Halo (franchise)
Halo is a military science fiction video game series and media franchise, originally developed by Bungie and currently managed and developed by Halo Studios, part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios. The series launched in November 2001 with the first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved and its tie-in novel, The Fall of Reach. The latest major installment, Halo Infinite, was released in 2021. Spinoffs include real-time strategy and twin-stick shooter games.
Bungie began as a developer of computer games for the Macintosh platform, making games including Marathon 2: Durandal. After the company was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, their in-progress game, which started life as a real-time strategy game, became Halo: Combat Evolved, a first-person shooter and exclusive launch title for Microsoft's Xbox video game console. Following the success of Halo, Bungie developed additional Halo sequels before and after regaining its independence from Microsoft in 2007. Microsoft established 343 Industries to oversee Halo going forward, producing games itself and in partnership with other studios. The developer was restructured and rebranded as Halo Studios in 2024, in conjunction with producing new games that would shift the series away from being developed on proprietary game technology, and towards being available on multiple platforms beyond Xbox and Windows going forward.
Halo: Combat Evolved was the Xbox's flagship "killer app" and cemented Microsoft as a major competitor in the video game console space, and its sequels pioneered online matchmaking, social features, and video game marketing. The games have sold more than 81 million copies worldwide. With more than $6 billion in franchise sales, Halo is one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, spanning novels, graphic novels, comic books, short films, animated films, feature films, fan-made short machinima animations and other licensed products.
Story
Millions of years ago, a powerful interstellar species known as the Precursors seeded the galaxy with life. One of their created races, known as the Forerunners, attacked their former masters and drove the Precursors into near extinction. A few Precursors turned into a dust, intending to regenerate themselves in the future. This dust became defective, infecting and contorting organisms into a new parasitic species, connected by a hivemind: the Flood. Spacefaring ancient humanity, fighting the Flood, also came into conflict with the Forerunners. After defeating humanity, the Forerunners reduced humanity's technology and species to a primitive level, while they concentrated on the threat of the Flood. The Forerunners conceived the Halo Array—ring-shaped megastructures and weapons of last resort that would destroy all sentient life in the galaxy to stop the Flood's spread. The array could be activated from the Ark, a repository of sentient life outside the range of the Halos. Exhausting all other options, the Array was activated, ending the Flood outbreak. The surviving Forerunners reseeded life and left the Milky Way galaxy.Nearly a hundred thousand years later, in the 26th century, humanity—under the auspices of the Unified Earth Government, or UEG, and their United Nations Space Command, or UNSC—colonizes many worlds thanks to the development of faster-than-light "slipstream space" travel. Tensions between the government and colonies desiring independence sparks violence. The UNSC's Office of Naval Intelligence creates the SPARTAN-II Project to create an elite group of enhanced supersoldiers to suppress the rebellions. In the year 2525, human worlds come under attack by a theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant, whose leadership declares humanity an affront to their gods, the Forerunners. The Covenant begin a genocidal holy war. Their superior technology and numbers prove to be decisive advantages; although effective, the Spartans are too few to turn the tide of battle in humanity's favor. After the Covenant invaded Reach in 2552, the UNSC's last major stronghold besides Earth, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 was left as one of the few remaining Spartans.
The rediscovery of the Halo rings prompts a desperate battle against the Covenant, who believe they are instruments of transcendence, not destruction. Master Chief and his artificial intelligence Cortana are instrumental in the destruction of a Halo ring to stop the Covenant and the threat of the Flood. Turmoil within the Covenant and the revelation of the Halo Array's true purpose leads to the Covenant splintering into civil war. The disgraced former Covenant commander known as the Arbiter, along with many of his species, helps the humans stop the Covenant leadership from activating the Halo Array via the Ark. The Human-Covenant War ends.
In the post-war era, the UNSC trains a new generation of Spartans, and tensions between the UNSC and rebels resumes. The Master Chief and Cortana accidentally free the Forerunner commander Didact and he briefly returns to assert supremacy over humanity. Master Chief and Cortana halt his plans, although Cortana is initially believed dead in the attempt. Cortana's survival through the Domain leads her to break with the UNSC and assert a new hegemony over the galaxy, with artificial intelligence in control. After two years of a scattered war between Cortana and the UNSC, Cortana attacks the Banished, a mercenary organization of former Covenant races. The Banished win the resultant conflict, terminating Cortana and battling the UNSC for control of Zeta Halo.
Game series
2001–2010: Bungie games
Video game studio Bungie was founded in 1991 by Alex Seropian in Chicago, Illinois, who partnered with programmer Jason Jones the following year to market and release Jones' game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete. Focusing on the Mac game market because it was smaller and easier to compete, Bungie became a preeminent game developer on the platform, releasing the successful Myth and Marathon. Bungie began development on a new game in 1997, referring to it by the temporary code names "Monkey Nuts" and later "Blam!" after Jones could not bring himself to say the previous codename to his mother. "Blam!" was conceived as a science fiction real-time strategy game and took place on a hollowed-out world called Solipsis. The planet eventually became a ringworld called "Halo", in turn giving the game its title.As the development team began experimenting with incorporating vehicles with realistic physics simulations, they began moving the distant third-person camera closer to the action. Bungie decided it would be more fun to directly control units than direct them, and the game shifted to a third-person shooter. Halo was announced on July 21, 1999, during the Macworld Conference & Expo. The title of the game was finalized only days before it was announced at Macworld.
Bungie was undergoing financial difficulties, and Microsoft was looking for games for its upcoming Xbox video game console. In June 2000, Microsoft announced their acquisition of Bungie, and Halo—now having morphed into a first-person shooter—became a launch title for the Xbox video game console. Relocated from Chicago to Redmond, Washington, Bungie had roughly 14 months to finish the game before the Xbox launched. The story slowly began to take shape, with an internal debate at Bungie over how much personality to give the main character. Writer Joe Staten wanted to do more than have the player character be an "empty vessel" like Half-Lifes Gordon Freeman, so they wrote him with a sense of humor. Deciding he should be referred to by his naval rank, Bungie decided on "Master Chief". Despite a difficult and hectic development schedule, Halo: Combat Evolved shipped as a launch title for the Xbox on November 15, 2001. The Xbox's marketing heavily featured Halo, whose green color palette meshed with the console's design scheme. Halo was a critical and commercial success, selling alongside half of every Xbox sold. By July 2006, the game had sold 4.2 million copies and earned $170 million in the United States.
Halo: Combat Evolved introduced many elements common to the franchise. Players battle enemies on foot and in vehicles to complete objectives across a mysterious alien landscape. Halo limited the number of weapons players could carry to two, forcing them to carefully select their preferred armament. Players fight with ranged and melee attacks, as well as grenades. Bungie referred to the "weapons-grenades-melee" format as the "Golden Triangle of Halo". The player's has health measured in hit points that must be replenished with health packs, but also has a perpetually recharging energy shield.
While Halo had not been intended as a franchise, the Bungie team wanted to make an ambitious sequel, looking to story and gameplay ideas that had been ultimately cut from Combat Evolved, and inspired by how fans had received the game. In particular, Bungie was surprised by how many fans used the System Link capability to network consoles together and play multiplayer in LAN parties. With the launch of the Xbox Live online multiplayer service, Bungie wanted to bring Halo multiplayer to the internet.
Halo 2, was announced on August 8, 2002, at Microsoft's X02 press event, and an impressive demo of the game was shown at Electronic Entertainment Expo the following year. The demo showed off new features like dual-wielding weapons and hijacking enemy vehicles, but behind the scenes the game was undergoing a troubled development; Bungie had to scrap the ambitious graphics engine as it would not run effectively on the Xbox hardware, leadership changes resulted in more infighting, and artists and designers wasted time developing assets that would ultimately not ship in the game. A planned massive multiplayer mode was entirely cut, leading to developer Max Hoberman's smaller-scale local mode becoming the only multiplayer offering. As the game's release date slipped, the studio entered a sustained period of crunch to finish the game, with other Bungie games being canceled and their staff absorbed into the Halo team. The final act of the game had to be cut entirely in the rush to complete the game. Halo 2 was released on the Xbox on in November 2004, and later for Windows Vista in 2007. Part of the marketing took the form of an alternative reality game, I Love Bees, centered around a website apparently hacked by a mysterious intelligence. Over the course of the game, audio clips were released that formed a narrative set on Earth between Halo and Halo 2. Halo 2 was a critical and commercial success, grossing $125 million in the first day and becoming the highest-grossing release in entertainment history up to that point; it would ultimately sell 8 million copies, becoming the best-selling Xbox game. Halo 2 was also a significant motivator for subscriptions to the Xbox Live multiplayer service.
Frustrated by the development of Halo 2 and wanting to move on to new non-Halo projects, Bungie wanted to wrap things up in a satisfying manner with Halo 3. Burned out by Halo 2, Jason Jones went on an extended sabbatical, and the Halo 3 effort started without direction as no one was definitively in charge. Designer Paul Bertone recalled that the large development staff meant more meetings and less efficiency. Multiple staff members temporarily or permanently departed the development team, including Hoberman, who started his own studio, Certain Affinity after developing Halo 3s online systems. Despite the difficult development, overall Halo 3s development went more smoothly than Halo 2. Halo 3 was announced at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo, and released on the Xbox 360 on September 25, 2007. It added new gameplay elements, including deployable equipment and heavy weapons. The game also added a limited map-editing tool, known as Forge, which allows players to insert game objects, such as weapons and vehicles, into existing multiplayer map geometry. A saved films feature allowed players to record gameplay and review it from any angle. Backed by an extensive marketing campaign, Halo 3 was a critical and commercial success, grossing $170million in the U.S. in the first 24 hours. The game was the best-selling title of the year in the U.S., and the fourteenth best-selling game of the 2000s.
Lingering dissatisfaction with Bungie's acquisition by Microsoft in 2000 and a desire for more favorable profit-sharing on Halo 3 led to an agreement where Bungie would become an independent studio after shipping a set number of new Halo games. Bungie announced their independence in October 2007. They were contractually obligated to produce two more Halo games as part of the deal. One project turned into the game Halo: Reach, while the other was initially going to be a production with Peter Jackson's Wingnut Interactive. When that project was scrapped, Bungie took elements prototyped for it and added them to a smaller Halo 3 expansion, originally titled Halo 3: Recon.
Produced using the Halo 3 engine and assets and with a smaller staff of only around 20 full-time employees, Recon—later renamed Halo 3: ODST—was conceived as a noir detective story, with the player character uncovering clues in a hub world that triggered playable flashbacks. Halo 3: ODST takes place between the events of Halo 2', and Halo 3'. The player had flexibility to explore and play missions in any order. Bungie staffers recalled that getting resources for the game was tough, as most of the studio's attention was on Halo: Reach. In the game, players assume the role of weaker Orbital Drop Shock Troopers rather than Spartan supersoldiers. Gameplay harkens back to Combat Evolved, with the use of health packs and scoped pistols. A night-vision mode illuminates dark environments and highlights friends and foes. In addition to shipping with the complete Halo 3 multiplayer, ODST also added a cooperative survival mode called Firefight, where players fight against waves of enemies with limited lives. Halo 3: ODST released September 22, 2009, and was positively received, though its price as a full game was sometimes criticized. It was the top-selling title of the month in the U.S. and ultimately sold more than three million copies worldwide. Eurogamer pointed to the work Bungie put into the more experimental Halo title as influencing the direction of its first post-Halo game, Destiny.
Tired of focusing on the character of Master Chief, Bungie cast Halo: Reach as a prequel to Combat Evolved, taking place on the doomed human world of Reach as it falls under attack from the Covenant. The step backwards in the timeline was mirrored by the gameplay, which Bungie wanted to harken to Combat Evolved with more open environments and exploration, and the return of health packs. Among the new additions were the replacement of single-use equipment with persistent armor abilities that enables sprinting, jetpacks, or temporary invincibility. The game's release was preceded by a beta to help balance the game and squash bugs. Reach released September 14, 2010, and was a success, making $200 million its first day and selling more than 4.7 million units by September 2011.