The Halo game series, developed by Bungie Inc., is known for its immersive storytelling and futuristic game atmosphere. Its lore is expansive, allowing the development team to craft games that vary in story intensity. The first three games — Halo Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 — were stories packed with explosive action and a main character that seemed virtually unstoppable. Halo 3 ODST is a complete twist on the original games. Instead of the main character being a biologically enhanced soldier with armor that weighs half a ton, you play as a regular soldier. The soldiers are Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, or ODSTs. Their mission is to drop from space in a single-operator high-tech metal pod, landing behind enemy lines to flank their forces.
The story of the game follows The Rookie. He has been placed with a new team of ODSTs to drop into the city of New Mombasa. Their mission is to combat an alien force known as the Covenant that has invaded Earth. The Covenant are looking for a portal created by the Forerunners, an ancient alien race, that will take them to The Arc. This is an installation believed by the Covenant to house the power to show them the great beyond, making them gods of the universe. The ODST team is composed of Mickey, Romeo, Duch, The Rookie, and Captain Buck. Their sixth member is Dare, a special agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI. She overtakes the leadership of Buck via ONI regulations. Dare was tasked with a highly classified mission that can only be disclosed at the time of arrival. The team believed that Dare would be dropping with them alongside the rest of the other ODST teams into the battlefield. However, her task is actually to extract a Covenant deserter in order to gain insight into the Covenant’s plans.
The team gathers their gear in the spaceship and enter their ODST pods. Three… two… one… light is green. As the team is dropped from space into New Mabasa, Dare takes control of the navigation systems and diverts the whole team to her objective site. The team panics, as they are unaware of the secret plan unfolding right before their eyes. As the team is descending through Earth’s atmosphere, a Covenant super ship begins a slipspace jump. This allows the alien’s ships to cross great interstellar distances through opening holes in the fabric of space and jumping to another point in space. This form of travel is extremely volatile since it releases huge amounts of energy after the jump; it has a similar release of energy to that of an atomic bomb.
As the Covenant ship makes the jump, the still-descending team gets hit with the aftermath blast. The energy shock scatters their formation and the team lands in different portions of New Mombasa as a result. Our character, The Rookie, wakes up six hours after the drop. You are now isolated from your team and must find your way back to them. Through the course of the game, the main character walks through the empty streets of New Mombasa, fighting occasional Covenant patrols left behind. While investigating the city, The Rookie finds various clues that lead him back to his team. When the team is whole again they work to escape the city and extract the Covenant deserter, an engineer who goes by the name Virgil.
The creators of Halo 3 ODST took a very creative route when developing the atmosphere. During the main portion of the game you play as the Rookie. After the slipspace jump broke him away from his team, The Rookie must wander the streets alone to find clues leading back to them. This portion of the game takes place at night. The player feels isolated and without a guide when walking through the streets. As you start to find more clues, the game's atmosphere switches from isolation to a futuristic detective-noir play style. It is made futuristic through the architecture and the fluorescent neon lights that give the streets of New Mabasa a soft gloom, and a night vision visor adds to the futuristic feeling. Players can make their way to the clues through stealth by sticking to the shadows, or through blunt combat with the Covenant patrols. The game does extremely well in making the player feel isolated and lost at first while also making them feel curious about solving the mystery of where their team is.
If the visuals of the game are the body, the soul is the sound track. The composer, Martin O’donnell, drew huge inspiration from tribal african drums and jazz compositions. The soundtrack adds to the game’s atmosphere, a quiet haze that slowly becomes clearer with the progression of the game. The ambient noir jazz saxophone combined with the deep tribal drums and the softness of the piano brings rich character to the game experience. You can sometimes find yourself walking in no particular direction at all while still enjoying the path since the music keeps you soft company.
Most games have linear gameplay, meaning the story unfolds in only one direction and goes from point A to point B before ending with the credits. Halo 3 ODST’s story is refreshing, however, since it does not follow a linear flow. The story centers on The Rookie in an open world version of New Mombasa. When you find clues, you stop playing as The Rookie and play as another team member in flashback sequences. Buck, Mickey, Duch, and Romeo are all able to play depending on the clues you find. This gives the player a break from wandering alone through the midnight city. These flashback missions are action packed, which is a nice contrast to the low action you encounter while searching for clues. As you become more familiar with the midnight streets of New Mombasa you will begin to pick up on a very interesting feature: You are not alone. As you walk past certain screens around the city, you will see that they react to your presence. The screens show arrows that point to your next clue or to a weapons cache. The operator of the screens is none other than Virgil, the Covenant deserter who needs to be extracted by your team. The engineer was able to make its way to the center of the city's AI system, called Vergil, and link itself to it. In doing so, the engineer took on characteristics of the AI and was given the nickname Vergil. So your secret buddy is the Covenant deserter; this has to be one of the best features of the game. It is a minimal feature but adds so much life to the gameplay experience.
I have only touched the tip of the iceberg in this review, for there is much more to this game than I covered. It is up to you to experience this masterpiece. Halo 3 ODST’s story line, atmosphere, music, and game details are extremely refreshing. If you want to take a break from the non-stop action of most first person shooters, this is the game for you. Enjoy the feeling of being a futuristic marine-turned-detective and walk through the darkened streets of New Mombasa to find your team. Games with unique atmospheres are rare to come by, but this is one of them.
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