Halo Reach Legendary Edition Commentary Review September 18, 2010

As you know from the unboxing, I purchased the Halo Reach Legendary Edition, and last night I finally went through the last of the content in the edition, the Legendary Commentary. While this is technically DLC, it’s DLC done right, and I want to talk a little bit about it.

The best special feature of the Halo 3 Legendary Edition by far was the audio commentary for Halo 1 and 2 done by Jason Jones, Martin O’Donnell, and Joe Staten. They gave so much insight into the first two games, far more information that had ever been released to the public before.

Well, for Reach, the commentary is back, and done even better.

Four developers are doing the commentary this time around. Jason Jones and Joe Staten are oddly absent, but in their place is Marcus “Reach, Reach, Reach” Leto, Lee Wilson (namesake of the Lee Wilson Memorial achievement in Halo 3), a third guy who’s name escapes me right now (Steve Scott), and the Returning Champion Martin O’Donnell.

The commentary is viewed through Halo Waypoint once the Legendary code is redeemed. One code unlocks everything specific to legendary and limited (Recon Helmet was separate because it was a short promotion, as was the gamestop multi-threat chest piece because that was a GS preorder incentive), and the legendary video will be ready to stream in waypoint the next time you load it up.

The video is in HD, an improvement from the non-anamorphic DVD transfers of Halo 1 and 2 (yes, even Halo 2’s were non-anamorphic and that game was fully anamorphic), and the commentary session was even filmed in HD cameras. All the Reach cutscenes are commented on, as well as some of the gameplay. When applicable the video cuts back and forth between the commentators and the game, or occasionally it will split screen the two. The editing on this is very good, and never jarring. The editor did a really good job. In all, the video is two hours in length, mostly because they show a bit more gameplay than they should have from the first half of the game, but because a lot of the story is told through scripted scenes and not cutscenes in the first act I see why they did that.

All in all, it makes another great reason to choose the Legendary Edition, on top of everything else included. I hope the developers go back to Halo 3 and ODST and do this, and release it on the Waypoint too.