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.
Apple's Halo?
Did you know Halo debuted at MacWorld in 1999?
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.
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.
Almost on PS2
Halo was thisclose to being on the PS2. Click here to see the Chief's third-person persona.
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 Ass, 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.
Sophomore Slump
Even Bungie's head writer Joseph Staten thought Halo 2 wasn't tops. See what else he said at GDC Online about Halo 2's fate.
Most gamers 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.
Once More, With Feeling
Fans 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 Halo 2 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.
Though hardly a surprise, that trailer meant Halo 3 was incoming. The third chapter in the Halo trilogy (which would later be expanded to included side stories and other narratives in the Halo universe) ditched the dual-narrative of the Master Chief and the Arbiter. Bungie zeroed back in on the center of the cult of personality: the Master Chief and his goal to "finish the fight." The Spartan hero ran headlong into a mission with nothing short of the fate of the galaxy at stake, as the High Prophet of Truth prepared to use a Forerunner artifact. Soon, though, the adventure expands to include the discovery of a new Halo. The Master Chief needs to use the ring to eliminate the threat of the Flood, even though it will cause the Halo to self-destruct. Sacrifices are made and by the time the credits roll, the Master Chief has been put into stasis with only Cortana to watch over him as they float off into space.
Microsoft did something very clever with Halo 3, though, before it hit shelves. It packed a multiplayer beta in a game with much lower sales expectations: Crackdown. This beta gave players a timed sneak peek at Halo 3's multiplayer feature set, which would eventually become the standard-bearer for console shooters going forward. The Halo 3 beta was a big success for two reasons. Not only did it get gamers incredibly jazzed about Halo 3 and where Bungie was going with the online portion of the shooter for the expanded Xbox Live service on the Xbox 360, but it also helped the surprisingly fun Crackdown get the audience it deserved.As you can imagine, when the real-deal Halo 3 hit in September 2007, it was a monster hit. After a launch day haul of over $170 million according to Microsoft, Halo 3 sold over eight million copies. Even though this was to be the last of the Master Chief's trilogy, numbers like that have a tendency to change plans. This would most certainly not be the last of Halo, although Bungie itself would not be at the helm of the next entry in the series.
In fact, Bungie actually had a little something to say about the possibility of other studios taking over the Halo universe in the shadow of Halo 3's great success. In October 2007, Bungie announced that it was splitting with Microsoft. They weren't exactly breaking up, but Bungie was becoming an independent studio again.
Enlisting in Halo Wars
Halo Wars, which was initially revealed in 2006, was to be the next chapter in the ongoing series. It was an interesting experiment, to see how the Halo universe would adapt to a completely different genre: real-time strategy. The keys to the kingdom were handed over to a developer with serious expertise in the genre named Ensemble Studios. Ensemble was a proven hit maker with big sellers like Age of Empires and Age of Mythology, and it already had plans for a console strategy game. Plus, it was also owned by Microsoft, which also made it an attractive partner in this endeavor.Ensemble's march toward Halo Wars was not without bumps and delays. However, Ensemble found that the Halo conflict fit nicely with the standards and tropes of the genre. Players take control of the UNSC in a series of grand battles against the advancing Covenant that take place prior to the events of the original Halo. Naturally, the Flood is also present to complicate everything – although they are not a playable faction. Halo Wars definitely put an emphasis on using Spartans to turn the tide of battles, as there was no denying that Halo fans enjoyed spending as much time as possible with the Master Chief.
The biggest pothole on the road to release, though, was the unexpected shuttering of Ensemble Studios. In September of 2008, it was revealed that Microsoft had begun the closing of Ensemble, with the ultimate plan to have the entire studio dismantled by the time Halo Wars was finished in early 2009. It was disheartening news to be sure, but it did not terribly affect the quality of the final product. Halo Wars enjoyed solid reviews when it launched on February 26, 2009. Many commented positively on the deftness in which Ensemble fitted the Halo universe into the genre and the ease of playing online matches with other players.
Despite having the word Halo on the box, though, Halo Wars did not come close to capturing the hearts and minds of fans like previous Halo adventures. That said, selling over one million copies is the kind of "failure" most publishers can only hope for in this volatile industry.
Halo Wars did prove, though, that even if fans loved hanging with the Master Chief, they just wanted more time in their favorite narrative. The next chapter in the series, Halo 3: ODST would offer just that, although it moved away from the almost-rigid structure of previous Halo shooters.
Initially, Halo 3: ODST wasn't going to be a full release. It was something of a stop-gap measure between Halo 3 and the next planned Halo shooter, Reach. But as Bungie spent time crafting the story of a band of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (ODST) put into a deteriorating situation in New Mombasa, the decision was made to go ahead and bend development toward a standalone game.
According to Bungie lead writer Joseph Staten, ODST also came together in part due to the well-documented wreckage of the cratered film deal to have Peter Jackson, acclaimed director of the Lord of the Rings and King Kong, helm a Halo movie. Much work had been done to flesh out the storytelling in the Halo universe because the plotting of a video game and a movie are very different things. Bungie became hooked on the cinematic styling it picked up from its flirtation with Hollywood and implanted that into the creation of ODST.Halo 3: ODST offered a short campaign that used multiple perspectives to tell its singular story. Players came at the narrative from different troopers dropped into the meat grinder, including one voiced by Nathan Fillion, star of Firefly. In addition to its campaign, ODST also included a full-featured multiplayer game, now a hallmark of Halo releases. All of the online content from Halo 3 was packed into ODST, but the star was a new mode called Firefight. Firefight pitted cooperative gamers against waves of Covenant and was an instant hit with fans.
Even though there was some grumbling about Halo 3: ODST not being a full game though released at a full price, Bungie and Microsoft enjoyed immense success with the risky project. According to Microsoft, ODST breezily moved over 2.5 million copies in the first two weeks of release. In the pre-Reach chart of best-selling Halo games, ODST rests neatly behind the original Halo: Combat Evolved.
So, what did Bungie and Microsoft learn from ODST and Halo Wars? Gamers still loved Halo. But they loved it even more when experienced behind the barrel of a gun. And so began the march to Reach.
Begin at the Beginning
Bungie had already announced Halo: Reach before ODST came out at E3 2009. Longtime fans of the series immediately recognized that the sub-title Reach meant this was to be a prequel to the original trilogy of Halo games, taking the conflict back to its frenzied roots before the fall of the storied planet. Players would join the Noble Team, a special unit of Spartans like the Master Chief, assigned to give as good as they got from the Covenant, which was dangerously close to completely overrunning humanity.Instead of multiple perspectives, Reach focused on a single character: Noble Six. As part of the Noble team, you were expected to fight as hard as you possibly could to turn back the Covenant, even though you knew exactly how things were going to turn out. After all, the fall of Reach was hardly a secret. It was a major plot point in the construction of the Halo universe. What kept players glued to this desperate situation, though, was that Reach itself was the pinnacle of Bungie's Halo achievements. With so many chapters under its belt, it knew exactly how to assemble a compelling shooter, both offline and online.
Owners of ODST were welcomed into a Reach beta program that let them explore the multiplayer potential of Bungie's latest, including the ability to try out the new armor upgrades, such as jet packs, that would feature heavily into the evolution of the action. What players could not quite see from the beta program, though, was the ambitious plans for Reach's community and the inclusion of a persistent persona in Reach, both on- and offline. Everything you do in Reach affects your persona, such as earning points to unlock gear. Reach's multiplayer includes everything from co-op campaign play to new online modes like Headhunter, where you collect the skulls of fallen enemies.However, before Bungie launched Halo: Reach, it had one more surprise to announce. In April 2010, Bungie revealed that it was entering into a publishing agreement with Activision Blizzard, the house behind such mega-hits as Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. This meant leaving Halo behind, which was wholly owned by Microsoft. Bungie welcomed the new frontier of a Halo-less future and has already set out to create its first original large-scale game in nearly a decade.
The definitive departure of Bungie prior to the release of Halo: Reach did nothing to dampen its reception. Halo: Reach was showered with praise – and cash. Microsoft claims that Halo: Reach brought in over $200 million on its launch day and has already sold well over three million units, making it one of the best selling Xbox 360 games thus far.
Bungie's Next
Bungie isn't saying much about its first post-Halo game. But we do have a little hint right here.
With the departure of Bungie, what does the future of Halo hold? At the end of Halo 3, before going into cryo-sleep, Master Chief told Cortana to wake him if he was needed. Though the Xbox 360 has many popular franchises, none are as important to the overall health and success of the console as Halo. Do not expect Reach to be the last we see of Halo any time soon, as Microsoft has already said a new game is underway somewhere, shepherded by 343 Industries, the caretaker of all things Halo.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.