Halo: Reach 'not a Natal title,' being made with a controller in mind

by Ben Gilbert on Jan 31st 2010 3:30PM

Sure, you could take Bungie's latest foray into Mythbusters territory as full on confirmation of Halo: Reach not having Project Natal support, or you could be like us and remain skeptical of the developer's still-not-straightforward wording. In a recent post on Bungie.net, the company attempted to answer a mess of "myths" about its upcoming Halo game, including "Myth: Reach is being built for Natal!" In answering, the post states, "Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind."

That said, rather than outright saying, "No, there's no support for Project Natal in Halo: Reach," Bungie instead chose to loosely word the answer. It certainly doesn't help the situation that multiple Bungie employees have expressed interest in seeing Natal incorporated into the Halo series, with Bungie prez Harold Ryan even saying he could "absolutely" see Reach specifically incorporate Natal. So, about that myth ...

Source

Tags: bungie.net, halo, halo-reach, harold-ryan, Microsoft, mythbusters, project-natal, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (58)

Eff off Dad!
I personally am not too worried about Halo Reach using Natal. If it does, cool. If not? Cool.

That wasn't even close to as good as the actual caption.

"eff you mom, I'm gonna go get pregnant."

Being designed specifically for a controller doesn't mean they didn't get an edict from MS that requires at least a frivolous amount of Natal functionality in specific instances of the game. It won't even be optional throughout the entirety of the game since Bungie already said they're bending the 360 as far as it can go ... as Chris Grant mentioned in one of the podcast it'll be a specific mission or subset of missions that use Natal but not the entire game. It'd be too much of a resource hog for a game thats already using as much resources as possible.

Alright, I have a whole mess of beat downs and insults ready for you johnny, just clarify for me.

Do you believe Natal will be required to play/beat everything in Halo: Reach?

huh?

I'm saying that a game like Halo Reach won't be able to incorporate Natal features throughout the entirety of the game. It'll be Natal specific levels.

Way to answer my question without....answering my question. Even in the slightest.

Are you saying that those "Natal specific levels" will REQUIRE Natal to beat/play? I cannot spell it out any clearer, so if you don't understand, then nevermind, I give up.

I think you might be misunderstanding me as I made myself pretty clear. I never said that Natal would be required to play the game in any capacity. It was not even something I hinted at or made thinly veiled reference towards so where you even got that is still a mystery to me. I said that you won't get full Natal integration in a game like Halo reach because it syphons off the so much CPU resources.

"It won't even be optional throughout the entirety of the game since Bungie already said they're bending the 360 as far as it can go" doesn't mean it'll be mandatory it means there isn't even an option to use a Natal feature throughout the entire game because of reasons I've already outlined very clearly. Maybe if you'd of read the entire comment you wouldn't of went into rage mode over a fairly innocuous comment. Sometimes I think, that people think, thinking is difficult and they keep it to a minimum.

I think what he is trying to ask is if Bungie will make it so you need to use Natal to get some of the achievements like how they make it so you need to buy the map packs to get some of the Halo 3 achievements.

I read your entire comment twice.

"it'll be a specific mission or subset of missions that use Natal "

"use" was not clarified as whether it would be needed or optional. Hence why I asked you. Your response?

"It'll be Natal specific levels"

If someone told me that something was a "car specific level" I would be lead to believe that I had to use a car in that level. If you tell me that it was a Natal specific level, I am lead to believe I have to use Natal. Make sense?

You again failed to provide clarification. After spelling it out in the most simplistic way I could think of, I finally got an answer.

I guess fanboyism really can make you blind.

You're just being a bit of a douche, R. Or is there some stupid flame 'history' between you two forcing you to be rude?

Its more of a "johnny shits on anything he does like that other people do like" history than anything. He's not a nice person. I am not nice to un-nice people.

This is certainly a good thing. I was interested in the optional integration of Natal in traditional genres until the announcement that it would occupy a portion of the 360's processing power. This means that Natal enabled games played without the Natal hardware will be gimped. Now I suppose my only interest in Natal is the new experiences that Microsoft can (hopefully) come up with

Thats essentially correct. If a core developer wants Natal integrated into their game on a grand scale other parts will need to be scaled back. Otherwise, they would just have a few Natal levels. So, it basically means (what Greenberg himself said) that new experiences will have to be crafted specifically for Natal. I just want some depth from Natal and Playstation Motion Controller in addition to some fun time wasters ... it can't be all mini game type stuff. It doesn't necessarily mean that every game built for PSMC & Natal has to be Halo or Killzone level of sophistication but something more than frisbee, pool and tennis would be nice.

@BigFat

Natal syphons from the CPU not the GPU. I would assume that Natal would effect everything except graphical data.

Well thats good news.

Yes it is good, but you have to admit, a bunch of people jammed in a room with their hands in the shape of guns pointing at a screen would be pretty hilarious!

LMFAO best comment ever.

Since Reach was in development for a while before Natal was announced it's not surprising it's not being included as a feature. Adding something like Natal mid-development is never a smart move.

Well if they are not even using it for Halo...

Was there an end to that thought?

Nice srirring of the pot, Joystiq! lol

It sounds pretty convincing the the maine input for the game with be traditional controls. It does leave open some ux augmentation with Natal. Perhaps voice and hand gestures.

It would need to be supplementary and not exclusively controlled by Natal. Squad controls would be nice especially intuitive if controlled with your hands and then there is that idea about popping in and out of a sniper scope with gestures. I'm not sure how good it would work in practice but in theory there are a lot of good ideas that could come from Natal being used as a companion device.

Oh, Mr. Kotick. You make it much too easy.

I may have said this before but...

I'd hit that.

"taking balls to the face."

Believe me, if there's anyone that knows about this, it's Bobby Kotick.

(Sorry, had to do it.)

Well the body tracking aspect is interesting, but would most likely cause unfair advantages in multiplayer. What I mean is if one person has the ability to turn their head to see around corners or other such "enhancements" then it could negatively affect those who do not.

In single player however I could see them adding in head tracking as a small bonus.

I hope Natal is just there for OPTIONAL interface navigation. Not gameplay please, Bungie.

I wanna do that girl

the milf or the 13 year old?

Why has it just gotta be one of them?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7YlEywVWvM

"Bungie employees have expressed interest in seeing Natal incorporated into the Halo series..."

If only fans of the franchise shared that interest.

Let's be fair, Jack. If Bungie deeply cared about what Halo's hardcore fan base wanted I'm sure that Master Chief would have a hard-drinking, fun-loving frat boy sidekick named Cody and a mini-game involving slipping Cortana the AI equivalent of roofies.

Thank you Wre for generalizing all the halo fans as frat boys. Stay classy.

"Let's be fair, Jack. If Bungie deeply cared about what Halo's hardcore fan base wanted I'm sure that Master Chief would have a hard-drinking, fun-loving frat boy sidekick named Cody and a mini-game involving slipping Cortana the AI equivalent of roofies."

WRONG. They would have named the tank "Sheila."

Aw, c'mon, Dr. Orpheus, I was just joking. You gotta admit though, it would be sick tight to play co-op as Cody.

NO! It's bad enough reading his comments on Joystiq, let alone playing an entire game with his commentary...

did you refresh before adding the comment since it removes the reply part?

lol chocolate milk kid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfwOqlnCKQs

That didn't sound loosely worded to me. It sounded like an outright denial.

Absolutely denied.

"Halo: Reach is NOT a Natal title and is being developed expressly with the traditional Xbox 360 controller in mind."

...is a very specific statement. There's no other way to interpret it.

I'm glad that for once, Joystiq is taking the good old fashion Fox News approach: Read way in between the lines of a statement or action and determine its actual meaning from whatever obscure fact you can find that would make it favorable to you.

Fox News approach? Oh right, because journalists should never ever question what they're told and should absolutely take everything at face value. I guess you can't call it the CNN approach because the article didn't talk about the benefits of Twitter over Facebook for half its length. Anyway, fact is that there is plenty to hide behind in this statement. Let's say for example that Nintendo was planning on porting the new Zelda to the 360 but they wanted to keep it a secret for a while. If asked about porting and they replied, "The new Zelda is NOT a 360 title and is being developed expressly with the Wii remote in mind", they wouldn't technically be lying. Halo: Reach may not be a "Natal title", whatever that means, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't use Natal, either.

It's the Fox News approach because they have the most egregious omissions when it comes to their coverage and how they portray a story. It shouldn't be called Fox News it should be called "Conservative Political Right Wing ideology Opinion Channel."

I was wondering, how do you look at the screen if you turn your head to "look around corners"??

I know we have an angle of about 180° in our field of vision but i somehow don't like that idea at all.

Unless you have another screen to your left/right, lol!

I was under the impression that Natal would be 'backwards compatible' so to speak, and work on games not specifically designed to use the technology. That's why they had the demo of Burnout.

So if they had said "No, there's no support for Project Natal in Halo: Reach," that would mean they would have to make it specifically ignore Natal.

No backward compatibility-as the Natal unit is a CPU hog.

only 15% sheesh

its better then vista.

A wise decision. Natal needs original experiences first, and then old experiences redefined through Natal.

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Halo: Reach 'not a Natal title,' being made with a controller in mind

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