[For this guest post, I am happy to welcome David Caldwell to Super Chart Island for the first time! David is a nonbinary writer and artist living in Salem, Oregon. They enjoy cats, guitar, and driving warthogs for dozens of assists.]
Halo has gone through a lot in 20+ years, but 2009 was the peak of Halo as a franchise. I kept returning to this sentiment on my most recent playthrough of Halo 3: ODST, released in fall of that year. Halo had dominated the First Person Shooter console space reliably from its release in 2001 all the way until 2007, when Halo 3’s strong sales were challenged by the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Call of Duty has since eclipsed the franchise and ended Halo’s multiplayer monopoly. The series nonetheless held brand recognition and a massive devoted fanbase at the end of the 2000s.
The franchise had proved to hold enough appeal to sell what was pitched by the developers as a side game for a full $60 USD. Some observers, including myself in the hype cycle before launch, worried that the title would not be “worth full price.” It would be hard to compare the value of any new Halo game to Halo 3, which was bursting with content at launch like no FPS before. Without head-to-head multiplayer, there was an argument to be made that this was a side-game easily skipped if you were not obsessed with Halo’s universe. Since its release ODST has undergone a fan reappraisal casting it as the standout campaign of Bungie’s tenure.
The changes to the typical Halo gameplay loop, much hyped before release as a major shake-up, are in reality the least consequential. Playing as an ODST Marine instead of a Spartan feels more vulnerable to a degree, particularly when fighting outsized enemies like Hunters and Brute Chieftains. Starting weapons feel very weak and give an appropriate impression of being mismatched against a technologically superior foe, which lends gravity to when you finally get to play with sniper rifles and tanks (Like every Halo, both get dedicated sequences). The game even emulates and intensifies Halo 1’s focus on health and medkits. However, the shooting, enemies, and vehicles adhere closely to the formula established at the beginning of the franchise and ensure that the gameplay never feels like anything but a Halo game.
With over a decade of hindsight, ODST’s lasting impact on the Halo franchise is almost entirely narrative; it is best remembered for its strength in storytelling, world-building and characters. New Mombasa is a fascinating future-earth setting that Halo 2 introduced with intrigue and proceeded to squander due to the demands of its epic plot (and an infamously rushed development cycle).Though it relies on a Halo 2 plot beat for setup, ODST’s story is more contained than any other Halo to a significant degree. The epic plots of Halo 2 and Halo 3 resulted in disappointingly little time spent on Earth, and ODST makes up for this with more personality than its predecessors.
There is an undercurrent of neo-noir to ODST’s entire presentation that sets it apart in the franchise. With respect to several highlight areas of Halo Reach, ODST is THE urban Halo. The cityscape is lent a dark and mysterious aura through ever-present colored lighting, neon and holograms. The moody tone is amplified in particular by the Marty O’ Donnell soundtrack, with an emphasis on jazzy woodwinds unusual for the series. Halo’s specific vision of humanity’s future feels less like the epic saga expected from main entries in the series. To its benefit, ODST delivers a more introspective story on a smaller scale.
Bungie tells this story through a charismatic cast with several high-profile names including Nathan Fillion and Nolan North (who even in 2009 was well on his way to being the Andy Serkis of videogame voice actors). A consistent throughline of the Bungie Halo games is banter between soldiers, and this game has some of their best. Fillion’s character Buck was so popular he was brought back as a new-generation spartan six years later for Halo 5’s co-op campaign. ODST is comparable to Reach as a game focused on a ragtag soldier squad, but the camaraderie between ODST’s characters feels more naturally developed. As a function of the lower stakes of a side-game, there is a sense that the characters are allowed room to breathe and express themselves far more than they would get in an epic like Halo 3 or Reach.
After years of complaints regarding Halo 1-3’s bogeymen, The Flood are absent from ODST. Levels like Halo 1’s “The Library” or Halo 3’s “Cortana” had become infamous, serving crucial plot points but featuring frustrating and often unfair gameplay, and ODST sidesteps these entirely. The result is a very strong series of levels, arguably the series’ best and undeniably unique in feel to the franchise.There are not a lot of surprises within the gameplay for anyone who finished Halo 3, with only a single new enemy type and two weapon variants. Halo 3’s gameplay loop is very solid, and ODST is very confident in its ability to set you up to experience that loop many times over. This is made quite explicit with ODST’s introduction of Halo’s Firefight mode, a co-op horde mode that I still consider one of the finest iterations of the genre due to Halo’s well-designed enemy behavior.
Despite all of this praise I would argue that the strong atmosphere the game provides conversely makes it the least compelling co-op experience of the Bungie titles. The game’s tone relies on the feeling of a lost soldier wrenched apart from their squad and trying to make it back. Doubling up on players for a campaign has generally been one of my favorite elements of the series, but in ODST it saps the game of a lot of tension. When you have someone to constantly communicate with, watch your back and help you overcome the odds, it keeps you from experiencing the little touches that make the game stand out. To me, the game’s most unique selling point compared to the rest of the franchise is its strength as a single-player experience.
Confidence is a very important thing for a game to have, and its absence is often apparent to even modestly seasoned gamers. A game that knows the story it wants to tell and puts effort into making every moment interesting can keep players hooked even when the gameplay is essentially something you have done thousands of times before over the years. The 343 Halos are all over the place in this regard, and their Halos have struggled to hold interest and relevance as a result. ODST is a supremely confident game. With no real new weapons or enemies or even graphics to design, Bungie’s goals were that of refinement.
Halo 3 is a very fun, grandly epic, extremely messy game. ODST is Halo 3 with much of the fat trimmed away, and is all the tastier for it. It remains a supreme example of the potential of the franchise as a single-player series: sci-fi intrigue, killer music, tight gunplay, and interesting characters as a cherry on top. Fans know the music, and ODST lets them dance.
As the series moves forward into 2023 and beyond it is hard to not notice the series flailing, and this yearslong gut feeling of many fans has been confirmed by 343 Studio’s recent layoffs. Halo Infinite’s Free-to-Play nature has failed to generate sustained interest in the series, especially as Infinite’s campaign has been seldom discussed since launch. As a fan of the series since its inception, I wish nothing but the best for Halo. It is not dead yet, but we are a long way from the halcyon days of 2009.
Perhaps we should hope for another side game.
Top of the charts for week ending 26 September 2009:
