Halo 3: ODST First Look Preview

Microsoft’s demo for ODST kicked off with an extended version of the video shown during Monday’s press conference – a dramatic intro sequence that explains how the player winds up in the ruined city of New Mombassa. The game begins aboard a UNSC vessel that’s preparing to take on a powerful Covenant ship, high above the Earth. As you and fellow troopers banter among themselves, a mysterious intelligence officer named Veronica shows up and assumes control of the unit – the first of what will no doubt be many twists in the game’s mysterious plot.

ODST, in case you were wondering, stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper – a specialist kick-ass soldier shot into battle via a Human Entry Vehicle, a one man transport pod deployed from space. You play The Rookie, the newest member of your platoon; you may be inexperienced, but to survive your adventures you’ll have to use every skill you have. Within seconds of the game’s start you’ll find yourself plummeting through the clouds towards the Covenant carrier. As your team approaches its target, the vessel attempts to travel through some kind of warp gate – triggering a massive explosion in the process. Helplessly you watch as a huge energy ball engulfs the other HEVs … and then everything goes black.

What follows, when you finally awake some six hours later, is something along the lines of a classic Halo shooter with several mystery-novel elements thrown in. You’ll find yourself exploring the ruined city of New Mombasa, a locale you may remember from Halo 2. While the carrier’s escape has had a pretty devastating effect on the urban landscape, there are still plenty of Covenant around to make your life difficult. Your immediate job is to fight off this alien threat while exploring the city and attempting to find out what’s happened to the rest of your unit.

The core action is very much the Halo we know and love, but The Rookie isn’t quite as tough as the good ol’ Master Chief. He’s equally adept at shooting the Covenant in the face, but he’s a tad more vulnerable too: he can’t jump as high or move as fast, and he doesn’t have the benefit of recharging shields. ODST uses a damage system reminiscent of the one found in the original Halo. The Rookie has both a stamina level (with damage reflected in a reddish hue that passes over the screen) and a health level. If your stamina gets worn down and you continue to take hits, your health will drop. Stamina will recharge with time, but health won’t – so you’ll have to seek out medical attention if you get too shot up. This setup makes Mr Rookie a more fragile hero than the Master Chief, and the game should take on an edgier tone as a result.

Despite these weaknesses, ODST troopers are no pussy cats. The Rookie gets to use two weapons to wield on his travels – a pistol and a beefy submachine gun, both featuring suppressed fire. These silenced tools of death allow for a stealthier approach to combat, and fans of Halo 1’s pistol will be pleased to hear that the ODST variant is ideally suited to pulling off scoped headshots – great for scoring a one-hit kill on a hapless grunt. In addition to these weapons, you’re also equipped with a visor that offers an alternative view of the action: once activated, it’ll help you see in the dark and pick out any items of interest – along with any nearby allies or enemies.

This enhanced vision will be a vital aid in your quest to track down the other members of your team, since you’re essentially on a hunt for clues that will trigger important flashback sequences (more on these later). Rather than being chapter-based, it seems that ODST will offer a relatively free-form open world approach to exploration. By communicating with The Superintendent – a friendly AI who runs the systems in New Mombasa – you’ll be able to identify important sites of interest on your detailed map of the city. However, it’s completely up to you how you approach these hotspots. Your map screen allows you to place markers and waypoint objectives to guide your route through the ruined streets, and creative director Joe Staten reckons that these tools will help you to plan ambushes when playing the game in co-op.

During his demonstration Staten frequently referenced film noir as being an influence on the game’s atmosphere. It seems like a weird touchstone for a sci-fi shooter, but it certainly looks as if mystery and brooding atmosphere will play a large part in the ODST experience. However, things start to change a bit once you actually stumble across something that tells the story of your team-mates. When you find a significant clue, you’ll jump into a playable flashback sequence from the perspective of one of your friends. While The Rookie’s gameplay is set largely at night and revolves around lonely exploration, these other sequences feature ODSTs fighting as a team in action packed circumstances. During our demo, The Rookie discovered the remains of a bridge, with part of a UNSC charge lying close-by. This triggered a frenetic sequence in which a Trooper called Dutch used a Spartan laser to take on masses of Covenant while arming the explosives that then blow up the bridge.

This mix of gameplay types, and the stylised contrast between night and day sequences, should give ODST a markedly different flavour from the previous Halo shooters. But that’s not all the game has to offer: Microsoft and Bungie also took the time to show off a new co-op mode called Firefight – a wave-based survival game that could be taken as a veiled riposte to Gears of War 2’s Horde mode.

The concept is that you and up to three chums will work together to fight off increasingly difficult groups of Covenant. The gameplay is divided up into rounds, with each round containing five waves of enemies. The first four of these attack groups will be random, but the fifth will always feature Brute chieftains. Once you’ve completed a round, the Covenant will be awarded some kind of random power-up, indicated on the left hand side of the screen. Some of these bonuses will disappear with time, while others will become permanent – until eventually your enemies will have all the bonuses active at once… at which point you’ll probably die. The system bares a lot of similarity to the skulls feature in Halo 2 and 3, and you can bank on it giving you a comparably hard time.

ODST is certainly looking like an appetising proposition already, and though the changes from the typical Halo fare are small, they look like they could give the game a surprisingly fresh flavour. It’s also worth mentioning that ODST will come with a standalone multiplayer-only version of Halo 3, offering all current maps and three new ones. It seems like a pretty decent deal.

Halo 3: ODST will be released exclusively on Xbox 360 on September 22.