Halo

Creator(s): Bungie & 343 Studios | Release: 1999-Present

Halo is an FPS developed by Bungie and later by 343 Industries. It was the flagship IP for Microsoft’s Xbox console.

Notable Design Implementations

The Halo (Bungie) series consists of:

• Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

• Halo 2 (2004)

• Halo 3 (2007)

• Halo 3: ODST (2009)

• Halo: Reach (2010)

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Originally released on the Xbox. A remastered version Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary was released on the Xbox 360 and is also included in Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and Steam.

In the 26th century, the development of faster-than-light travel called slip-space allows the human race to colonize planets other than Earth. The planet Reach serves as an interstellar hub of scientific and military activity. The UNSC develops the SPARTAN-II program, a secret program to create augmented supersoldiers known as Spartan-IIs. 20 years prior to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, a technologically advanced collective of alien races called the Covenant begins a religious war against humanity, declaring them an affront to their gods. Humanity's military experiences a series of crushing defeats; although the Spartans are effective against the Covenant, they are too few in number to turn the tide.

In 2552, Covenant forces attack Reach and destroy the colony. The starship Pillar of Autumn escapes the planet with the Spartan-II Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 on board. The ship initiates a jump to slip-space, hoping to lead the enemy away from Earth. As the Pillar of Autumn exits slip-space, its crew discovers a large ringworld structure of unknown origin. The Covenant pursues the Pillar of Autumn and attacks. With the ship heavily damaged, the Pillar of Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, entrusts the ship's artificial intelligence (AI) known as Cortana to Master Chief in order to prevent the Covenant from discovering the location of Earth. Keyes orders the crew to abandon the Pillar of Autumn and pilots the ship to a crash-landing on the ringworld.

On the ring's surface, Master Chief and Cortana rescue scattered survivors and help organize a counter-offensive against the Covenant. Learning that Keyes has been captured by the Covenant, Master Chief and a small contingent of soldiers rescue him from the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation. Keyes reveals that the Covenant call the ringworld "Halo" and that they believe it to be a weapon. Intent on stopping the Covenant from using Halo, Keyes searches for a potential weapons cache, while Master Chief and Cortana mount an assault on the ringworld's control room called The Silent Cartographer. Cortana enters Halo's computer systems and, after discovering something horrifying, sends Master Chief to find and stop Keyes from continuing his search and uncovering what lies within the ring.

Searching for the captain, Master Chief encounters a new enemy, the parasitic Flood. The release of the Flood prompts a robot called 343 Guilty Spark who is Halo's caretaker, also known as a Monitor, to enlist Master Chief's help in activating Halo's defenses. After Master Chief retrieves the ring's activation index, 343 Guilty Spark transports him back to Halo's control room. Cortana intervenes before Master Chief can activate the ring; she has discovered the purpose of the installation is to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, starving the Flood of potential hosts. When Cortana refuses to surrender Halo's activation index, 343 Guilty Spark attacks her and Master Chief.

To stop Halo's activation, Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy the installation. Needing Keyes' neural implants to destroy the Pillar of Autumn and Halo with it, Master Chief returns to the Truth and Reconciliation. He finds that Keyes has been assimilated by the Flood and retrieves the neural implant from the captain's remains. After 343 Guilty Spark stops them from using Pillar of Autumn's self-destruct, Master Chief and Cortana destabilize the Pillar of Autumn's reactors instead, narrowly escaping the ensuing detonation in a fighter. Cortana justifies their actions to destroy the Covenant fleet and stop the Flood threat and believes the fight is finished, but Master Chief states they are only getting started.

In a post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen floating through space, having survived the ring's destruction.

Halo 2 (2004)

Originally released on the Xbox. A remastered version Halo 2 Anniversary was released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and Steam which also features CGI cinematics throughout the campaign.

PLAY: Halo: The Master Chief Collection

About 1 month after the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, a Covenant Elite commander Thel ‘Vadam stands trial aboard the Covenant's capital city-ship of High Charity.  For his failure to stop Halo's destruction, the Elite is stripped of his rank, branded a heretic, and tortured by Tartarus, the Chieftain of the Covenant Brutes. Spared from his execution, the Covenant leadership—the three High Prophets Truth, Regret, and Mercy—give the Elite the chance to become an Arbiter, a rank given to Elites in times of great crisis or turmoil. As the Arbiter, Thel ‘Vadam quells a rebellion led by Elite Sesa ‘Refumee who had learned of the truth of the Halo rings from 343 Guilty Spark, and recovers 343 Guilty Spark for the Covenant.

On Earth, Fleet Admiral Hood commends the Master Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson for their actions on Halo, with Commander Miranda Keyes accepting a medal on behalf of her deceased father, Captain Jacob Keyes. Master Chief’s armor is upgraded from the MJOLNIR Mark V to the MJOLNIR Mark VI. A Covenant fleet suddenly appears near Earth. In the ensuing battle, a single ship carrying the Prophet of Regret slips through Earth's defenses and besieges the African city of New Mombasa. Master Chief assists in repelling the invasion. With his fleet destroyed, Regret makes a hasty slipspace jump, and Keyes, Johnson, Cortana, and the Master Chief follow aboard the UNSC ship In Amber Clad. The crew discovers another Halo installation; realizing the danger the ring presents, Keyes sends Master Chief to kill Regret while she and Johnson search for the Index, Halo's activation key.

Responding to Regret's distress call, High Charity and the Covenant fleet arrive at the Halo. After Master Chief kills Regret, the Covenant bombard his location; he falls into a lake, where he is dragged away by tentacles. Regret's death triggers discord among the races of the Covenant, as the Prophets give the Brutes the Elites' traditional role as their honor guard. The Arbiter subdues Johnson and Keyes and retrieves the Index. Tartarus appears and reveals that the Prophets have ordered the annihilation of the Elites, and sends the Arbiter falling down a deep chasm.

The Arbiter meets the Master Chief in the bowels of the Halo, brought together by a Flood creature called the Gravemind. The Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the Great Journey is a lie, and sends the two soldiers to different places to stop Halo's activation. The Master Chief is teleported to High Charity as the Covenant falls into civil war. The Flood-infested In Amber Clad crashes into the city, and Cortana realizes that the Gravemind used them as a distraction. As the Flood overruns the city, the Prophet of Mercy is consumed. As for Tartarus, the Prophet of Truth consigns him to Halo with Keyes, Johnson, and Guilty Spark to activate the ring. Master Chief follows Truth aboard a Forerunner ship leaving the city; Cortana remains behind to destroy High Charity and Halo if Tartarus succeeds in activating the ring.

On the surface of Halo, the Arbiter joins forces with Johnson and confronts Tartarus in Halo's control room. When the Arbiter tries to convince Tartarus that the Prophets have betrayed them, Tartarus instead activates the ring, and a battle ensues. The Arbiter and Johnson kill Tartarus while Keyes removes the Index; the unexpected deactivation sets Halo and all the other rings on standby for remote activation from a place 343 Guilty Spark calls "the Ark." Meanwhile, Truth's ship arrives at Earth, and Master Chief informs Admiral Hood that he is "finishing this fight.”

In a post-credits scene, Gravemind assumes control of High Charity. Cortana agrees to answer the Flood intelligence's questions.

Halo 3 (2007)

Originally released on the Xbox 360. It was also released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and Steam.

Master Chief arrives on Earth in east Africa, where he is found by Sergeant Johnson and the Arbiter. The Chief and company return to a UNSC outpost where Miranda Keyes and Lord Hood plan a final effort to stop the Covenant leader, the High Prophet of Truth, from activating a Forerunner artifact the Covenant have excavated. The Chief clears anti-air Covenant defenses so Hood can lead the last of Earth's ships against the Prophet, but Truth activates the buried artifact, creating a slipspace portal which he and his followers enter. A Flood-infested ship crash-lands nearby; Elite forces arrive and vitrify the Flood-infected areas of Earth, stopping the threat. Following a message Cortana left aboard the Flood ship, the Chief, Arbiter, Elites, Johnson, Keyes and their troops follow Truth through the portal. Joining them is 343 Guilty Spark, who aids the Chief as he has no function to fulfill after the destruction of his Halo.

Traveling through the portal, the humans and Elites discover an immense artificial structure known as the Ark, far beyond the edges of the Milky Way galaxy. Here, Truth can remotely activate all the Halos. The Flood arrive aboard High Charity in full force, beginning to infest the installation. Truth captures Johnson, as he needs a human to use Forerunner technology. Keyes is killed attempting a rescue, and Johnson is forced to activate the rings. Gravemind forges a truce with the Chief and Arbiter to stop Truth and defeat the remainder of his army, rescuing Johnson and halting the installations' activation. After the Arbiter kills Truth, Gravemind turns on the Chief and Arbiter.

The Chief, Arbiter, and Guilty Spark discover that the Ark is constructing another Halo to replace the one that the Chief previously destroyed. The Chief decides to activate this Halo; the Halo would eliminate the Flood infestation on the Ark while sparing the galaxy at large from destruction. To activate the ring, the Chief rescues Cortana, who has the Activation Index of the destroyed Halo, from High Charity and destroys the city. Arriving on the new Halo, Cortana warns that Gravemind is trying to rebuild itself on the ring. The Chief, Arbiter, and Johnson travel to Halo's control room to activate the ring. Guilty Spark explains that because the ring is not yet complete, a premature activation will destroy it and the Ark. When Johnson ignores his warning, Guilty Spark fatally wounds him to protect "his" ring. Although the Chief destroys Guilty Spark, Johnson soon dies of his injuries. Chief activates the ring, and escapes the ring's self-destruction on the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn. However, the force of Halo's blast causes the slipspace portal to collapse, resulting in only the front half of Forward Unto Dawn, carrying the Arbiter, making it back to Earth.

A memorial service is held on Earth for the fallen heroes of the Human-Covenant war, during which the Arbiter and Lord Hood briefly exchange words regarding the fallen Master Chief. After the memorial service, the Arbiter and his Elite brethren depart for their home planet. Meanwhile, the rear half of the Forward Unto Dawn drifts in unknown space. Cortana drops a distress beacon, but acknowledges it may be many years before they are rescued. As the Master Chief enters cryonic sleep, Cortana confides to him that she will miss him, but he comforts her by telling her "wake me when you need me."

If the game is completed at the Legendary difficulty level, the scene continues to show the piece of Forward Unto Dawn drifting towards an unknown planet, setting up the events of Halo 4.

Halo 3: ODST (2009)

Originally released on the Xbox 360. It was also released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and Steam.

Halo 3: ODST occurs during the events of Halo 2.

ODST members Dutch, Romeo, and Mickey discuss the Covenant Supercarrier above New Mombasa, with the Rookie asleep nearby. Buck arrives and introduces Dare. Romeo wakes the Rookie and the team enter their HEVs and drop through the atmosphere; at the last minute, Dare changes their trajectory to miss the ship due to a classified mission she has for the team. The Covenant ship enters slipspace with a UNSC ship that can be seen pulling alongside it, sending a shockwave toward the ODSTs; the Rookie's pod collides with Mickey's and crashes into a building on the ground, knocking him unconscious for six hours. He awakens and proceeds through New Mombasa to find clues as to what happened to his squadmates.

Buck makes a rough landing after the drop and fights through Covenant forces to find Dare. However, Dare has vanished without a trace when he arrives at her drop pod, leaving behind only her helmet which is later found by the Rookie. Buck finds Romeo instead and the two resolve to find the others and leave the city.

Dutch drops near a nature preserve and helps Marines fighting there. Mickey commandeers a tank and fights his way along a Mombasa boulevard. Meeting up with Dutch, the two defend an ONI base from the Covenant, destroying the facility to keep it from being captured. They are evacuated by a police dropship and make contact with Buck, arranging a rendezvous at police headquarters, but are shot down. Buck and Romeo rescue Dutch and Mickey, but Romeo is seriously wounded. The squad hijacks a Covenant dropship, but instead of leaving the city, Buck decides to have them turn back and find Dare, having realized that Dare has continued her classified mission on her own.

Back in the city, the Rookie is assisted by the Superintendent Vergil, the city's maintenance AI. The Rookie receives a distress call from Dare which leads him to a data center. He travels through the data center where he encounters a NMDP cop on sub-level 7, together the pair battle Covenant forces while traveling further down. Upon reaching a frozen section of the data center, the cop tells the Rookie to wait outside a room as he needs to check on a personnel issue. The Rookie follows him, however, and saw that he was inspecting Dr. Endesha's corpse. The corrupt policeman, caught red-handed, told the Rookie of his goal. He states that the Rookie could not be allowed to live and quickly attacks him. The Rookie kills the police officer in self-defense, prompting the Superintendent to announce that "CRIME DOESN'T PAY. GOOD CITIZENS DO THEIR PART”.

The Rookie eventually locates Dare and the two reach the Superintendent's data core, which possesses information on something the Covenant is looking for underneath the city. Inside the core, they discover a Covenant Engineer that has combined the Superintendent into itself. Dare explains that the Engineers are "biological supercomputers" that have been enslaved by the Covenant, and the one they found wishes to defect to the humans; with the Engineer's information on the Covenant combined with the Superintendent's data, Dare's mission changes from downloading the Superintendent's data to escorting the alien to safety. The Rookie, Dare, and the Engineer reunite with Buck and fight their way out of the city where they reunite with the rest of the squad. As they fly away in the hijacked dropship, the squad watches as Covenant ships destroy New Mombasa and excavate a massive alien artifact.

In the epilogue, one month after the events of Halo 3: ODST, the ODST squad has been keeping guard over the Engineer. Sergeant Major Avery Johnson arrives, informing the Engineer that he intends to ask it everything it knows about the Covenant—and what they are looking for. Hating the Covenant as much as the humans do, the Engineer lights Johnson's cigar in a sign of agreement.

If the campaign is completed on the Legendary difficulty level, a scene shows the Prophet of Truth overseeing the excavation of the Forerunner artifact buried beneath the Superintendent's data core.

F.A.Q.

To Unlock Additional Cop Sidequest: to unlock the additional NMPD cop sidequest, the player must find and listen to 29 different audio files scattered throughout New Mombasa. After finding all 29 audio files, during the Data Hive mission, a different scenario will play through with the NMPD cop where the final 30th audio file can be found.

Halo: Reach (2010)

Originally released on the Xbox 360. It was also released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One and Steam.

Noble Team is a UNSC special operations unit composed of mainly Spartan-III supersoldiers. The teams consists of Noble Team's leader Carter-A259, a no-nonsense soldier. His second-in-command, Catherine-B320 (referred to by other team members as "Kat"), heavy weapons specialist and surviving Spartan-II Jorge-052, assault specialist Emile-A239, marksman Jun-A266, and new member Noble Six. Noble Six meets the rest of Noble Team, shortly before they are dispatched to the planet of Reach to investigate why a communications relay has gone offline. They discover Covenant forces have invaded Reach. The team is relocated to defend Sword Base, an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) installation, from a Covenant assault. After repelling the attack, Noble Team meets Catherine Halsey, a scientist and the mastermind behind the Spartan program and their MJOLNIR powered armor. Halsey enquires about Noble's engagement at the relay, suspecting that the Covenant were attempting to retrieve highly classified ONI data from the site.

Jun and Six discover an invasion force gathering on the planet. The UNSC launches an assault the next morning to repel the invasion. Noble Team assists the strike force, targeting key artillery stations and command posts. A cloaked Covenant supercarrier reveals itself; lacking a conventional weapon to destroy the carrier, Jorge and Six smuggle a slipspace engine onto a Covenant corvette en route to refuel at the carrier. With the timer damaged, Jorge drops Six out of the hangar of the corvette, remaining behind to detonate the engine manually and destroy the carrier. Another Covenant fleet arrives soon afterwards.

Back on the surface, Six assists with city defense and civilian evacuation and reunites with Noble Team, but Kat is killed by a Covenant sniper. Recalled to Sword Base for a scorched earth demolition mission, Noble Team is redirected underground by Halsey to an ancient alien artifact, which she believes is vital to winning the war against the Covenant. Noble Team is entrusted with transporting the artificial intelligence Cortana and her data on the artifact to the UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn, docked at a shipyard. Jun leaves the team to escort Halsey to safety.

En route to the Pillar of Autumn, Carter is wounded and sacrifices himself to allow Six and Emile to reach the shipyard. Emile uses a mass driver emplacement to defend the Autumn against enemies while Six gives Cortana to Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes. When Emile is killed, Six remains behind to operate the gun and ensure Autumn's escape. Cortana, using the data from the alien artifact, leads the Autumn to a Halo ringworld, leading to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.

In a post-credits scene, Six fights a last stand against overwhelming Covenant forces. In 2589, Six's helmet remains on the grassy plains of a now-restored Reach. A narration by Halsey eulogizes Noble Team, who enabled humanity's victory over the Covenant.

F.A.Q.

The Halo (343 Industries) series consists of:

• Halo 4 (2012)

• Halo 5: Guardians (2015)

• Halo Infinite (2021)

RTS series consists of:

• Halo Wars (2009)

• Halo Wars 2 (2017)