Halo 3: ODST is about a group of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers that drop into allied territory to fend off aggressive, hostile forces and complete some secret mission under the veil of a general liberation of the city of New Mombasa. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, all of the soldiers get off course and land in varied parts of a large city, isolated from one another, and in the middle of an urban warzone. If this sounds like material borrowed from the historic exploits of the 101st Airborne when they dropped into Normandy, I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence. What this setup allows ODST is the opportunity to cast the player as “The Rookie,” the archetypal new guy.
The Rookie begins ODST alone in the African “mega-city” of New Mombasa when he wakes up in his drop pod six hours after the initial ODST drop. When the Rookie comes to — presumably in the middle of the night — the city is largely abandoned by its human civilians and, instead, Covenant forces are idly patrolling the streets. With no real objective nor any idea of the events which have transpired while he was unconscious, the Rookie begins a trek through the city to piece together the events that transpired throughout the course of the day and reconnect with the rest of his ODST squad. The Rookie’s progress through the story is determined by a series of somewhat hackneyed narrative devices“relics” which he finds scattered about the city. The Rookie, presumably, uses the placement of these relics in the environment to interpret the entirety of the event (which all involve the happenings of his fellow ODST squad-mates) that caused this relic to, uh, exist. The mild awkwardness of the narrative presentation aside, the Rookie’s lonely escapades in the largely desolate night-time streets of New Mombasa contrasted against the more standard Halo mission fare present in the relic-inspired flashbacks is actually a gameplay structure that works very well.
It’s remarkable that in a franchise as ubiquitous as Halo, Bungie chose to take ODST in a direction that actively attempted to avoid the typical “War, Fuck Yeah!” space marine ethos. Over the course of the ODST single-player campaign, players spend about 30-40% of the game simply wandering the streets of New Mombasa as he/she makes her way to the next mission segment. During the course of this gameplay there are somewhat ‘random’ enemy encounters spread throughout the city. Sometimes players can evade these encounters, sometimes they can’t, but they’re pretty trivial combat scenarios in generally-designed encounter spaces. Then again, an encounter in a Halo game is rarely dull or routine. The Rookie’s gameplay sections do nothing if not to prove how durable Halo 3’s general combat systems are. Bungie also proves how much more interesting their combat system is when they limit the abilities of the player character rather than continually add systems on top of an already powerful Master Chief. The complete removal of dual-wielding, for instance, shows how much more interesting the Halo gameplay is when players have to make hard choices. When dual-wielding, players can have an energy weapon and a ballistic weapon in the same weapon set due to one-handed variations of each type of weapon. In ODST players can only have one weapon active at a time, which makes the typical yin (plasma) and yang (ballistic) combo all the more difficult — and rewarding.
The primary dilemma with the solitary exploration of New Mombasa’s post-invasion night life is that it’s an anemic experience unfitting the Bungie pedigree. Players are given a loose objective at the beginning of every segment and that’s the extent of the guidance given. The player then chooses to go from A to B via one of a two-or-three paths through the city streets (and occasional buildings). There just is not a whole lot to do along the way other than, maybe, find one of the thirty audiovisual logs spread throughout the city. And finding these bits of side-story are interesting, but they’re not enough to build a gameplay experience on. The gist of the exploration through New Mombasa is taking in the atmosphere and fighting. While Halo 3’s combat is pretty consistently engaging and interesting, combat for the sake of combat is rarely an enjoyable endeavor for players.
Players typically need their actions in games to feel like narrative progression, character progression, or the mostly intangible personal progression. Narrative/forward progression is progression from a starting point to an ending point in a game’s directed “campaign.” This is the primary means of progression in most single-player-enabled games. Character progression is the advancement of the character a player assumes in a game. In a lot of ways, character progression happens in parallel to narrative progression, but, especially over the last few years, there are a great deal of examples of character progression independent of story progression (especially in multiplayer shooters and MMORPGs). Personal progression is the player’s mental state of feeling like their skills are obviously progressing through their endeavors; most games teach players the skills they need as they ramp up from starting a game to finishing it. Some games, like EA Blackbox’s Skate series, actually utilize personal progression as the driving force of the game and offer players targeted opportunities to improve their skills throughout a thin narrative progression. It is incredibly difficult for games to properly frame personal progression in a way which feels obvious and meaningful to players. Skate accomplishes it by having the gameplay revolve around an entirely skill-based inner loop where no modifiers are ever made to the gameplay throughout the entire game’s progression. The entire game is centered around a skill-based control mechanism that never changes, but that is always guiding a player’s advancement through the thin character and narrative progression via the in-world treatment of the player’s character as some “rising star.” In a sense, reminding the player that the he has learned skills that maybe he only recognized in his reflex/subconscious memory.
Halo 3: ODST’s New Mombasa sections fail to ever make the player feel like he is accomplishing something. In ODST’s missions, which work in the typical Halo trappings, the player encounters new enemies, characters, and constant narrative progression. The dynamism of Halo 3’s combat mechanics prevent these segments from ever really getting dull; but that stark contrast that is drawn from the jumping back-and-forth between The Rookie and the more linear, structured missions in the ODST flashbacks constantly reminds the player that his time in the dimly-lit streets of New Mombasa are filler… Which is incredibly unfortunate because the solo experience in New Mombasa is absolutely beautiful; it’s a dedicated solo experience, encourages thoughtful progression through gorgeous blown-out, ember-filled buildings all taking place amidst a fantastic Film Noir-inspired score composed by Bungie veteran Martin O’Donnell.
As a quick aside, it seems completely irresponsible to see so many reviewers ripping on the ODST price. Having played the game now I am somewhat frightened over the amount of “price versus content” discussions surrounding the game. The single-player campaign is the length of a typical Halo campaign except, this time, there are no Flood. Not even a single Flood mention. Well. There’s a flooded city, but there are no Flood. And Firefight. ODST also includes the full Halo 3 multiplayer along with every map pack ever released for the game (which, arguably, is of negligible value since Halo 3 is an Xbox 360 staple, but the map packs may not be). Plus Firefight.
Oh, Firefight. Let’s talk about Firefight for a second.
Halo 3: ODST has a mode that is essentially Geometry Wars reskinned as Space Marines versus Aliens. And it is glorious. Four players in co-op have the opportunity to fight against wave after wave of Covenant within the space of a single, confined arena. Unlike Gears of War 2’s Horde Mode, which is conceptually similar, Firefight feels like a mode that was actively treated different from standard gameplay. As four players advance through a Firefight session, ODST applies a number of the skulls from Halo 3 to the ruleset which force all involved players to rethink whatever strategy has gotten them to where they are. There are skulls which cut the amount of ammunition that the Covenant drop by about 75% (ie, ruthless), one which only allows players to regain stamina by meleeing enemies (more ruthless), and a skull which makes ballistic weapons useless against shields (not ruthless until famine is active at which point it’s evil). Basically, Firefight is Halo 3’s typically excellent combat system modified per-round and per-set to require players to think on their feet even more than normal while also providing a scoring system that is providing constant feedback and rewards to players who excel. It’s heaven.
ODST is a strange little package. It’s the best campaign the series, the glorious nature of arena shooters and intense four-player cooperative gameplay is alive and well in the game’s Firefight mode, and and the refined Halo 3 gameplay make for Bungie’s best production to-date. It somewhat saddens me to think that Halo: Reach may revert back to ever-powerful (and completely uninteresting) Master Chief, as going from the ODST marines to Master Chief in Halo 3 multiplayer was a completely deflating experience. That is, however, neither here nor there. Play ODST and experience Bungie’s least-hyped and most well-executed Halo since the series’ debut back in 2001.