Deeper Look Into The Halo Universe, Halo: Combat Evolved Part 1

So I wish I could get myself an interview with and of the Bungie Devs to talk about the storyline in the Halo series but I think it's worth a look all the same. In fact I would rather go into Halo more than MGS 4 as I mentioned earlier.

First off I don't want any feedback from Fanboys and people who haven't played the games before either. A few matches at your friends house in multiplayer do not count as having played the game for future reference.

What I wanna look at is the storyline as a whole over the course of the three games and examine the key moments that build the story and the characters involved in them.

Logically that means we would start with the legendary Halo: Combat Evolved. It is legendary for many things, most importantly being the beginning of what is probably the most powerful brand name in video games right now. On top of that though not many people realize that it standardized the control system for first person shooters on consoles, I don't care what you say about GoldenEye, the controls were mad clunky in my opinion. The reason most shooters now have the same control system is that they tried to copy the success of Halo, shooters on consoles before that sucked in control, a lot.

Moving on to the real point of this article, the story of Halo. Overall the story of Halo: Combat Evolved was a little general and hard to follow. There was no back story present at the time of launch so that could have been a disaster for the game. What I applaud Bungie for is how they overcame this fact by just throwing you into the action. The story starts with Master Chief waking up and immediately being boarded by the Covenant while in orbit around this giant constellation that we know as a Halo ring. You don't have time to wonder about the storyline as the tutorial lasts all of 2 minutes before your sent into the action and your left fighting to an escape pod so you can abandon your spaceship the Pillar of Autumn and land on the mysterious construct.

This is the first key part of the story, there are questions that can be asked about the storyline at this point but you are so caught up in the events of the game as soon as the end of the first level that you could care less. This is an impressive achievement in my mind as I consider the storyline to be the most important part of the game. I make it a habit to play through the campaign of any game I buy before I try to play multiplayer.

The next thing I applaud about the story in Halo is how mysterious the ring feels. You know about the ForeRunners but you don't know who they were or what happened to them. More than that you are actually curious as to finding out more about them and what Halo is for. There is a sense of antiquity that hangs in the air while Chief fights across the ring and the plot further unfolds.

In my opinion the biggest part of Halo: Combat Evolved and the history of video games is the emergence of the Flood. There is absolutely no hint of the flood leading up to this part of the game. All you know at the beginning of the level is that Captain Keyes and a team of marines have gone to activate what they thought was a weapon on Halo with the intention of using it against the Covenant. You have also been warned by Cortana that if they succeed in their mission that they'll doom everything in the galaxy. Automatically you know something is wrong as the forest you land in seems to be interestingly mutated and the Covenant don't seem to engage you in any form of strength. Then you get inside of the installation and the sense of wrongness only seems to increase as you meet no resistance whatsoever and yet Chief can't find any evidence of Keyes or his team. This however changes as you enter a room and find the helmet of a MIA marine named Private Jenkins. Chief quickly jacks into his helmet and views the last bit of his service log. That also happens to be when all hell breaks loose, as you watch with no small amount of horror Keyes and his team are overwhelmed by a horde of small bulbous creatures that explode when shot. The video ends with expiring of Jenkins and chief is left on his own in the middle of a room and then hordes of the same Flood creatures swarm out of the surrounding doorways. Chief manages to fight through this but the real surprise is still to be had as you discover the actual fate of the Marines in Keyes' team. The truth is that they have been taken over and terribly mutated from their original forms and sent against the Chief, more than that you have to kill them twice as they refuse to stay dead.

The emergence of the Flood is more important than it seems when you look at the universe as a whole. What you know leading up to the Flood is that there is this huge intergalactic war between the humans and the covenant. On top of that, Mankind is losing. There's enough burden in that alone but the Flood shake everything up as it soon seems apparent that the Covenant cannot even stem the flow. It's the sudden introduction of a third force in the universe, one that seeks only to destroy all life both Human and Covenant. It alludes to many things, such as the possibility of an alliance to stop the Flood, or just the total destruction of the universe.

That's all for now folks, I am going to put Halo into a many part series and I will finish Halo: Combat Evolved in the next post.

Furthermore, if you don't agree with me than I would rather have constructive criticism than Fanboy hate mail

-Ichi