10 Years of ODST - Why Halo 3: ODST is one of the best Halo stories of all time

2009 was a big year for gaming packed full of highly anticipated sequels and new IPs that would go on to become industry staples Modern Warfare 2 burst onto the market in November shattering any and all sales records that came before it Gears of War 2 released the same month to resounding success cementing itself as Xboxes runner-up flagship franchise laughs added to released and continued to prove that valve could not make an Impala first party game Borderlands came onto the scene and spawned an how infinitely popular looter shooter genre and then there was hailing where all his Co competing franchises chose to dig in and iterate upon previous successors Bungie still riding the immense high of Halo 3 took an incredible risk and tried something completely new halo 3 ODST now granted not only was ODST a spin-off game but it was a project that originally began as a DLC for Halo 3 codenamed halo 3 recon but where some people criticized Bungie decision to convert recon into its own dedicated game I personally feel like they actually deserve praise for having the balls to do this they knew how different it was gonna feel to Halo 3 and more so to any other Halo game that had come before and they knew that as a standalone game it wasn't gonna be anywhere near as complete a package as saved Gears of War 2 or modern warfare 2 and yet they had enough faith in their experimental baby to release it during the same season as multiple gaming juggernauts in hindsight a spring 2010 release would have been a far safer choice but in their typical fashion Bungie didn't care about the competition and thus halo 3 ODST was released to the world on September 22nd 2009 meaning it's now been ten years since we first dropped feet-first into hell happy 10th birthday ODST let's talk about you and everything that you did so god damn right like any other good Halo game ODSP success began before its launch with this advertising now all Halo games even the bad ones have had incredible marketing campaigns but only asti's was different more so than any other Halo even reach ODST tries to paint the horrors of the human covenant war from a more grounded perspective a perspective that ODST let us in on for the first time in halo history now halos marketing campaigns had always been gritty I mean Hilary's believes starry night & Lomb fall were our first insights into Halo as a more visceral and gritty experience where humanity was very much fighting a losing battle and ODST shares these themes but with one stark difference where Halo 3's advertising always focused on an individual hero the Master Chief whose strength tenacity and abilities were vastly superior to anyone or anything fighting alongside him ODST focused instead on the collective no single ODST is ever shown as the hero of the day in fact the opposite is painted o DSPs are depicted as painfully mortal soldiers who unlike chief can't do it all alone and can and do die in battle whereas chief could accomplish just about anything alone the odious T's need to act as a collective they are the super heroes people are used to playing us in the Halo universe they're vulnerable and they're far more grounded through the eyes of an ODST a single brute is one of the greatest Horrors and is rarely something they can handle alone their vulnerability compared to the Spartan miss means that they aren't strangers to death they're sent on similar missions to Spartans except without all the bio augmentations and armor and shielding and their fatality rates are extremely high this focus on death and loss set up the role of the ODST perfectly and brought home what it was really like to be fighting a losing war on home turf against an enemy that just seemed unstoppable as a highly vulnerable soldier sent on a suicide mission after suicide mission and the beauty of ODST is just how well most of these themes transitioned into the game itself but first let's talk about the games launch like we already mentioned fall 2009 was an incredibly busy time in gaming and Bungie releasing what was once a campaign DLC as a fully fledged game seemed insane and it was insane but the insane was Weapon XI thrived in a strange semi coincidental way ODST launched mirrored is protagonist quiet among the noise surrounding it yet still incredibly impactful obviously it was no halo 3 but it still managed an impressive 2.5 million sales in its first few weeks topping all the sales charts until November it even gave halo 3 a bit of a boost as well with Microsoft reporting over 5 million unique players and over a hundred and sixteen million hours played on either Halo 3 or ODST less than a month after launch but just how different was ODST well where most game is releasing at the time were simply elaborating on their existing formulas iterating on what made their predecessors so popular Bungie did the typical Bungie thing and went in the other direction once again carving their own path in the snow they had the best formula in first-person shooter history one that utterly revolutionized console gaming a core aspect of which was the raw power of the player and yet they took a risk and nerfed the player gone were the days of the power fantasy fueled by the Master Chief now that you're an ODST your smaller your weapon is a weaker and you're much more vulnerable the health system from combat Evolved made a return to you exacerbate this feeling of vulnerability now every firefight had a lasting effect on your health when coupled with the weaker firepower this made every enemy you encountered much more of a threat no longer was plowing through the Covenant mowing down hordes of grunts and brutes that stood in your way a viable tactic you have to actually use your head now often evasion was even a superior strategy to engagement a first for Halo and an effect that served to ground the experience just that little bit more all these gameplay alterations that served to bring halo down a few notches would be carried forward by Bungie into reach to the atmosphere created by ODST changes created the perfect foundation for Halo stories based on loss by putting us on the same level as those who suffered the highest fatalities during the war we got an insight into what it was like to be that vulnerable and yet still be sent on near impossible missions against the Covenant and yet despite this Bungie still managed to give us almost everything that we expect from a halo campaign we got a sniper mission we got dedicated vehicle missions huge set pieces scorpion sections and even a warthog run and somehow none of these experiences felt even remotely out of place in the overall story the game was trying to tell and what a story it was halo 1 2 & 3 all told very grandiose stories about saving the universe focusing on the macro details over the micro in keeping with ODST love of shaking up the formula it told an incredibly different one one that was a thematic departure from the halo stories that we were all used to ultimately the overall story did end up linking into the original trilogy quite well in fact but its tone was so radically different like we already mentioned ODST is a story primarily about loss but at the same time it's also a story about isolation about loneliness and separation and even about love the way that I see it ODST story can be kind of cut in half based on tone with 1/2 being a rookie story and the other half being the rest of night both these halves tell stories that are drastically different from a total perspective yet somehow managed to fit together in the overarching narrative really really neatly alpha 9 side of the story is incredibly vanilla it's pretty much everything that we expect from a traditional Hilo campy and in terms of tone and also just overall mission design not that that's a bad thing that mind you it's a story about banding together and overcoming overwhelming odds with hints of something a little bit more grandiose waiting for us at the end thanks the dares secret mission there's moments of humor badassery and companionship each ODST mission brings a typical halo troop to the table knocks mission is your vanilla halo infantry mission Dutch brings us the vehicle level Nikki satisfies our need for explosive scorpion action and Romeo gives us the all-too-familiar sniping mission none of these experiences are new but that's not a bad thing their experiences that we've come to expect and come to love from halo and a game without them would just feel plain wrong so bungees idea to use alpha 9 a more conventional set of characters to deliver them was pretty clever but then we have rookies half of the campaign and right off the bat you can tell that it's going to be different you're alone stranded in an occupied new Mombasa in the dead of night there's nothing coming through your comms no friendly voice or transmission the only audio is the rookie wincing in pain in searing store the Phantom's circling your location and be unfamiliar and rather unsettling news the first human voice that you ran into is that of a superintendent which is a sign of things to come that voice is the only remotely human thing the rookie is gonna hear for hours to come the first encounter with the Covenant patrol in the square really sets the tone for the rest of the rookies mumbasa street missions beneath a dark stormy sky you're outnumbered yet undetected it's already clear that this entire region of new Mombasa is lost to the Covenant and thus beneath the grand caucus of the space elevator you have two options evasion or engagement engagement requires you to pick your shots wisely preferably from a distance but evasion arguably the preferred method requires constant scanning of your surroundings with visor mode to make sure that no other patrols get the jump on you as you navigate between the wreckage of a battle fought here in the hours before the atmosphere combined for the option to remain in the rainy shadows really helps to build the game's film noir tone Bungie have gone on record stating that the film noir genre of cinema was one of EDS P's biggest inspirations and that it inspired it in almost every way from art design and gameplay to story and music and this inspiration is what makes ODSP story rookies half in particular stand out so much it's so unlike any story that healers ever told before but it fits the government-controlled new Mombasa setting absolutely perfectly and the pessimistic elements of film noir feed into this idea of loss and loneliness that rookie story focuses on he spends the entire night tiptoeing around the dark rainy City piecing together all the evidence he can find to work out what happened to his squad after the failed drop the day before he plays the role of a sort of detective living in the shadows of his squad and his only guiding force is the mysterious superintendent a city ji that guide him towards his ultimate destination in a cleverly subtle manner and then there's the music Marty and Michael had been making the same style of music for the past eight years at this point and with ODSP with all of its tonal shifts aside I think it's very clear that they wanted to try something different the introduction of smooth jazz inspired by film noir was the perfect accompaniment to the quiet rainy new Mombasa ODST really gives me the same vibes as Cowboy Bebop both are film noir focusing on isolation separation and loneliness and both are accompanied by soul healing jazz in a way rookie even kind of reminds me of spike Spiegel both are lonely characters trying to piece together their past and search for their companions they're both clumsy yet also innocent and for the majority of their stories they're both alone just in different ways the similarities in music between the two are really just the icing on the cake and I swear to God Bungie had to have drawn some inspiration from Cowboy Bebop for ODST I am absolutely adamant in the end similar to spike rookie finds what he's looking for after piecing together all the evidence that he found and following a breadcrumb trail through the Mombasa streets he reunites with there and ultimately the rest of alpha 9 as they escape the city with one of the most important artifacts ever discovered by humanity the adorable Vergil I love the fact that the entire time Virgil was the one guiding rookies throughout new Mombasa giving him directions on the digital street signs and selectively locking and opening bus doors until like in typical film noir fashion he was guided into the underbelly of the city to rescue him I looked at the entire path the rookie were sent on was ultimately to save a scared helpless alien who just happened to be really damn cute it's a nice human cherry on the cake that is the rookie story he overcame the loneliness in separation and in doing so helped turn the tired of the war how were very Hayley so to bring this whole thing full circle ODST story is so good because of how many risks it took Bungie weren't afraid of creating something radically different to what millions of people expected from halo from almost every single perspective ODST changes up the halo formula and yet it still works and it still feels like halo it proves that a Halo game doesn't have to center around a Spartan to feel like Halo and it's an absolute crying shame that we've never had anything like it since Bungie dared to experiment and it paid off in an immaculate fashion happy 10th birthday ODST you haven't aged a day it really does pay to be the strong silent type [Music] but what about firefight okay right look I'm gonna commit an act of treason here and say that I was never actually the biggest fan of firefight in any Halo game I always preferred playing horde or zombies when it came to playing a horde mode but out of all the iterations of firefight I think it's almost at this point a unanimous opinion across the entire Halo community the earliest he did it best and I think the reason why is because of how nerf the player character was being a weaker ODST as opposed to a strong formidable super soldier makes the infinite waves of covenant feel far more intimidating for the same reasons that the individual patrols in the campaign felt intimidating as well you can't just blast through them anymore but in firefight there's no evasion he can't hide from the brutes every single brutes jackal grunt and hunter needs to be taken down so it forces you into that sort of uncomfortable position of being out of options and having to face the enemy straight down it's far more grounded and I don't want to say realistic but this are all gritty I'm not quite sure what the word is to describe it but compared to reach and far more so compared to Halo 5s in my opinion awful iteration of firefight it feels a lot more like a do-or-die survival mode than simply a mode where you kill infinite waves of enemies that's all I've really got to say about firefight because I mean like I said I was never the biggest fan of it but I appreciate how ods teased gameplay changes managed to make what was once a simple horde mode that much more intense and also a word that I can't quite think of oh and also fable Johnson Mabel Johnson need i say anymore and so that's why I personally think that ODST is not only one of the best halo stories ever told but also one of the best stories that gaming has ever produced and in my opinion it's a perfect example of video games as an art form I genuinely cannot believe that this masterpiece of an experiment is ten years old really doesn't feel like it it only feels like yesterday that I was in year eight at school or eighth grade for those in America defending it when everyone else was calling it trash and saying that model warfare to war Borderlands was better and now I'm 22 almost 23 I graduated University over a year ago man real boomer hours right I'm gonna go and listen to some low fight until the early hours of the morning and crack open a can of monster big thank you to spot and Jonathan Andrews for once again becoming an iconic one over on patreon as well as of course all my other amazing patrons for their continued support over there and thank you all so much for watching I really do appreciate it and I'll catch you all in the next one take it away Marty [Music] you

Channel: HiddenXperia

Views: 484,877

Keywords: halo 3: odst, halo 3 odst soundtrack, halo 3 odst theme, halo 3 odst rain, halo 3 odst campaign, halo lore, halo 3 odst 10th anniversary, halo retrospective, odst, halo 3, halo, halo trilogy, hiddenxperia, new mombasa, halo the rookie, halo buck, halo alpha 9, halo 3 odst firefight, halo 3 odst music, halo firefight, halo story, orbital drop shock troopers, halo spartans, halo 3 odst story, halo new blood, halo bad blood, halo odsts, halo 3 odst, halo odst lore

Id: Wn2lmrTC99g

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019