Halo Reach's Opening Cutscene: A Powerful Piece of Gaming

So if it's not obvious enough by the title and header image, there's spoilers of the opening cutscene of Reach here in this post. Keep in mind though, if you're commenting,
I HAVEN'T FINISHED THE GAME YET.

I've only gotten through the first mission before now being away from my xbox for the next week or so.

SO: if you're commenting, please only comment on what I'm talking about. I don't want the rest of the story spoiled for me.



Alright, so let's get to the actual blog, huh?

So this blog is about the opening of Halo: Reach. The first thing that happens when you start up Reach is that you are prompted to start customizing your spartan. You are given 5000 credits (the game's method of purchasing armor and other cosmetic stuff like your voice in firefight mode), plus 2000 more if you are a "loyal" halo fan (which I presume means that you have some Halo 3/Halo: ODST achievements under your belt).

You can buy some cool upgrades for your spartan, choose your colors, make an emblem, etc. etc.. It's actually a pretty deep customization system, but that's not what I'm here to talk about anyway.



Once you are satisfied with your spartan's look (and believe me, I made sure I liked my spartan's look before I started ANYTHING), you can choose to start the solo campaign. Select a difficulty, and then the opening cutscene begins.

The camera pans over a glassed planet Reach.

Smoke is filling the air, everything is scorched black.

The camera pans down from looking towards a scorched burning volcano-esque rock structure.

There's your helmet.

YOUR HELMET.

That YOU picked.

Half buried in the ground.

With a hole in it.

...

...


...

...

Well...

...SHIT.

Right from the start, you can tell that this is going to be an emotional story. And that it's not going to have a happy ending.

This opening shot was pretty moving, especially for a video game.

now don't get me wrong, I didn't break down in tears or anything like that,

but still, after spending that time to customize your armor just the way you want, making your spartan YOURS, the first scene is the remains of your destroyed armor.

It seems that it's a great way to make you even more attached to your character. You've created this character, and you know that it's not going to end well, but you'll be damned if you don't try to keep him (or her) alive.

It's an awesome device that Bungie used, and one mission into Reach, I'm already more attached to my Noble 6 than I have ever been to any other character in a video game.

so yeah, that's my (admittedly pretty short) blog. Feel free to discuss in the comments, but please keep spoilers away, as I said before, I've only finished the first mission. Thanks for reading though! I hope you liked it!