It’s a surprisingly bright Monday morning in London (the last few weeks has an odd and unpredictable concoction of blistering heat and rainfall of biblical proportions) and journalists from all over the country have gathered at a secret location for the chance to get some hands on time with one of the most anticipated 360 releases of the year.

 

The host: Bungie, the game: Halo 3 ODST, and unfortunately nothing else. “We won’t be talking about Reach today” is the one of the sentences Bungie developer Lars Bakken chooses to start today’s presentation with. There is a sigh of disappointment upon hearing this news, after all what we already know about ODST is enough to get us by whilst Bungie’s big E3 announcement is still shrouded in mystery. “We’ll be unveiling some new info on Reach in a couple of months but today we’re here to talk about Halo 3 ODST.”

 

It’s the sort of warning we expected but didn’t want to hear.

 

 

As we sit down, we’re greeted with the games title screen which frames around our ODST protagonist ‘The Rookie’ anticipating his mission. Not straying too far from tradition, the menu features your solo campaign, Firefight; the newest feature to the multiplayer Halo entourage and the focus of today’s gathering, Theatre makes a noble return from Halo 3 and we’re treated to short clip of a game of Firefight played between the Bungie developers.

 

And finally, blanked out of this short list is ‘Extras’. Curiosity is peaked by the attention drawn to it. “As you may know, ODST comes with an access key to the Halo Reach Beta, when it goes live, you’ll be able to access it from this menu.” That’s all we’re given on Halo Reach today; no new info, no details on when the beta will go live, only that when it does go live, you better hope you still have the Halo 3 ODST disc kicking around.

 

Hopping into the solo campaign, we’re treated to the full opening cinematic which sets the mood perfectly as the calm before the storm. ODST is a far darker game than any Halo before it, not just from the dimly lit settings but to the team who emerge more anxious than determined, there’s a sense of impending pandemonium. It’s not long before the Rookie is kicked into gear and sent plummeting down towards Earth but this eye-boggling descent is cut short as the Rookies trip is interrupted by the slipspace Incident during Halo 2, which sends him off course and crashing into the city below.

 

Picking up six hours later, the rookie is thrown into the streets of New Mombasa, a dark Neotopia complete with burning skylines and streets packed with Covenant patrols. Lars tells us that New Mombasa is without a doubt the biggest map the Bungie team has ever worked on, something he later reveals was one of the hardest parts about developing ODST.