50 Fun Facts About Halo: Reach

On the box art of Halo: Reach, Noble Team stand lined up from left to right in order of what?

Their deaths set the line-up: Jorge falls first, then Kat, Carter and Emile, and the one squad member who lives through the game stands last. The player's own Spartan is left off the cover entirely.

What has Emile, Noble Team's assault specialist in Halo: Reach, scratched into the visor of his helmet?

A skull glares from Emile's faceplate, built up from hundreds of scratches, each one standing for a Covenant soldier he has killed. In split-screen co-op the carving vanishes and his visor is left blank.

Hemorrhage, a map in Halo: Reach, is a remake of which classic canyon from the first Halo game?

Blood Gulch came back with its original bases set on terrain lifted from Coagulation, its Halo 2 remake. The makers of the comedy series Red vs Blue revealed it in a spoof public-service video.

After Halo: Reach, its final Halo title, the studio Bungie went on to launch which shooter franchise?

Destiny followed in 2014, under a ten-year publishing deal with Activision that Bungie had signed only months before Reach shipped. Microsoft kept the Halo name.

Lone Wolf, the playable epilogue of Halo: Reach, sets Noble Six which hopeless objective?

Survive is all the mission asks, and it cannot be done: Covenant troops keep arriving until Noble Six is overwhelmed. Some at Bungie wanted the sequence cut, but it stayed as the game's closing act.

To make the Covenant feel more alien, Bungie had the enemy troops of Halo: Reach stop doing what?

Speaking English was dropped so the Covenant would seem threatening again: in Reach the aliens bark at each other in their own languages. The redesigned Grunts took their shape from a concept sketch made ten years earlier.

Which ability in Halo: Reach roots a Spartan to the spot while making them briefly invincible?

Armor lock also punished reckless drivers: a vehicle that rammed a locked Spartan took heavy damage. Coming out of the stance set off a short-range EMP that stripped nearby players' shields.

Noble Six's last delivery in Halo: Reach goes to which UNSC cruiser, where the first Halo game begins?

Pillar of Autumn escapes only because Noble Six stays behind at a mass driver cannon and cripples a Covenant warship lining up its shot. The ship then flees to the ringworld of the 2001 original.

Which helmet, once awarded only by Bungie staff in Halo 3, came free with launch-day copies of Halo: Reach?

Recon went from rarest prize to giveaway: North American launch-day buyers, and pre-order customers elsewhere, got an exclusive variant. The standard version could simply be bought in the game's Armory.

Which AI does Noble Six carry to Captain Keyes in the final mission of Halo: Reach?

Cortana picked Noble Six as her carrier herself, Catherine Halsey tells the squad. Jen Taylor plays both the AI and the scientist, casting that underlines the bond between the two characters.

Carter, the leader of Noble Team in Halo: Reach, gives his life by ramming his dropship into which Covenant machine?

A Scarab walker blocked the last two Spartans' route to the shipyard, so Carter, already wounded and flying a damaged Pelican, turned the dropship into a missile.

What kills Kat in Halo: Reach, moments before Noble Team can shelter in a radiation bunker?

A sniper's shot from a needle rifle, fired by a high-ranking Elite aboard a Phantom overhead, hits Kat as Carter is relaying new orders. The rest of the squad spends the next three days in the shelter.

What does Jorge set off by hand to destroy a Covenant supercarrier above the planet in Halo: Reach?

A slipspace drive, given up by a UNSC warship, became a makeshift bomb because no nuclear weapons were left on the planet. The plan was Kat's, and a damaged timer meant someone had to stay and trigger it.

Which member of Noble Team leaves the squad late in Halo: Reach to escort scientist Catherine Halsey to safety?

Jun, the squad's marksman, is the only member of Noble Team still alive when the story ends. He takes one of two waiting Pelicans to CASTLE Base while the others fly on toward the shipyard.

Which Covenant supercarrier, sharing its name with a mission in Halo: Reach, uncloaks to destroy the frigate Grafton?

Long Night of Solace revealed itself seconds after the Grafton had flattened a Covenant spire with its main gun. The smaller corvette Ardent Prayer later became the delivery vehicle for the bomb that destroyed it.

Sent to a silent communications relay in the first mission of Halo: Reach, Noble Team expects to find which enemy?

Insurrectionists, human rebels against UNSC rule, were the threat the first Spartans had been created to fight. Finding Covenant troops at the relay instead triggers the planet-wide alert Winter Contingency.

Sword Base, which Noble Team defends early in Halo: Reach, is a facility of which secretive UNSC agency?

Office of Naval Intelligence secrecy shapes the fight: the base is so sensitive that orbital guns may not fire near it. Beneath it lies the alien artifact that sends the Spartans on their last mission.

According to Catherine Halsey, Noble Six of Halo: Reach shares which rare rating with only one other Spartan?

Hyper-lethal is how a heavily redacted personnel file sums up Noble Six, a lone assassin said to have made entire rebel groups disappear. That habit of going solo dismayed superiors.

The epilogue of Halo: Reach shows Noble Six's cracked helmet lying where, decades after the battle?

A grassy field has replaced the scorched battlefield by 2589, and a human ship stands nearby, a sign that people are returning to the planet. Catherine Halsey delivers a eulogy for the squad over the scene.

Which top-secret UNSC starfighter does Noble Six pilot in the orbital battle of Halo: Reach?

Sabre fighters gave the series its first playable space combat, launched into orbit on detachable rocket boosters. The craft was so secret that three separate administrations had denied it existed.

Which UNSC aircraft does Noble Six fly between burning skyscrapers in the New Alexandria mission of Halo: Reach?

Falcon gunships carry a mission that never plays the same way twice: its three main objectives arrive in any order, with smaller tasks drawn at random. A lost aircraft can simply be called in again.

Which Halo: Reach multiplayer mode sets Spartans against Elites across phases that unlock new areas and vehicles?

Invasion in its standard form gives the Elites three phases to break through, steal a data core and carry it to a dropship. If the Spartans hold out in any one phase they win outright, and bombers level the site.

Which Halo: Reach map, a blank canvas for player creations, was the largest the series had seen at release?

Forge World stitched several landscapes into one map, among them a canyon, an island and a quarry, so creators could build tight arenas or vehicle battlegrounds. Launch maps such as Asylum and The Cage were made inside it.

Holding the melee button behind an enemy in Halo: Reach triggers which finishing move, new to the series?

An assassination is a third-person animation that changes with the situation, while a quick tap of the same button still delivers the old instant kill from behind, renamed a beat-down.

Halo: Reach made its smaller guns far stronger to make up for removing which Halo 2 and Halo 3 feature?

Dual-wielding was dropped, and the weapons once carried in pairs were made drastically stronger to compensate. The grenade selection was trimmed as well, with spike and incendiary grenades left out.

Halo: Reach gives Spartans which pickup from the first Halo game that Halo 2 and Halo 3 did without?

Health packs matter because a Spartan's health in Reach only regrows to the nearest third on its own. Grabbing a pack restores the rest, and in this game it recharges shields too.

Jorge, born on Reach, sometimes slips into which language during the Halo: Reach campaign?

Hungarian suits his roots: Jorge comes from Pálháza, a city on Reach that shares its name with a town in Hungary. On his first day of Spartan training, an instructor gave his name a Spanish pronunciation and was promptly corrected.

Which Covenant weapon in Halo: Reach, reverse-engineered from Forerunner technology, fires a highly visible beam?

Focus rifle beams are so bright that firing one instantly gives away the shooter's position. The weapon was built to pin enemies down at long range, not to pick them off one at a time.

Which weapon drew loud complaints early in the Halo: Reach beta, yet ended it as the top killer among new guns?

Magnum pistol complaints filled the forums, yet match data showed it out-killing every other newcomer. Bungie ran special test matches to separate what players said from what the numbers showed.

Which currency, earned from matches and challenges in Halo: Reach, buys new armor pieces in the Armory?

Credits also decided a player's rank, and spending them on armor never lowered it. At launch the higher ranks stayed locked for 49 days, until the community had completed millions of challenges.

Which top rank in Halo: Reach, reached after Forerunner and Reclaimer, opens the Haunted helmet for purchase?

Inheritor demanded 20 million of the game's currency, and with daily earnings capped it took roughly three months of hitting the limit every single day. The Haunted helmet itself then cost just one.

Which armor effect in Halo: Reach was sold only with the Legendary Edition, echoing a Bungie staff perk from Halo 3?

A flaming head came with the priciest boxed edition, though the fire never showed up in cutscenes. Bungie kept a blue-flamed version called Eternal for its own staff.

Which helmet does Carter wear in Halo: Reach, sharing its name with his chest and shoulder armor?

Commando gear sets the squad leader apart from helmet to shoulder, but no player can copy any Noble Team member exactly. Bungie kept a few of each Spartan's pieces exclusive to avoid confusion.

Which generation of MJOLNIR armor do new players in Halo: Reach share with every member of Noble Team?

Mark V suits put the squad on a par with the original Spartans, while most of their own generation went to war in far cheaper armor. Each member then customized the base suit with different helmets, colors and add-ons.

Buying Carter, Kat or Emile in the Armory of Halo: Reach changes what about a player's Spartan in Firefight?

Its voice becomes that of the chosen squad member for the wave-defense mode. The slot sits beside helmets, visor colors and knee guards as one of ten ways to customize a Spartan.

Which helmet does the marksman of Noble Team wear in Halo: Reach, fitted with an orange-brown visor?

Scout suits a soldier who carries spare rifle rounds on one shoulder and a combat knife on the other. His chest rig even includes a rucksack for extra storage.

Which actor, known as drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield in The Wire, plays Emile in Halo: Reach?

Jamie Hector recorded the part about two years after The Wire ended. Emile's taste for overkill is an act too: he believes sheer brutality can break an enemy's will to fight.

Which sergeant from Halo 3: ODST, played by Nathan Fillion, asks Noble Six for an escort in Halo: Reach?

Edward Buck borrows more than Fillion's face: several of his lines are lifted from the actor's TV shows Firefly and Castle. In Reach he radios for help while flying over a burning city.

Which flightless birds native to Reach can be found roaming the valley in the first mission of Halo: Reach?

Moa resemble the extinct giant birds of Earth whose name they share. The Covenant attack drove them close to extinction on their home planet, though exported flocks live on in other colonies.

Which longtime series composer gave Halo: Reach a more somber score to suit a planet players knew was doomed?

Martin O'Donnell handed his opening themes, tempos and keys to his fellow composers and told them to run with whatever inspired them.

Before Halo: Reach, a Bungie team worked on a Halo game planned by which film director, canceled before release?

Peter Jackson's project, Halo Chronicles, was scrapped, and its team moved on to the expansion Halo 3: ODST. A second team under creative director Marcus Lehto was already building Reach.

Before settling on a prequel, the makers of Halo: Reach weighed up building what kind of game instead?

A direct sequel to Halo 3 would have meant picking up every story thread the trilogy had left behind. A prequel set on a doomed planet let the studio start fresh with new characters and settings.

Which weapon model in Halo: Reach is built from more polygons than an entire Marine character in Halo 3?

Assault rifle detail on that scale became possible when the artists found they could rebuild every asset from scratch, at far higher quality, without spending much more time than a touch-up of the old models would take.

Halo: Reach leaked online weeks early after hackers cracked a 99,999-point Xbox Live download meant for whom?

Game reviewers were the only intended audience, and the price, about 1,250 dollars in points, put it far beyond a normal purchase. Within days of Microsoft confirming that, pirated copies were circulating.

Which company sculpted the hand-painted Noble Team statue included in the Legendary Edition of Halo: Reach?

McFarlane Toys left one Spartan off the ten-pound statue: the player's own character, whose look is never fixed. The firm also made a Noble Seven figure, a squad member who does not exist in the story.

Marketing for Halo: Reach let fans steer which machine to plot points of light into a monument to Noble Team?

An industrial robot built by KUKA plotted each pinprick on command from a website. More than 54,000 points formed the sculpture, which faded away unless fans kept adding to it.

Halo: Reach was North America's third-bestselling game of 2010, behind Madden NFL 11 and which shooter?

Call of Duty: Black Ops finished first for the year. Reach still took 200 million dollars on its first day, a series record at the time, and sold 3.3 million copies in its first month in North America.

Which Microsoft studio took over the Halo series once Bungie had finished Halo: Reach?

343 Industries began with an anniversary remake of the 2001 original, and even patched Reach itself, changing bullet spread and melee damage. The studio was later renamed Halo Studios.

Which author's novel Halo: The Fall of Reach told the planet's story nine years before the game Halo: Reach?

Eric Nylund wrote the book in just seven weeks, the tightest deadline of his career. The game then went its own way, largely ignoring the novel's timeline of events.

The planet in Halo: Reach orbits which real star, about 10.5 light-years from the Sun?

Epsilon Eridani is close enough to see with the naked eye, which fits the story: Reach is the UNSC's main military hub, a fortress planet on Earth's doorstep.