Alirght then, here we are at the last part of the Reach environments I have to share at this time.  It’s also the last part of the Reach concepts I have to share. Tomorrow will start the Halo 4 environment articles.

Let’s take a look at the rest of the reach concepts.

Part of the New Alexandria cityscape, this concept is fairly clean for a marker rendering. Many of the buildings in those missions had a fairly pristine look to them, even while under attack by the Covenant. This particular concept serves as a great point by which the environmental artists can draw from.
The concept above should be pretty familiar if you were playing Halo 3, while waiting for Halo Reach. It was used as a marketing tool. Powerhouse, for which this concept became the basis for, changed a bit in look from this. However,it did maintain the base structure and bridges. The right portion is what changed the most.

Did you know that this beacon can actually be seen in the game? While playing the middle portion of “Ling Night of Solace” fly your Sabre beyond the Space Station and you’ll see a similar beacon beyond it. Without a background or another object to give this scale, this beacon could have been any size the artists wanted it to be. While many times it’s a good idea to show scale, with certain objects, you might want to leave it up to the viewer to determine the size. In this case, that’s what happened. The only thing to give a clue to the size is the radar dish at the top right corner.
This is a concept of the interior of the Mutliplayer map “Anchor 9” It’s much more dark than the final version. I actually prefer this. In my opinion, darker spaces to play matchmaking in tend to focus the gamer to the task at hand. Otherwise, if you’re like me, I spent time, even during matches, exploring and looking at the details of maps. LOL
Here we see the basement of Sword Base. This area is seen twice in the campaign and can be seen somewhat on the Firefight map “Courtyard”. Though it’s tougher to see in the latter due to shielding getting in the way. This concept looks VERY much like the final version. I’d make a guess that this was further along in the design process than an initial sketch or color rendering.
Now this concept is interesting. It reminds me more of a scene from Halo CE, than Reach. This was to be a part of Sword Base. For whatever reason it was cut from the game. I’d love to see this space reused in a future Halo title. I do like the contrasting lighting. It clearly conveys that the lighted areas are the main hallways, while this room is just an offshoot of it.
Another of the marketing concepts, this Sword Base rendering might have you a little dizzy with it’s varied slanted bridges and angles. I’m a bit curious as to why the artist chose a cold blue theme for this concept. Perhaps it’s to help convey the location of Sword Base, which we know is in one of the coldest temperaments on Reach.
One of the rooms within Sword Base, this brightly lit concept was use, though parts of it were. I find it a little strange that there is a reception desk in the middle. It does add some realism though.


While this piece is marked as something from Sword Base, I can’t see where it would fit in.  It looks as though the artist was going for a modular look for most of the sketches herein.  The bottom middle sketch has me intrigued the most. I wonder what that device would have been used for?
And last but not least, the Traxus tower. Versions of this were seen as many buildings in the city. It was fun to fly around/above them with the Falcon. It’s plainly obvious that this skyscraper is very tall. The gentle horizontal lines in the left black portion tell us that those are individual stories within the building. So how tall is this tower? I hope for the next game we have a couple of missions or more that require flying, be they in a cityscape or in space.

Should I find more concepts from Reach, I’ll post those at a later date. I hope you’ve enjoyed the look back to Bungie’s last Halo game and hope you’ve seen some new things and have been entertained by the articles. If you’ve liked these, let me know by replying below.

Okay folks, tomorrow we move on to Halo 4’s Environments!
-Sal