Halo is a popular series of science fiction first-person shooter video games developed by Bungie Studios and published by Microsoft. The games are set in the "Halo universe"—a science fiction universe created by Bungie Studios exclusively for the series. Halo: Combat Evolved quickly became known as the first "killer application" for Microsoft's Xbox video game console when it was released in 2001, achieving both critical acclaim and financial success. Combat Evolved was later published on the PC and finally released for the Mac (for which it was originally developed prior to Microsoft's buying developer Bungie).

A second game, Halo 2 was released in 2004, breaking sales records and becoming the fastest selling United States media product in history.^[1] A third game, Halo 3, is in development for the Xbox 360, announced for release in 2007 . The Halo games have become well known for their graphics, gameplay, physics, and storyline. Further expanding the Halo universe are several novels, which provide insight into the background story, a movie currently in pre-production, and two upcoming Xbox 360 projects: a Halo RTS named Halo Wars and an as-yet untitled Halo project to be made in partnership with Peter Jackson.

Video games

The series follows the events of the war between future humanity and a collective of alien races known as The Covenant. Here is an example of in game play taken from over 50 different online players perspectives. http://nikon.bungie.org/news.html?item=16622

Halo trilogy

The Halo trilogy centers around the SPARTAN 117 "John", also known as Master Chief, a human super-soldier equipped with technologically advanced battle armor, and his AI companion, Cortana. Halo was the most popular application for the Xbox console up until the release of sequel, Halo 2, which was previewed in 2003. Halo 3 is yet to be released, and will mark the end of the Halo trilogy [1].

Halo: Combat Evolved

Main article: Halo: Combat Evolved

Halo: Combat Evolved is a first-person shooter that takes place on a mysterious ring world named Halo. Set in the year 2552 AD, it focuses around a war between humans and a technologically advanced alliance of alien races known as the Covenant, united by their fanatical religious beliefs. A subject of the SPARTAN-II Project, the protagonist is a highly trained and biologically-engineered cyborg. Prior to the game's beginning, SPARTAN-II soldiers were recalled for further augmentation, in preparation for a mission to discover the Covenant homeworld's location by boarding a Covenant starship. Two days before the mission began, Covenant forces launched an assault on the facility and destroyed it. A single starship, the Pillar of Autumn, survived the alien onslaught and initiated a random jump to light speed, hoping to lead the enemy away from Earth. The Autumn was carrying the last SPARTAN-II super-soldier, who is known only as the "Master Chief John-117".

The ship exits light speed near a mysterious ring-shaped space station, called "Halo" by the Covenant, and is attacked by a Covenant ship fleet. The Master Chief is awoken from his cryogenic sleep and escapes in an escape pod, as do other Marines. The ship's Captain crashlands the Autumn into Halo, surviving the impact.

In the ten levels of the game, the Master Chief must, with the help of the artificial intelligence construct Cortana, fight off the Covenant forces and other enemies, to discover the true purpose of Halo.

Halo: Custom Edition

Main article: Halo: Custom Edition

Halo Custom Edition is an expansion of the PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved. It is used to load user-created content (mods) that were created using the Halo editing kit.

Halo 2

Main article: Halo 2

Halo 2 is the sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, released for the Xbox on November 9, 2004 in two different editions; the standard Halo 2 edition, with traditional Xbox packaging and a single disc with the single- and multiplayer components, and the Collector's Edition, package in a specially designed metal case, along with an additional bonus DVD, extra booklet and slightly different user manual (written from the perspective of the Covenant military). The game's sales generated US$125 million on its premiere day, making it the fastest selling United States media product in history. The game has sold over 7 million copies worldwide since release. The game didn't live up to its hype, however, and many feel betrayed by how "user friendly" they made Halo 2. A PC port for the Windows Vista operating system is currently in development by an internal team composed of both Microsoft Game Studios and Bungie Studios.

Halo 2 features new vehicles and weapons, and improved artificial intelligence, as well as new game mechanics like dual wielding and the ability to hijack vehicles. Unlike its predecessor, the game fully suports online multiplayer via Xbox Live. The game has a reworked, more advanced graphics engine than the original, utilizing normal mapping and bloom effects. It also has Bungie.net integration and rankings and tracking of every online match. Halo 2 supports the same local area network and split-screen multiplayer components found in Halo: Combat Evolved.

Halo 3

Main article: Halo 3

Halo 3 is the third and final installment in the Halo series, announced at Microsoft's E3 2006 Press Conference via trailer. The trailer depicted the Master Chief walking through a desert with wreckage that resembles parts of the space elevator of New Mombasa. As the Master Chief is walking, Cortana speaks the following lines:

I have defied Gods and Demons

I am your shield, I am your Sword

I know you; your past; your future

This is the way the world ends

Cortana is presumably in the clutches of the Gravemind, a Flood intelligence, as shown in the end of Halo 2. The Master Chief halts on a cliff overlooking a Forerunner Artifact surrounded by Covenant starships. According to Bungie, the trailer takes place in the game about 1/3 of the way through. Halo 3 marks the end of the Halo trilogy.

Halo Wars

Main article: Halo Wars

Halo Wars is a real-time strategy game that was announced on September 27, 2006 at Microsoft's X06 media briefing ^[2]. The story first broke on 1up.com.[2]

Microsoft announced that Bungie Studios and Ensemble Studios - the developers of the Age of Empires series - would be collaborating on the game's production, to be released exclusively on the Xbox 360 platform.

A trailer for Halo Wars was shown at X06 [3]

Untitled Halo Project

Main article: Untitled Halo Project

An untitled Halo project was announced on September 27, 2006 at X06, to be co-written, co-designed and co-produced by Peter Jackson, with his recently-formed Wingnut Interactive ^[3]. Jackson will create a game set in the Halo universe, in partnership with Bungie Studios.[4]

Possible influences

Some fans believe Halo and Halo 2 were influenced by a number of other games and pop culture references, partially based on the game series own references to some of these pop culture icons. These include StarCraft, the Alien and Predator movies, the Marathon series (also created by Bungie, makers of Halo) and Larry Niven's Known Space universe (in which there is an object called "Ringworld" that is shaped like halo, and circles an entire star). No comment has been made about these possible influences by the developer and these ideas are only speculation.

Marathon

A number of weapons and plot devices seem to borrow from ideas seen in the Marathon series of first-person shooters made by Bungie in the early to mid-1990s (see List of weapons in the Halo universe). These include the concept of MJOLNIR "cyborgs", the supersoldier main character, the weapons, artificial intelligences, Marathon class cruisers in the UNSC, and even some of the alien creatures. Upon close inspection, crew members of the Pillar of the Autumn have the Marathon symbol on their uniforms, and the symbol is even embedded in the Halo logo itself.[5] A type of alien that was modeled for Halo 2 but later cut is nearly identical to the Drinniol from Marathon. Also, both games use uniform color to differentiate between different ranks of aliens (and crew members), with higher ranks being stronger and harder to kill.^{original research?]}

These similarities led to speculation that Halo took place in the same universe as Marathon, only with different time frames;^{citation needed]} however, this was later proved highly unlikely.^{citation needed]} According to both the Halo video games and books, the events in Halo coincide with the events in Marathon.^{citation needed]} However, due to technology differences, this is impossible. On Bungie Studios' Marathon page, there is a Q&A which states, "Is Marathon the prequel to Halo? Marathon takes place 200 years after halo.[...] No, Marathon is a separate story, with wholly different characters, story and gameplay." [6].

Halo, like Marathon, also many uses of the number 7. The characters 343 Guilty Spark (7 cubed) and 2401 Penitent Tangent (7^4 and 2+4+0+1=7). There are 7 Halos. July 7th or 7/7 is Bungie Day.^{citation needed]}

Known Space

Ringworld is a megastructure 93 million miles in radius that resembles the Halo installations, albeit on an enormously larger scale. This idea has been copied numerous times in science fiction, although normally on a larger scale than in Halo. In both Halo and Known Space, humans develop space travel on their own and later encounter a hostile and technologically superior alien civilization. In one of Larry Niven's early Known Space novels, World of Ptavvs, it details an alien race, known as the Thrintun, and how they ruled a massive empire 2 billion years before humanity, through advanced mind control. At one point, the Thrintun's most advanced slave race eventually instigated a massive rebellion, using much of their own technology, which was developed for their masters, against them. The Thrintun, fearing extinction and intense paranoia, used an amplification device that targeted the minds of all sentient lifeforms and simply told them to "die". The wave from this device spread across the entire galaxy, killing all sentient life, including the Thrintun themselves. In Halo, the Forerunners used the Halos to extinguish all sentient life in the galaxy, in order to prevent The Flood from escaping the Halo installations.

Historical and mythological facts

Halo took names from world history and mythology to aptly name objects and important characters in the Halo universe.^{citation needed]} Some of these names include:

• Cortana, derived from a sword used by Edward the Confessor.
• Beowulf, a hero in the Anglo-Saxon poem "Beowulf".
• Tartarus, a deity and a place in the Greek mythological underworld.
• MJOLNIR, Thor's Hammer.
• SPARTAN, the Ancient Greek polis of renowned martial prowess, Sparta.
• Wellesley, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, a famous British general (Defeated Napoleon at Waterloo).

The Culture

Alternatively, it is possible (or even likely) that Halo was inspired by the Orbitals featured in The Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, as they are ring-shaped megastructures that orbit stars or gas giants, rather than rotate around them. These smaller structures have the advantage of not needing additional machinery to generate a day/night cycle. Furthering this theory is the fact that the Covenant resemble in no small measure the Idiran race, religious zealots bent on eradicating The Culture, which they regard as heretical; or that the Forerunner robot 343 Guilty Spark resembles a Culture drone. The titles of the ships, and the names of the levels are extremely similar to the naming method Banks uses in his novels; whimsical names in Marathon and Halo are common, "Guilty Spark", "Never Burn Money" etc. are arguably similar to the Culture ship's names, "Nervous Energy", "Sleeper Service", "Grey Area"

Other science fiction

Halo seems to be inspired by a number of other science fiction books, such as Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and Starhammer by Christopher Rowley. Starhammer details the story of a genetically altered man named Jon 6725416 who escapes slavery by a race of technologically advanced overlords threatening to destroy humanity, and finds an ancient weapon that was created by an ancient race to destroy a parasitic alien life form called the Vang that may have been a partial basis for the Flood. Also of note is that Foehammer, the dropship pilot in the first game, is canonically named "Carol Rawley," adding a further connection. 343 Guilty Spark is also very similar to Durandal, an AI from Bungie's earlier Marathon Series, as the two seem to share a similar manner of speech. Both Durandal and 343 Guilty Spark also "control" the player during gameplay, directing the player where to go and opening certain doors to aid progression. In the book Starship Troopers, the Mobile Infantry are equipped with powered armor and are launched down to the surface of a planet in pods, not unlike the Spartans and ODSTs of Halo. The species in the Halo series also share similarities with Blizzard's StarCraft series, especially the "Three Races" concept: "Terran, Protoss, Zerg" as opposed to "Human, Covenant, Flood". The parallels between the Protoss and Covenant are more marked; both are portrayed as very technologically advanced, deeply religious races. The Flood and Zerg are also both parasitic species that assimilate other races. Both the UNSC and the Terrans utilize technology that is seemingly not very "modern" when compared to other humans in science fiction works, despite the hundreds of years the humans in both games have had to advance. Another possible sci-fi influence is from David Weber's book Path of The Fury. In it, Elysium, AI's, and even the name of a character: Colonel Watts is mentioned. Elysium, in Halo, is the city which John-117 (SPARTAN-117) is born and raised. AIs are used in the ships of the Imperial Fleet of David Weber's book, and Colonel Watts, a governor of rebels in Halo: The Fall of Reach book.

Novelization

The Halo universe has several times been adapted into novel form. The first adaption was Halo: The Fall of Reach—a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, written by Eric Nylund and published during October 2001.^[4] The novel was reportedly finished in seven weeks,^[4] eventually becoming a Publisher's Weekly bestseller with nearly two hundred thousand copies sold.^[5] The second novel, entitled Halo: The Flood, served as an adaptation of Halo: Combat Evolved. Written by William C. Dietz, this novel also attained the Publisher's Weekly bestsellers list during May 2003.^[6]

Eric Nylund returned to write the third novel, Halo: First Strike, a sequel to Halo: Combat Evolved taking place before the events of Halo 2. It was published in December 2003,^[7] after being written in a period of sixteen weeks.^[5] A fourth novel, entitled Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, is currently being written by Eric Nylund, and is to be published on October 31 2006.^[8] The Halo universe was adapted into the graphic novel format in the Halo Graphic Novel, a collection of four short stories, released during July 2006.^[9] It was written and illustrated by well-known graphic novelists Lee Hammock, Jay Faerber, Tsutomu Nihei, Brett Lewis, Simon Bisley, Ed Lee and Jean Giraud. Bungie Studios considers the Halo novels as canon.^[10]

Action figures

A shipload of action figures and vehicles based on Halo have been produced by Joyride Studios and includes, among others, the Master Chief.

Film adaptation

Main article: Halo (film)

An upcoming film adaption of the series. The script for the movie was to be written by Alex Garland,^[11] though writer D.B. Weiss, author of Lucky Wander Boy is currently set to rewrite it, using elements of the Garland draft.^{citation needed]} The movie will be developed and released by Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox, under the creative oversight of Microsoft.^[12] Former Columbia president Peter Schlessel has been selected as producer,^[13] and Peter Jackson will be the executive producer.^[14] The movie is expected to release 2008, due to difficulties in selecting a director for the project.^[15] The director has been revealed as Neill Blomkamp.^[15]

Fan fiction

A large body of fan fiction based on the Halo series has been written, covering both the past and future of the setting. The sites bungie.net and halo.bungie.org both host collections of Halo fan fiction. Indeed, there are several works of fan fiction that run to the length of a novel or more, and are well-known among the Halo community. Additionally, fanfiction.net hosts a selection of over 1,000 Halo-inspired pieces.

The Haunted Apiary

The Haunted Apiary (aka I Love Bees) was an alternate reality game used to promote the release of Halo 2. The game was centered on a website at ilovebees.com, and was created by 4orty2wo Entertainment, commissioned by Microsoft and endorsed by Bungie. The URL was discovered when it was briefly flashed in an official Halo 2 trailer.

Halo machinima

Main article: Red vs. Blue

Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, created by Rooster Teeth Productions, is a machinima series that parodies the Halo universe. Virtually all of the footage of the series is taken from Halo and Halo 2 gameplay. Set mostly outside Halo canon, the series chronicles the story of two opposing teams fighting—in Blood Gulch, a desolate box canyon "in the middle of nowhere"—a human civil war that supposedly ensues between the events of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. An absurdist parody of Halo itself, military life in general, and other science fiction films, Red vs. Blue is based largely on comedy.

Other machinima series—ranging from Fire Team Charlie, another comedy, to The Codex, a space opera more closely tied to Halo canon—have also been created.

Music

Three soundtracks, all composed by Martin O'Donnell, have been released based on the Halo game series:

• Halo Original Soundtrack

• Halo 2, Vol. 1: Original Soundtrack

• Halo 2, Vol. 2: Original Soundtrack

Time magazine

Recently, the creators of Halo were listed in Time's 100 most influential figures of the past year. This is due to the reason that Halo manages to appeal to both casual and hard core gamers, and broke sales records, making gaming more mainstream entertainment.

See also

• Halo Zero, a fan-made 2D sidescroller set in the Halo universe.
• Marathon Trilogy
• Halo: Spartan was a supposedly cancelled Gizmondo game that was in pre-production, but was only so to generate stock numbers. It was said that it was going to be controlled with the mounted-camera on the Gizmondo for superior FPS controls.[7]

Notes

External links

• Bungie Studios
• Halo Community
• Halo 2 Wiki for Multiplayer action
• Halopedia - Halo Knowledge center
• Halo Pro - Large online movie resource
• HBO, a large web resource for Halo-related topics
• Halo 3 Multiplayer
• The Library - A Massive Halo Reference Page
• Halo 2 game review at The Shadow Sun
• Join Central Modding Forum, Halo Mods