A Sum of Parts: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Halo: Reach, from start to finish, is about trying to win while constantly, persistently losing. You don’t just ‘lose’ the planet Reach at the end of the game; you are losing it gradually right from the very start. The game is paced in a particular way so that the player doesn’t feel like they are winning for most of the game before things go wrong, but in a way that the goalposts are constantly shifting, so that the player constantly feels like the situation is deteriorating and becoming increasingly desperate. 

To lean on a tired cliché, with every step the player takes forward in Reach, they take two steps back. As the game progresses and the true extent of the Covenant’s presence on the planet becomes apparent to the characters, the goalposts keep shifting. I think of the way the game is paced as almost like walking backwards down a staircase. Each mission begins in a worse scenario than the previous mission hoped to reach. Each mission’s Worst Case Scenario is the next mission’s starting point. No matter how hard you try to make things better in a mission, by the next mission, things will be even worse.

Perhaps the best example is the progress across three missions about halfway through the game. Firstly, in “Tip of the Spear,” the UNSC leads a full-on assault on the secret Covenant army hiding on Reach’s surface, cloaked. As the USNC forced attack this army head on, Noble Six is sent off to take out several anti-air gun batteries so that the UNSC battle cruisers and their bigger guns can move in. Once this is achieved, there are more cloaking stations to take out that are hiding something. 

At the end of this mission, the player takes out the tower’s shields, and a giant UNSC cruiser drifts in to finish it off with an explosive MAC round. It does this, but seconds later, a beam of plasma bursts down from the sky and rips the UNSC cruiser in half. What was being cloaked by the towers, it seems, is a Covenant super-carrier, a massive Covenant ship just floating above the battlefield. 

As the level progresses, the player takes a step forward; as it ends, they take two steps back. It started with the knowledge there is a giant Covenant army on Reach, but one that can be dealt with. The entire mission is spent dealing with that army, and the player takes their step forward as they take out gun batteries and the UNSC forces make ground. But then, as the super-carrier appears at the end, two backward steps are taken, and the next mission starts in a worse place than this mission began.

The next mission, “Long Night of Solace,” is all about destroying the super-carrier. It’s a goal that, if accomplished, will create a scenario that is, at best, as poor as the situation was before the previous mission even started, when there was no super-carrier. 

“Long Night of Solace” is one of Reach’s longest and multifaceted missions, including an assault on an ONI base to steal a space ship, an intergalactic fight to board a smaller cruiser, and an assault on that ship’s bridge. Eventually, against all odds, Noble Team’s harebrained scheme works and, with the sacrifice of one of their members, the super-carrier is taken out. Another step forward is taken. We are back at where we were at the beginning of the previous mission.

But then, as the mission ends, dozens of Covenant super-carriers appear in-system above Reach. I just spent well over an hour on a lengthy mission to take out one super-carrier, and now there are dozens of them. This moment, with the panicked screams of the UNSC forces on the radio as the radar’s AI repeats over and over and over “SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED,” juxtaposes the huge effort required by the mission (both by me and by Noble Team) to take out one super-carrier with the whole futility of what we just achieved. It feels like the moment Reach falls. That’s it. I can’t do this. I simply can’t.

The next mission, “Exodus,” has Noble Six smash back onto the planet’s surface. The super-carrier’s wreckage is burning atop a nearby mountain, but the music is only mournful. We achieved nothing. The goalposts are moved again. We know we can’t save Reach now. The best we can hope for now is to survive, and the goals for the next mission—helping civilians escape a city to go… who knows where—reflect this.

After the game’s opening cut scene ensured we as players knew we would not get off Reach alive, each mission gave us entirely accomplishable goals. We accomplished them but, every time, they were instantly rendered meaningless. Each victory is exposed as the deluded putting off of the inevitable that it is. I achieve each mission’s objectives. I get to feel like I am playing the game ‘properly’. But as each mission’s final cut scene pushes the goalposts back down the stairs, I feel like I am walking backwards with each missions. I can see the goal I started the game with ahead of me. I can see what has to be done, but it keeps getting further away as I keep taking steps backwards.

From the start of the first mission to the end of the final mission, Reach allows me to feel like I am progressing towards something while that something is consistently growing further and further away. The entire game is permeated with a tragic undertone. It’s not that something bad is going to happen. It’s that something bad is happening right from my first steps, and nothing I do can stop it.