This is The History and All you need to know about Halo Mega Thread by Extras!

Halo

Halo is a science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and now managed by 343 Industries and owned by Microsoft Studios. The series centers on an interstellar war between humanity and a theocratic alliance of aliens known as the Covenant. The Covenant worship an ancient civilization known as the Forerunners, who perished in combat with the parasitic Flood. Many of the games center on the experiences of Master Chief John-117, a cybernetically-enhanced human super-soldier, and his artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana. The term "Halo" refers to Halo megastructures: large, habitable ringed structures, similar to the Orbitals in Iain M Banks' Culture novels, or author Larry Niven's Ringworld.
The series has been praised as being among the best first-person shooters on a video game console, and are considered the Microsoft Xbox's "killer app". This has led to the term "Halo killer" being used to describe console games that aspire, or are considered, to be better than Halo. Fueled by the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, and immense marketing campaigns from publisher Microsoft, its sequels went on to break various sales records. Halo 3 sold more than US$170 million worth of copies in the first twenty-four hours of release, breaking the record set by Halo 2 three years prior. Halo: Reach, in turn, broke the record set by Halo 3, selling $200 million USD worth of copies on its first day of release. The games have sold over 40 million copies worldwide, and all Halo merchandise has grossed more than $2 billion.
Strong sales of the games led to the franchise's expansion to other mediums; there are multiple bestselling novels, graphic novels, and other licensed products. Beyond the original trilogy, other "Halo" games have branched off into other video game genres, including Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game produced as developer Ensemble Studios' last project. Bungie also contributed the expansion Halo 3: ODST and a prequel Halo: Reach, their last project for the franchise. A new title, Halo 4, is currently in development, as well as a high-definition remake of the first game entitled Halo: Anniversary.
The cultural impact of the Halo series has been compared by writer Brian Bendis to that of Star Wars. The collective group of fans of the series is referred to as the "Halo Nation".


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Story overview

In the distant past, an intelligent race called the Forerunners used their advanced technology to protect life. The Forerunner fought an alien parasite known as the Flood. The Flood, which spread through infestation of sentient life, overran much of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Forerunners conceived a weapon of last resort to combat the Flood. Using an installation known as the Ark, they built seven large ring-shaped megastructures known as Halos. The Halo Array, when activated, would destroy all sentient life in the galaxydepriving the Flood of their food. Delaying as long as they could, the Forerunners activated the rings and disappeared.
Tens of thousands of years later in the 26th century, humanityunder the auspices of the United Nations Space Command or UNSCcolonize many worlds thanks to the development of faster-than-light "slipstream" travel. Tensions escalate between the older and more stable "Inner Colonies" and the remote "Outer Colonies", leading to civil war. The UNSC creates an elite group of enhanced supersoldiers, known as Spartans, to suppress the rebellion covertly. In the year 2525 the human colony of Harvest falls under attack by a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant. The Covenant leadership declares humanity heretics and an affront to their godsthe Forerunnersand begins to methodically exterminate human worlds. The Covenant's superior technology and numbers prove decisive advantages; though effective, the Spartans are too few in number to turn the tide of battle in humanity's favor.
In 2552, the Covenant arrive at Reach, the UNSC's last major stronghold, and launch an invasion of the planet. The last Spartans and UNSC military are unable to stop the Covenant from bombarding the surface with plasma. Following directives to avoid leading the Covenant to Earth, the artificial intelligence (AI) Cortana aboard the fleeing UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn selects coordinates that lead the ship to a Halo installation. The Covenant follow, damaging the Autumn and leading its crew to take the fight to the ring's surface. The Covenant accidentally release Flood imprisoned on the ring; in order to nullify the threat, the ring's AI caretaker, 343 Guilty Spark, enlists the help of the Spartan, John-117. Before the pair can activate Halo's defenses, however, Cortana reveals that Halo's activation would mean their own destruction. Master Chief and Cortana instead detonate the Autumn's engines, destroying Halo and preventing the escape of the Flood. They and a few other human survivors return to Earth, warning of an impending Covenant attack.
Soon after, a Covenant fleet arrives at Earth. Most of the fleet is destroyed, but a single ship under the command of one of the Covenant's Hierarchs, the Prophet of Regret, breaks through the human defenses and invades the African city of New Mombasa. Before the humans can assault Regret's carrier, he retreats through a slipspace portal, pursued by the Master Chief aboard the human ship In Amber Clad. Regret travels to another Halo installation, where the Master Chief kills Regret. Inner turmoil in the Covenant leads to civil war between the various member races. Learning that the activation of the Halo Array (a central tenet of the Covenant religion) would lead to their extinction, the Covenant warrior Arbiter and his brethren ally with humanity to stop the rings from being fired. The aborted activation of the ring puts all the Halo installations on standby: the remaining rings can be activated remotely from a location known as "The Ark".
The Covenant begin a full-scale invasion of Earth and excavate a Forerunner artifact in the African desert that creates a slipspace portal to the Ark. The Master Chief and Arbiter travel through the portal to kill the last High Prophet, Truth, and discover the installation is building a new Halo ring to replace the one destroyed previously. In order to destroy the spreading infestation led by the Flood intelligence Gravemind, the Master Chief activates the incomplete ringas the Ark lies outside the Milky Way Galaxy, the blast destroys the Flood but spares the galaxy at large. Because the ring's construction is incomplete, the resulting pulse destroys the ring and damages the Ark. The Arbiter escapes the explosion, but the Master Chief and Cortana are left drifting in space, trapped in the severed rear half of their ship. The Master Chief cryonically freezes himself as he and Cortana wait for rescue. In the legendary ending, the rear half is seen floating towards an unknown planet.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Original trilogy

Originally developed as a real-time strategy game for the Apple Macintosh platform, Halo: Combat Evolved went through several iterations before arriving at the console first person shooter for which it is recognized. When the developers, Bungie, were bought by Microsoft in 2001, the game was rapidly finished and became an Xbox launch title and platform exclusive. Released on November 15, 2001, the Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved is the first Halo video game. The games of the main trilogy are first-person shooters, with the player experiencing most action from the protagonist's perspective. Combat Evolved introduced many gameplay and plot themes common to the whole trilogy. Players battle various aliens on foot and in vehicles to complete objectives, while attempting to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo. One concept introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved, is limiting the number of weapons players could carry to two, forcing them to carefully select their preferred armament.[16] Players fight with ranged and melee attacks, as well as a limited number of grenades. Bungie refers to the "weapons-grenades-melee" format as the "Golden Triangle of Halo", which has remained fundamentally unchanged throughout the trilogy. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the player's health is measured in both hit points and a continually recharging energy shield. A Windows and Mac OS X port was later developed by Gearbox Software, and released on September 30 and November 11, 2003 respectively. A stand-alone expansion, entitled Halo: Custom Edition, was released as a Windows exclusive, and allowed players to create custom content for the game.
Its sequel, Halo 2 was released on the Xbox on November 9, 2004 and later for Windows Vista on May 17, 2007. For the first time, the game was released in two different editions: a standard edition with just the game disc and traditional Xbox packaging, and the Collector's Edition with a specially designed aluminum case, along with an additional bonus DVD, extra booklet, and slightly different user manual. Halo 2 introduced new gameplay elements, chief among them the ability to hold and fire two weapons simultaneously, known as "dual wielding". Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 fully supports online multiplayer via Xbox Live. The game uses "matchmaking" to facilitate joining online matches by grouping players looking for certain types of games. This was a change from the more traditional "server list" approach which was used to find matches in online games at this time. Upon release, Halo 2 became the game played by the most people on the Xbox Live service that week; regaining this title every week for over two years the longest streak any game has held the spot.
Halo 3 is the third and final game in the main Halo trilogy, ending the story arc begun in Halo: Combat Evolved. The game was released on the Xbox 360 on September 25, 2007. It adds to the series new vehicles, new weapons, and a class of items called equipment. The game also includes a limited map-editing tool known as the Forge, which allows players to insert game objects, such as weapons and crates, into existing multiplayer map geometry. Players can also save a recording of their gameplay sessions, and view them as video, from any angle.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Adaptations

Further information: List of Halo media
The Halo franchise includes various types of merchandise and adaptations outside of the video games. This includes bestselling novels, graphic novels, and other licensed products, from action figures to a packaging tie-in with Mountain Dew. Numerous action figures and vehicles based on Halo have been produced. Joyride Studios created Halo and Halo 2 action figures, while Halo 3 poseable and collectible action figures, aimed at collectors, were produced by McFarlane Toys and became some of the top-selling action figures of 2007 and 2008. MEGA Blocks partnered with Microsoft to produce Halo Wars-themed toys.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Books and comic series

There have been numerous printed adaptations based on the Halo canon established by the video games. Larry Niven (author of Ringworld) was originally approached to write a Halo novelization, but declined due to unfamiliarity with the subject matter. The first novel was Halo: The Fall of Reach, a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved. It was written by Eric Nylund in seven weeks, and published in October 2001. William C. Dietz wrote an adaptation of Halo: Combat Evolved called Halo: The Flood, which was released in 2003. Eric Nylund returned to write the third novel, Halo: First Strike, which takes place between Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, and was published in December 2003. Nylund also wrote the fourth adaptation, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, which was published on October 31, 2006. Bungie employee Joseph Staten wrote the fifth book, Halo: Contact Harvest, which was released on October 30, 2007, while Tobias S. Buckell produced the sixth, Halo: The Cole Protocol, published in November 2008. Bungie considers the Halo novels as additions to the Halo canon.
The Halo universe was first adapted into the graphic novel format in 2006, with the release of the Halo Graphic Novel, a collection of four short stories. It was written and illustrated by graphic novelists Lee Hammock, Jay Faerber, Tsutomu Nihei, Brett Lewis, Simon Bisley, Ed Lee and Jean Giraud. At the 2007 New York Comic Con, Marvel Comics announced they would be working on an ongoing Halo series with Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. The limited series, titled Halo: Uprising, bridges the gap between the events of Halo 2 and Halo 3; initially planned to conclude shortly before the release of Halo 3, the constant delays led to the final issue being published April 2009.
Marvel announced at the 2009 Comic Con that two new comics, a five-part series written by Peter David and a second series written by Fred Van Lente, would appear the coming summer and winter. David's series, Halo: Helljumper, is set prior to Halo: Combat Evolved and focuses on the elite Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. The five-part series was published between July and November 2009.[102] Lente's series, originally titled Spartan Black, revolves around a black ops team of Spartan supersoldiers assigned to the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence. The rebranded comic, Halo: Blood Line, debuted in December 2009. A comic-retelling of the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach was the most recent comic series entitled: Halo: Fall of Reach. Fall of Reach was split into 3 mini-stories: Boot Camp, Covenant, and Invasion.
A collection of Halo stories, Halo: Evolutions, was simultaneously released in print and audiobook formats in November 2009. Evolutions includes original material by Nylund, Buckell, Karen Traviss and contributions from Bungie.[105] Tor eventually re-released the first three Halo novels with new content and cover art. Science fiction author Greg Bear has been contracted to write a trilogy of books focusing on the Forerunners, the first titled Halo: Cryptum released in January 2011, while his second Halo: Primordium will be released January 2012. Traviss is writing a series of novels taking place after the events of Halo 3 and Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, the first entitled Halo: Glasslands comes out October 2011.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Film

In 2005, Columbia Pictures president Peter Schlessel began working outside the studio system to produce a Halo filmic adaptation. Alex Garland wrote the first script, which was then pitched to studios by couriers dressed as Master Chief. Microsoft's terms required $10 million against 15 percent of gross; most studios passed, citing the lack of risk for Microsoft compared to their large share of potential profits. 20th Century Fox and Universal Studios decided to partner to produce the film, paying Microsoft $5 million to option the film and 10 percent of grosses. Peter Jackson was slated to be the executive producer, with Neill Blomkamp as director. Before Blomkamp signed on, Guillermo del Toro was in negotiations to direct.
D. B. Weiss and Josh Olson rewrote Garland's script during 2006. The crew stopped and resumed preproduction of the film several times. Later that year, 20th Century Fox threatened to pull out of the project, leading Universal to issue an ultimatum to Jackson and Schlessel: either cut their large "first-dollar" deals, or the project was ended. Both refused, and the project stalled.
Blomkamp declared the project dead in late 2007, but Jackson replied that the film would still be made. Blomkamp and Jackson collaborated on District 9, but the director told /Film that he was no longer considering working on a Halo film if the opportunity arose, saying that after working on the film for five months before the project's collapse it would be difficult to return. The rights for the film have since reverted back to Microsoft. O'Connor has stated that the movie will be made at some point. At one point, filmmaker Steven Spielberg had expressed interest in being involved in the making of a film adaptation of Halo. A fan-film, Halo: Faith is currently in development.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Anime

Microsoft announced at Comic-Con 2009 that it was overseeing production of a series of seven short anime films, together called Halo Legends. Financed by 343 Industries, the animation was created by five Japanese production houses: Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4C, and Toei Animation. Shinji Aramaki, creator and director of Appleseed and Appleseed Ex Machina, serves as the project's creative director. Warner Bros. distributed Legends on DVD and Blu-ray in February 2010. Six of the stories are officially part of the Halo canon, with the seventh, made by Toei, intended to be a parody of the universe.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Cultural impact

The main trilogy, particularly its protagonist, has been declared iconic and a symbol of today's videogames; a wax replica of the Master Chief was made by Madame Tussauds in Las Vegas, where Pete Wentz compared the character to notable characters from previous generations like Spider-Man, Frodo, and Luke Skywalker. The Escapist author Roger Travis compared Halo's story to Virgil's Aeneid, saying the religious and political struggle described in the games relates to the modern epic tradition. GamesTM stated Halo: Combat Evolved "changed videogame combat forever", and Halo 2 showcased Xbox Live as a tool for communities. GameDaily noted Halo 2's launch was "easily comparable to the biggest in other sectors of the entertainment industry", marking the first time a video game launch has become a major cultural event in America. Time magazine included the franchise in the "2005 Time 100", highlighting that in the first ten weeks after the release of Halo 2, players spent 91 million combined hours playing the game online. A The New York Times report noted the success of Halo 3 was critical for Microsoft, persuading consumers to buy the Xbox 360 console which was experiencing waning sales compared with the Nintendo Wii, as well as helping restore the console's image. On September 25, 2007, the release date for Halo 3, Microsoft's shares rose 1.7% based on sales expectations for the game. Halo has been described as a series that "has reinvented a genre that didn't know it needed to be reinvented", with aspects of the main trilogy being duplicated in other FPS games multiple times.



Read Now


All info that is above was found here. The Page I do not take credit for any of the above information.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Halo 1



"Halo Killer" has become part of the gaming industry lexicon, a pipe dream floated by every wannabe developer hoping to make their bones by taking top honors away from the most successful first person shooter of all time. It'll be a tough climb. As a series, Halo has sold more units faster than any other game in history. Over five billion matches have been played online. Dozens of awards. Hundreds of accolades. Halo was itself a game-changer, simultaneously putting a new and untested console on the map while announcing the end of PC-shooter dominance with authority.

The epic tale it wove was pure pulp sci-fi goodness. An interstellar war, Earth on the brink of defeat, the fate of the galaxy hinging on an ancient and mysterious alien artifact and one hope for survival remaining: a lone soldier of superhuman will and ability, fighting to turn the tide in humanity's final hour. One man, one war. And that was just for openers.

When Bungie Studios finally deployed Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 in late 2001, everyone felt the lightning hit. The thunder was still to come.

Breaking Stuff to Look Tough
University of Chicago student Alex Seropian had already published Gnop!, a humble Pong clone, and tank shooter Operation Desert Storm when he met fellow undergrad Jason Jones. Hungry for another project, they partnered in 1991 to create Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, with no solid intentions beyond getting it done and out the door. Seven years later, as co-founders of Bungie Studios, they topped the admittedly-thin list of Mac developers with two stellar franchises to their name: real-time strategy Myth and first-person shooter Marathon.

Marathon took the relatively young FPS genre and added physics, dual-weapon wielding, networked multiplayer and, most improbably, a plot with objectives beyond "shoot everything, find door." You were a nameless cyborg security officer in Mjolnir Mark IV armor, revived from stasis to defend the UESC Marathon from alien incursion, assisted (and hindered) by increasingly unstable AIs. Fans of open source, Jones and Seropian finished their popular trilogy by including the Forge and Anvil, level editors that put their design tools into gamers' hands.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bungie soon partnered with Take-Two Interactive, publisher of controversial top-down actioner Grand Theft Auto. California-based Bungie West was coding Oni, a third-person beat-em-up with a strong Masamune Shirow flavor and definite sequel possibilities. Myth II was in the bag. A longtime fan of old school science fiction, Jones fired up a new project at the Chicago office: an RTS envisioned as a sci-fi variation on Myth, chronicling a desperate war on a distant planet... called Solipsis. Also the name of the game itself: "One of many." The Crystal Palace, Hard Vacuum, Star Maker, Star Shield, and The Santa Machine all took their turn.

It went to a rough build before everyone decided moving tiny army men around felt a little dull. Solipsis shifted to third-person run-'n-gun and picked up a new nickname: "Blam!" The planet became a Dyson Sphere - an artificial world built around a live sun - then a much cooler Dyson Ring inspired by Iain M. Banks' Culture novels. Focus centered in on a beefed-up 3D build of a sketch by conceptual artist Shi Kai Wang, finally getting the thumbs-up with a drawing of an imposing cyborg soldier encased head to toe in pencil-gray armor.

The Master Chief set foot on Halo for the first time in 1998, and he was armed to the teeth.

Machetes, flamethrowers, mini-guns, a gravity weapon, SMGs, bazookas, pistols, rifles, and harpoon guns to deal with the odd sea monster (never built), plus a host of alien ordinance, all found its way to the ring, itself featuring a missing segment connected by scaffolding. Helicopters hovered overhead. Zodiac boats were on the beach. Local dinosaurs and rubber chicken-looking "blind wolves" could be subdued and used for cheap transport like a less-than-epic World of Warcraft mount.

Many became preludes. Most were simply cut by the time Jones shared the stage with Apple CEO Steve Jobs at MacWorld '99 for Halo's public debut. The crowd went crazy for it. Jobs announced Halo would release for Mac and PC same-day.


Reps from Microsoft saw the presentation as well. Microsoft was secretly developing its first gaming system since collaborating on the Dreamcast and headhunting top-notch content to launch it. Midway surfaced as a likely acquisition, but in June of 2000, less than three months after confirming "the Xbox project" to the press, Microsoft cut a check for $50 million and Bungie cashed it. Take-Two disengaged, taking the rights to Myth and Oni with them. MacAddicts everywhere howled in betrayal. Bungie was now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

Halo wasn't just another videogame anymore. It was an exclusive launch title -- THE launch title -- for the Xbox, and the success of Microsoft's big black box depended on it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Halo 2



A Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe
Even before inking the Microsoft deal, Halo needed a change in perspective. Again.

The third-person builds looked good, but a few messy in-house multiplayer tests showed the gameplay to be seriously lacking. Back in the RTS days, engineer Charlie Gough attached a camera to a tank unit to get a tank's eye view of the game, with interesting results. Jones, however, was dead-set against going to first-person. Fortunately, 3D rendering technology had drastically improved in the six years since Jones resorted to graphical sleight-of-hand to make Marathon's perspective work. A few tests sold him. Halo became a FPS.

In Jones' book, great games were built on three pillars: graphics, gameplay, story. The first two were in hand, but to be what it needed to be, Halo needed a compelling plot, interesting characters, and unexpected twists. It had to be more than just a game.


Hype grew around Halo for the next year, fueled in part by the Cortana Letters, emails sent to a Marathon fansite in 1999 from a rampant AI (aka Bungie staffer Nathan Bitner) claiming "THIS is the way the world ends." It started a tradition of buzz-building pre-launch metagames, though none would ever be held as canon.

Bungie's pride and joy went gold in time to make its must-make deadline. The Xbox hit stores on November 15, 2001, side-by-side with its killer app.

Halo: Combat Evolved opened on the heels of a massive defeat in a decades-long conflict with the Covenant, a collective of alien species waging holy war to wipe out the human race. A single ship -- the Pillar of Autumn -- escaped the obliteration of human colony Reach, but a blind jump landed them in range of an incredible artifact the Covenant revered above all things. It was Halo, a habitable, planet-sized ring built by an ancient race known as the Forerunners, and a weapon of incredible power.

As the Autumn came under attack, one of the few surviving SPARTAN-II super-solders was called to action, charged with safeguarding Cortana, the shipboard AI. He was Spartan 117, the Master Chief, a bio-engineered combatant trained from childhood to complete any mission against any odds. Together, they were blood and oil, a cudgel and a scalpel, a perfect team. The Chief's blunt approach often saw him playing straight man to the sassier, savvier program guiding him, but complexity wasn't his job. With Cortana riding shotgun in his MJOLNIR Mark V armor, the Master Chief rallied the surviving marines on Halo's surface, organized resistance against an overwhelming Covenant occupation force, and doggedly hunted for the key to unlock Halo's secrets. Too late, he found it.

The Covenant believed activating the ring would release a divine wind to cleanse the universe of heresy, the culmination of their "Great Journey." The truth wasn't so rosy. Halo was one of seven installations, a final solution against a hideous threat so dire, the Forerunners chose to murder an entire galaxy to contain it.


Over halfway through the game, in a brilliantly unexpected move, the primary threat changed. Gamers were suddenly ambushed by hundreds of grotesque creatures pouring out of every doorway, skittering straight at them. The Flood was a parasitic contagion, intelligent and virulent beyond imagining. Humans and Covenant alike were infected, absorbed and mutated into impossibly resilient killing machines. Shotguns instantly became every player's best friend.

By design, the rings nuked any and all life that could possibly sustain the Flood. Halo's monitor, the annoyingly smug 343 Guilty Spark, nearly duped the Chief into committing galacticide before he and Cortana detonated the Pillar of Autumn's engine core instead, destroying the Flood, the Covenant fleet, and Halo itself.

It was one hell of a ride.

Everything worked. Control was tighter, more intuitive, easily competing with the PC's popular and traditional FPS keyboard and mouse. Martin O'Donnell's sweeping music and Gregorian chants gave weight to the ring, the people, and the events with equal grace. Weapons, vehicles, mood, combat... Halo did it all seamlessly. Even the loads were cleverly masked. The Master Chief, who never showed his face, became the face of first-person shooters.

Halo remained the best selling Xbox game for the next four years, credited with half the consoles sales in the first sixty days. Authorization for a sequel came down right as Halo crossed the million-unit mark, a mere five months post-release.

The killer app was officially a franchise.

Your Butt, My Size-24 Hoof
Bungie went right back into the crunch. A ten-person development team ballooned to sixty, split up into teams, one level to a team.

Community, long a Bungie mantra, took a forced hiatus when Halo left the home computer platforms. Co-op worked fine, but multiplayer meant lugging your console to a buddy's house to set up a LAN party. When Xbox Live launched in 2002, revamping multiplayer became a major priority for the Halo sequel.

As was weapon balancing. Players loved killing Hunters, one of the tougher opponents, with a single pistol shot, but Bungie regarded it as a broken element to be fixed... to much public outcry. The old arsenal and armor got updated, dual wielding was added and the much-desired Covenant power sword became playable, all nothing compared to the far more drastic changes in store.

Early on, the decision was made to distance from their iconic characters for long stretches and spend some time with the enemy. More specifically, as the enemy: a Covenant warrior with a status and ethos to equal the Master Chief's. The game was called "Halo," after all, not "Spartan-117," and Bungie had a lot of story to tell. Its new playable character became an Elite commander sentenced to death for failing to prevent Halo's destruction, ordered by the Covenant's High Prophets to take on the ancient and sacred mantle of the Arbiter, the blade of the Prophets' will... also expected to be a death sentence.

Unfortunately, the core programmers were all too used to working in the same room, and coordination between teams suffered. When the project leads put the whole game together for the first time, what they found was a disjointed mess. Nothing was consistent, not story, not difficulty... not fun. These were perfectionists following up on their masterpiece, and it played like a slow-motion car wreck.

They scrapped nearly everything and started fresh. The deadline was just a year away.

While a Halo 2 trailer attached to I Robot sent devotees hunting for clues on ilovebees.com, Bungie went into the mother of all crunches. In the end, Halo 2 shipped on time, almost exactly three years after the original, risks taken and ambitions finally met. Mostly.

Dual storylines split between the Master Chief and the Arbiter, both experiencing fractures in the Covenant from different angles. The Chief and Cortana repelled a lightning Covenant strike on Earth led by the rogue Prophet of Regret, acting against his fellow Prophets' will, in a bid to locate hidden Forerunner technology. Meanwhile, the Arbiter was tasked with assassinating a heretic Elite spreading "lies" about the true purpose of the sacred rings, heresy the Arbiter soon came to believe.


Both paths led to Delta Halo, a second ready-to-fire ring under Covenant control. If the Covenant was breaking, they were taking the rest of the galaxy with them.

Civil war erupted between the Elites and a new race, the Brutes, secretly engineered by the Prophet of Truth to exterminate the Elites. Finishing off Regret only seemed to fit into Truth's plans, and the Arbiter was swiftly backstabbed by treacherous Brute chieftain Tartarus. Truth's two betrayals inadvertently put both his "champion" and his greatest enemy into the grasp of something even more sinister: Gravemind, the hidden intelligence behind the Flood.

Gravemind brought the Arbiter and his "demon," the Master Chief, together for the first time, claiming they shared a common cause. Momentarily, they did. Human soldier and Elite warrior were dispatched to stop Truth from activating Delta Halo, even as the civil war raged around them. But a scorpion's got to sting; in the confusion, Gravemind escaped the ring and infested the Covenant city-ship High Charity. Now the Flood could travel anywhere.

Truth escaped to a Forerunner ship in the heart of the city, setting course to finish the job Regret started on Earth. The Master Chief slipped aboard just as it lifted off, but Cortana stayed behind as insurance, ready to detonate the ring if necessary. The perfect team parted ways, unsure if they'd ever meet again.

And with a whole level to go, the Master Chief's role as a playable character ended.

Playing as the Arbiter automatically threw some players off; the same alien zealots they'd cheerfully dusted were now friendlies. It didn't help that Arbiter levels tended to be Flooded levels, which meant pain. Lots of pain. But telling the Covenant's side of the story expanded the Halo universe, adding layers of complexity beyond the scope of most "shoot the bad guys" games. The payoff came when the Arbiter partnered with Commander Miranda Keyes and badass marine Sgt. Major Avery Johnson to kill Tartarus and stop Delta Halo's firing sequence in the nick of time.

Then the unthinkable happened. A cliffhanger. In a videogame.

Out of a final two minute cutscene, the last thirty seconds showed Truth's ship arriving at Earth, an orbital battle still raging. The Master Chief had arrived to finish the fight... cut to black. Roll credits. Cue outraged screaming.

It wasn't the original plan. Deadlines were the enemy. According to lead writer Frank O'Connor, "the game was not supposed to end at that point in time." A tenth level would've put players back into Master Chief mode, but the crunch ultimately beat them. Publicly, Bungie defended it as a story decision. Privately, "it kind of left a bitter taste in our mouth."

Other faults were called out. The campaign was short. Graphics glitches pointed to an abbreviated polish time. A major marketing campaign lured gamers into thinking they'd be saving Earth when they barely spent any time there. Shifts between Master Chief and Arbiter proved jarring, and some who showed up to play the Chief didn't want to go reptilian for half the game.

Most got over it quick, and many rated the sequel higher than the original. Anyone wanting more game after the campaign got it in multiplayer, the one element everyone agreed exceeded expectations. It'd been a nice feature in the original; now it was a franchise signature. Xbox Live made it work, and True Skill matching evened the odds. Everybody had their favorite map, their favorite match, and friends to hook up with. It started as Live's top game and stayed there until Gears of War released two years later, and even then it didn't fall far.

Halo 2 broke records, making $125 million on its first day alone, more than any other entertainment release in history. Over nine million units have sold, nearly one for every Xbox 360 owner, and only one game is likely to surpass those numbers. The abrupt ending might've been almost universally reviled, but it definitely whet gamers' appetite for a finale that was already on the drawing board.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Halo 3

Once More, With Feeling
Fans have marinated in that cliffhanger for three years. Cortana remained trapped on High Charity as Gravemind's prisoner. Aborting Delta Halo put the whole network on active standby, awaiting a remote command from "the Ark" to trigger Armageddon. Humans allied with Elites, but no promises made could mean no promises kept. Truth and a Covenant armada encircled Earth. The Master Chief stood ready to take orders or the initiative, whichever came first.

A quarter of the way into Halo 2, O'Connor broke the story out through the third game. Physical work began soon after H2 shipped, but nothing was made official until May 9, 2006, at Microsoft's Pre-E3 conference. A trailer opened with a blinding white screen, a stark piano key, a broken holographic message... and the Master Chief, walking through the wasteland of a conquered Earth.

While future games might share the same universe, as many suspect Marathon does, Halo 3 will end the Master Chief's war.

He won't be going quietly. A decade later, the flamethrower, the minigun, the Forge, the everything have made it into the final build. Spartan lasers, bubble shields, man cannons, more skulls, more vehicles, new guns, new grenades. Player two will play as the Arbiter, now teamed with the Master Chief, smoothing the game-to-cutscene continuity. Their deep and abiding resentments might make for a potentially shaky truce during a very busy day. They've got to take back the Earth from Covenant control, defeat Truth, stop the Flood, and reach the Ark before the Halos are activated en mass. There will be twists and revelations and blood. The gravity is such that speculation around the Chief making the ultimate sacrifice, amazingly enough, seems possible.

Expectations are insanely high.

Accordingly, the kitchen sink's been included. Players can record gameplay and share their glory -- and humiliation -- with friends. "Adding a social element was a big push," says Brian Jarrard, Bungie's Community Lead. Everything from campaign scoring to four player co-op was designed to make campaign feel like multiplayer, only with the scale and scope ratcheted up in every capacity. "It really is the Master Chief against overwhelming odds."

And after the last gunshot, once the Chief goes into endless multiplayer reruns... Bungie won't say. Not beyond confirming downloadable content to support H3's online mayhem.

Ensemble Studios will release Halo Wars in '08, an RTS mirroring Jason Jones' original concept of a sci-fi Myth. Appropriately enough, it's a prequel. Peter Jackson's Halo movie is "on pause," says O'Connor, but with Halo 3 out the door, Bungie employees already have tickets to Australia to meet on Jackson's proposed episodic Halo series. No further details forthcoming. Yet.

So while this fight might be finished, there will be others. Pretenders will try to dethrone the king while we wait, but they really don't know what they're up against. The Halo saga ranks with the giants - Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars - as a phenomenon that crosses media boundaries and markets, even before the movie's made. That's what a Halo Killer will have to do. So far, few have even tried where the Master Chief succeeded.

But then, it's always been the Chief's job to get the job done. If this is goodbye, his echo will take a long, long time to fade.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Halo: Reach

Halo: Reach is a shooter game in which players experience gameplay predominantly from a first-person perspective. Players assume the role of Noble Six, a supersoldier engaged in combat with an alien collective known as the Covenant. Gameplay is more similar to Halo: Combat Evolved than later games in the series. The player character is equipped with a recharging energy shield that absorbs damage from weapons fire and impacts. When the energy shield is depleted, the player character loses health; when the character's health reaches zero, the game reloads from a saved checkpoint. Health is replenished using health packs scattered throughout Reach's levels.
In Halo 3, player characters could carry single-use equipment power-ups that offer temporary offensive or defensive advantages.[3][4] This system of single-use equipment is replaced in Reach by reusable and persistent "armor abilities" that remain with a character until they are replaced. Among the abilities are a jetpack, active camouflage, sprint, and "armor lock", which immobilizes the player but grants invincibility for a brief period of time. Reach features updated versions of old weapons, plus new weapons fulfilling various combat roles.

Multiplayer
Reach supports player-versus-player multiplayer through splitscreen on a single Xbox 360, local networks (System Link), and the Xbox Live service. Reach includes standard multiplayer modes such as Slayer and Capture the Flag, as well as gametypes new to the franchise. In "Headhunter", player characters drop skulls upon death, which other players can pick up and deposit at special zones for points. When a player dies, all their accumulated skulls are dropped. "Stockpile" has teams race to collect neutral flags, holding them at capture points every minute for points. "Generator Defense" pits three human supersoldiers, or Spartans, against three Covenant soldiers called Elites. The Elites' objective is to destroy three generators, while Spartans defend the installation. After every round the players switch roles. "Invasion" is a six versus six mode with three squads of two on each team. The gametype pits Spartans against Elites; Elites vie for control of territories to disable a shield guarding a navigation core. Once the shield is disabled, they must transfer the core to a dropship; the Spartans must prevent this. As the game progresses, new vehicles and areas of the map become open.

Alongside other multiplayer options is "Firefight", where players take on increasingly difficult waves of foes in a game of survival. Players can customize Firefight options, including the number and types of enemies. Firefight versus allows a player-controlled Elite team to try and stop the Spartan team from scoring points. Game modes like Generator Defense are also playable in Firefight.
Also included with Reach is Forge, a level editor. Players can edit the default multiplayer maps and a large empty map known as Forge World, adding or modifying spawn points, weapons and items. Objects may be phased into other objects, and can also be snapped to specific orientations.