Halo 3

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"Halo: Reach for us is not Halo 4," says Executive Producer Joseph Tung, who was originally Halo 3's Multiplayer Producer. "It's not a continuation of the Master Chief story, nor is it the start of a new trilogy. For us, it's a completely standalone game."

Gone are the bright greens, luminescent blues, neon purples and glow-in-the-dark pinks. The little Grunt aliens don't squeal jokes or make pratfalls. Don't expect that Gregorian choir Bungie has on retainer to chant the all-too-familiar theme during the title sequence. It's grittier, moodier and far more alien than any preceding title in the franchise. Master Chief is busy kicking Covenant ass elsewhere in the galaxy, and has no time for you.

REACH ORIGINS

With Halo 3 complete, Bungie - a company that started with just 3 programmers, an artist and a level designer - split it's now 130-person strong development team into two groups. One group worked on Halo 3: ODST, while the other started work on a project that would eventually become Reach. Headed by creative director Marcus Lehto, originally the art director on Halo 1 through 3, the team brainstormed ideas until they hit upon doing a prequel that takes place before the first game, Halo: Combat Evolved. According to Lehto, "Reach, as a fictional planet, was just a great candidate to play around with. It's such a rich world, with such a great fiction surrounding it."

The planet of Reach, before it's destruction, saw the massacre of over 700 million people by the invading zealot alien force known as the Covenant, as detailed in the prequel novel The Fall Of Reach. With Master Chief off-planet by the time the game starts, the stpry introduces a new team of Spartan super-soldiers. The six-man Nobel Team is a group of Sp...

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... cover the same area of lore, Reach is not the game version of the book The Fall Of Reach. Instead, it compliments it by taking place during and after the events in the book, from a different perspective (since you're not playing as Master Chief). Written by science-fiction author Eric Nylund, The Fall Of Reach is the official prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, narrating the events which lead up to Evolved, explaining the origins of Master Chief.

Boxout: 353 Industries

While Bungie continues to make Halo games, the franchise itself is now overseen and published by a Microsoft-created subdivision called 343 Industries. This sub-division is also in charge of the recently released Halo: Legends anime/CG short-movie compilation, the comic books and all tertiary products, like the upcoming animated television series based on the machinima comedy shorts, Red vs. Blue.

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