PLEASE BE WARNED THAT THIS NEWS ITEM CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS. FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE NOT YET COMPLETED THE CAMPAIGN OF HALO: REACH, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Halo: Reach had an awesome ending, one that will be remembered for many years to come. It shows Noble 6 standing against overwhelming waves of Covenant forces, as he fights them off with all his might, and ultimately dissolves into oblivion, i.e dies a brutal death (depending upon how the player wishes to die. I just threw a grenade at myself).
Bungie, while talking with UGO, have revealed why they chose for such a non-conventional yet explosive ending,
Bungie’s Marcus Lehto, father of the Halo franchise, said: “Well, the game’s a tragedy overall. We wanted to tell the story of the Spartans sacrificing everything they had, and we thought it would be a cop-out if we didn’t really bring it to a true ending with the Spartan that you create and that you fight with through the entire campaign and all the way to the very bitter end. If we didn’t actually do the right thing to that character and bring them down with the planet…
“After they had already succeeded in making sure that one thing that gave humanity any hope was actually saved, (we decided) they were going to go out all gung-ho and guns blazing. It was a crazy, controversial thing within our studio.
“We had a lot of people who were like, ‘No, we shouldn’t end it that way. We should allow the player to play on and, in their heads, keep living.’ But we wanted to bring it to a close.”
Bungie also revealed that they were considering cutting out the ending, to make the game more of a cliffhanger. Executive producer Joe Tung said: “I think the inside scoop about the ending is that it was one of the parts of the game that we wrestled with for months, and there were many different iterations with the ending. There was a point where the ending didn’t happen at all like it happened now. It was so important to us that the game ended well.
“Not just from a game perspective, but from the perspective of Bungie saying goodbye to the entire universe. We spent so much time wrestling with how to end the game, and I think it ended up being such a great farewell, not just for the game, but for the entire involvement in the universe and a fitting farewell to Halo from Bungie.”
You can check out all the Halo: Reach related stuff here.