The next mission, “Long Night of Solace,” is all about destroying the super-carrier. It’s a goal that, if accomplished, will create a scenario that is, at best, as poor as the situation was before the previous mission even started, when there was no super-carrier.
“Long Night of Solace” is one of Reach’s longest and multifaceted missions, including an assault on an ONI base to steal a space ship, an intergalactic fight to board a smaller cruiser, and an assault on that ship’s bridge. Eventually, against all odds, Noble Team’s harebrained scheme works and, with the sacrifice of one of their members, the super-carrier is taken out. Another step forward is taken. We are back at where we were at the beginning of the previous mission.
But then, as the mission ends, dozens of Covenant super-carriers appear in-system above Reach. I just spent well over an hour on a lengthy mission to take out one super-carrier, and now there are dozens of them. This moment, with the panicked screams of the UNSC forces on the radio as the radar’s AI repeats over and over and over “SLIPSPACE RUPTURE DETECTED,” juxtaposes the huge effort required by the mission (both by me and by Noble Team) to take out one super-carrier with the whole futility of what we just achieved. It feels like the moment Reach falls. That’s it. I can’t do this. I simply can’t.
The next mission, “Exodus,” has Noble Six smash back onto the planet’s surface. The super-carrier’s wreckage is burning atop a nearby mountain, but the music is only mournful. We achieved nothing. The goalposts are moved again. We know we can’t save Reach now. The best we can hope for now is to survive, and the goals for the next mission—helping civilians escape a city to go… who knows where—reflect this.
After the game’s opening cut scene ensured we as players knew we would not get off Reach alive, each mission gave us entirely accomplishable goals. We accomplished them but, every time, they were instantly rendered meaningless. Each victory is exposed as the deluded putting off of the inevitable that it is. I achieve each mission’s objectives. I get to feel like I am playing the game ‘properly’. But as each mission’s final cut scene pushes the goalposts back down the stairs, I feel like I am walking backwards with each missions. I can see the goal I started the game with ahead of me. I can see what has to be done, but it keeps getting further away as I keep taking steps backwards.
From the start of the first mission to the end of the final mission, Reach allows me to feel like I am progressing towards something while that something is consistently growing further and further away. The entire game is permeated with a tragic undertone. It’s not that something bad is going to happen. It’s that something bad is happening right from my first steps, and nothing I do can stop it.
