Moving on, Jarrard notes, "So, one of the other cool additions to
Reach is our fair reward system, and this is integrated throughout every mode of our game, throughout multiplayer, campaign, even while you're working in Forge. Everything you do in
Reach is going to reward the player with credit... In the short time I played I just earned 270 credits.
“These credits are the virtual currency that will be able to be spent on armoury here. And with any armoury we're going to have a whole host of different armour options for you to choose from - helmets, shoulder pads, chest pieces, all these things. And, as you progress through the
Reach game, as you earn more credits, you're actually going to rank up and as your rank increases you'll be able to get cooler and more expensive armoury items. So, on day one there's still going to be a bunch of stuff visible, but that's only a fraction of the full armoury available to you. As you progress, more stuff will start to become visible and available to you.
“It's only aesthetic,” Jarrard says. “We're not looking to do something like a perks-style system, we don't think it fits in the
Halo gameplay formula. We had a couple of armour options available for
Halo 3 tied to achievements, they were extremely popular, they were sought after, so for this game we're letting players really own and be their own unique Noble 6 character, and you can choose a female if you prefer, so starting the game for the first time the first choice you make is, do you want to be a male or a female? They have different models, different voice actors. Then we'll throw you right into the armoury with a small number of credits to get started. The thought is as you keep playing more stuff becomes available, you keep coming in and customising and changing your character's aesthetic.”
You won't get cheated when you hit a cutscene by your character reverting to a pre-designed model, either. "What's really cool is that you're own version of Noble 6 will appear in every game mode, even cinematics for the campaign, so if you want to be a pink spartan, unicorn-influenced, that's what you're gonna see.
"Beyond just armour, we have a couple of cool things. We have armour effects. So, if you want to run around the battlefield and have lightening coursing through your body, it's awesome. You can do that. It's gonna cost 2 million credits though, so it's going to take quite a lot of gameplay to do that." Like the armour itself, though, the effect has no impact on the gameplay (except to maybe make you a bit more visible in multiplayer), so you won't be able to electrocute opponents just by brushing up against them. It will, however, show that you've put in some serious hours.
There are also unlockable character voices in Firefight. Basically that's what it sounds like - you can open up new voices to pipe through your TV speakers as you're playing through the mode. The whole cast of Noble Team is available, as you'd expect, and some "old time favourites" like Cortana and even Master Chief. It's all new dialogue recorded specifically for Firefight.
And that's the end of the demo. We won't be waiting long for more, though.
Halo Reach is out on September 14th. Keep your eye on SPOnG for a full review soon...
