You have been asking for a game based on the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach for a while now, and it appears like Bungie and Microsoft have yeard your cry. Today, at the Microsoft Press Conference, Bungie announced Halo: Reach.

This is what we can tell from the trailer:

-Reach will be a prequel to the Halo: Trilogy
-It will be based around the Battle of Reach
-Multiple Spartans will be involved
-An invitation for this game’s multiplayer Beta will be included with Halo 3: ODST.
-Halo Reach is due out in 2010

Here is another trailer to get you pumped up about the new Halo Reach experience.

Halo 3: ODST is a shooter game with gameplay taking place from a first-person perspective. Although the gameplay of ODST bears a strong resemblance to previous Halo titles, the player does not assume the role of the enhanced human supersoldier Master Chief. Instead, the player controls a lone UNSC soldier in the city of New Mombasa, East African Protectorate (formerly Kenya). Since the soldier, known as an ODST or Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, does not possess Master Chief’s advanced armor, reflexes and strength, he is more vulnerable to gunfire; players are forced to act more cautiously. The soldier HUD is different from the previous series, with red outlines for the enemies, but the aiming reticle remains. While the game is not focused on stealth gameplay, some elements of stealth will be incorporated. It will also include an open world environment, utilizing the old vehicles and weapons, and adding new features like more varied acrobatics for the Banshee.

Set before Halo 3, the main objective of ODST is for the player to search through the ruins of New Mombasa and discover what happened to his missing teammates. As the player drops in the ODST pod, the Prophet of Regret’s ship is seen jumping into slipspace. After finding a piece of evidence left behind — a sniper rifle hanging on a lamppost, for example — a flashback is triggered and the player assumes the role of the missing soldier. After players find the first beacon, the choice of where to go next is up to the player. It will also include an option which, unlike other Halo games, will allow the player to play the campaign levels in any order they want to.

In a recent gameplay trailer, a game mode called Firefight is shown (see the 2nd video below), wherein players take on increasingly difficult waves of varied enemies, similar to Gears of War 2’s Horde mode. Firefight will include new medals as well as the ability to co-op with up to 4 teammates over Xbox LIVE or system link. Each player has a set number of lives which, upon their depletion the game ends. There is no time limit, no limited number of rounds and no maximum number of kills. Skulls will be incorporated into firefight as a means to increase the difficulty and provide variation. The maps used in firefight will be unlocked as the player progresses through the ODST campaign. It is also noted that the enemy characters appearing in each wave are generated at random, thus the player will be unable to anticipate the strength of the next wave prior to its arrival.

Here is the original trailer:

And the latest trailer from E3:

Acknowledging the shortcomings of previous console RTS games, Ensemble built Halo Wars specifically for the Xbox 360’s controller and attempted to bring together Halo fans and experienced players of strategy games. Although Ensemble closed its doors before the game’s release, a company formed by many of Ensemble’s former employees, Robot Entertainment, continued to support the game with updates and downloadable content.

Halo Wars received generally positive reviews from gaming critics. Reviewers lauded the game’s pre-rendered cinematics, attention to details of the Halo universe, and intuitive control scheme. Complaints with the game included a lack of options to play as Covenant or Flood in the campaign mode, and a lack of strategic options in play. Several critics said that experienced RTS players would find the strategic elements of the title shallow. The game sold one million units worldwide by mid-March 2009, making it the best-selling console real-time strategy game to date.

Halo 3’s story centers on the interstellar war between twenty-sixth century humanity, led by the UNSC, and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant. The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetic enhanced super-soldier, as he wages war in defense of humanity, assisted by Marines as well as an allied alien race called Elites, which is led by the Arbiter. The game features vehicles, weapons, and gameplay not present in previous titles of the series, as well as the addition of saved gameplay films, file sharing, and the Forge map editor; a utility which allows the player to perform modifications to multiplayer levels.

Halo 3 grossed US$300 million in its first week. More than one million people played Halo 3 on Xbox Live in the first twenty hours. As of January 3, 2008, Halo 3 has sold 8.1 million copies, and was the best-selling video game of 2007 in the U.S. Overall, the game was very well-received by critics, with the Forge and multiplayer offerings singled out as strong features. By March 2009 more than 1 billion online matches had been played.

After its initial release, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later. By June 20, 2006, more than 500 million games of Halo 2 had been played and more than 710 million hours had been spent playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live; by May 9, 2007, this number had risen to more than five million unique players on Xbox Live. As of November 2008, Halo 2 is the best-selling game on the original Xbox with 8.46 million copies sold worldwide and at least 6.3 million copies sold in the US alone. Critical reception of the game was generally positive, with most publications lauding the strong multiplayer component; at the same time, the campaign was the focus of criticism for its cliffhanger ending.

In Halo’s twenty-sixth century setting, the player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetic enhanced SPARTAN super-soldier. The player is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence who occupies the Master Chief’s neural interface. Players battle various aliens on foot and in vehicles as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the Halo, a ring-shaped structure.

Many game magazines have praised Halo as one of the best and most important games of all time. The game’s popularity has led to labels such as Halo clone and Halo killer, applied respectively to games either similar to or anticipated to be better than Halo. In addition, the game inspired and was used in the fan-created Red vs. Blue video series, which is credited as the first big success of machinima—the technique of using real-time 3D engines to create animated films.