Several readers of our Halo Reach preview yesterday were wondering about the voice of the lead character in Halo Reach. Some clarification:
You can choose whether your Spartan will be male or female, which will determine not just their body type but their voice. You don't hear much from your Spartan in the game, though. In the two levels we previewed yesterday, Kotaku's female Noble 6 heroine made few noises other than grunting when getting shot. She grunted in a female voice, at least!
There are options in Halo Reach's menus to select other voices for your character, but it wasn't clear in our single-player-focused preview session if those voices would be applicable to single-player or just multiplayer. Given that the voices were associated with named Halo characters — characters other than Noble 6 — there's a good chance these are just for multiplayer. You have to pay virtual credits to unlock some of the more interesting voices, just as you have to pay to unlock better armor for your Spartan. Your custom armor does appear on your Noble 6 in the campaign. You earn those credits while playing the game, though we weren't able to scrutinize the system to see just which actions earn you points.
Noble 6, like Master Chief before him/her is not chatty in action or in cutscenes, at least not in these early levels we played. The rest of Noble Team do far more talking to move the Reach plot forward. But your hero will make their voice heard just enough in Reach for you to remember that there's a person in that armored shell.