it's because the Halo franchise is limited, realistically, to the Xbox community as a fanbase, and thus the hardcore Xbots [yes, I am one as well to an extent] view what would normally be just a debate over the merits of the Halo franchise as a debate over the merits of the consoles which the franchise calls home, and thus get all riled up about it, as fanboys do! :)

  • Teamallstar #20 3 years ago

    I for one cannot wait to hear more about Reach.

    Reading the posts above, it seems that the Halo series of games is a very polarising subject.

    Personally, Halo is the reason that I got into gaming about 7 years ago at the age of 23!!!

    At Uni, me and a bunch of friends used to hang out at the student bar (Bournemouth Uni) and after hours used to use the two projectors to play LAN games of Halo CE. It was the first time I had ever played any console game (since the Atari ST!).

    Halo is a great multiplayer game, probably the best, but has, since Halo 2 had a very average single player. This, I think is why it gets so badly criticised.

    Added to the weak single player, the online multiplayer experience is not fun for people who have not played a couple of thousand games and has a good group of friends to play with.

    For me, I love it as I played about 8,000 halo 2 matches and about 4,000 halo 3 games. I am reasonably competent and have a group of friends from uni who play regularly. They are all generally 30+ and don't scream like 13 year old american kids. We play in an Xbox Live party and never listen to the opposition team whining.

    For other people who don't have a good group of friends who are into Halo, I can totally understand why they do not like the series.



  • schnide #21 3 years ago

    smelly - I'm totally with you man. I don't get GTA IV at all. I've tried, oh how I've tried, but the game that's supposed to be the most open world yet in the series felt sluggish, linear and dull. I totally loved GTA III and this latest version felt like all the joy was squeezed out of it completely. Sales went through the roof. Go figure.