10 Video Game NPCs With Awesome Details You Totally Missed
2. Kat’s Unfortunate Arm - Halo Reach
The poignant and powerful swansong of Bungie’s Halo games, Halo Reach, is so drenched in bravado and high-stakes adventure that you’d think this prequel’d be nothing more than an excuse to have more Halo Mans fight baddie Covenant beasties - but it ends up being one of the most emotive and detail-rich.
Noble Team, comprised of Carter, Emile, Jorge, Jun, Kat and “the Rookie”, in their last-ditch attempt to save the UNSC fortress planet of Reach, attempt to stop the Covenant’s relentless push across the galaxy. However, as they’re picked off, one by one, it becomes clear that the mission won’t have a happy ending.
I could talk about anything - like how Jorge is the only big lumbering “old-school, tank-style” Spartan 2 amongst the team (and how his gentle giant nature is occasionally referenced), but one detail very few people noticed was Kat’s missing arm... and how it came to be lost.
Though the official statement is that she lost it protecting Carter, in the live-action advert “Deliver Hope”, we clearly see her, arms intact, delivering a bomb to a Covenant ship... before being hit by a Banshee aircraft’s bombs, exploding against her forearm.
A great, overlooked bit of character detail.