I am tempted to call this a Noble Experiment of a game. The stated purpose of the developers was to get away from the all-military environment of the Spartans and Master Chief and show some of the smaller stories of people caught in war.
The best parts of the game, in fact, is when you as The Rookie are searching the war-ravaged streets of New Mombasa through one long night, avoiding Covenant patrols while looking for other members of your squad. It is dark, noir-like chiaroscuro lighting and cool sax music is playing.
And as The Rookie picks up emblematic items left behind by his fellow soldiers -- a broken helmet, a discarded sniper rifle -- you shift in time and POV to play as that soldier and experience what they saw before that long night.
This is reasonably clever but it is also great play pacing. After sneaking around and running from firefights it is nice to get into a pedal-to-the-heavy-metal Warthog Run.
But that's the first 2/3 of the game. The rest of it, you are back to frenetic firefights, running back and forth trying to reload from weapon drops and pick up more health packs.
Thing of it is, even The Rookie is ODST. Master Chief might be a super-soldier in the Steve Rogers mold, but you are Special Forces. The ordinary soldiers the developers spoke of are still cannon fodder, and there's still chatter about how grateful they are about having one of You to help them with their battles.
And the civilians? Nothing but voices on a recording (which is too easy to miss, too). (Plus those darkened streets are so dark you end up playing most of the game with Batman Vision -- sorry, HUD enhancement -- on.)
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