Halo

[Jonathan]

Halo

Setting and plot Edit

In the distant past, a powerful race called the Forerunners fought an alien parasite known as the Flood. The Flood, which spread through infestation of sentient life, overran much of the Milky Way Galaxy. One of the races affected was humanity, who came into conflict with the Forerunners as a result. Exhausted by their war and after having explored all other options, the Forerunners conceived a weapon of last resort to combat the Flood, called the Halo Array. Using an installation known as the Ark, they built large ring-shaped megastructures known as Halos. The Halo Array, when activated, would destroy all sentient life in the galaxy – depriving the Flood of their food, after which samples of the lost lifeforms would be reseeded. Delaying as long as they could, the Forerunners activated the rings and disappeared.[15] Tens of thousands of years later, in the 26th century, humanity – under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC – colonize many worlds thanks to the development of faster-than-light "slipspace" travel. Tensions escalate between the older and more stable "Inner Colonies" and the remote "Outer Colonies", leading to civil war. The UNSC sponsors the Spartan-II program to create an elite group of enhanced supersoldiers, whose purpose is to suppress the rebellion covertly.[16] In the year 2525, human worlds come under attack by a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant. The Covenant leadership declares humanity heretics and an affront to their gods – the Forerunners – and begins a holy war of genocide. 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 the UNSC's last major stronghold beyond Earth – the planet Reach, in orbit of Epsilon Eridani – and launch an invasion of the planet. The last Spartans and UNSC military are unable to stop the Covenant from bombarding the planet. The UNSC Navy suffers devastating losses, and every Spartan but their leader, player character Master Chief John-117, is believed lost in action. Following directives to avoid leading the Covenant to Earth, Cortana, the AI aboard the fleeing UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn, selects random coordinates that lead the ship to a Halo installation. These events form the backdrop to the first game in the series, Halo: Combat Evolved.

Over the course of the game, the Covenant pursue, damaging the Autumn and leading its crew to wage a guerrilla war on the ring's surface. The Covenant accidentally release Flood imprisoned on the ring; to nullify the threat, the ring's AI caretaker, 343 Guilty Spark, enlists the help of the Master Chief in activating Halo. Cortana reveals that Halo's activation would mean their own destruction. Master Chief and Cortana instead detonate Autumn's engines, destroying Halo and preventing the escape of the Flood.

Between the events of the first game and Halo 2, the Chief and a few other survivors return to Earth, warning of an impending Covenant attack; this attack forms the first mission of the game. Meanwhile, the Covenant, unaware of the destructive nature of the rings, attempt to fire another ring, Installation 05, to fulfill their religious prophecy[17] and to do so launch an attack on Earth. Helping the Chief to defend the Earth are Sergeant Avery Johnson and Commander Miranda Keyes. One race in the Covenant, the Elites, learn the truth about the rings and are led by a former Elite commander named the Arbiter (also a player character) to join forces with humanity to stop the firing of the ring. Though they are successful, the unexpected shutdown of the installation triggers a fail-safe protocol, priming all the rings for firing from the Ark.[18]

Halo 3 picks up immediately after, with the Covenant's leader, the High Prophet of Truth, and the remaining loyalist Covenant uncovering a portal to the Ark on Earth. A battle rages on Earth between human forces, the Covenant, and a Flood-infected army. Eventually, the Covenant is repulsed and flees through a slipspace portal, and the Flood is purged from Earth, though much of Africa has been devastated in the battle.

Chief, Arbiter, Elites, Johnson, Keyes, and U.N.S.C. troops follow Truth through the portal, joined by 343 Guilty Spark, who aids the Chief as he has no function to fulfill after the destruction of his ringworld. During the ensuing battle between humans, Covenant, and the Flood on the Ark, Johnson is captured by Truth to activate the Halo rings. Keyes tries to intervene, but is killed. Master Chief and the Arbiter, aided by the Flood, kill the Covenant "Prophet of Truth" and rescue Johnson. After finding out that the Ark is constructing a replacement for Guilty Spark's Halo installation, Master Chief decides to fire the unstable Halo, destroying both the Flood and the Ark. After finding out about their plan, Guilty Spark kills Johnson and tries to kill Master Chief, but Master Chief destroys Guilty Spark and activates the Halo. Master Chief and the Arbiter escape on the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn, but the slipspace portal closes with Master Chief's half trapped in space. After a memorial service on Earth for the victims of the Human-Covenant war, the Arbiter and his Elite brethren depart for their home planet. The rear half of Forward Unto Dawn floats in deep space. Cortana activates a distress beacon and the Chief goes into hibernation.

Four years later, the Chief and Cortana awake to find they are being attacked by a Covenant splinter group (Halo 4). Caught in an artificial gravity well, they are pulled into the artificial Forerunner planet of Requiem, along with the UNSC ship Infinity.[19][20] Master Chief, fighting Covenant and AI soldiers called Prometheans, unwittingly releases a hostile Forerunner warrior called the Didact. While seeking a way to combat the Didact, Cortana reveals that she is becoming "rampant" (an inevitable state leading to insanity that AIs reach when their knowledge base finally becomes too large). Master Chief is eventually contacted by a Forerunner consciousness called the Librarian (The Didact's Wife), who tells him about the Didact: during the crisis with the Flood, the Didact tried to use a device called the Composer to transform humanity into creatures like the Prometheans. He did this because he needed extra soldiers in the war. His own race then imprisoned him along with Forerunner soldiers and humans he had already converted. The Composer was hidden. After the Didact leaves Requiem and retrieves the Composer, Master Chief pursues him to Earth, with Master Chief and Cortana working together to destroy the Composer. Master Chief succeeds, but Cortana sacrifices herself to save him from the resultant explosion. Master Chief is later found floating among the rubble, and taken back to Infinity.

Halo 5: Guardians begins eight months later. Blue Team — consisting of four of the five remaining Spartans (Master Chief, Fred-104, Kelly-87 and Linda-58), receives signals from Cortana indicating that she has survived her death by taking advantage of Forerunner AI technology. The Chief, disobeying direct orders, travels to the planet Genesis to reunite with her. A team of Spartans from a competing program, Fireteam Osiris, are dispatched to apprehend him. This journey takes them to several places around the galaxy, including the Elite homeworld of Sanghelios, where the Arbiter leads an offensive against the final remnants of the loyalist Covenant. As they travel, Osiris discover that Cortana is activating ancient Forerunner constructs — the eponymous Guardians — with which she plans to impose permanent galactic peace on pain of death. She holds the Master Chief's team captive, and while Fireteam Osiris are able to rescue them, they are not able to stop Cortana from executing her plan, disabling most contemporary technology and bringing all remaining sentient species under her aegis. As the game ends, Blue Team, Fireteam Osiris and the Arbiter regroup to plan their resistance.


Halo: Combat Evolved is a 2001 military science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system on November 15, 2001 ,and is considered the platform's "killer app".More than five million copies were sold worldwide by November 2005.Microsoft released versions of the game for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 2003, and the surrounding storyline was adapted and elaborated into a series of novels, comic books, and live-action web series. The game was later released as a downloadable Xbox Original for the Xbox 360. A high-definition remake, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, was released for Xbox 360 on the 10th anniversary of the original game's launch, and was rereleased as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on November 11, 2014, for the Xbox One.

Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the player assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The player is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence who occupies the Master Chief's neural interface. Players battle various aliens as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world. The game has been commended for elements such as its story, the variety of strategies players can employ, and its multiplayer mode; however, the repetitive nature of its level design was criticized by some reviewers.

Halo has been praised as one of the greatest video games of all time,and was ranked by IGN as the fourth-best first-person shooter ever made.The game's popularity has led to labels such as "Halo clone" and "Halo killer", applied respectively to games either similar to or anticipated to be better than it.In addition, the game inspired and was used in the fan-created Red vs. Blue video series, which is credited as the "first big success" of machinima (the technique of using real-time 3D engines, often from video games, to create animated films).



Halo: Combat Evolved takes place in a science fiction universe created by Bungie Studios. According to the story, the realization of faster-than-light travel has allowed the human race to colonize other planets after the overpopulation of Earth. A keystone of these efforts is the planet Reach, an interstellar naval yard and a hub of scientific and military activity.A secret military endeavor, dubbed the SPARTAN Project, is established on Reach to create an army of biologically engineered, cyborg "supersoldiers." Twenty-seven years before the beginning of the game, a technologically advanced collective of alien races, the Covenant, begin to attack human settlements, declaring humanity an affront to their gods. The United Nations Space Command experiences a series of crushing defeats; although the supersoldiers of the SPARTAN-II Project are effective against the Covenant, they are too few in numbers to turn the tides of war.

To prepare for a mission to discover the location of the Covenant's homeworld, SPARTAN-II soldiers are recalled to Reach. Two days before the mission was to begin, Covenant forces attack Reach and destroy the colony.A starship, the Pillar of Autumn, survives the onslaught with the SPARTAN-II Master Chief on board. The ship initiates a jump to slipspace (similar to hyperspace),hoping to lead the enemy away from Earth.The game starts with the Pillar of Autumn encountering Halo.

The titular Halo is an enormous, ring-shaped artificial space station/planet, which (according to Bungie Studios) has a diameter of ten thousand kilometers.Halo sits at a Lagrange point between a planet and its moon. Centrifugal force created by the rotation of the station provides the ring's gravity.



The player character is Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, one of the few (see Halo: The Fall of Reach and its sequels for more information) surviving supersoldiers of the SPARTAN-II project, and the main character of the story. Accompanying Master Chief is the Pillar of Autumn's feminine artificial intelligence construct, Cortana, who resides in a neural implant connected to his battle armor, code-named MJOLNIR Mark V. The Pillar of Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes, is also a major character, with Staff Sergeant Avery Junior Johnson as a supporting character. Playing a mainly antagonistic role in the game's events is 343 Guilty Spark, an eccentric artificial intelligence responsible for monitoring and maintaining Halo's systems.


The game opens just following the events of Halo: Reach, as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace near a mysterious ring-shaped space station, called "Halo" by the enemy in the game, the Covenant. A Covenant fleet attacks and heavily damages the Pillar of Autumn. Captain Keyes initiates "The Cole Protocol,"a procedure which destroys all navigation data and is designed to prevent the Covenant from learning the location of Earth. Master Chief and Cortana fight their way to an escape pod, where they eject from the ship along with a group of Marines. As they fly away they can see Keyes attempting to crash land Pillar on Halo.

Master Chief and Cortana are the only survivors of their pod's crash landing, but they soon contact other survivors and help collect them into a fighting force. The survivors tell them that Keyes survived the Pillar of Autumn's crash landing, but has been captured by the Covenant and is being held aboard the Covenant ship Truth and Reconciliation.Master Chief and a force of Marines board the ship and rescue Keyes, who orders Master Chief to beat the Covenant to Halo's control center and to discover Halo's purpose.Master Chief and Cortana travel to a map room called the Silent Cartographer, which leads them to the control room. There, Cortana enters the systems and, discovering something urgent, suddenly sends Master Chief to find Captain Keyes while she stays behind. Keyes was searching for what he believed was a cache of powerful weapons, but when he reaches his position Master Chief finds only signs of a battle and a recording revealing they have accidentally released the Flood, a parasitic alien race capable of spreading itself by infesting other sentient life-forms.

The release of the Flood prompts Halo's AI monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, to recruit Master Chief in retrieving the Index, a device that will activate Halo and prevent the Flood from spreading beyond the facility. After Master Chief retrieves and prepares to use the Index, Cortana re-appears and warns him against the activation. She has discovered that Halo's defense system is a weapon designed to kill all sentient life in the galaxy, which will deny the host bodies the Flood requires to spread, a revelation which Guilty Spark confirms.

Faced with this information, Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy Halo to prevent its activation. While fighting the Flood, the Covenant, and Guilty Spark's Sentinels, Cortana discovers that the best way to accomplish this is to cause the crashed Pillar of Autumn to self-destruct.However, Captain Keyes' authorization is required to destroy the Autumn,forcing the Chief and Cortana to return to the now-Flood-infested Truth and Reconciliation to search for him. By the time they reach Keyes, however, he has been infected beyond the point of no return by the Flood. Master Chief retrieves Keyes' neural implants directly from his brain and retreats to the Autumn, where Cortana activates the ship's self-destruct sequence. However, 343 Guilty Spark reappears and deactivates the countdown, discovering the record of human history in the process.Master Chief manually destabilizes the Pillar of Autumn's fusion reactors, and he and Cortana narrowly escape the destruction of the ring via a fighter. Cortana scans nearby space and finds that they are apparently the only survivors. Cortana justifies the sacrifices of the other humans on Halo, stating that they had no choice due to the threat posed by Halo, the Covenant and the Flood. Cortana believes it's over but the Master Chief tells her that they're just getting started.

In a brief post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen fleeing Halo's destruction and into the unknown of deep space.



In a brief post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen fleeing Halo's destruction and into the unknown of deep space.

Voice cast
Steve Downes as Master Chief

Jen Taylor as Cortana

Pete Stacker as Captain Keyes
David Scully as Avery Johnson/Elites (voice pitch-altered and reversed)

Tim Dadabo as 343 Guilty Spark

Tawnya Pettiford-Wates as Foehammer

Chris Wicklund as Pvt. Jenkins

Mike Madeoy as Pvt. Bisenti

Mark Dias as Pvt. Mendoza

Andrew McKaige as Pvt. Chipps Dubbo

Joseph Staten as Grunts

[Jonathan]

Halo 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004,the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved. A Microsoft Windows version of the game was released on May 31, 2007,developed by an internal team at Microsoft Game Studios known as Hired Gun. The game features a new game engine, as well as using the Havok physics engine; added weapons and vehicles, and new multiplayer maps. The player alternately assumes the roles of the human Master Chief and the alien Arbiter in a 26th-century conflict between the human United Nations Space Command and genocidal Covenant.

After the success of Combat Evolved, a sequel was expected and highly anticipated. Bungie found inspiration in plot points and gameplay elements that had been left out of their first game, including multiplayer over the Internet through Xbox Live. Time constraints forced a series of cutbacks in the size and scope of the game, including a cliffhanger ending to the game's campaign mode that left many in the studio dissatisfied. Among Halo 2's marketing efforts was an alternate reality game called "I Love Bees" that involved players solving real-world puzzles.

On release, Halo 2 was the most popular video game on Xbox Live, holding that rank until the release of Gears of War for the Xbox 360 nearly two years later. By June 20, 2006, more than 500 million games of Halo 2 had been played and more than 710 million hours have been spent playing it on Xbox Live; by May 9, 2007, the number of unique players had risen to over five million. Halo 2 is the best-selling first-generation Xbox game with at least 6.3 million copies sold in the United States alone.The game received critical acclaim, with most publications lauding the strong multiplayer component. The campaign however, was the focus of criticism for its cliffhanger ending.

A high-definition remake of Halo 2 was released as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection on November 11, 2014, for the Xbox One.


Halo 2 takes place in the 26th century. Humans, under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command or UNSC, have developed faster-than-light slipspace travel and colonized numerous worlds.According to the game's backstory, the outer colony world of Harvest was decimated by a collective of alien races known as the Covenant in 2525. Declaring humanity an affront to their gods, the Forerunners, the Covenant begin to systemically obliterate the humans with their superior numbers and technology. After the human bastion at the planet Reach is destroyed, a single ship, The Pillar of Autumn, follows protocol and initiates a random slipspace jump to lead the Covenant away from Earth. The crew discovers a Forerunner ringworld called Halo, which the Covenant wants to activate because of their religious belief that the activation of the ring will bring about a "Great Journey," sweeping loyal Covenant to salvation.Leading a guerilla insurgency on the ring's surface, the humans discover that the rings are actually weapons of last resort built to contain a terrifying parasite called the Flood. The human supersoldier Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and his AI companion Cortana learn from Halo's AI monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, that activation of the Halos will prevent the spread of the Flood by destroying all sentient life the parasite can subsist on in the galaxy. Instead of activating the ring, however, the Master Chief evades Guilty Spark and his robots and detonates the Pillar of Autumn's engines, destroying the installation and preventing the escape of the Flood. The Master Chief and Cortana race back to Earth to warn of an impending invasion by Covenant forces.


Taking place shortly after the events of the novel Halo: First Strike, Halo 2 opens with the trial of Thel 'Vadam, a Covenant Elite commander aboard the Covenant's mobile capital city of High Charity. The Elite is stripped of his rank, branded a heretic for failing to stop the humans from destroying Halo, and is tortured by Tartarus, the Chieftain of the Covenant Brutes. On Earth, the Master Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson are commended for their actions at Halo. Lord Terrence Hood awards the soldiers alongside Commander Miranda Keyes, who accepts a medal on behalf of her deceased father, Captain Jacob Keyes.

A Covenant fleet appears outside Earth's defensive perimeter and begins an invasion of the planet. While the UNSC repels most of the fleet, a single Covenant cruiser carrying an important member of the Covenant hierarchy, the High Prophet of Regret, assaults the city of New Mombasa, Kenya. The Master Chief assists in clearing the city of Covenant; 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 discover another Halo installation; realizing the danger the ring presents, Keyes sends the Master Chief to kill Regret while she and Johnson find Halo's key to activation, the Index.

Meanwhile, the disgraced Covenant commander is presented before the Prophet Hierarchs, who acknowledge that though the destruction of Halo was his fault, he is no heretic. They offer him the honored position of Arbiter so that he can continue to fight for the Covenant. On his first mission to kill a heretic, the Arbiter discovers 343 Guilty Spark, who the Covenant calls an "oracle," and brings him back to High Charity. Responding to Regret's distress call, High Charity and the Covenant fleet arrive at the new Halo, Installation 05, just before the Master Chief kills Regret. Bombarded from space, the Chief falls into a lake and is rescued by a mysterious tentacled creature.

Regret's death triggers discord among the races of the Covenant, as the Hierarchs have given the Brutes the Elites' traditional job of protecting them in the wake of the death. The Arbiter is sent to find Halo's Index and captures it, Johnson, and Keyes before being confronted by Tartarus. He reveals to the Arbiter that the Prophets have ordered the annihilation of the Elites, and sends the Arbiter falling down a deep chasm.

The Arbiter is saved by the tentacled creature and meets the Master Chief in the bowels of the installation. The creature, Gravemind, is the leader of the Flood on Installation 05. The Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the Great Journey would destroy Flood, humans, and Covenant altogether, and sends both the Arbiter and Master Chief to different places to stop Halo's activation.The Master Chief is teleported into High Charity, where a civil war has broken out among the Covenant; In Amber Clad crashes into the city, and Cortana realizes that Gravemind used them as a distraction to infest In Amber Clad and spread the Flood. As the parasite overruns the city, consuming the Prophet of Mercy in the process, the Prophet of Truth orders Tartarus to take Keyes, Johnson, and Guilty Spark to Halo's control room and activate the ring. The 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.

The Arbiter is sent to the surface of Halo, where he rallies his allies to assault the Brute's position. With the help of Johnson, he confronts Tartarus in Halo's control room. When the Arbiter tries to convince Tartarus that the Prophets have betrayed them both, Tartarus angrily activates the ring, and a battle ensues. The Arbiter and Johnson manage to kill Tartarus while Keyes removes the Index. Instead of shutting down the ring entirely, a system wide fail-safe protocol is triggered, putting Installation 05 and all the other Halo rings on standby for activation from a remote location, which Guilty Spark refers to as "the Ark".As Truth's ship arrives amidst a raging battle on Earth, Hood asks the Master Chief what he is doing aboard the ship. The Chief replies, "Sir, finishing this fight."

In a post-credits scene, Gravemind is seen arriving on High Charity, where Cortana agrees to answer the Flood intelligence's questions.

[Jonathan]

Halo 3 is a 2007 first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie for the Xbox 360 console. The third installment in the Halo franchise, the game concludes the story arc begun in 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved and continued in 2004's Halo 2. The game was released on September 25, 2007, in Australia, Brazil, India, New Zealand, North America, and Singapore; September 26, 2007, in Europe; and September 27, 2007, in Japan. Halo 3's story centers on the interstellar war between twenty-sixth century humanity and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant. The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, as he battles the Covenant. The game features vehicles, weapons, and gameplay elements not present in previous titles of the series, as well as the addition of saved gameplay films, file sharing, and the Forge map editor—a utility which allows the player to perform modifications to multiplayer levels.

Bungie began developing Halo 3 shortly after Halo 2 shipped. The game was officially announced at E3 2006, and its release was preceded by a multiplayer beta open to select players who purchased the Xbox 360 game Crackdown. Microsoft spent $40 million on marketing the game, in an effort to sell more game consoles and broaden the appeal of the game beyond the established Halo fanbase. Marketing included cross-promotions and an alternate reality game.

On the day before its official release, 4.2 million units of Halo 3 were in retail outlets.Halo 3 grossed US$300 million in its first week. More than one million people played Halo 3 on Xbox Live in the first twenty hours.To date, Halo 3 has sold in excess of 14.5 million copies, making it the fifth best selling Xbox 360 game of all time, the best selling Xbox 360 exclusive title and the best selling first person shooter on the console outside of the Call of Duty games.The game was also the best-selling video game of 2007 in the U.S.Overall, the game was very well received by critics, with the Forge and multiplayer offerings singled out as strong features; however some reviewers criticized single-player aspects, especially the plot and campaign layout. A prequel to the game, Halo 3: ODST, was released worldwide on September 22, 2009. A sequel, Halo 4, released on November 6, 2012, was developed by 343 Industries and grossed $220 million on its launch day. Halo 3 was rereleased as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One on November 11, 2014.


Halo 3 is set in a science fiction setting during the years 2552 and 2553. In the year 2525, a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant discover humanity spread across dozens of interstellar colonies.The Covenant declare humanity an affront to their gods and begin destroying colonies by bombarding the planets with barrages of plasma, turning their surfaces into glass. Despite efforts to keep the Covenant from finding further human worlds, a Covenant fleet discovers Earth during Halo 2.

"Halos" are massive ringworlds, ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of kilometers in diameter, scattered across the galaxy. These rings were constructed thousands of years ago by a race known as the Forerunners as weapons of last resort against the parasitic alien species known as the Flood. When activated, the Halos would destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, depriving the Flood of its food. The Forerunners disappeared after they activated the rings. In Halo: Combat Evolved, whilst fleeing the Covenant, the UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn stumbled upon one of these ringworlds, Installation 04. The humans manage to destroy the ring, stopping the Flood; the Covenant, unaware of the destructive nature of the rings, attempt to fire another ring, Installation 05, during Halo 2 in order to fulfill their religious prophecy.One race in the Covenant, the Elites, learn the truth about the rings, and join forces with humanity in order to stop the firing of the ring. Though they are successful, the unexpected shutdown of the installation triggers a fail-safe protocol, priming all the rings for firing from one location, referred to as the Ark.Still oblivious to the true nature of the rings, the Covenant High Prophet of Truth and the remaining loyalist Covenant proceed to head to Earth, where they believe the Ark is buried.

Halo 3's protagonist is Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, a surgically enhanced supersoldier known as a "Spartan". The Chief fights alongside the Arbiter, a disgraced Covenant Elite commander. Two other Elite characters, N'tho 'Sraom and Usze 'Taham, appear as the third and fourth players in cooperative play. Supporting characters from previous games return, including human soldiers Avery Johnson and Miranda Keyes.The Forerunner artificial intelligence 343 Guilty Spark, who tries and fails to stop the Master Chief from destroying its ringworld in Halo: Combat Evolved, also makes an appearance.Also playing a role in the story is the Flood entity known as the "Gravemind". In Halo 2, this leader of the Flood escapes from confinement on Installation 05, invades the Covenant mobile capital city of High Charity, and captures Cortana, a human-created artificial intelligence.

Plot
After the events of the comic tie-in Halo: Uprising,the Master Chief crashes in eastern Africa, where he is found by Johnson and the Arbiter.The Chief, Johnson, and company fight Covenant in the jungle and arrive at a UNSC outpost. Here, Keyes and Lord Hood plan a final effort to stop the Covenant leader, the High Prophet of Truth, from activating a Forerunner artifact uncovered outside the ruins of the city of New Mombasa. 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 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 ringworld.

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.The Arbiter, Master Chief, and Flood forces arrive and overwhelm Truth's guards, 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 ringworld 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, Sanghelios. 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. The Chief enters cryonic sleep, telling Cortana to "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, revealed in the sequel to be known as "Requiem", the primary setting of the campaign of Halo 4.



Voice actors returning to reprise their roles in Halo 3 include Jen Taylor as Cortana, David Scully as Sergeant Johnson and the Elites, Keith David as the Arbiter, Tim Dadabo as 343 Guilty Spark, Ron Perlman as Lord Hood, Robert Davi as Rtas 'Vadum, and Steve Downes as the voice of Master Chief. The game also features new voices, with Terence Stamp and Justis Bolding replacing Halo 2 voice actors Michael Wincott and Julie Benz as the Prophet of Truth and Miranda Keyes respectively.Additional voices include celebrity presenter Jonathan Ross,Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Alan Tudyk, Katee Sackhoff, and John DiMaggio.Members of the Halo machinima Red vs. Blue (Burnie Burns, Gus Sorola, Matt Hullum, Jason Saldaña, Geoff Ramsey, and Joel Heyman) have a cameo role.[

[Jonathan]

Halo Wars is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009; in Europe on February 27; and in North America on March 3. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series in the year 2531, 21 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved. The player leads human soldiers aboard the warship Spirit of Fire in an effort to stop an ancient fleet of ships from falling into the hands of the genocidal alien Covenant.

Halo Wars was unveiled at the X06 Xbox show in 2006. Ensemble designed the game specifically for the Xbox 360 controller, in an attempt to circumvent issues present in previous console RTS. Ensemble was closed by Microsoft before the game's release, but soon after Robot Entertainment was founded by many of Ensemble's former employees; this new company continued to support Halo Wars with updates and downloadable content.

Halo Wars received generally positive reviews. Reviewers lauded the game's pre-rendered cinematics, attention to detail in replicating the Halo universe, and intuitive control scheme. Complaints against the game included the lack of an option to play as the Covenant faction in campaign mode as well as the lack of strategic options during play. Critics from GameSpot and USA Today wrote that experienced RTS players would find the strategic elements of the title shallow. The game sold one million units worldwide through March 2009, making it the best-selling console real-time strategy game to date. Halo Wars 2, a sequel under development by Creative Assembly will be released February 2017. An enhanced version of the game—Halo Wars: Definitive Edition—was released for Windows and Xbox One.



Halo Wars takes place in the science fictional universe of the Halo series, during the 26th century. In 2525, a collective of alien races known as the Covenant attacked humanity, declaring humans an affront to their gods, the Forerunners. The game takes place in 2531,[10] roughly 20 years before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.[11] Six years after the Covenant invaded the colony of Harvest, human UNSC forces are still locked in battle on the planet.


The commander of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire is Captain James Cutter (Gregg Berger), a strong leader who has earned the admiration of his subordinates. Cutter's lack of political ambition prevents him from climbing the ranks further.[12] Serving under Cutter is Sergeant John Forge (Nolan North), a gruff Marine whose devotion to men has caused him to be jailed twice for disobeying orders and engaging in disorderly conduct.[13] Joining the Spirit of Fire's military expedition is Professor Ellen Anders (Kim Mai Guest), a scientist interested in ancient ruins of the mysterious Forerunners. The Spirit of Fire is operated with help from Serina (Courtenay Taylor), a super-intelligent artificial intelligence (AI) with a sardonic sense of humor;[14] it has been noted that she demonstrates a level of contempt for the humans she assists.[15] Leading the Covenant search for Forerunner technology is a holy warrior known as the Arbiter (David Sobolov), who the Covenant leaders, the Prophet Hierarchs, have tasked with the oversight of humanity's destruction.[16]

Story Edit
The Spirit of Fire is sent to the ruined planet Harvest to investigate Covenant activity, where Cutter learns that the Covenant has excavated something at the planet's northern pole.[17] When the UNSC's main outpost on Harvest is captured, Cutter orders Forge to retake it.[18] Soon after, Forge scouts the Covenant excavation and discovers that they, under the direction of the Arbiter, have discovered a Forerunner facility. Forge's troops defeat the Covenant forces before they can destroy the installation, and Anders arrives. She determines that the facility is an interstellar map, and recognizes a set of coordinates that points to the human colony of Arcadia.[19]

After repelling a Covenant counterattack on the Forerunner facility, the Spirit of Fire travels to Arcadia, where the Covenant has begun raiding local cities and slaughtering civilians. Forge contacts the local Spartan special forces and assists with the evacuation process. The Covenant builds a giant energy shield to hide the construction of a gigantic Scarab super-weapon, but the UNSC forces use experimental equipment to break through.[20][21] The Scarab is destroyed, but the Arbiter kidnaps Anders and escapes the planet.[22]

Forge and the Spartans return to the Spirit of Fire and the crew follows Anders' signal to an uncharted planet in another star system.[23][24] The planet's surface is infested by the parasitic Flood, who attack and assimilate any sentient life they encounter.[25] The Spirit of Fire inadvertently activates a Forerunner docking station and enters the planet's interior. Flood board the ship, and very soon Forerunner Sentinels appear to cleanse the Flood threat and also to destroy all UNSC forces in the process. The crew discovers the planet is actually hollow, with a habitable interior and a miniature sun. The Covenant's plan is to activate a dormant fleet of highly advanced Forerunner starships inside the planet, and use them to obliterate humanity.[26]

While the Forerunner ships are being activated, Anders escapes through a teleportation device and is rescued. Cutter decides to destroy the Forerunner fleet rather than allow the Covenant to use it. Anders formulates a plan to detonate the ship's faster-than-light drive in the planet's sun, as the explosion would cause a supernova.[27] Before they can prepare the reactor, Forge and the Spartans are ambushed by the Arbiter and his Elites. The Spartans dispatch the aliens and Forge kills the Arbiter. The reactor is damaged during the fight, necessitating a manual detonation. Forge volunteers for the suicidal task, telling the Spartans that they will be needed in the coming fight.[28] The Spirit of Fire escapes just as Forge overloads the reactor, destroying the Forerunner fleet. Without its faster-than-light drive, the Spirit of Fire is left drifting in space. The crew enters cryonic sleep for long-term storage as Cutter takes a last look at Forge's empty cryonic tube. If the game is completed on the "Legendary" difficulty mode, Serina wakes Cutter and tells him that "something has happened".[29]

[Jonathan]

Halo 3: ODST is a 2009 first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It is part of the Halo franchise, and was released on the Xbox 360 video game console on September 22, 2009. Players assume the roles of United Nations Space Command soldiers, known as "Orbital Drop Shock Troopers" or ODSTs, during the events of Halo 2. In the game's campaign mode, players explore the ruined city of New Mombasa to discover what happened to their missing teammates in the midst of an alien invasion. In the "Firefight" multiplayer option, players battle increasingly difficult waves of enemies to score points and survive as long as possible; Halo 3's multiplayer is contained on a separate disc packaged with ODST.

Bungie initially conceived ODST as a small side project to produce in the lull between Halo 3's completion and Halo: Reach. Instead of featuring recognizable characters such as armored protagonist Master Chief, the developers focused on the ODSTs. Story director Joseph Staten penned a detective story utilizing film noir designs, settings, and characters. Composer Martin O'Donnell abandoned his previous Halo themes to create a quieter, jazz-influenced sound. During development, the planned expansion grew in scope to that of a full-sized game. Release marketing for the game included a tie-in comic, live-action trailers, and print and web advertisements.

Upon release, ODST became the top-selling Xbox 360 game worldwide. The title received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the atmosphere, music, and story approach. Reviewers were divided on whether the relatively short campaign and included extras were enough to justify the game's US$60 price tag. The game was the top-selling title in the United States in September 2009, and sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Softpedia, Time, and Wired were among publications that declared the game one of the year's best.


ODST takes place in the 26th century, when humans under the command of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) are locked in a war with a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant.[16] During the events of the 2004 video game Halo 2, the Covenant discover the location of Earth and launch an assault on the city of New Mombasa in Africa. Though the UNSC manages to repel most of the fleet, a large ship hovers over the city, depositing an invasion force. The ship eventually retreats via a slipspace jump, creating a massive shockwave.[8] While the rest of Halo 2's storyline follows the ship to an ancient installation identical to the first Halo, ODST focuses on the aftermath of the shockwave, while the Covenant still occupy the city.[17]

During the game, the player can unlock audio files to an additional narrative called "Sadie's Story", which tells the story of a civilian girl caught in the initial stages of the Covenant invasion and her quest to find her father. The tale can also provide useful information for the player during the game, such as helping to locate hidden caches of weapons.[17]

The game's protagonist is the unnamed Rookie, a new member of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. Troopers, known as ODSTs or Helljumpers,[18] often deploy in small, one-man Human Entry Vehicles (HEVs), launched from spaceships in the upper atmosphere.[19] The Rookie is assisted in finding his teammates by Mombasa's city maintenance AI, called the Superintendent or Virgil.[20][21] The Rookie's teammates are Buck, Dutch, Romeo, Mickey, and Dare.[22] The lattermost is a UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) agent in charge of the squad's operation.[23]


The game begins with Dutch (Adam Baldwin), Romeo (Nolan North), and Mickey (Alan Tudyk) discussing the Covenant ship above New Mombasa, with the Rookie asleep nearby. Buck (Nathan Fillion) arrives and introduces Dare (Tricia Helfer).[23] 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.[24][25] The Covenant ship enters slipspace, 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.[26] He awakens and proceeds to find clues as to what happened to his squadmates.[27]

Buck makes a rough landing after the drop and fights through Covenant forces to find Dare. He finds Romeo instead, and the two resolve to find the others and get out of the city.[28] 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 transport 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.[29]

Back in the city, the Rookie is assisted by Virgil (the Superintendent), which leads him to Dare's position. The two reach the Superintendent's data core, which possesses information on something the Covenant is looking for underneath the city.[30] Inside the core, they discover a Covenant Engineer. 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,[31] 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. As they fly away in the transport, the squad watches as Covenant ships destroy New Mombasa.[32]

In the epilogue, one month after the events of the Campaign, 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—setting the stage for Halo 3.[33] If the campaign is completed on the Legendary difficulty level, a scene shows the Prophet of Truth overseeing the excavation of a Forerunner artifact buried beneath the Superintendent's data core.[32]

[Jonathan]

Halo: Reach is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 home video game console. The sixth installment in the Halo series, Reach was released worldwide in September 2010. The game takes place in the year 2552, where humanity is locked in a war with the alien Covenant. Players control Noble Six, a member of an elite supersoldier squad, when the human world known as Reach falls under Covenant attack.

After releasing Halo 3 in 2007, Bungie split into teams to develop two different games—what would become Halo 3: ODST and Reach. The developers decided to create a prequel to the original Halo game trilogy, freeing themselves from the obligation of addressing old story threads. As the game would take place on a human world doomed to be destroyed, they focused on making the environment a character unto itself. Longtime Halo composers Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori returned to compose Reach's music, aiming for a more somber sound to match the story.

Reach was announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 in Los Angeles, California, and the first in-engine trailer was shown at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards. Players who purchased ODST were eligible to participate in a Reach multiplayer beta in May 2010; the beta allowed Bungie to gain player feedback for fixing bugs and making gameplay tweaks before shipping the final version. Microsoft gave Reach its biggest game marketing budget yet and created award-winning live-action commercials, action figures, and interactive media to promote the game.

The game grossed US$200 million on its launch day, setting a new record for the franchise. Reach sold well in most territories, moving more than three million units its first month in North America. Critical reception was positive; reviewers from publications such as GamePro, IGN, and Official Xbox Magazine called it the best Halo title yet. Critics generally praised the game's graphics and sound, but the plot and characters were less positively received. Reach was Bungie's final Halo game; subsequent games have been overseen by Microsoft subsidiary 343 Industries.


Setting and characters
Reach takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting; the year is 2552, shortly before the events of the video game Halo: Combat Evolved,[17] and during the events of the novel Halo: The Fall of Reach. Humans, under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC), have been waging a long war against a collective of alien races known as the Covenant. By the events of Reach, almost all of humanity's interstellar colonies have fallen. Reach itself is an Earthlike colony that serves as the UNSC's main military hub. The colony is home to over 700 million civilians in addition to the military presence.[18]

The game follows the actions of "Noble Team", a UNSC special operations unit composed of elite supersoldiers known as Spartans.[19] Players assume the role of a new addition to the team identified by the call sign Noble Six. Noble Team's leader is Carter-A259, a no-nonsense soldier. His second-in-command, Kat-B320, has a bionic arm; together, Carter and Kat are the only remaining original members of Noble Team. The other current members include heavy weapons specialist Jorge-052, assault specialist Emile-A239, and marksman Jun-A266.[9][17][20]

Story
The game opens with the planet Reach in ruins, then flashes back to before the devastating invasion by the Covenant. Noble Team, dispatched to investigate why a communications relay has gone offline, discovers Covenant forces on Reach. Soon after, the team defends "Sword Base", an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) installation, from a Covenant vessel. The team meets Catherine Halsey, a scientist and the mastermind behind the Spartan program and their MJOLNIR powered armor. Halsey informs Noble Team that the Covenant forces at the relay were searching for important information.

Jun and Six are dispatched on a covert mission to assess the Covenant's strength and discover an invasion force gathering on the planet. The following morning, Noble Team assists UNSC forces in assaulting a Covenant ground base. When a massive Covenant super-carrier joins the fight, Jorge and Six take part in a plan to destroy the super-carrier using a makeshift bomb. The Spartans use starfighters to infiltrate a smaller Covenant corvette, prepare the bomb and set the corvette on a docking course with the carrier, but the bomb's timer is damaged. Left with no choice, Jorge stays behind and sacrifices himself to destroy the super-carrier. Moments later, huge numbers of Covenant ships arrive at Reach and begin a full-scale invasion.

Six returns to the surface and travels to the city of New Alexandria. The Spartan aids the local military in fighting the Covenant and evacuating the city, reuniting with Noble Team along the way. They retreat to an underground bunker when the Covenant begin to bombard the city with plasma, but Kat is killed by a Covenant sniper before they reach it. Recalled to Sword Base, Noble Team is guided underground to an ancient artifact that Halsey believes is key to winning the war against the Covenant. Six, Carter and Emile are entrusted with transporting the artificial intelligence Cortana, and the information she carries concerning the artifact, to the UNSC ship Pillar of Autumn. Jun leaves the team to escort Halsey to another base.

En route to the Autumn's dry dock, Carter is critically wounded. He rams his ship into a Covenant mobile assault platform, allowing Six and Emile to safely reach the shipyard. Emile uses a mass driver emplacement to defend the Autumn while Six fights through Covenant ground forces to get Cortana to the Autumn's captain, Jacob Keyes. When Emile is slain by Elites, Six remains behind to control the gun, ensuring the Autumn's escape. The Autumn flees from Reach and discovers a Halo ringworld, leading directly to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved.

The post-credits scene puts the player in control of Six's last stand against overwhelming Covenant forces. After sustaining heavy damage, Six drops his or her shattered helmet and is overwhelmed and killed. Decades later, Six's helmet remains on the grassy plains of a now-restored Reach. A narration by Halsey eulogizes Noble Team, who ultimately enabled humanity's victory over the Covenant.

[Jonathan]

Halo 4 is a first-person shooter video game developed by 343 Industries and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. The seventh video game installment in the Halo franchise, the game was released worldwide in November 2012. Halo 4's story follows a cybernetically enhanced human supersoldier, Master Chief, and his artificial intelligence construct Cortana, as they encounter unknown threats while exploring an ancient civilization's planet. The player assumes the role of Master Chief, who battles against rogue remnants of the military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant and warriors of the Forerunner empire known as the Prometheans. The game features a selection of weapons, enemies, and game modes not present in previous titles of the series.

Development of Halo 4 began in 2009 and continued until September 2012. Halo 4 is 343 Industries' first original title within the Halo series—previously, development of the main series was undertaken by Bungie, the creator of the franchise. In the developmental process, 343 Industries decided to explore the Forerunner fiction within the Halo universe, leading the team to design a new setting, enemies, and main antagonist. Existing characters and assets received visual overhauls and motion capture was used for animation within cutscenes. A goal for Halo 4's story was to incorporate more human elements; to achieve this, the developers chose to delve more deeply into the relationship between the two protagonists, Master Chief and Cortana. Several external studios assisted 343 Industries with developing Halo 4, and over 350 people worked on the game in total.

The game was officially announced at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2011 (E3) on June 6. Prior to launch, Microsoft stated that Halo 4 was the most expensive video game title the company had created so far. The game was marketed with promotional events and videos, including the creation of a live-action film, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. Halo 4 grossed US$220 million on its launch day and $300 million in its opening week—a record for the franchise. More than one million people played Halo 4 on Xbox Live within the first 24 hours of its release. The game received positive reviews from professional critics and received multiple nominations and awards from the press. It was rereleased as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection for the Xbox One on November 11, 2014. A sequel, Halo 5: Guardians, was released for the Xbox One on October 27, 2015.


Halo 4 takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting in the year 2557, four years after the events of Halo 3.[20] Backstory details that hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era, humans were one of several interstellar civilizations. Following a war with the parasitic Flood, the humans came into conflict with the Forerunners, a powerful race that upheld a policy of benevolent shepherding of other races known as the Mantle of Responsibility. Humanity had begun an aggressive campaign of destroying any Flood infestations on a planet, which was misinterpreted as a desire for conquest. After centuries of war the Forerunners defeated the humans, ancestors of the contemporary human race, and stripped them of their technology and empire. The Forerunners soon fought the Flood themselves; after exhausting every other strategic option available to them, the Forerunners activated weapons of mass destruction known as the Halo Array. The Array's firing killed all sentient life in the galaxy to deprive the Flood of their food. Life that the Forerunners cataloged was then reseeded throughout the galaxy.[21][22]

In the 26th century, space-faring humanity (organized under the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC) comes under attack from a splinter faction of the former Covenant, an alien collective of species that worships the Forerunners as gods. This Covenant faction believes that activating the Halos will bring about salvation, not destruction.[23] The human supersoldier Master Chief John-117, along with his artificial intelligence companion Cortana, are instrumental in stopping the Halos from being activated, and the Flood from once again menacing the galaxy. At the end of Halo 3, Chief and Cortana are left stranded in unknown space aboard the remains of the vessel Forward Unto Dawn.[24] Much of Halo 4's campaign and Spartan Ops' missions take place on or near the Forerunner planet Requiem. Part of the game also takes place on Ivanoff Research Station—a human base in orbit around the Halo ringworld Installation 03—and in Earth's orbit.


Music composer Kazuma Jinnouchi, also formerly from Konami,[115] joined 343 Industries during the production of Halo 4 in 2011.[116] He contributed several additional tracks for the game.[116][117] He would later go on to be the sole composer of the game's sequel, Halo 5: Guardians, in 2015.[118]



Four years after the events of Halo 3, UNSC Forward Unto Dawn drifts towards Requiem from the destroyed ring.[25] Cortana wakes Master Chief from cryonic sleep shortly before rogue post-war Covenant forces board the vessel.[26][27] The remnants of Forward Unto Dawn are caught in Requiem's gravity well and pass through an opening to crash-land on its interior. As Chief and Cortana explore Requiem, fighting hostile Covenant and Prometheans, Cortana malfunctions. She reveals that she is experiencing "rampancy", a declining mental state where AIs past their operating expectancies "think" themselves to death. Chief promises to get Cortana to Earth, believing that Cortana's creator, Doctor Catherine Halsey, can fix Cortana's condition.[28] Chief and Cortana pick up garbled transmissions from a human ship, UNSC Infinity, who have picked up Dawn's distress call.[29] Cortana attempts to warn Infinity away from Requiem's gravity well and directs the Chief to deactivate what she believes are communications jammers.[30] Instead, the Chief unwittingly releases the Didact, an ancient Forerunner warrior, from imprisonment.[31] The Didact takes control of the Prometheans and Covenant and attacks Infinity after it is dragged into Requiem.[32][33]

Chief makes contact with Infinity and helps repel the Didact's attack. Chief and Cortana recommend attacking the Didact while he is vulnerable, but Infinity captain Del Rio orders them to destroy the gravity well so their ship can escape.[34] In the process, Chief is contacted by a Forerunner known as the Librarian—the wife of the Didact, as well as ancient humanity's protector.[35][36] She explains that the Forerunners were divided on how best to combat the Flood. After failing to discover a way to immunize biological beings from the parasite, the Didact used a device called the Composer to convert the warriors under his command into digital versions immune to infection. Requiring more soldiers, the Didact forcibly converted captured humans into Prometheans, before being stopped and imprisoned by the Librarian.[37] The Librarian, who has guided humanity's development, accelerates the Chief's evolution; this grants him immunity to the Composer.[38]

After destroying the gravity well,[39] Del Rio orders a retreat back to Earth, doubting the Chief and Cortana's testimony.[40] The Master Chief disobeys orders to stand down and relinquish the malfunctioning Cortana, and stays behind to oppose the Didact.[41] Infinity executive officer Commander Lasky gives Chief an armed transport and wishes him luck.[42] Chief and Cortana attempt to sabotage the Didact's ship before he leaves, but when they are unsuccessful they follow the Didact to a Halo ring, Installation 03.[43][44] The Composer has been moved from the ring onto the nearby Ivanoff Research Station, which the Covenant attack.[45] The Chief defends Ivanoff, but the Didact retrieves the Composer and uses it on the station, composing every individual except the Chief.[46]

Chief and Cortana use a fighter to follow the Didact's ship through slipspace towards Earth.[47] Aided by Infinity, now commanded by Lasky, and the UNSC home fleet, the Chief boards the Didact's ship with a nuclear warhead.[48] Cortana inserts copies of herself into the Didact's computer systems to overwhelm the Didact's shield, but not before the Didact directs the Composer at Earth.[49] With the help of Cortana, the Chief defeats the Didact, who falls into a slipspace corridor generated underneath the Composer.[50] The Master Chief activates the bomb but is saved by Cortana, who sacrifices herself. The Chief is found by a UNSC rescue team and is taken back to Infinity, where he, mourning the loss of Cortana, talks with Lasky about Earth, humanity, and what his duty as a soldier means.[51]

In a post-credits cutscene, UNSC forces descend on the city of New Phoenix, the location the Didact used the Composer on, to find its inhabitants composed. In a narration, the Didact proclaims the Forerunner's role as custodians of the galaxy having to bear the Mantle of Responsibility, and humanity as the greatest threat in the galaxy.[52] Master Chief removes his armor aboard Infinity; if the player completes the game on Legendary difficulty, the Chief's eyes are briefly shown.[53]

Spartan Ops Edit
The events of Spartan Ops take place six months after Halo 4's campaign.[54] Infinity returns to Requiem, where Covenant insurgents—led by Jul 'Mdama, who styles himself as "the Didact's Hand"—and Prometheans are still active.[54][55] Sarah Palmer, commander of the Spartan-IVs, deploys Spartan squads to clear out the Covenant and Promethean forces in Requiem's interior in order to set up research bases.[56] Crimson Squad recovers a mysterious artifact excavated by Covenant;[57] Infinity scientist Doctor Glassman disappears after studying the device.[58]

Catherine Halsey is brought to Infinity due to her knowledge of Forerunner technology.[59] She is kept under guard by marines and Spartans including Gabriel Thorne, who lost his family during the Didact's attack on New Phoenix.[60] While studying the artifact, Halsey begins receiving messages on her computer from an anonymous sender.[61] The source of the transmissions is 'Mdama, who captures Glassman and forces him to work on a Forerunner device that supposedly contains the Librarian.[62][63] Pursuing 'Mdama's troops, Crimson Squad recovers another artifact. When Halsey examines the device, it displays images Thorne recognizes as depicting New Phoenix. Lasky reveals to Halsey and the Spartans that the UNSC knows Prometheans are former humans.[64] Approaching the artifact looking for answers, Thorne is teleported to Requiem and captured by Covenant.[65] Palmer arrests Halsey for communicating with 'Mdama.[66] Thorne escapes captivity outside 'Mdama's base, and escapes with Glassman; they are rescued by Majestic Squad.[67]

Halsey uses an override code to force Infinity's AI, Roland, to assist her.[68] Seeking information withheld from her concerning the Librarian, Halsey learns that Master Chief is alive.[69] Halsey contacts M'dama to try and strike a deal, as they both want to find the Librarian;[70] Roland breaks free of Halsey's control and summons guards to apprehend Halsey. Lasky decides to place Halsey in cryogenic sleep to prevent further trouble,[71] but Promethean forces invade Infinity, capture Halsey and teleport her to 'Mdama's base.[72] Serin Osman, head of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), orders Lasky to kill Halsey, but he is reluctant to do so.[73] Palmer sets off to Requiem to kill Halsey; Lasky tells Majestic Squad to intervene and rescue Halsey from 'Mdama.[74]

Halsey steps into the Forerunner device and makes contact with the Librarian. The Librarian gives Halsey the two pieces of the "Janus Key", an instrument that provides the location for all Forerunner technology in the galaxy, and instructs Halsey to use the key to advance humankind.[75] Upon receiving the key, Halsey exits the device and 'Mdama takes half of the key from her. Halsey passes the second piece to Thorne as Majestic Squad and Palmer arrive. Palmer wounds Halsey in the arm just before a Promethean teleports 'Mdama and Halsey from the base.[76] 'Mdama sets Requiem to collide with the nearby sun and his forces evacuate the planet.[77] Crimson and Majestic disable devices that anchor Infinity to Requiem, allowing the ship to escape before the installation is destroyed.[78] Meanwhile, Halsey, who lost her wounded arm, tells 'Mdama she has been betrayed by the UNSC and offers to ally herself to exact revenge.[79]





Cast Edit
Voice actors returning to reprise their roles in Halo 4 include Steve Downes as Master Chief, and Jen Taylor as both Cortana and Halsey.[96][119] Voices for new characters include Mark Rolston as Captain Andrew Del Rio, Darren O'Hare as Thomas Lasky, Jennifer Hale as Sarah Palmer, Adrienne Barbeau as Dr. Tillson, Keith Szarabajka as the Didact, Travis Willingham as Jul 'Mdama, and Lori Tritel as the Librarian.[119][120] Additional voices provided include Conan O'Brien, Andy Richter, and Jason Bradbury.[119][121][122] Employees of Rooster Teeth Productions' have cameo roles in Spartan Ops, as characters from the Halo machinima Red vs. Blue.[123] Bruce Thomas was the performance capture actor playing the role of Master Chief and actress Mackenzie Mason played the performance role of Cortana.[96][119] Taylor served as the motion capture source for Halsey.[124]

[Jonathan]

Halo: Spartan Assault is a 2013 top-down twin stick shooter video game developed by 343 Industries and Vanguard Games. Part of the Halo media franchise, it was first released on July 18, 2013, for Microsoft's Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms.[7] The game was subsequently released for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, Steam and iOS platforms.

Halo: Spartan Assault is set between the events of Halo 3 and Halo 4. Players control the human soldiers Edward Davis and Sarah Palmer as they fight the alien Covenant. The game launched with 25 single-player missions, with additional content released later.[7]


Halo: Spartan Assault takes place between the events of Halo 3 in 2553 and the events of Halo 4 in 2557. Following the events of Halo 3, the human UNSC and alien Covenant signed a ceasefire to end a decades-long war. It follows the early Spartan Ops' missions against the Covenant alien species and gives more background to the human-Covenant conflict. Stationed on the UNSC Infinity, gameplay is through the perspective of either Commander Sarah Palmer or Spartan Davis.[10]

Spartans Palmer and Davis are stationed on the planet Draetheus V when it comes under attack from a rogue group of Covenant who have ignored the ceasefire.[11] Palmer and Davis work to repel the invaders. The Covenant leadership discover that Draetheus' moon is actually a weapon built by an ancient race known as the Forerunners. The Covenant activates the weapon, tearing apart Draetheus and forcing the UNSC to evacuate. Spartan Davis gives his life to allow the remaining UNSC enough time to evacuate. Spartan Palmer tracks down the Covenant leader Merg Vol, kills him, sabotages the Forerunner weapon, and escapes the planet.

In the Operation Hydra update, Spartan Palmer returns to X50 in search of a mysterious signal. She discovers that the signal is actually a distress signal from Spartan Davis. Palmer reaches the core of X50 but finds Davis dead, with the moon using his remains to create an unnamed device that Palmer extracts.



Halo: Spartan Strike is a twin-stick shooter video game set in the science fiction Halo universe. The successor to Halo: Spartan Assault, the game was developed by 343 Industries and Vanguard Games. It was released for iOS, Windows, and Windows Phone on April 16, 2015.[1] During gameplay, players assume the role of human supersoldiers known as Spartans in a series of war games simulating fictional historical events. Players are able to use all-new weapons, such as the Suppressor, Scatter Shot, Incineration Cannon, and Binary Rifle, as well as new armor abilities, such as the Bubble Shield, Airstrike, Proximity Mine, Teleport, and Shock Chain in the battlefield.



Halo: Spartan Strike takes place after the events of Halo 4. The player character is a Spartan IV super soldier that leads UNSC forces against Covenant and Promethean enemies within a combat simulation set during the events of Halo 2 on New Mombasa, much like in Halo 3: ODST.[2] After the first campaign, the player goes to Gamma Halo to stop Covenant forces from activating a device known as the conduit, but they fail, able to seize the device. Then the player takes the Conduit to a city being attacked by Prometheans and stops the battle.

[Jonathan]

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is a military science fiction web series set in the universe of the Halo franchise. Forward Unto Dawn consists of five 15-minute episodes released weekly starting on October 5, 2012, and was later released as a single film on DVD and Blu-ray and was later put on Netflix in 2013. The series was produced as a marketing effort for the video game Halo 4 intended to widen the audience of the Halo series and as a stepping stone to a potential Halo film. It was written by Aaron Helbing and Todd Helbing, and directed by Stewart Hendler. Forward Unto Dawn was shot in Vancouver over 25 days in May 2012 on a budget just under USD $10 million. It has just under 500 shots with computer generated imagery, approximately a quarter of what a feature film would have, but the visual effects received praise from reviewers.

A coming-of-age story, Forward Unto Dawn follows a cadet, Thomas Lasky, at a twenty-sixth century military training academy as it is attacked by the Covenant, a religious alliance of aliens. Lasky is unsure of his future within the military but feels pressured to follow in the footsteps of his mother and brother. Lasky and his surviving squad mates are rescued by the Master Chief and, after the death of his romantic interest, Chyler Silva, Lasky is inspired by the Chief to take initiative and aids him in saving the remaining cadets.

Forward Unto Dawn received a Streamy Award and several of the crew received awards for their work editing, producing and filming of it. The series also won a Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Award for sound editing. Reviewers were impressed by the special effects and action-packed second act, but found that the plot was too slow in the first half and most of the characters were under-developed. The series was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for main title design.



Forward Unto Dawn takes place on a fictional planet, Circinius-IV, one of many that humans have colonized outside of the solar system. The protagonist, Thomas Lasky, is aboard a spaceship named Infinity in 2557. Forward Unto Dawn portrays his memory of the events on Circinius-IV in 2526, when he is a cadet at the Corbulo Academy, a training facility for the children of high-ranking UNSC officers. The UNSC is training the cadets for war with insurrectionists on various colony planets.[16]

A Covenant army attacks the academy causing confusion and panic. Although not made clear in Forward Unto Dawn, the Covenant are a theocratic collection of alien species that are religiously offended by Humanity and seek to eradicate it. The events portrayed in Forward Unto Dawn are some of the earliest encounters with the Covenant, and the characters other than Master Chief were unaware of their existence.[17]

Casting and characters Edit

The production team was responsible for casting, but Microsoft maintained a final say. The decision to use Alex Puccinelli instead of Steve Downes, the previous voice artist of Master Chief, was approved by Microsoft.[2] The actors playing the cadets attended a boot camp before shooting to raise their fitness and accustom them to assault courses and rifle drills in their armour costumes.[18][19] Cast members drove themselves to overexertion in the training, causing some to vomit, which they saw as a bonding experience.[18][19][20]

Tom Green plays the protagonist Thomas Lasky, a cadet at Corbulo Academy and Ty Olsson plays the adult rendition.[9] Lasky is "ambivalent about his role in the military", considering diplomacy a better option to warfare.[9][21] Lasky is from a military family; his mother is a colonel and his brother Cadmon (played by Max Carver) was an ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers - a special forces unit in the Halo universe), but Thomas is uninterested in becoming an officer.[9] Green portrayed Lasky as a "regular teenager", unsure of his future.[11] As research for the role, Green was required to watch the previous shorts and read the "Halo encyclopedia" that 343 Industries uses to preserve the Halo canon.[11] Executive producer Josh Feldman considers Lasky an important character in the Halo universe beyond just Forward Unto Dawn and Halo 4.[9]

Daniel Cudmore was cast to play the role of Master Chief largely due to his height and physique.[7] The director, Stewart Hendler, wanted to contrast the size of Master Chief to that of the teenage cadets; Cudmore is 203 centimetres (6'8") tall whereas the actors playing the cadets were deliberately chosen to be "short, scrawny freshmen".[7] In order to accurately portray Master Chief, Cudmore watched the Landfall shorts by Neill Blomkamp and read the Halo novels for the history of the character, having already played the games.[22][23] Cudmore expressed interest in the history of Master Chief, the character's view on war and his role as a soldier, as he was only required to portray a utilitarian character in the series.[22] Cudmore thinks the character is torn between aiding the cadets and completing his mission, but Master Chief's confidence and actions inspire the cadets.[24]

Legacy Effects took a body scan of Cudmore, then overlaid a 3D model provided by Microsoft and edited it to get proportions correct.[25] A prototype was 3D printed and then used to make moulds for the final suit.[25] The majority of the suit is rubber over a foam bodysuit, similar to a wetsuit, with a fibreglass helmet.[25] Cudmore compared wearing it to walking through water, although he had to perform stunts in the suit as it was made only for his body.[11][22][26][27] Cudmore repeatedly watched the video of his movements immediately after they were shot to ensure that they were deliberate but without appearing robotic, "trying to make his movements a little larger than life, but still with a sense of humanity to them."[24] Both Hendler and Frank O'Connor praised Cudmore, not just for his physique but for moving in a fluid manner in the cumbersome suit.[7][8]

Anna Popplewell plays Chyler Silva, a cadet who, contrary to Lasky's beliefs, is a full supporter of the war against the insurrectionists.[28][29] Popplewell portrays Silva as a competent cadet who has been hardened by her childhood surrounded by insurrectionist violence.[19][29] She had a romantic connection with Lasky that was interrupted by the Covenant attack. Popplewell was new to the Halo series when cast for the role but thinks that the characters and aesthetic of the series have the potential to draw in a new audience.[19]

Other characters include cadets April Orenski, a senior cadet and squad leader, played by Enisha Brewster, Junjie Chen, played by Osric Chau, who is the only cadet without a military family and has gained entry to the academy through his own achievements, Dimah Tchakova played by Kat de Lieva, Walter Vickers played by Iain Belcher and Michael Sullivan, played by Masam Holden.[30]



Episodes Edit

No. Title Directed by Written by Original air date

1 "Part 1" Stewart Hendler Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing October 5, 2012
Thomas Lasky is a freshman officer cadet struggling to fit in at the prestigious Corbulo Academy of Military Science. He clashes with other members of Hastati squad, his training squad, and ignores orders, leading to low marks in training exercises. With only the encouragement of fellow freshman Chyler Silva, Lasky struggles to live up to the expectations of his military family. In his spare time, he is seen frequently watching video correspondence from his brother, Cadmon, who is an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper deployed to a combat zone.

2 "Part 2" Stewart Hendler Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing October 12, 2012
Hastati Squad remains under scrutiny by commanders because of its poor performance, which the other cadets blame on Lasky. Lasky and fellow squadmate Vickers fight over this in the academy mess hall. After reflecting on his situation, Lasky has a change of heart and decides to take initiative, volunteering to take point in the final training exercise of the term, a game of capture the flag against another squad. Lasky orchestrates a successful ambush on the other squad, but collapses as he approaches the flag.

3 "Part 3" Stewart Hendler Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing October 19, 2012
Lasky discovers that he has a severe allergy which would allow him to be medically discharged from service, which leaves him contemplating his future. It is revealed that his brother Cadmon was killed in combat against insurrectionists. Lasky and Silva meet outside the academy grounds and, while discussing his future, share a kiss. In the meantime, cadet Sullivan has decoded classified combat footage which shows UNSC troops, insurrectionists, and Spartans fighting together against a new, unseen foe. An alarm is sounded at the academy, and as the cadets attempt to evacuate via a space elevator, several Covenant vessels appear in the sky, destroying the elevator. An Elite appears out of the smoke as UNSC forces begin to defend the academy.

4 "Part 4" Stewart Hendler Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing October 26, 2012
The Covenant attack overwhelms the UNSC defences, killing most of the cadets and humans on the planet. As the remainder of Hastati Squad attempts to flee from an Elite under active camouflage, they send a distress signal but are trapped in an armoury. Just as the Elite prepares to strike, it is killed by the Master Chief, who escorts Lasky, Orenski, Silva, and Sullivan out of the grounds. Outside they are ambushed by several Jackals and Sullivan is wounded, but the group manages to escape the academy via a Warthog, heading for the forest and evacuation from the planet.

5 "Part 5" Stewart Hendler Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing November 2, 2012
Driving through the dark forest, Chief and the remaining cadets fight off Jackals in the trees. Lasky crashes into one of the aliens on the road, causing the Warthog to stall. While Chief patches up Sullivan, Silva realises she's been wounded. Chief covers the cadets as they abandon the vehicle in the face of larger aliens called Hunters. Silva hands Lasky dogtags before dying. The Chief catches up to the cadets and they run from another Hunter. Lasky volunteers to act as a diversion, allowing Chief to kill the last Hunter. The group rendezvous with the Pelican and escape the planet. 32 years later, Lasky, now a Commander on the vessel UNSC Infinity, is seen ordering a jump after listening to a distress beacon sent by Cortana from UNSC Forward Unto Dawn.

[Jonathan]

Nightfall (2014)
On April 3, 2014, it was announced that Ridley Scott and his production company, Scott Free Productions, were working on a Halo digital feature alongside 343 Industries and Xbox Entertainment Studios; Scott would be the executive producer, with David W. Zucker and Sergio Mimica-Gezzan as the directors. The feature was expected to follow the same format as Machinima's Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn.[151] On June 9, 2014, it was announced at E3 2014 that the feature, titled Halo: Nightfall, would be included with Halo: The Master Chief Collection at its November 2014 launch. The feature introduces a new character to the franchise, Agent Jameson Locke, played by actor Mike Colter; Nightfall is considered to be his origin story.[152] Locke is one of the Spartans portrayed on the cover art of Halo 5: Guardians, and is set to play a large role in the series.[153] On July 24, 2014, 343 Industries released the first trailer for the feature.[154] Halo: Nightfall is available to watch through Halo Channel, an application for the Xbox One, Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone.[155] On March 16, 2015, the series became available to stream, download, and buy on physical disc.[156]


Halo Legends is a collection of seven short anime films set in the Halo science-fiction universe. Financed by Halo franchise overseer 343 Industries, the stories were created by six Japanese production houses: Bee Train, Bones, Casio Entertainment, Production I.G., Studio 4°C, and Toei Animation. Shinji Aramaki, creator and director of Appleseed and Appleseed Ex Machina, serves as the project's creative director. Warner Bros. released Legends on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on February 16, 2010.

The idea for an anime compilation existed for years before there was momentum for the project. 343 creative director Frank O'Connor produced story outlines or finished scripts that the production houses animated in a variety of styles.



Episodes Edit

Several episodes were originally broadcast on Halo Waypoint on the specified date. The episodes range in length from ten to twenty minutes.[5]

Title Studio Waypoint airdate
"The Babysitter" Studio 4°C November 7, 2009
"The Babysitter" follows a squad of four Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, or Helljumpers. The squad is composed of Private O'Brien, Master Sergeant Cortez, Corporal Taylor Miles (Dutch) and Corporal Checkman. O'Brien is being replaced as the squad's sniper by Cal-141, a SPARTAN-II, and is now the backup. The squad is sent into a Covenant zone under the cover of a meteor shower to eliminate a Prophet. Produced by Eiko Tanaka and directed by Toshiyuki Kanno.
"The Duel" Production I.G November 21, 2009
"The Duel" was produced by Mitsuhisa Ishikawa and directed by Hiroshi Yamazaki, with creative supervision by Mamoru Oshii. The story follows an Arbiter who does not want to follow the Covenant religion. One of the Prophets accuses Fal of heresy. Fal will not yield and the Prophet sends another Elite to kill his wife in order to drag him to a trap.
"The Package" Casio Entertainment December 5/12, 2009 (Two parts)
On board a cloaked human ship, a group of elite supersoldiers called Spartans (John-117/Master Chief, Frederic-104, Kelly-087, Arthur-079 and Solomon-069) are briefed by an intelligence officer about their mission. A Covenant fleet is momentarily trapped in the system, and is carrying an important "package" the Spartans must retrieve. The ship decloaks and deploys the Spartans in small ships called Booster Frames. Solomon detects the package on one of the ships, but discovers too late that it is a ruse; Solomon is killed when the ship is destroyed. Master Chief deduces that their target is actually in the Covenant flagship. Arthur is killed trying to cover Kelly during the battle, and the rest of the Spartans board the Covenant ship. Making their way through thick Covenant defenses, Master Chief manages to recover the package—human scientist Catherine Halsey in cryonic hibernation—and the two escape via a Covenant escape pod. The remaining Spartans are recovered by the stealth ship and leave the system.
"Origins" Studio 4°C January 1, 2010
On board the ship Forward Unto Dawn , the artificial intelligence Cortana and Master Chief are stranded after the events of Halo 3. Cortana muses on her existence and what she has learned about the noble and ancient race known as the Forerunners. Cortana narrates past events: thousands of years ago, the Forerunners were a great civilization, but they came under attack by the parasitic Flood. The Forerunners underestimated the Flood, by which time it had spread, gaining the knowledge of the life it consumed. Though the Forerunners fought bravely, they eventually realized it was a futile fight. After trying other methods, they developed a weapon of last resort; an array of ringed megastructures called Halos that would destroy the Flood and their food supply—every sentient creature in the galaxy. While the Flood and Forerunner were wiped out by the Halo Array's activation, the Forerunners reseeded catalogued life throughout the galaxy.

The second part of "Origins" follows the rise of human civilization. Humanity's exploration and colonization of other worlds coincides with the rise of the Covenant, a theocratic alliance of alien races that worship the Forerunners and reverse-engineer their technology. The Covenant launches a massive war of extermination against the human race. The events of Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 and Halo 3 are summarized; a band of Covenant Elites ally with humanity to stop the Flood from spreading into the galaxy again, and the long war ends between human and Covenant. In the present, Cortana cryptically warns that the Halos are only one of the galaxy's many secrets.

"Origins" was a chance to tell the story of the entire Halo universe in a clear fashion; many parts of the franchise had only been explored in what O'Connor called a "piecemeal" fashion.[4]
"Homecoming" Production I.G, Bee Train Unaired on Waypoint
Produced by Production I.G and executive produced by Koichi Mashimo, written by Hiroyuki Kawasaki and directed Koji Sawai.

On a planet, UNSC forces are pinned down by Covenant. A Spartan codenamed Daisy-023 arrives and helps evacuate the UNSC forces. While in battle, Daisy has flashbacks to her past in the SPARTAN-II supersoldier project. When she decides to escape the project and return home, she finds a replacement clone of herself. Daisy draws her firearm, but cannot kill the clone and decides to return to the military. The clone gives Daisy a small teddy bear, similar to what Daisy had before she was inducted into the SPARTAN-II Project. In the present, Daisy is shot and killed; her body is found by the Master Chief, who picks up the teddy bear beside her and places it in her hands.
"Prototype" Bones Unaired on Waypoint
A marine sergeant nicknamed Ghost and his demolition team are sent to destroy a prototype weapons facility to prevent it from falling into Covenant hands. Not wanting a repeat of his last mission, in which his entire platoon was killed, Ghost commandeers the heavy armor suit and uses it to provide cover for his squad as they evacuate. While Ghost deals massive damage to the Covenant forces, he is heavily outmatched and seriously wounded. As the last evacuation ships fly away, he uses the suit's self-destruct to destroy the nearby Covenant and complete his mission.

Animated by Studio Bones, Directed by Tomoki Kyoda and Yasushi Muraki, featuring production designs by Shinji Aramaki.
"Odd One Out" Toei Animation N/A
Animated by Toei Animation Company written and directed by Daisuke Nishio, Odd One Out is a parody of the Halo universe and is not canon.[10] It follows the adventures of Spartan 1337, a member of Master Chief's unit who suffers both from a severe ego and horrendous bad luck, although still a fairly competent fighter in his own right. He finds himself accidentally stranded on a planet after falling out of his transport. The planet is inhabited by dinosaurs and a group of stranded kids, the two oldest having superhuman strength. The Covenant test their latest weapon, a bestial warrior called Pluton. 1337 and the kids fight back, but are overpowered. However, the kids' ship (whose AI they refer to as "Mama") launches the beast into slipspace. When Cortana senses it, she tells Master Chief to leave it, as it is happy. 1337 makes for the rendezvous point, before being carried off by a pterodactyl.
The DVD released in 2010 has another episode sequence.

Origins I
Origins II
The Duel
Homecoming
Odd One Out
Prototype
The Babysitter
The Package

[Jonathan]

Halo 5: Guardians is a first-person shooter video game developed by 343 Industries and published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox One home video game console. Part of the Halo series, the game was released on October 27, 2015.[2] Halo 5's plot follows two fireteams of human supersoldiers; when Blue Team, led by Master Chief, goes absent without leave to track down the artificial intelligence construct Cortana, the Master Chief's loyalties are called into question and Spartan Locke along with Fireteam Osiris are sent to retrieve him.

343 Industries started to formulate concepts and objectives for Halo 5 shortly after the release of its predecessor. In late 2012, the team set out goals for the game, including larger campaign and multiplayer areas. Microsoft announced Halo 5 for the Xbox One at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2013. Halo 5 features a game engine that dynamically scales its resolution in order to maintain a frame rate of 60 frames per second.

Upon release, Halo 5: Guardians received positive reviews from critics, with praise being directed at its gameplay, visuals, level design and multiplayer modes. The game's single-player campaign was met with divided responses, with criticism directed at its length and writing. A commercial success, Halo 5: Guardians and its game-related hardware grossed over US$400 million in its first twenty-four hours and US$500 million in its first week.


Halo 5: Guardians takes place in the year 2558, and is set eight months after the events of Halo 4. The game follows the human fireteams Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris.[7] Blue Team is led by Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (Steve Downes) and is composed of the Spartan-II teammates he fought alongside in the timeframe before Halo: Combat Evolved:[8] Linda-058 (Brittany Uomoleale), an elite sniper; Kelly-087 (Michelle Lukes), a scout known for her incredible speed and John's closest friend; and Frederic-104 (Travis Willingham), who is technically Blue Team's highest-ranking officer, but defers to Master Chief.[9] The members of Blue Team are all Spartan-IIs, augmented super soldiers who were abducted and trained as children; they are among the last Spartan-IIs left alive.[10] Fireteam Osiris comprises Spartan-IVs, a newer generation of Spartans who joined the program as adult members of the military. Fireteam Osiris is led by Jameson Locke (Ike Amadi), a former agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and skilled tracker. The other members of Fireteam Osiris are: Holly Tanaka (Cynthia McWilliams), a survivor of a Covenant attack on her world; Olympia Vale (Laura Bailey), who can speak many of the Covenant's dialects; and Edward Buck (Nathan Fillion), a veteran former Orbital Drop Shock Trooper who was previously a main character in Halo 3: ODST.[11]

Supporting characters include Infinity's commanding officer, Captain Thomas Lasky (Darren O'Hare); Commander Sarah Palmer (Jennifer Hale), head of operations for all Spartan IV teams on board Infinity; Roland, Infinity's shipboard AI, and Catherine Halsey (Jen Taylor), a scientist who created the SPARTAN-II program. Other returning characters include the Arbiter Thel 'Vadam (Keith David),[12] now leading the Sangheili species against the Covenant remnants, led by Jul 'Mdama (Travis Willingham). Cortana (Jen Taylor), John's former AI companion who was presumed dead after the events of Halo 4, also returns.[13]

Plot Edit
Fireteam Osiris is deployed to the Covenant-controlled planet of Kamchatka to extract the rogue Halsey, who claims to have information on a series of devastating attacks on several human worlds, during a battle between Covenant forces and the Prometheans. While the team is successful in retrieving Halsey and eliminating the Covenant leader Jul 'Mdama, Halsey informs them that a new threat is about to emerge.

Elsewhere, the Master Chief leads Blue Team on a mission to secure a derelict ONI research station known as Argent Moon. The arrival of a Covenant fleet forces Blue Team to scuttle the station instead. During the sabotage, the Chief receives a cryptic message from Cortana, directing him to the planet Meridian. John is ordered to return to Infinity upon destroying Argent Moon, but he and Blue Team disobey orders and set out after Cortana, forcing Captain Lasky to list the rogue Spartans as AWOL. This causes consternation aboard Infinity, as Halsey believes that Cortana's survival through the use of Forerunner technology makes her unpredictable and untrustworthy.

Lasky gives Fireteam Osiris the objective of finding and capturing Blue Team. Osiris is deployed to Meridian in order to pursue Blue Team, where they find a human colony under attack by Promethean forces. During their pursuit, they encounter the Warden Eternal, a Promethean serving as Cortana's enforcer. After temporarily defeating the Warden, Osiris catches up to Blue Team, ordering them to stand down and return to Infinity. Blue Team, instead, board a Guardian: large Forerunner constructs built as enforcers of entire worlds. Osiris barely escape the colony's collapse as the Guardian activates and disappears. The Guardian emerges on the Forerunner planet Genesis, where John and Cortana reunite. Cortana says her terminal rampancy was cured by the same Forerunner technology that saved her.

Osiris is deployed to the Sangheili homeworld of Sanghelios, where they plan to use a dormant Guardian that resides there to travel to Blue Team's location. However, the planet is engulfed in civil war; the remaining forces of the Covenant have chosen to make their last stand there. To expedite their mission, Osiris joins forces with the Arbiter and help him strike a crucial blow at the Covenant remnant. Osiris successfully boards a Guardian with the help of Commander Palmer while the Arbiter finishes off the last Covenant troops.

On Genesis Osiris encounters the planet's caretaker, the artificial intelligence 031 Exuberant Witness, who allies with them to stop Cortana. Osiris catches up to Blue Team, who reveal Cortana is planning on using the Guardians to achieve galactic peace through forcible disarmament. Master Chief, aware of the massive devastation Cortana's plan will cause, attempts to convince Cortana to stand down. She refuses and confines Blue Team in a Forerunner prison, to prevent them from interfering with her plan. Osiris manages to transfer control of Genesis back to Exuberant, who wrests the prison from Cortana as she leaves the planet via a Guardian.

Artificial intelligences across the galaxy begin swearing allegiance to Cortana and her plans. Cortana locates Infinity and prepares to disable it, but Lasky has the ship's AI Roland, who is still loyal to Infinity, engage slipspace away from Earth and commit to random jumps until they can develop a way to combat Cortana. With Blue Team recovered, Osiris returns to Sanghelios to reunite the SPARTAN-IIs with an injured Commander Palmer, The Arbiter, and Halsey. If the player completes the game on Legendary, an extra cutscene shows an unknown Halo installation powering up while Cortana hums before cutting to black.



To support the drop-in/drop-out co-op, 343 Industries built a dynamic AI system for the fireteam companions to assist the player when a session is played alone.[26]

Story Edit
Narrative designer Morgan Lockhart described the co-op nature of the campaign as the most difficult element of the game.[27] Speaking about Cortana's fate in Halo 4, O'Connor stated that Halo 4's story was focused on the effect that Cortana's sacrifice and loss would have on the Master Chief.[28] He also noted that this effect would be reflected in Halo 5: Guardians, with a story that explores how the Master Chief copes with loss and past memories.[28]

Creative director Tim Longo explained that one of the main goals for Halo 5: Guardians was to expand the universe.[26] To achieve this the studio created new main characters for Fireteam Osiris and introduced characters from the expanded fiction with Blue Team.[26] Early in development, the team decided that Spartan Locke would be used to present the player with a different perspective on the Master Chief.[26] The aim was to create a deliberate contrast between the two main characters.[26] In developing the characters of Fireteam Osiris, 343 Industries initially considered making the team Fireteam Majestic, using the same characters from the Halo 4 episodic series Spartan Ops. When Longo joined as creative director and the rest of the story developed, the developers decided that Majestic was the wrong team to use and set out to create a new fireteam with different characters.[29]

The unnamed fireteam comprised three Spartans: "Smith", "Jones", and "Brown". Initially, none of these characters' traits—not even their genders—were determined. The narrative team decided Smith (later Locke) would be a former ONI agent, a cross of James Bond and Lara Croft. Brian Reed recalled that at one point they had added Fireteam Majestic member Thorne, as well as Spartan leader Palmer, and a still-unnamed Jones, who would be an expert in alien languages. Spartan Jones turned into Spartan Vesper, and her character matured from a child prodigy to someone more serious, if innocent.[29]

Once part of the story became set on the planet Meridian, the narrative team decided that one of the Spartans should have grown up outside the UNSC and survived the destruction of her home planet to act as a conduit for understanding Meridian; this character, now known as Spartan Song, replaced Palmer. When Thorne's voice actor, Ethan Peck, was unavailable, 343 Industries decided to replace his character on the team roster rather than recast the role. Other suggestions included an entirely new Spartan or a member of Blue Team, but the developers decided on fan favorite Buck after Nathan Fillion became available. Spartan Smith became Spartan Locke, Vesper and Song became Vale and Tanaka, and Fireteam Osiris took shape after more than two years of changes.[29]

On March 22, 2015, Microsoft launched Hunt the Truth, a podcast similar to radio series such as This American Life. The first season followed the investigations of fictional journalist and war photographer Benjamin Giraud (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key), who investigates the Master Chief's background.[43] Giraud discovers that the official story of Master Chief's origins are false, and attempts to expose the coverup.[44]

The first season was highly successful, drawing an audience of 6.7 million listeners on iTunes and winning Hunt the Truth's ad agency a Clio Award.[45] A second season of the podcast began September 22, 2015, focusing upon the view point of ONI Agent Maya Sankar (Janina Gavankar), returning undercover as FERO, to investigate unidentified attacks on human colonies.[46] The second season concluded October 26.[citation needed]

[Jonathan]

Halo Wars 2 is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game developed by 343 Industries and Creative Assembly, and published by Microsoft Studios. The game is set in the science fiction universe of the Halo series in the year 2559, and is a sequel to the 2009 video game Halo Wars. The game sees the return of the human crew aboard the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire and introduces a new alien faction known as the Banished. Development of Halo Wars 2 began in 2014 and the game was announced at Gamescom in 2015. It was released on February 21, 2017 for Windows personal computers (PCs) and the Xbox One video game console.


Halo Wars 2 takes place in the science fictional universe of the Halo series, during the 26th century. The game is set in 2559, 28 years after the events of Halo Wars and shortly after the events of Halo 5: Guardians.[2][6] Halo Wars closes with the crew of the UNSC warship Spirit of Fire entering cryosleep and drifting into space. Since that event, the war between humanity and the military alien alliance known as the Covenant has ended, and the Spirit of Fire has been declared lost with all hands.[2]

In 2559, after the end of the Human-Covenant War, Captain James Cutter, Professor Anders, and the crew aboard the Spirit of Fire wake from cryosleep above the Ark, where the Halo rings were manufactured. Unaware of the past 28 years, they receive a signal from the Ark. There, a Spartan team encounter an alien group known as the Banished, led by Atriox, a Brute sent on suicide missions for the Covenant and excommunicated for his growing hatred of them. An artificial intelligence, Isabel, is recovered from a destroyed UNSC research base on the Ark. However, during the ex-filtration, Alice-130 is left behind and Douglas-042 is injured.

Back on the Spirit of Fire, Isabel reveals to the crew that the portal to Earth from the Ark had closed five months ago, with Atriox invading four months later, and denounces the hopelessness of their situation and the futility of fighting such a ferocious enemy when the ship is so woefully outmatched. Emboldened by Captain Cutter, the crew declare war upon the Banished. A strike team, including Spartans, ODSTs and soldiers, manage to set up a forward base and defeat Decimus, a chief lieutenant who is salvaging the Ark’s resources. Decimus escapes and orders a bombardment upon his own base. Upon investigating the wreckage, Isabel discovers information about the Cartographer, a map of key systems and weapons upon the Ark. The team secures a Forerunner elevator and ascend to the Cartographer.

Meanwhile, Alice-130 contacts the Spirit of Fire and escapes the Ark with numerous recovered UNSC prisoners. The team, including Professor Anders, reach the Cartographer’s Map Room despite attacking Sentinels. There, she discovers that Atriox has hijacked the Ark’s portal network, allowing him to transport troops across the whole structure. While trying to shut down the portal network, the team face Decimus again and defeat him for the second and final time. Meanwhile, the Spirit of Fire comes under attack from a Banished carrier, the Enduring Conviction. Professor Anders suggests that they create a Halo using the Ark’s protocols to transport the crew away from the Ark and back into UNSC controlled space. The attacking carrier is destroyed when Isabel and Jerome-092 hijack its weapon systems to prompt the Sentinels stationed on the Ark to shatter it in two.

The Spirit of Fire releases the new Halo ring, but face immediate resistance upon it from the Brutes. Back on the Ark, Alice and Douglas capture a Scarab to destroy Brute barricades and prevent reinforcements, including Atriox, from reaching the Halo; they then use the portal network to reach the Halo themselves. There, Professor Anders is escorted to the ring’s control room, where the firing system of the structure is deactivated and a signal beacon is set. Meanwhile, the team are locked in a struggle with the remnants of the Banished’s forces, including numerous Scarabs. While within the Halo structure, Anders finds the gravity controls for the Halo. Using this, she separates the land that the remaining Banished are standing on and tosses it into space where it disintegrates. The ground forces return to the Spirit of Fire, but Anders and the Halo enter slipspace. Meanwhile, back on the Ark, Atriox and a legion of Banished still live, preparing for the next fight against the UNSC.

In an after-credits scene, the Halo carrying Anders drops out of slipspace prematurely, only to encounter a Guardian.


The story of the first Halo Wars is set 20 years before Halo: Combat Evolved, and is largely isolated from other games within the series.[2] This was to prevent it from interfering with other projects (Halo 3, Halo: Reach) that were also in development at the time.[2] Franchise development director, Frank O'Connor explained that Halo Wars 2 would be more integrated with other fiction in the universe than its predecessor.[2] Consequently, the game is set in the contemporary fictional timeline following the events of Halo 5: Guardians,[21] and is said to have a "sense of scale" that the first game was missing.[2] This decision also opened a narrative thread in Halo Wars 2, in which the returning characters are placed in an unfamiliar universe with outdated technology.[21] Narrative director on Halo Wars 2, Kevin Grace,[22] said that the development team took most of their inspiration for the game's tone from Halo: Combat Evolved.[2]

The developers wanted to establish a new villain who was both powerful and intelligent by introducing the Brute warlord Atriox.[23] He has been described as a "smart commander" who has salvaged and re-purposed the Covenant's technology.[2] Grace cited the Arbiter as a great example of a character who was unique within his species; he noted that this trait was applied to the Brutes with the creation of Atriox.[24] While Atriox's faction, the Banished, have been referenced in previous Halo media, Halo Wars 2 marks their debut as the primary enemy faction.[2] Real-world events and historical mercenary groups were a source of inspiration when designing the Banished.[24]