On a recent 4 Guys 1 UP podcasts, David Ellis mentioned that Halo: Reach is “already fully playable from beginning to end.” John Davison mentioned that he visited a studio, and stated they built the whole game from beginning to end at 40%. Of course, Davison never stated which game, but with Ellis’ Reach statement it doesn’t take much to put one and one together.
Bungie recently set a media embargo on Reach for mid-January, and Sound Designer Hong-Wei David Liu has stated that he’s signed contractually onto the project until sometime around late July, meaning Halo: Reach could very well be nearing the end stages of development.