Trivia / Halo: Reach

• Ascended Fanon:
  • It's hard to say if this was Bungie's plan from the beginning, but Dr. Halsey's journal was the first indication that the fanon theory of Halsey being Miranda's mother was true, before it was later outright confirmed in subsequent Halo media.
  • An armor set indented to be released alongside the Anniversary Map Pack was shown in a few pre-release screenshots, but cut from the final release. The armor was given the nickname "GRD" by the community as it lacked an official name. When the armor set was finally added to Reach in a 2020 update for The Master Chief Collection, it was given the official name "AKIS", but "GRD" became the name for one of its helmet variants, and the helmet's description even gives a Leaning on the Fourth Wall backstory:
    "The AKIS helmet and associated components were highly classified, leading some operatives to question its very existence."
• Blooper: At the start of "Tip of the Spear", you are equipped with a DMR holding 12 rounds in the magazine and 48 in reserve. This is a holdover from the beta, where 12/48 was the DMR's maximum ammo capacity. In the final game, it is instead 15/60, but your loadout for this mission wasn't updated.
• Development Gag: Two of the past members of NOBLE Team, Thom-A293 (the previous Noble Six who's featured in the "Deliver Hope" trailer) and Rosenda-A344 (mentioned in supplementary material as Emile's substitute during counterinsurgency missions), come from a time when NOBLE Team was to have seven members instead of six; they were both ideas for that seventh member.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Gamers who pre-ordered or bought the Legendary or Limited Editions got a large amount of extra goodies, including exclusive armor pieces, flaming helmets, avatar items, a real-life replica of Dr. Halsey's journal (complete with numerous entries and various attached documents), and even a big ol' diorama of Noble Team.
• Production Nickname: The dev team nicknamed the Grenade Launcher the "Pro Pipe", a knock on the grenade launcher in Modern Warfare often being called a "Noob Tube".
• Recycled Set: Club Errera in the mission "New Alexandria" reuses its layout from Tayari Plaza in Halo 3: ODST.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: The tension between Bungie and Microsoft over the Halo Expanded Universe was somewhat infamous; the former wanted the games to tell standalone stories and looked at the largely Microsoft-managed novels as something which betrayed that. Bungie's Reach largely ignores and Retcons the events depicted in Halo: The Fall of Reach and to a lesser extent Halo: First Strike in an attempt to depict their version of the Battle of Reach. Such changes include extending the battle to take place over a month and a half instead of just one day, and placing Cortana in Dr. Halsey's SWORD Base lab instead of in orbit preparing for Operation: RED FLAG. After gaining stewardship of the franchise, 343 Industries would go to great lengths to fuse the two timelines together, even starting with Dr. Halsey's journal which was primarily written by the scribe of the aforementioned books, Eric Nylund. It's largely successful, but the "solution" still relies on things such as most of the UNSC and Reach's civilian populace being unaware of or downplaying the Covenant invasion until several weeks into it, and much of the Covenant seen throughout Reach being a small vanguard awaiting the arrival of the much bigger fleet seen in The Fall of Reach.
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • When the game was just coming out, the lack of a Legendary ending and apparent confirmation from Bungie in a commentary video that there WAS some sort of bonus ending led to massive amounts of speculation on how it could be unlocked^note Technically, playing on Legendary does change one thing: Keyes refers to Halsey by her first name when talking to Six in the penultimate level.
  • A whole mess of rumors surround the Data Pads littered throughout the levels, as well as hidden switches off the normal paths.
    • And the achievements in the MCC Reach openly acknowledging their role never having been explained only makes things more mysterious.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The original roadmap for Bungie's franchise commitments all the way back when Halo 2 was released involved them finishing the franchise with a Halo 4. They ultimately decided to develop Reach instead because they wanted to work with a relatively clean-slate rather than directly follow on from the ending of Halo 3.
  • According to Bungie, the original plan called for NOBLE Team to escape the glassing of New Alexandria by hijacking a Covenant Scarab, then letting the player pilot it out of the city.
  • And the huge-scale battle cutscene at the beginning of "Tip of the Spear"? That might have been partially playable, judging from some cut content videos.
  • Concept art and demo videos exist for a "Warthog of the Seas", aka a speedboat with a turret.
  • Remember Sára Sorvad, the orphaned lady from the first level? She was going to accompany NOBLE Team as a science advisor.
  • Other ambient wildlife was planned, such as alien porcupines and squirrels, but they had to be cut out several weeks before release due to issues with their AI.
  • The enormous Gùtas that appear on "Nightfall" were to appear on other levels. The Covenant would use some as mounts, and there was an assassination where the player could board one and toss a grenade in its mouth.
  • Speaking of boarding and grenade assassinations, it was originally going to be possible for the player to do the same to Hunters.
  • An early experiment would have given every Grunt a helmet that absorbs a single headshot before falling off. After realising that this made the Grunts unfun to fight against, the bulletproof helmet was made the gimmick of just the Grunt Ultras.
  • The list of internal level names includes one that does not correspond to anything, implying that an additional level between "Tip of the Spear" and "Long Night of Solace" was planned at some point.
  • Various sets of cut audio show some major setpieces that were cut from levels:
    • There's cut dialogue throughout the game that shows each Armor Ability was set to have a proper introduction and tutorial, with various characters giving a brief explanation of each ability and their lore basis upon discovering them. The only ability to get something similar in the final game is the Jetpack, which is first directly offered to you by a team of ODST Bullfrogs.
    • "Winter Contingency" was to feature a section where, after the first engagement with the Covenant, Jun's falcon would be shot down by Banshees, with Noble Six and Carter going off to rescue him while Jorge, Kat and Emile head to the relay station. In the final game, this doesn't happen, with Six, Carter and Jorge instead exploring the valley to search for Army troopers.
    • "Tip of the Spear" was to feature a fight against a Scarab after taking out the second AA gun. In the final game, you do not fight any Scarabs, and the pair that appear on "The Pillar of Autumn" cannot be damaged or destroyed.
    • Also in "Tip of the Spear", there is dialogue between Jorge and Auntie Dot suggesting that the Jetpack was supposed to be introduced in this level, likely near the end as you assault the spire. In the final game, the Jetpack gets its introduction in "Exodus" instead.
    • "Long Night of Solace" features a set of dialogue showing that shutting down the Covenant ship's comms relay was supposed to be more involved, requiring Noble Six to step into a beam to discharge their shields and overload it, similar to how you destroy the pulse generators in Combat Evolved. In the final game, shutting down the comms relay just involves killing all the enemies in the room.
    • "Exodus" has several cut strings of dialogue:
    • There's dialogue involving army troopers repairing your visor. This seems to suggest that you were supposed to start the level with a cracked visor, only getting it repaired once you rendezvous with friendly forces.
    • There's dialogue suggesting another Scarab encounter was planned for this level, this time involving fighting it with a Falcon. It is left ambiguous whether you were supposed to fight these Scarabs directly, or if they just served as a background threat for the mission's finale (with destroying the AA gun allowing air support to bomb them).
    • There's an odd conversation between Duvall and 6 Echo 2, the civilian evacuation ship that gets shot down in the final game. Here, Duvall warns 6 Echo 2 that they need to shut down their reactor to avoid nuking the city when they crash. Exactly what this was supposed to set up is unknown.
    • The Mongoose run at the start of "The Pillar of Autumn" was supposed to be a Warthog.
  • NOBLE Team was originally going to be comprised of seven members, but was later slimmed down to six. Two ideas for Noble Seven remain as Development Gags: Thom-A293 is the deceased Spartan who Noble Six is replacing at the start of the game, while Rosenda-A344 is mentioned in background materials as a possible substitute for Emile should NOBLE Team be deployed against Insurrectionists.
  • The game was originally just going to be called Reach, but Microsoft requested having Halo in the name for brand recognition. This is a form of History Repeats, as they made a similar request with the first Halo game, giving it "Combat Evolved" as a subtitle so the shooter aspect of the game was more obvious. And much like Combat Evolved, the actual title screen only says their intended title for the game, Reach.
  • Doctor Halsey's journal contains a few pages that have been torn out. A handful of the journals printed contained the intact pages, which were expected to eventually be shared by fans online once they were found. However, whoever got the full journals apparently never posted their contents. Eventually after several years 343 Industries posted the missing pages on Halo Waypoint.