Reach & Project Natal – Why i’m worried, and why i’m not

So it’s recently been said, by the Studio Head at Bungie (Harold Ryan) that Halo Reach could use Project Natal. Now to some people, this might sound pretty cool. After all, imagine if you could go in to hand-to-hand Combat with a Grunt, or an Elite, or maybe you could even do a William. Well actually, none of that appealed to me, but whatever, just throwing out some examples of what some people might have thought.

So first of all, what is Halo Reach? This seems to be a question that a lot of people are asking, and here’s the answer: It’s a First Person shooter. Just like every other Halo game (Except for Halo Wars). As Urk put it in a weekly update, “Halo: Reach will be a First Person Shooter. You will shoot stuff from a first person perspective. It will be awesome.”

So yeah, if you play Halo, you’re probably familiar with what a First Person Shooter is. You walk around, shoot things, and occasionally throw Grenades. If we’re talking specifially about Halo, you also fly certain vehicles, drive certain vehicles, and man turrets. But for the most part, Halo is an FPS.

So here’s one of my problems with Halo Reach using Project Natal.  Movement: To move, would you have to do some kind of jogging-on-the-spot movement? What about to turn? Would you have to actually physically turn your body? But if you do that, you wouldn’t be able to see the screen! How would you Fire? Pretend that you’ve got a gun in your hand? A First Person Shooter simply would not work with this.

Thankfully, I don’t think Bungie are this stupid. At least, I don’t think that they’re stupid enough to change the game this dramatically, especially given the economy. Halo 3 is a very successful game, often being the most played game on Xbox Live. There’s not really any reason to change things dramatically. People like what they have.

Now on to a more logical reason about why Halo Reach won’t require Natal, and the main reason why i’m not worried about Natal being a mandatory add-on to play this game, is the Halo Reach Beta. While an official release date for the Beta has yet to be announced, i’ll place my money on it being released in the Spring of 2010, just like the Halo 3 Beta was released in the spring of 2007. My guess is that Natal won’t even be out until the second half of 2010. With this knowledge in mind, I think it’s fairly logical to assume that Natal won’t be mandatory to play the game with.

Whichs brings the question: What will Natal be used for in Halo Reach? An alternative control scheme? To be honest I can’t really think of many things that Natal would be good for in a Halo game. But i’m 99% certain that this game won’t require it, which can only be good news.

~ by pokeh on June 30, 2009.