Halo: Reach levels vs. Halo: Ghosts of Reach levels

HALO: GHOSTS OF REACH LEVELS

Noble Actual

Noble Six meets team, are told that visigrad is down because of rebel activity. Noble is sent to investigate.
Playable, Noble walks around FOB and goes to firing range, meeting characters one at a time.
All are present.

Winter Contingency

Visigrad relay is under attack by rebels. First half of level spent fighting rebels.
Opening Cutscene is almost the same, but has ‘Fortunate Son’ playing. Emile says that he hates that shit, while the pilot playing it over the comms says that it’s their history, referencing Halo CE (itself a reference to starcraft)
First half of level is spent with emile and Jorge.
Emile is wisely wearing the Gugnir helmet, providing complete facial ballistic protection (vision is via a camera mounted over where the right eye would be). A visor the size of your face? especially when you're the point-man? now that's just silly, bungie.
In a scripted scuffle with one of the rebels, Emile takes half a mag of M7 point-blank to the face. it leaves visible scratches and bullet marks in the face
Cutscene: Carter get mad about the helmet, telling him that ONI will have his ass for damaging such a valuable piece of equipment. Jorge says not to worry; just cover it in some paint or something and no-one will know the wiser. Rebels are taken hostage, carter orders Emile to torture and interrogate rebel prisoners; Jorge is mildly disgusted. The rebels being interrogated deny that they have anything to do with the comms blackout. Noble team is then taken off guard by a team of cloaked elites. Carter and Jorge immediately begin arming and uncuffing rebels.
A rebel who runs off into a structure is impaled and lifted from the floor by an elite’s energy sword. You are knocked to the ground and tackled by an elite who attempt to stab you, but emile kicks the elite off of you, and shoves the barrel of his shotgun into the elite’s mouth and down its throat, pulling the trigger.
The rest of the level is spent fighting the covenant. You spend most of time now with Kat, regrouping at the relay
 Once you get to the inside of the relay and we are treated to the same cutscene as before, but with some differences. You request permission to go after the elites in order to save the marine they have hostage. Carter refuses. You go after anyway. Carter is forced to send Jorge after you to assist.
Once the level is over, you are chewed out by carter for jeopardizing the mission. He then hacks the relay in order to communicate command (the conversation is now between Carter and Jorge, rather than Kat and Carter)

ONI: Sword Base

On the way to sword base, the stakes being raised by the covenant, Emile take's Jorge's advice and carves his distinctive skull into his face-plate. Kat symbolically cuts off her hair from a civilian cut into the high and tight seen throughout the rest of the game. blending in with civilians no longer matters.

It is determined that the covenant on visigrad are a team inserted by a small stealth ship that was plotted itself into reach’s orbital key hole, turned off all power except for cryo, and waited to hit reach’s atmosphere before turning itself back on and thawing the crew, allowing to enter Reach completely undetected.
The ship turns out to have revealed its position voluntarily – by assaulting ONI Sword Base. Your team is sent in to quell things as fast as possible.
MAC rounds cannot be used because of the ship’s proximity to the base. It must be chased away by Long Sword’s, but the long swords cannot be scrambled because of the banshees attacking the base.
The first half of this level is spent with Jorge and Carter (he wants to keep you on a short leash). You find out through radio communication that Red Team is operating in the Area.
When you fight your way into the garage, after you kill the hunters, a cutscene triggers.
Carter counts three dead hunter corpses, asks where the fourth is.  The fourth hunter is beserking and charges it’s ass straight through a wall. At the same time you are attacked by grunts. While busy shooting the grunts and dodging the hunter, Master Chief runs up behind the hunter and jumps onto it, ripping out worms with his fist and then shoves a grenade inside. No more hunter
Just then a stray grunt grenade lands on the Chief’s foot. He looks down at his foot, back up and then takes an awkward step backwards. Jorge: “A… dud?” Six: “What are the odds of that?” Carter and Cortana simultaneously “one in fivethousand seven hundred and eighty one.” Master Chief: “Lucky me.” Jorge and John, both Spartan IIs, shoot the shit for a minute. MC joins up with the rest of Red Team elsewhere
Rest of the level is the same
The final cutscene involves Halsey chewing out Noble for going after the hostage in the Visigrad relay. Carter covers your ass by saying that it was his order to send you there and he takes full responsibility for it.

OPERATION:Red Flag

It’s revealed that the real reason there are so many Spartans on reach is that they are being gathered by ONI for an offensive against the covenant, involving hijacking a covenant starship, using it to find the covenant homeworld, taking one of the covenant’s leaders hostage, and then using that as leverage to organize a cease-fire. The presence of the covenant on reach is still being kept secret by ONI and forces them to accelerate their plans. Noble, Red, and all other available Spartans are gathered aboard the pillar of autumn, waiting for the inevitable strike on Reach.
You are free to wander about small portions of the Pillar of Autumn in the beginning. Among other things, Kat and Carter can be observed talking to each other, and Carter, not realizing you’re there to hear his conversation, loses his usual demeanor and begins geeking out about the unique design of the Halcyon class cruiser.
Master Chief hands over Cortana to Captain Keyes.
Slip space ruptures detected. But there are only four ships. One Cruiser. One Carrier, and two corvettes.  And they’re far closer to reach than they should be. Too close to the planet to make the orbital MACs effective.
The Autumn begins accelerating back toward the planet to assist. All the Spartans load up to go to ground. Master Chief goes to the docked ship to destroy its NAV log, as described in the book. While he’s leaving, He gets an urgent message from ONI. Keyes give Cortana to Carter, telling him that while Noble is going to defend the MAC, their main mission is to get the chip to an ONI liaison waiting for them on the ground.
You and Carter take a shuttle to defend the nearest MAC from boarders until Marines arrive to assist while the rest of Noble defends that platform’s ground-side Generator.
At the end of this section you are that the end a hallway with docking stations, while two hunters side by side approach you. They fill the hallway. Behind them are grunts. You take cover or else they shoot you. Peaking from cover to shoot them makes them stop walking to cover themselves with their shields.  If you don’t they will overtake you. You hold out long enough for marine reinforcements to dock and pour out of their shuttle right behind them and open up into the grunts and hunters. The stunned hunters turn around and accidently cannon the grunts right in front of you, sending them flying. This gives you the window to kill them.
Being overwhelmed on the ground, you and Carter take an escape pod to the surface to aid the rest of noble. On the way down, A scarab passes you in free fall. You will have to fight it later.
You fight your way to the generator, clear it out, kill the Scarab, and then hold out against one last final assault, where ODSTs drop onto your location to aide you.
Final cutscene. Amongst the wreckage of the battlefield there’s a single grunt driving a ghost, in circles, occasionally and uselessly shooting at the generator building. From on the roof, you and the odsts stare.
ODST: “He’s shooting at scraps of metal”
ODSTs get a rocket launcher. "Backblast clear," etc. they fire. The rocket twists its way to the ghost, and then harmlessly embeds itself in the ghosts canopy; Another dud. Six: “So what are the odds of that Carter?” Disapointed Buck sets launcher on the ground to reload. Suddenly, the rocket detonates, and the ghost along with it in a massive explosion. The ODSTs look at each other silently for an instant and then begin loudly cheering and jumping up and down. Buck: “What? What I miss?” Six then tackles Buck out of the way and the grunts carcass splatters right where Buck was standing, completely covering six in blue blood and guts
Dr Halsey arrives in a falcon to take Cortana from Carter.

Exodus

In the aftermath the super carrier and the other ships have moved to a deep orbit out of range of the MAC guns. But before that, they dumped numerous phantoms and three assault ships from the cruiser to attack Reach’s major population centers. It’s a replay of Sigma Octanus.
The other Spartan teams including Noble decide to all split up to cover more ground. Emile being Emile, kick’s you out of the Pelican right before you were about to jump out of it.
Other than that, the rest of the level is the same.

Tip of the Spear

While the covenant cent most of their forces to New Alexandria, resupply ships were tracked heading to the middle of nowhere by satellite. ONI believes that New Alexandria was a distraction and that these dropships were sent by the carrier to reinforce a pocket of troops that were previously planted by the stealth ship. Noble is assigned to Recon in Force along a battalion of Reach’s Army
While on the FOB and gearing up for the mission, Emile asks you to grab his shotgun from his tent. While there you open his foot locker and find a beat up old teddy bear with Emile’s name on it. Emile storms into the tent, snatches it from you, closes it back into the footlocker, and storms out.
The level itself is the same, but the original opening cutscene is now less over the top retarded, and the scale of the background even battles has been toned down a bit.
The spire turns out not to be a teleporter but a beacon for ultra-precise slip-space travel. It was erected by the crew from the steal-corvette so that the cruiser could enter under reaches defense. Now in the atmosphere and under reaches guns, it destroys all the MACs over that continent, and ascends with its three other ships to Low Reach Orbit, controlling that entire horizon.

Long Night of Solace

Reach didn’t lose its nukes. It’s not attack because it’s ships are all massing on the opposite side of the planet. Not wanting to risk massive casualties in  a ship to ship engagement, you, Noble Six come up wit the slipspace bomb idea.
Emile dejects, however, saying that it should be him and not Jorge to go up into the Sabre, because boarding the Corvette will be a close quarters affair. He is over ruled by Carter however, because he says that they need Jorge’s skill as a Spartan II to carry it out, while Emile’s cqc is needed to help them escape the base.
Only first Sabre fight is done.
The second is replaced by a Savanah firing it’s mac at the Corvette.  Six and Jorge then load themselves into ODST drop pods which are fired at the hole in the Corvette’s hull. Six lands first and gets to fight several Covenant. Jorge comes in second, his pod landing on top of a Zealot about to kill Noble Six.
The rest of the Level is the same

The Big Comedown

The entire time, the actions of these covenant ships and their crew was to stall and prepare the way for the real invasion force.
By the very nature of this level, I can’t give a point by point synopsis. It has a lot of details to be worked out
This is the big level that Halo: Reach was missing. You spend your time alternating with all the other members of noble team, but you spend a notable amount of time with Emile. This is the level where you fight along fellow soldiers, friendly vehicles, and fellow Spartans. Here we get to see retreat and counter-attack. Falling back and back. This is the level where we see that Reach is lost. We get to see how horrifying and hopeless it really is to fight the covenant head on. Strafing runs, orbital bombardment, Covenant glassing, and Friendly fire. Massive casualties, and mostly for you.

Night Fall

Having lost Reach, the last of the UNSC’s ships are occupying one last spot in low orbit that is over the covenant controlled horizon; the control more than an entire hemisphere at this point. In order to slow the covenant has much as possible for the rest of the UNSC to evac, Spartans are sent behind enemy lines. Noble is split in two. You and Kat, and Carter and Emile. Both fire teams have tac nukes and your job is to infiltrate the covenant territory and get them into the ship via grav-lift. Kat says she’s uncomfortable with this plan, as it’s how she lost her arm and Tom died.
The level is essentially the Same.
At the end of the level, Noble is extracted via Foehammer’s Pelican. Kat waits to detonate the bomb because she wants to see it go off ‘’for Tom.’’ The radiation and EMP deactivate their shields and scramble their HUD’s. Blinded, Kat takes off her helmet, and is shot through the head by a needle rifle. The round embeds through the top of her skull, and she collapses in your arms. Not quite dead. She’s twitching and her lips tremble with shallow gasping breaths. The needle shatters in her brain, she goes limp in your arms and her eyes roll around lifelessly. A single drop of blood trickles out of her nose.

The Package

This level is completely unchanged.

The Pillar of Autumn

Because the Pillar of Autumn is in Orbit, you and several other evacuating Spartan teams are making their way to shuttles headed for the Pillar of Autumn. This includes Master Chief, who you hear on the Radio.
Instead of being approached by one scarab, you get two. Noble Six aims the Pelican at the first, runs out the back of the cockpit with a rifle and tries to jump onto the second. He… doesn’t exactly stick the landing. He lands hard, breaking his legs. The Scarab bucks hard, trying to get him off, and ends up sliding down the cliff face. Going against his direct orders, you run after the Scarab and jump onto it to save him.
You then proceed, with the help of Cortana, to Hijack the Scarab
Cue music: Warthog Run.
You, Noble Six, then go between driving the scarab and repelling boarders.
The Scarab is bombed to hell and you ditch it at the shuttle rendezvous point for the pelican but not before ripping out its core first.
You hold off against the Covenant. Carter does his best not to slow you down. Emile get on the gun and DOES destroy the incoming Cruiser. The Master Chief, not Key’s shows up on the Pelican and you give him Cortana back.
Then the phantom with the elites shows up. As the pelican dives out of the way a marine in the back tosses you a rocket launcher. Six catches it, spins around at the phantom and fires, nailing a pair of Zealots. They still manage to drop two on the MAC gun, killing Emile.
Damaged from the phantom, you wave off the Pelican, telling them that they need to secure the package and that you’ll hump it to the second shuttle. The Pelican leaves, and as you drag along Carter (who’s gone full Lieutenant Dan at this point) you get to see the shuttle blast off and make orbit.
As you’re about to get to the shuttle which has over 600 people on board (you’re both the last to make it). You hear that there’s another Cruiser headed right for your position. Carter gives you his dog tags and the dog tags of all the rest of Noble team. He tells Six he’ll make it back to the gun in spite of his injuries – all he has to do is sit in a chair. He says he won’t allow himself – as the leader and father of Noble – to be it’s only surviving member. Six tells him that he won’t make it their in that condition and says he’s going to adjust Carter’s armor.
Noble then temporarily shuts it down, rendering him immobile. Noble Six drags Carter into the Shuttle doors and tells him that it’s not the people that pull the triggers that will end the war, but brilliant promising minds like Carter’s that will really make a difference. He tells Carter that his life doesn’t matter anyway, because ultimately, he was ‘Just a ghost.’ Six walks away as Carter screams at him in protest.
You then race to the gun, and kill the cruiser, much like the timed warthog runs at the end of Halo 1 and 3.
Once it’s down and the shuttle takes off. You climb down and lie against its base as you watch it take off. It cuts to Carter, standing, and his hand against the window looking down on Reach
As you sit there, all you say is ‘Go.’ The shuttle’s blast of reflected in your visor. There are phantoms all around but you don’t pay them any attention. And in the reflection of your visor, we see two Seraphs swoop down out of the clouds and blast the Shuttle into a thousand tiny fireballs
There are now elites completely circling you, drawing their swords. One in the Middle appears to out rank all others. The others step back as if to watch him challenge you. You put Noble’s dog-tags between your fingers, and charge.

Lone Wolf

You only get this on legendary. Otherwise the game ends with the cut to black.
This IS a quick time event, but not a shitty ‘press X to kill boss’ bullshit. The system is dynamic. You don’t automatically lose the thing if you mess up, and there’s lots of frantic mashing.
You eventually wrestle Elite into submission, disemboweling it with its own sword. You take the sword.
The other elites are now enraged. One charges at you… yeah fuck no. you get to stab the shit out of it. You now get back full control of Noble Six with another one of those split-chin bastards just in range of your sword. After he’s killed the rest of the elites actually get scared and begin running away panickingly turning around and firing errant plasma rifle shots at you. And you get to cut them down to your own leisure. There’s still a sea of covenant in front of you and you are given a single objective:
Kill. Them.  All.


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ORIGINAL HALO: REACH LEVELS

Noble Actual
Noble Six meets the team, are told that Visegrad is down because of rebel activity. Noble is sent to investigate
Entirely cutscene
All are present

Winter Contingency
Visegrad relays is actually under attack by covenant.
Most of level is spent with Carter and Jorge
End of level is spent with Jorge

ONI: Sword Base
Sword bas is under attack by a corvette
Level is spent mostly with Kat, everyone joins at the very end

Nightfall
You and Jun are sent to investigate and recon an invasion force

Tip of the Spear
an assault is made on the hidden covenant ‘teleporters’
Covenant supercarrier uncloaks and destroys the Grafton and is implied to take out orbital defences and other ships
Most of the level is spent with Kat
End of the Level is spent with Jorge

Long Night of Solace
Noble fights its way into a launch facility. Six and Jorge then Launch in sabers and defend an a station. They then assault and board a corvette with the help of the Savanah, which is later destroyed. They then plant the slipspace generator on the corvette and send it to the supercarrier. Jorge stays behind to detonate the improvised bomb as you skydive out of the corvette
Beginning of level is spent with all of noble team except Jun
Middle of level is spent by yourself
End of level is spent with Jorge

Exodus
New Alexandria is under attack and your job is to help civilians evacuate
All of level is spent by yourself

New Alexandria
Kat sends you on various missions around the top of the skyscrapers in new Alexandria
You spend the entire mission by yourself
Kat is killed at the end of the level by a sniper

The Package
You are sent to the remains of Sword base for what is believed to be a demolition mission. When they get inside sword bas they find that they are really being sent to a secret geofront under the bast to retrieve Coratana from Halsey.
The beginning of the level is spent by yourself.
The rest is spent with the remainder of Noble
Jun leaves Noble with Halsey at the end of the level

The Pillar of Autumn
You make your way to the pillar of autumn to deliver cortana and evac  from the planet. You hand cortana to Keyes and stay behind to protect the autumn as she launches.
You spend most of the level with emile
Emile is then killed while in the MAC gun
You spend the end of the level by yourself
Carter dies in a cutscene in the middle of the level

Lone Wolf
You are marooned on the planet and spend your time taking out as many covenant before you go as possible
You spend the whole level by yourself