It's taken a few tries, but Bungie has finally learned how to tell a good story.
The studio behind the popular Xbox-only Halo trilogy had created a narrative so encumbered by exotic alien mythology and ongoing interstellar battles that I'd almost given up trying to make sense of it all.
Then along comes Halo 3: ODST , a game that doesn't feature so much as a cameo by the series' iconic and beloved Master Chief and yet somehow manages to tell the most engaging and personal tale of any title in the franchise.
Best described as an unconventional detective yarn, ODST puts players in the role of the Rookie, an orbital drop shock trooper searching for his missing squad mates in the ruins of New Mombasa, an African mega-city that exists 500 years in the future and has been overrun by the Covenant, mankind's sworn extraterrestrial nemesis.
Our new hero explores the urban wasteland looking for the pods of his allies who crash landed during a mission gone awry.
A new co-op mode called Firefight allows up to four players to take on wave after wave of Covenant in various locations
Whenever he finds one, he also discovers a piece of equipment (such as a helmet or sniper rifle) that contains a video recording showing fragments of what happened to its owner.
Players then jump into the armour of the missing troopers – affable grunts with handles like Romeo and Buck – and experience firsthand the events that occurred after the crash.
It's essentially a series of short stories. One explores a romantic relationship between two troopers, while another focuses on a trio of soldiers working to transport an injured fourth out of the war zone. They're quick, compelling, and cleverly interconnected – what Robert Altman might have created had he ever set himself to making a sci-fi video game.
Players also stumble across data logs from computers scattered around the city by a woman who was in New Mombasa when the Covenant attacked. These recordings not only offer context for the destruction, but also insight into the invasion itself. It's worth the considerable effort it takes to track them all down.
All told, it's an engaging bit of interactive storytelling that's helped along by a talented cast of voice actors – led by Firefly 's Nathan Fillion – and an improbably apropos film noir score that at times consists of little more than a few jazzy piano key plunks.
Despite the departure in narrative and tone, ODST still manages to deliver the sort of straightforward and satisfying action that has made the Halo series a hit among both core and casual gamers. With few exceptions, we shoot the same weapons, drive the same vehicles, and dispose of the same types of aliens we've seen in other Halo games.
The biggest change comes in the ODST helmet, which has a heads-up display dubbed VISR that outlines bad guys in red, important objects in yellow, and offers a 3-D map of the city that makes exploring New Mombasa a bit easier.
There's also a new co-op mode called Firefight that allows up to four players to take on wave after wave of Covenant in various locations (this is in addition to a second disc that contains the complete Halo 3 competitive multiplayer experience). It's fun stuff for folks who just want to sit back with their buddies and annihilate some aliens, and a good way to augment the entertaining but relatively short six-hour campaign.
Halo 3: ODST may not be as grand in scope as its predecessors, but it's perhaps more satisfying – and a good lesson to game makers that they need not follow the industry's prevailing philosophy of always outdoing themselves with ever more epic adventures.
