This review contains spoilers
Man, you think knowing the ultimate outcome for these characters beforehand might soften the ending of this game but.....nope.
It's inevitable that some comparisons to ODST pop up as well after having played that one recently, however Reach succeeds over ODST in building much more memorable relationships with your squad mates. While I liked the characters in ODST, you only spend a couple of minutes with them before spending the rest of the game assuming they're already dead, as opposed to this game where you get to meet and fight with your team from the beginning, making the ultimate dissolution of your squad even more tragic.
Also, I have to say while I knew and expected my entire team to die (did Jun make it out? I don't think we ever saw him die, he just went off with the scientist lady), from the context of Combat Evolved and everything else, I assumed this was going to end in some grand, star wars death star-type planetary explosion or something, that they were going to completely destroy Reach. Instead what I got was more of a quiet whimper instead of a grand bang, with each member going out on their own throughout the story, constantly whittling down the team until it's just your last stand against endless wave of covenant. And that is MUCH more effective than the alternative, and really brings home a certain "war is hell" theme, rather than the fantastical space battles we've become accustomed to. One of the best sequences in that vein was Kat's death, which caught me so genuinely off guard that I audibly gasped.
Lastly, can I just say how relieved I was when the ancient artifact they were experimenting with under Reach didn't turn out to be Flood, but was instead Cortana? Much better than retreading that storyline again, only thing is I thought Cortana was part of the Pillar of Autumn from the beginning? I'm going to have to replay CE again but it seemed like her and Keyes had a deeper relationship beyond the week between this one and CE, and I definitely thought her and John already knew each other. I don't know I could be totally missing something here, but seriously other than that confusion near the end, can't think of any actual complaints.
It's inevitable that some comparisons to ODST pop up as well after having played that one recently, however Reach succeeds over ODST in building much more memorable relationships with your squad mates. While I liked the characters in ODST, you only spend a couple of minutes with them before spending the rest of the game assuming they're already dead, as opposed to this game where you get to meet and fight with your team from the beginning, making the ultimate dissolution of your squad even more tragic.
Also, I have to say while I knew and expected my entire team to die (did Jun make it out? I don't think we ever saw him die, he just went off with the scientist lady), from the context of Combat Evolved and everything else, I assumed this was going to end in some grand, star wars death star-type planetary explosion or something, that they were going to completely destroy Reach. Instead what I got was more of a quiet whimper instead of a grand bang, with each member going out on their own throughout the story, constantly whittling down the team until it's just your last stand against endless wave of covenant. And that is MUCH more effective than the alternative, and really brings home a certain "war is hell" theme, rather than the fantastical space battles we've become accustomed to. One of the best sequences in that vein was Kat's death, which caught me so genuinely off guard that I audibly gasped.
Lastly, can I just say how relieved I was when the ancient artifact they were experimenting with under Reach didn't turn out to be Flood, but was instead Cortana? Much better than retreading that storyline again, only thing is I thought Cortana was part of the Pillar of Autumn from the beginning? I'm going to have to replay CE again but it seemed like her and Keyes had a deeper relationship beyond the week between this one and CE, and I definitely thought her and John already knew each other. I don't know I could be totally missing something here, but seriously other than that confusion near the end, can't think of any actual complaints.