Bungie has 'turned on the good stuff' for Reach

Storytelling and cutscenes improved in the studio's farewell to Halo.

Bungie has had to up its game during the development of Halo: Reach in order to compete with the talented crop of developers currently working in the marketplace, Halo: Reach campaign director Niles Sankey has told VideoGamer.com.

Asked by VideoGamer.com if Bungie felt under any pressure because of a growing sense of personality in games produced by other studios, Sankey said: "Absolutely, it's something we've chosen to tackle with ODST and Reach. It did force us to re-address our technologies, and the industry is a very competitive place. There are a lot of very talented developers; we had to really step up our game with Reach and turn on the good stuff - really sell Noble Team."

Sankey was also keen to point out that Bungie has addressed some of the criticism aimed at ODST's narrative and storytelling techniques.

"[Reach] certainly is different in a lot of ways. The integration into the campaign: the campaign in Reach is more akin to, say, Halo 1 through 3, where we decided to do a lot more linear storytelling so we could pace out the story a little better," he explained.

"On top of that, one thing that we really worked on was the facial animations, the facial rendering - bringing up the graphics. I think we were really able to breathe a lot more life, a lot more humanity, into the characters. This time around in the cutscenes not only do you get a more believable sense of the characters, but we use the characters to a certain extent, as you'll see when you play through the campaign."

Halo: Reach is scheduled for release on September 14. Head over to the Halo: Reach game page for first impressions of the improved Firefight mode.