Who says that all Spartans have to be faceless, nameless cyborg supermen, devoid of personality? I mean, just because Master Chief, the iconic Spartan of the Halo series, is a boring, dull cypher doesn’t mean they all were, right?

(And before you Halo fans go on a tear, I don’t care how much character development he got in the books/comics/etc – I’m speaking strictly in-game.)

Well it seems like Bungie took a page out of the Halo 3: ODST playbook when they were putting together Halo: Reach. When we got our first look at the game in the form of this cinematic at Spike’s 2009 Video Game Awards we didn’t actually see any action – no epic Spartan-on-Covenant warfare at all. Instead we just got the Spartans of Noble Team… talking? Who would have thought, right?

Not only that, but we also got our first look at a female Spartan (complete with cybernetic replacement arm) and one bad dude who looks like he missed his audition for Army of Two. Color me at least slightly interested (if a bit underwhelmed based on the amount of hype leading up to this reveal).

Here’s to hoping for a decent story with characters you actually give a crap about. At the very least, the new engine looks pretty nice in the cinematic, which I’m fairly sure is rendered in-game.