Time for the Arbiter to get a little payback on the traitorous Brutes.
This neighborhood has really gone downhill. The Chief needs to find Truth and get out of here!
The Arbiter has to stop Tartarus from activating Halo, and he’ll take all the help he can get.
To finish off Halo 2, here’s some extra stuff that I didn’t get the chance to show off yet.
Alright, time to start gearing up for some more Halo. Today we’re starting off with some of the promotional stuff for Halo 3. This might be the last game where I share a bunch of teaser videos like this because while I could still remember all of these from memory, promotional material for later games is a lot more hazy. And also most of it was released directly to YouTube in high quality by that point.
Announce Trailer - This was of course the first official confirmation that Halo 3 was a thing that was being worked on. The music in this one, especially the piano, still gets me.
Starry Night - This special commercial only aired once during a Monday night football game. I actually remember convincing my whole family to watch the game that night so I could catch it, and afterwords they were all like, “that’s it?” They are not Halo fans.
Believe Diorama - Another video with excellent music. This diorama was actually built and is large enough to take up a whole room. There are a few videos to go along with it, that are faux documentary interviews with veterans of the Human-Covenant war talking about their experience for the Museum of Humanity. You can find them by searching “Halo 3 Believe Museum” but I think the diorama is the most interesting part.
Halo: Landfall - This is the first official live-action media created for Halo. It was originally three short films called Arms Race, Combat Part 1, and Combat Part 2, but was eventually combined together. This was also made at a time when a Halo movie was being pitched with Neil Blomkamp and WETA attached, and these videos were kind of a proof of concept. The movie never got made and those guys moved on and made District 9 instead.
Developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios, as per usual, Halo 3 was released on September 25, 2007. Halo 3 is the conclusion of the original Halo trilogy, where we finally get to continue the story after Halo 2’s disappointing and somewhat abrupt ending. The Halo array is primed to fire, the Covenant has fractured, and the Master Chief has made his way back to Earth to “finish the fight”. With Cortana in the hands of the Flood Gravemind, and the Arbiter and his fellow Elites now having to find their own path, there are a lot of unknowns to contend with.
Halo 3 had absolutely sky-high expectations. Everyone knew that it would be a conclusion of some sort, and fans had been waiting for years to know how this story would end. Halo was secure at the top of the Xbox’s flagship titles list and despite releasing 2 years after the Xbox 360, Microsoft was still depending on it to sell a lot of consoles and Xbox Live memberships. To further crank up the hype, Halo 3 had a public multiplayer beta and a $40 million advertising blitz that included live-action short films, an alternate reality game, and the birth of Mountain Dew Game Fuel. All of that effort must have worked, since Halo 3 became the best selling game of 2007 and made $170 million just on release day.
The Xbox 360’s improved hardware allowed Bungie to drastically improve graphics and increase the scale of maps and encounters. Like in Halo 2, they were able to add new weapons, vehicles, and game mechanics that fit the existing formula and managed to keep that Halo “feel”. Halo 3 also saw the debut of some other very impressive features. A theatre mode that allowed the player to go back and watch previously played campaign levels or multiplayer games, and dynamically change camera angles and record clips or screenshots (this is how I created my thumbnails for this game). The most important addition was Forge mode, an editor that allowed players to create their own maps and gametypes. People were very creative, creating race tracks, jumping puzzles, escape rooms, and all sorts of other fun gimmicks. Halo 3 is a game that largely met its high expectations, and even found new ways to keep myself and many others coming back for more.
00 - Separate Paths
01 - Sierra 117
02 - Crow’s Nest
03 - Tsavo Highway
04 - The Storm
05 - Floodgate
06 - The Ark (Part 1)
07 - The Ark (Part 2)
08 - The Covenant (Part 1)
09 - The Covenant (Part 2)
10 - Cortana
11 - Halo
XX - Bonus Content
Announce Trailer
Starry Night Trailer
Believe Diorama
Halo: Landfall
One last thing before we get into the game for real. This is a short video to explain what all of our main characters got up to in between games.
After a short “rest”, the Chief is back to defending Earth from the Covenant invasion.
Time to return the favor, as the Chief takes a road trip to bring the fight to the Covenant.
The UNSC strikes back, as the Chief clears the path for an attack on Truth’s Dreadnought.
As if we didn’t have enough to deal with, now the Flood have joined the party in the Battle for Earth.
We follow the Covenant through the portal, and what we find isn’t quite what we expected.
The UNSC and the Elites stage a joint operation to bring down the defenses around Truth’s stronghold.
The Master Chief leads the assault on the Citadel to stop Truth from activating the rings.
We’ve put this off for too long. It’s time to rescue Cortana from the Gravemind’s clutches.
Halo 3: ODST, released in September 2009, is the first real “departure” from the main Halo formula. While still developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios, this is the first Halo game that does not have the Master Chief as its protagonist, and also [spoiler alert] doesn’t involve any Halos. We play as an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper (ODST) known only as The Rookie, separated from his squad during the Covenant invasion of Earth. We must wander the eerily quiet, occupied city of New Mombasa and try to figure out what happened to the rest of the squad, and the top-secret mission they were supposed to be carrying out. A much more grounded and atmospheric experience than previous Halo games, Halo 3: ODST actually channels a film noir detective story vibe which works really, really well.
The other major difference from previous Halo games is the lack of a PvP multiplayer. Halo 3: ODST actually shipped with a separate disk that contained Halo 3’s multiplayer instead, as well as all of the DLC maps up to that date. That being said, it introduced a new co-operative PvE multiplayer called Firefight. Firefight is a wave defense mode where players must fight against increasingly difficult waves of enemies with a limited number of lives shared between the entire team. The goal of this mode is to survive for as long as possible while racking up high scores using kill streaks, special kills, and difficulty modifiers.
As the titling would suggest, Halo 3: ODST (previously titled Halo 3: Recon) was originally planned as sort of an expansion pack. It was intended to be a smaller project to fill the time before the next major Halo release, but they ended up with enough content that Microsoft insisted on selling it as a stand-alone, full-price game.
01 - Prepare to Drop
02 - Tayari Plaza
03 - Uplift Reserve
04 - Kizingo Boulevard
XX - Norvinsk Region (April Fools)
05 - ONI Alpha Site
06 - NMPD HQ
07 - Kikowani Station
08 - Data Hive
XX - Sadie’s Story (Audio Logs)
09 - Coastal Highway
XX - Bonus Content
