Halo 3: ODST — The Halo Series’ Finest Entry?

I picked up ODST when it first came out and played through it. It was very different not running around as Master Chief, a move I was skeptical of at first. After playing through the solo quest, my concerns were quickly turned on their head. This game was special, a testament to how strong the Halo universe can be.

Months have passed with nary a Halo to have been played other than Halo Wars, which I bought used through GameFly a year after its release. So comes a quiet Sunday with boredom creeping over my shoulder. On a whim, I decide to play through one of the Halos again, leaning towards Combat Evolved. ODST looked at me from my shelf and whispered something to my psyche, something seductive. It murmured solid storytelling, excellent music, engrossing atmosphere, relatable characters, enhanced difficulty, and satisfaction to me, and so I popped it in. What seemed to be only a brief moment of time later, Sunday was over, completely absorbed by the tales of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers.

Tricia Helfer's ODST Avatar Does NOT Look This Good...

As mentioned earlier, ODST doesn’t have anything to do with Master Chief. Instead, you get the next-most elite group of human soldiers, the Hell Jumpers. All members of the squad are playable characters, used to traverse their section of the story that the unnamed Rookie is trying to piece together after the fact. All of the characters control exactly the same and are only differentiated by voice (or lack thereof in the case of the Rookie). Speaking of voices, the list of vocals is most impressive, especially to anyone with an inkling of sci-fi nerdiness within them: Tricia Helfer (Six from Battlestar Galactica, who is smoking hot and shouldn’t be relegated to voicework only), the incomparable Nathan Fillion of Firefly/Serenity infamy, along with his cohorts Adam Baldwin (a man named Jane) and Alan Tudyk (Serenity’s wisecracking pilot, Wash; also Pirate Steve from Dodgeball). The game also features the voice talents of Nolan North, who has the most awesome job in the world of video game vocal especial. This cast adds humor and actual acting chops to a series that takes itself too seriously at times, though does know how to lighten the mood on occasion, as evidenced with the following clip.

Bungie took a seemingly insignificant and obvious point with ODST and made it part of the gameplay.  The developers recognized that Master Chief was genetically altered, the perfect human soldier.  He could jump high, wield multiple weapons at once, run fast, and had shields to go with his MJOLNIR armor.  ODSTs were humans, regular people, trained as soldiers–that’s it.  They don’t have increased physical attributes or state-of-the-art armor.  As such, enemies can pack quite the punch, moreso than they could against the Chief.  Grunts were of little consequence for Sierra-117, but for Buck or the Rookie, they can seriously hamper your day.  Hunters dwarf an ODST–even Brutes can block out the sun for someone like Dutch or Mickey.  This detail adds realism (a term loosely used, of course) to the game, providing a much more mortal experience for the characters involved.  They aren’t super heroes, they are just heroes.

Edward Buck: Hero.

The storytelling of the game is superb, breaking up the main plot through various tales of what occurred following the Hell Jumpers’ disadvantageous fall into New Mombasa.  The Rookie is knocked offline and unconscious for approximately the first six hours of the action on the ground.  He emerges from his jump pod after nightfall in the largely-dark, neon-glowed city.  There are no familiar, or friendly, faces to be found, so he goes about trying to piece together what happened.  As he finds different pieces of equipment used by his squad mates, a story of that character is played through.  This very multilateral approach allows the plot to unfold rather naturally and impressively.  A sense of isolation is given to the player in part of the Rookie while camaraderie is experienced amongst the other members of the squad who were awake during the majority of the action.

The prime qualities of ODST are all adept at putting the player in the situation: the wonderful lighting effects and music create a sense of presence;the gameplay is designed with a soldier in mind, not a super human; the storytelling is sincere and light-hearted, while serious and engrossing.  That’s not to say any other Halo lacks these qualities, on the contrary.  ODST just seems to do it all better.  The only fault I can find of ODST is its brevity.  Many consider it to be little more than an Expansion Pack, but I demand it be seen as so much more, the sum of all its wonderful parts put into a package that features all the best of Halo and more.