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Halo 3 ODST is a shooter game released in 2009 and is a spin-off title from the main series of games known as “Halo”. The series follows a war between a genocidal alien covenant and humanity. The protagonist and hero of the games is known as The Master Chief, seen by many as humanity’s last hope—but Halo 3 ODST shows that there were many more heroes in the war than Spartan 117.Halo 3 ODST took many different directions away from the main trilogy of games, in gameplay, setting, atmosphere and characters; this game has no Master Chief, no super soldiers-- for most of the game you are a lone shock trooper, wandering the abandoned and haunting streets of the super-city of New Mombasa in Africa. You are determined to find the rest of your squad, and you are hopeless.The games first playable mission is actually a ‘hub’ as it is called, it is a large map with scripted events, enemies and main pieces of ‘evidence’ pointing towards the whereabouts of your squad with the help of the city’s artificial intelligence and superintendent known as Virgil.You awake after being knocked unconscious from a severe drop pod crash, noticing you are high above the ground and your pod is submerged in the edge of a tall building; there is no way down but from to jump. The sky is a dull, dark grey with a menacing red glow, the city is void of light, the only light that guides you is the neon signs and notifications from Virgil, who tries to help you find your squad.Police cars and destroyed vehicles litter the empty streets, there are no signs of life whatsoever. This strikes the player with a hopeless, lonely feeling from the very beginning. This feeling is different from any other Halo game in the series; playing as the Master Chief and causing the Covenant absolute carnage using every weapon at your disposal…this feeling is very different. You don’t feel the adrenaline of battle or the strength of a suit of power armour like the Master Chief’s in the streets of New Mombasa; you feel alone, hopeless, even this feeling you get wandering the streets differs from the games key missions following other team members in the recent past— and most of this is thanks to the games art and design direction.The abandoned city parts of the game are designed to be complicated and tricky to navigate. This is evident in early concepts for the Mombasa Streets setting; most of the buildings and scenery look very similar and fits a theme of a near-brutalist styled, modernist, stereotypical science fiction supercity.The doors of the buildings are lit with an orange-red emergency light, a choice possibly made to invite the player in from the dark streets with Covenant patrols, but expect not a refuge but a danger within. The interiors, similar to the outside streets, are very dark, lit only by large TV screens and dim, flickering lights and littered with bodies. The darkness around the entirety of the level forces the player to use the game’s unique night-vision ability, only seen in this game in the Halo series plus the game released a year after ODST (Halo: Reach).All of these details added to the Mombasa Streets level all help create a post-apocalyptic, neon and noir atmosphere; the post-apocalyptic segment of this atmosphere comes from the abandoned vehicles and buildings, crumbling structures and decimated trucks and cars, occasionally wandered past by a patrol of Grunts led by a Brute, or a sneaky ODST Rookie determined to find his squad.The noir effect of the game comes from not only the dark surroundings, but the soundtrack and music of the game as well as the Rookie’s search to find in-game objects which act as a beacon. This beacon triggers a cutscene of the Rookie (player) examining the object, having flashbacks to the voices of his long-gone allies. After the scene plays out, a new mission will load and so will a new cutscene; depending on what type of object you found, whether that be Romeo’s bent sniper rifle hanging from cut cables, Dare’s helmet or a decimated recon drone (the sniper leading to the mission with Buck and Romeo where they attempt to rescue Mickey and Dutch from a downed Pelican aerial carrier vehicle, in which an Covenant Brute Chieftain slams its gravity hammer into Romeo’s chest, bringing the sniper with the blow).A lot of Halo 3 ODST takes place inside this dark, mysterious, neon city, with a theme of pattern and repetition in its art and architecture. Some of the game’s missions will provide a breather from the overwhelming city and place the player in a less complex environment; Examples of this would be Uplift Reserve and ONI Alpha Site.the third main mission of the game is called ‘Uplift Reserve’ and follows the heavy soldier of the squad known as Dutch and a battalion of marines fighting the Covenant through a deserted wildlife reserve. Longsword bomber ships saw through the orange-yellow skies, explosions and radio chatter is heard through the rattle of gunfire and screams of the wounded.It is obvious that the team behind Halo 3 ODST’s art style were attempting to give a very different feeling from the normal games through the hub world mission ‘Mombasa Streets’ but keep Halo’s signature flow and style through key story missions like ‘Uplift Reserve’; providing an environment similar to that of missions in Halo 3, ‘The Storm’ or ‘Floodgate’ for example. The ground is a sand yellow-orange, scorched by the African sun and deprived of water with very small, rare and dying patches of grass dotted around to reflect that of the real world’s Africa and its climate and terrain.The Office of Naval Intelligence, ‘ONI’ for short, are a secret military organisation responsible for many cover-ups in the Halo timeline: The Covenant invasion, the Flood (ancient outer space aliens that only wish to consume everything and use humans as zombies) outbreak in the town of Voy, the Spartan super soldier program and more. There is not only weight to their name to fans of the franchise, but it should be evident the sheer power they hold on humanity by their Alpha site in Halo 3: ODST.A large cubed building stands out in the New Mombasa beaches, a bridge connecting it to the city, this cube is the ONI Alpha Site; it boasts its simplistic design with Brutalist-inspired elements although the building does not appear to be made from just concrete. This mission refreshes the memory of the player by bringing them away from the complex streets of the supercity and dumps them in this building.Another notable mission in Halo 3 ODST, for its artistic design and overall gameplay and storytelling which can be linked to possible inspirations, is ‘Data Hive’. During the story, the Rookie (the player’s main role in the game) picks up a signal coming from Dare, the mysterious acting captain of the squad sent by the Office of Naval Intelligence. The damaged Superintendent finally begins to shut down after sending the final clues to the Rookie to go into the Data Centre to find Virgil.Upon The Rookie’s descent, the data centre is reminiscent of a sci-fi horror movie; the spawn-point of the level is dimly lit, the opening of where the shaft Rookie abseiled down using a rope is the only source of light; the moon, soon to be falling against the morning sun, illuminates the square, elevated platform in the middle of the room. Corpses of New Mombasa Policemen and women lie on the floor, murdered by the Covenant; one of these corpses lie trapped underneath a door, as the door attempts to close. Cables and wired hang from the damaged ceiling, monitors lay cracked and damaged.The very first room the player spawns in on Data Hive paints a grizzly picture; the Covenant are much stronger than portrayed in previous games with the Master Chief, and are able to vandalise and murder anything in their path, especially when you are just a normal shock trooper; you are no Spartan.Upon stepping through the first door, you come across the first corridor of the level; these corridors look near-identical, and are the storage rooms for the superintendents data. Glass walls with even more data towers standing behind them lay cracked and splattered with human and Covenant blood, the data towers in front of the player have small, glowing buttons which battle against the horrifying darkness. The corridors are dark, and the Covenant will try to use this to their advantage by having the Brutes use stealth modules.It is evident that inspiration for the data hive level was drawn from science fiction-horror movies, like that of Predator; the Predator species’ ship design reminds me of this level. The city and outdoor scenery may be reminiscent of brutalist or modernist stylisation, but the city’s underground is full-blown sci-fi horror. ................
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