LogFAQs > #946697137

Aside from being an exercise in male bonding for Nobles 4 and 6, Pillar of Autumn gave me a lot of trouble, mostly concentrated in a few particular areas. There's one arena early on where the enemy are mostly weaker troops but with a Wraith far in the back being very annoying. I died a ton of times to that damn thing, first by getting blown up by it when I was trying to deal with the nearby infantry, and then taking an embarrassing number of attempts to run around everyone else and blow it up with grenades. After finishing that one up and then going through a cave filled with the bug guys, and a cutscene where Carter returns in his burning ship to kamikaze strike and big Covenant walker mech so the other two boys can pass by, there's an area where you fight a ton of elites. I had to temporarily drop my assault rifle to go through that part with plasma pistol + DMR, which lets you instantly blow up shields with the pistol's charge shot and then secure kills with a single headshot from the DMR. There was one particular yellow Elite with a sort of plasma rocket launcher who kept blowing me to kingdom come.

The most brutal section of the whole level is the final skirmish where you're securing a landing pad for the Pillar of Autumn, or at least it was for me. You deal with multiple waves of enemies, but I managed to get all the NPC fighters killed off and most of the best resources used up before the final brute wave even started. This was another appearance of what I like to call the Ornstein and Smaugh of Halo - the buffed-up brute pair with the gravity hammer and a heavy projectile weapon, both of which 1HKO Noble 6. I ended up clearing the last wave mainly using the grenade launcher, which I had ignored up to that point because I had trouble hitting with it. Against the larger brutes, it's not so hard to aim correctly and can take them down much faster than most other weapons. During this whole section, Emile is operating a big anti-air gun, so he's too busy to help you fight. Right as the Pillar finally arrives, the poor bastard gets impaled by an energy sword Elite, forcing Noble 6 to stay behind and take his place on the gun. Emile made it look easy, though, because the second 6 climbs into it every covenant air vehicle within a 10-mile radius sets its sights on him. You have to shoot down a bunch of smaller guys to survive long enough to take your shoot on the priority cruiser that's about to blast Cortana out of the sky. She gets away, but Noble 6 is left without a ride on the surface of the now-doomed Reach.

There's an Epilogue level where your goal is "survive" but you inevitably die in the end. I practically got a speedrun time on that one. It's a cool narrative device, actually, and oddly kind of a common one for 2010, since both Starcraft II and RDR did something similar. I just wish I cared at all about Noble 6.

That's the end of the game, in any case. The Noble Team are all goners except possibly Jun, and as Noble 6's helmet lies lost in the dirt, we hear a monologue about what his sacrifice meant to humanity.

Final Thoughts on Reach in the afternoon.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 9/129
Currently Playing: Halo: Reach