Previews// Halo: Reach

Jarrard reminds us that four-player co-op is up for grabs through live or system link, and that (happily) split-screen is making a comeback.

"Reach is the fist of the series where [when] you're playing a co-op campaign the base difficulty and the base AI behaviour will actually scale now in comparison to how many people are in the game,” Jarrard says.

"A four-player game on normal will actually be harder than a one-player game on normal because the AI behaviour will account for extra players.”

By this point he's into a chunk of the campaign that hadn't had a public airing before – Tip of the Spear.

"At this point the Covenant invasion's already in full swing, a massive battle's already underway,” Jarrard says. “Generally speaking the Covenant has superior numbers, superior firepower, superior technology, so the battle's already starting to not go too well but it's going to be up to me, Noble 6, with the help of Kat, to initially find this Covenant AA gun and disable it, hopefully allowing us to bring some our large cruiser frigate ships down from orbit to help us in this ground battle that's taking place.”

A cutscene leads us in, showing the two sides piling towards each other along an open valley surrounded by mountains, through the dirt and the sky. I'm pretty sure it's not how I'd go about fighting a war if I had satellites that could shoot you from space, but it certainly impresses the scale of Reach on you. This isn't Dynasty Warriors, though, and we won't be fighting a huge swathe of enemies on open ground. Taking out that AA gun means heading up the side of the valley, away from the main battle, to find it.

To help with this there's a new vehicle – more or less a Warthog with four missile pods. Yeah. Four. This is a vehicle-heavy mission, so that's no bad thing.

The path to the AA gun ascends the side of the valley, but there's still a very strong sense of a wider conflict around you. The sky to the left is alight with gunfire and the landscape has a scarred feel to it. It's looking great and there's a subtle greyness to the light that adds atmosphere.

The tower is reached, and it's on-foot to get the thing taken out, but the job gets done.

The bombing run commences. It's a temporary victory for the ground forces, at least. That goes as far as we can go, but Jarrard notes that further up ahead we'll meet another AA gun then try to advance across the ravine, trying to figure out what's going on with a Covenant closed area we've discovered. Something's happening - there are far too many troops across there for comfort, and it's going to be up to Noble Team to try to figure out what's going on.