Be sure to read Part I before continuing this epic journey.
The light illuminated from the ceiling and reflected off the walls making the room seem really bright. There we were, four of us (my two cousins, brother, and myself) patiently waiting as the game loaded. The glare from the bright light bounced off the television screen as unique letters formed the word, “Halo”. The camera shifted behind the title screen and menu options and began floating around a giant ring suspended in space just near a large brown planet. The menu options remained in place, but we sat there for a moment watching this ring world expose its green and blue beauty that made up the surface. Voices sprang out at us that sounded like chanting monks or something (see video), which really gave us the sense that this was definitely different than anything we’ve ever experienced in a game. I wasn’t too sure I was ready for a change, but as bored as I was, I would have played anything. Our first memorable experience in the evolution of gaming was about to begin, granted only two of us could dip our feet in the untouched waters of the future due to the lack of controllers. It was okay though, we didn’t mind taking turns.
Before we loaded up our first multiplayer game, we created our own unique characters. Compared to games I play now, this feature doesn’t seem that great. But at the time we thought it was the greatest thing because we could give our characters a name and a color of armor that we liked best (light red for the win). I plainly named my character “Cody” and colored him black as night. I thought this feature was very unique because it was almost as if a part of me was in the game itself, even though it was just a black robot. Ha, we learn much later that he’s not a robot, but a buff dude in armor. Our first game was on a small map called Battle Creek. It had identical bases located across from each other, one being marked red and the other one blue. A small creek separated the bases as it flowed through center of the map just below a large ark formation made of rock. Many other rocks littered the ground in front of both of the bases while certain paths led up to a cliff and rewarded us with access to a sniper rifle. Behind each base was a teleporter that if walked through, would transfer us behind the opposite base. This made life easy to sneak up behind the enemy, ready to wreak havoc. My brother and I struggled to get use to the duel joysticks on the controller, one allowed movement and the other allowed looking around. We chased each other throughout this rocky maze shooting all sorts of different weapons and grenades at each other until it came to an abrupt end with my last kill. Our first reaction left us stunned and the only words worthy of a response were, “holy shit”. We handed off the controllers to our cousins while the joyful experience caught up with us giving us an excitement we hadn’t felt for a game in years.
After spending a couple of hours with this first person mystery that we had previously thought was probably a crappy game (we were wrong), we immediately related it to Turok 2. In the years prior to moving to Cheyenne permanently, we would spend hours playing Turok 2’s multiplayer, which had the same run around and shoot people mentality that this new Halo game did. We loved Turok, but at that moment in my grandparent’s dark, unfinished basement, we found a replacement for a game we hadn’t thought about in ages. We had forgotten how much fun games could really be, and that day has been permanently etched in my memory. At first, multiplayer was all we would play, especially after we realized my Uncle enjoyed it as much as we did. Honestly, too much was never enough when it came to shooting the snot out of each other and we simply never got bored, not unless you were the only person in the game room staring at an empty map with nothing but rocks and walls to shoot. Surprise, surprise, multiplayer wasn’t any fun without other people there to share the experience, which soon made me realize that the multiplayer was only a presage of what was to come next.
I was sitting in my Uncle’s game room by myself during a weekday and it was a lackluster experience without anyone there to share it with. I remember it was dark and rainy outside and I could hear the muffled voices from my family members upstairs. My boredom was a raging appetite that couldn’t seem to be quenched. I thought about popping in some of the other games my Uncle had but the thought of it made my stomach ache a little bit. I knew they would bore me, probably more so than I already was. Eventually I made my way to the Xbox and put Halo in, regardless of the fact that there was no one there to compete with me, but instead I figured I’d explore the other avenues that were presented on Halo’s main page. Other than the settings option, campaign was the only open road that looked compatible for a single player. With my boredom itching at me, I had hoped that the campaign would scratch it. I could tell from the very get go that this story would be different than that of any other game I’ve ever played, and that’s not including how much the multiplayer has made me realize the potential this game had. It began with this massive cut scene that introduced the game to me and immediately showed off how amazing its graphics, dialogue, and characters were. It all seemed to pop out at me as if I were reading a book with pop up pictures. No, it wasn’t 3D, but everything did stand out very well, especially when I got to the part where it showed the dude sleeping in some tight nit chamber that would make a claustrophobic person like me cry for his mommy.
As soon as the scene was over, I assumed the role of the man sleeping in that chamber (Master Chief is what they called him). He was wearing green armor and a helmet that had a reflective gold tinted visor. I did find it odd that he slept in full body armor, almost as if he knew the ship would be under attack when they woke him up. It was a jaw dropping moment for me to have watched this cut scene as it introduced this guy, and the next moment I am controlling him, sitting upright in the same chamber I just saw in the scene. The dudes that let me out of the chamber began to take me through a series of diagnostic tests that looked like it was making sure the character’s armor was okay, but the tests were really meant for the gamer sitting just outside of the fictional world. I ran through the tests and calibrated the settings that worked best for me, wow that was an awesome way to do that and keep me in the plot at the same time. For the first time ever, the story made me feel like I was the character because even though they were talking to the Chief, it was really me they were focused on. Shortly after the testing was completed I was forced to leave the area without a weapon because the Captain needed me on the bridge ASAP. I followed the chappy fellow dressed in a Star Trek looking jumpsuit out of the cryo bay and down a corridor towards a door that exploded and killed him. With my chaperone moving onto a better place, I was forced to find an alternate route, a route that aimed to teach me the controls of the game. I jumped over a barrier, I crouched beneath door that didn’t lift all the way, and I ran into a dark hallway that forced me to use my flashlight. I neared the end of the hallway as the double doors slid sideways out of sight, only to be introduced to my first enemy. He was standing inches from my face belting out a loud roar. Since I didn’t possess a weapon yet, I just waited for him to rip my defenseless face off. Fortunately to my rescue, two marines started shooting the large blue humanoid thing (I found out later it’s called an Elite), which allowed me to escape past him and on towards the bridge where Captain Keyes waited patiently for me alongside the AI Cortana. As soon as I got there and saw the Captain looking as some schematics or something, the game smoothly rotated into a cut scene. Only this wasn’t a normal action cut scene, but a brief on my mission and the introduction to Cortana, the Halo games comic relief and best ally.
The first fifteen minutes of that game left me dumbfounded and speechless as I peeled my eyes away from the television screen to go find someone to share this with. Never in my life had played a game that literally sucked me into the virtual world as if I were Master Chief himself. The way the game introduced me to its control scheme in the first person view as I was struggling to get to the bridge was amazing, and the way the game cut in and out of cut scenes effortlessly allowed me to feel as if I was the protagonist himself. The whole experience was utterly astonishing to me. I wasn’t the only one who thought that, because my Uncle had gotten to see that too and on top of it he introduced me to my new favorite game type, cooperative pay. We had fallen in love with this co-op element and swiftly moved our way through this amazing story together. That was the best part, playing the game by myself gave me some sort of fear, just knowing that I was literally by myself, but co-op allowed me to have someone there to back me up. We thought the game couldn’t get any better or more interesting, until we reached the climax of the story. It was this one part of the game that really solidified how legendary it really was. Up to this point we’d been fighting the Covenant (a religious alien enemy made up of multiple different species) and were on a mission to find Captain Keyes. We get to the area where he was last located and try to find out where in that area he was. The Chief was now by himself, making his way beneath the earth in search for the fearless Captain. We finally reach our destination, deep beneath the ring world and slip into an epic cut scene. The Chief makes his way through a locked door, witnessing the death and destruction that already took place on the other side. Chief, in a very military like manner, makes his way over to an abandoned helmet and pulls a data card from it. Being the super human bad ass that he is, he was able to view the video within his own helmet. What we witnessed then was nothing short of the most epic and story altering footage I’ve ever seen, even to this day. The film footage that Chief was watching was the first hand experience of Pvt Jenkins, a marine assigned to Captain Keyes’s group. The footage was taken by a camera attached to his helmet that closely resembled that of the marines in the movie Aliens. Actually, the whole scene gave me the same suspense and fear of that in Aliens when they first encounter the hostile E.T. Perhaps not to the same degree as the movie, but I’d say pretty close. Instead of going into great detail about this particular scene, I’ll post a video so you can see it for yourself.
After viewing this for the first time you may not have the same reaction my Uncle and I did, which was, “HOLY SHIT!” Of course we’d invested time into playing and living this story which was so enthralling that we had gotten emotionally attached to Captain Keyes and the other characters in the game, the same way one would viewing a film. Eventually we finished the game and were left wanting much more after the ending hinted that there could possibly be more. We didn’t necessarily mean a sequel, but by more we went through the campaign again on co-op on the hardest difficulty, and again, and again, and again. I think we completed the game at least fifteen to twenty times. I eventually got tired of having to go hangout with my Uncle in order to play Halo, so I used the ancient option that Wal-Mart use to have to reserve my own Xbox and a copy of Halo. That option was Lay-A-Way, you remember that? Yeah it doesn’t exist anymore, but it was easy for me to have them set aside my product while it took me about three months to pay it off. It felt like I was saving money forever, but it was well worth the wait. The first time I played Halo on my tiny television was as surreal for me as it could get. To this day, I’ve never played a campaign as much as Halo one and the game itself was an epiphany to what I really enjoy in a good game. The story really sucked me in from the get go, making me feel as if I were the character himself, fighting a losing battle against an enemy that is ruthless and merciless in its conquest to destroy the human race. Sure we’ve seen the story told before, but this was different in the aspect that the characters were loveable and memorable people (or AI) that you cared about and wanted to see overcome the impossible.
It was almost as if Microsoft and Bungie (Halo’s developer) planted me as a seed to spread the news of how awesome they are. I have gotten many people hooked to playing Halo and I like to think my friend Bryan is one of them. I’m pretty sure I introduced the game to him, but in time he was hooked and wound up purchasing his own console. My cousins bought their own console as well; the world was being overrun by the Xbox craze. After some time my Uncle introduced an absolutely new way to enjoy Halo. He called it a LAN party, this is where we would all get together (typically at my grandparent’s house), and network our Xboxes together so that we could all play in the same multiplayer game, yet on different screens. Multiplayer on Halo became had become our vice again, and it was utterly addicting. I shouldn’t say vice, but it’s the only word I can really think of because it was like a drug to us, or at least for me anyway. We were able to fit more than four people into one game, how sweet was that? During the school year we could only have a LAN party on the weekends, but we would do so with freaking style. Pizza? Check. Soda? Check. Four televisions? Check. Plenty of Xboxes? Check. Owning the shit out of each other for hours? On the way. Occasionally, when all the family happens to be in town, we’ll still throw a random LAN party here and there. It’s never the same though because nothing can really match that original awesomeness when something new has been discovered.
I’m going to side track here for a second to talk about one of my favorite moments with the Halo one LAN parties we had. I can’t remember what day of the week it was, but I’m pretty sure it was a weekend. We kept the basement rather dark (the basement being finished now at my Grandpa’s house) so that we could see our own screens much better. There were about eight of us there playing, all family except my buddy Bryan and my other Playstation loving friend Riccardo. Riccardo was funny as hell because he would always choose the random name option and for some reason he always got the name, “Cupid”. If he decided to get an Xbox, I’d beg him to make that his gamertag, but I doubt he’ll ever get one because he prefers a crappy system. So we start up a game of capture the flag (CTF) on Sidewinder, one of our favorite maps of all time. It was a large map covered in snow and ice and like most maps that came with the game, it had identical bases. There were vehicles on this map because of how large it was and teleporters that helped ease the process of running on foot. It was the section in the middle where we would always get into a nice little firefight ending in one or both of the efforts having to restart from the base. The thing that was so unique about this particular battle was that it lasted for freaking three or more hours. Capture the flag is a gametype that is played out exactly as the name states. Each team has to steal the other team’s flag and return it to their own base, but that’s not an easy task when the teams seem to be evenly matched. After a couple of hours of playing, the match got extremely intense because the score was tied 2-2, and the first one to three would be the winner. I cannot remember exactly who won the match (but I’m pretty sure my team pulled the victory home), but I will never forget this. Riccardo (Cupid) stole the flag, hopped into a ghost (an alien hovercraft) and started his journey home to win the game. Typically, if the other team made it into a vehicle with your flag, then it was gone forever, but I wasn’t going to put up with that. Luckily I was running on foot in the area I would consider to being the bottom middle of the map (long way around) when I see Cupid flying his purple machine around the corner. He was far enough away that he didn’t see me, but not far enough for my sniper to be out of range. I aimed in as quickly as I could and with one swift shot to his pink face (he did wear pink armor to accompany his cute name), the flag was set free. Moments later I returned it to my base and let the match carry on. That game lasted so long because, other than not setting a time limit, the defense was amazing on both sides. I’d say my team worked harder on defense though because the other team only needed one person to put us to sleep the second he saw our faces. That’s right, Uncle Eric stood in the same damn spot the entire match, wielding a giant rocket launcher that obliterated us before we knew what was going on. Did we learn from this the first thirty times he killed us like that? Nope, like ignorant morons we kept running into the same trap and continued to meet the same fate. Didn’t I post in part one the definition of insanity? Yeah. I honestly wish all the matches I’ve played in Halo were as fun and suspenseful as this particular game was.
After so much enjoyment with the campaign and multiplayer, I couldn’t seem to get enough of the Halo universe and its story. I happened to come across another way to expand my ever growing dorkyness that carried the Halo story much further. It was in a different format than a game though; I think people call it reading. I was browsing through the books at the local Barnes N Noble one day when I came across a Halo Novel. It was titled, “The Fall of Reach”. Not really sure what that meant, but the cover stated that it was the official prequel to the Halo game. With a little more research I found a second Halo Novel that was written about the game. I bought them both without question, read them, loved them and wanted more of them. I can remember going camping with my family and my buddy Bryan one time, and Bryan and I would be arguing over who gets to read the next chapter. We were addicted to the story, even more so than before, and instead of just talking about the game, we wound up talking about the story in general and what could have happened here, or why Spartans are like this or that. Two jocks that love football sitting around discussing something most people would fit into the Star Wars and Star Trek geekyness category wasn’t a normal sight. Why should we care though, we loved it, still do love it.
If you’re at the point where you think that this part of my epic blog should be about finished, well you’re wrong. I’ve only tapped into Halo one and it’s far from complete. Early 2004, which happened to be my senior year, Halo one was re-released on the PC. Meh, whatever. My original thought was, “why buy it on PC? I already own it for Xbox.” The answer came in the form of two simple words. Online multiplayer. Um, yes please. My Uncle had purchased the game and I would frequent his place, playing it online. But Bryan purchased this as well and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t at his house all the time taking turns with him playing the snot out of it. On the weekends we’d be up until like three in the morning just playing non-stop Halo like a couple of crack addicted retards. Before you get the wrong impression about how this story is going, we did do tons of other stuff besides play games. Hell we were involved with football, jobs, girlfriends, friends. Heck I remember one night after a football game we’d lost, Bryan and I got stupid drunk on vodka only to wake up late for practice on Saturday morning. Generally we’d only watch some film and lift weights, but the coach was a little mad about our loss the night before. We ran forever without a water break and spent another eternity pushing the lineman sled around the entire practice field. On top of all that, Bryan and I got extra laps to run because we were late. Bryan decided to go all out on our last lap and sprinted the whole way before I could even get to the second turn. Needless to say he threw up everything he’d consumed in the previous week, hell from where I saw, it looked like a year’s worth of vomit. The boy probably didn’t need to shit for a week after that. We all had a talk about coming off the sauce from the coach because we most likely wreaked of the nasty alcohol we made ourselves stupid with night before, and I’m sure the field smelled like it after Bryan painted it with previously consumed alcohol. Fortunately McDonalds dropped off like three boxes full of big macs. I think I ate like three of them, but it wasn’t enough to keep me out of bed all day. I actually don’t drink that much because of that whole situation, ug, my tummy feels sick just thinking about it.
So anyway, we would play the snot out to Halo PC at Bryan’s house, so much so that I had to wind up buying my own copy just so I didn’t have to take turns. I got pretty decent online but I quickly had come to the realization that even though I was rarely beat by my family and friends, people online were much better than I could hope to be. I didn’t fair too bad though, just not as godlike as I had originally thought. One day my Uncle had told me that there was a Halo tournament coming up for the PC version and that we should go to it. I’m not sure what the prize for winning it would've been, but I was ready to go test my skills out against the noobs that were dumb enough to test me. One problem though, he said I needed an alias, a gamertag, a different name to be called by. I wasn’t really sure what to choose and pondered over what I should call myself. Haloman? Halogod? Halodude? CodyHalo? All gay, but I give thanks to my Uncle for simply blurting it out, “How about Halotitan?” After my feeble brain needed explanation on what a Titan was, I decided that I loved it. That’s how my nickname originated a whopping seven years ago. Most people just call me Titan unless they know me in real life, then they just call me by the human name given to me after I was captured. We didn’t go to the tourney, so I’ll never know how famous I could’ve become.
Three years of Halo had passed us by, three years of gaming non-stop, reading the books, watching the machinima (online parodies made using games, most notably Red Vs Blue, see video for sample), and playing online. Finally, a bombshell was dropped on us; Halo 2 was in development and was due to come out in November. As a kid, did you get that excited feeling in your stomach the night before Christmas in anticipation of what Santa was going to leave under the tree? If so, that’s the feeling I got when I saw the E3 game play trailer (see video) that Bungie released. Could this be happening? We can finally have more of a game that we played non-stop almost since the day it was released? In the months that followed we kept a close eye on the progress of the game as Bungie creatively leaked small portions of info that would keep us intrigued and ancy as we waited the pending release. Finally the day had come for Halo 2 to hit shelves across America and along with so many people, we stood in line for a midnight release. First we stopped at CB&Potts to enjoy some tasty chicken wings and pool, and as the hour neared and the line grew, we ran across the way to take our spots. So many nerds and geeks like myself, Bryan, Cousin Brandon, and my Uncle, chanted Halo 2! Halo 2! One gamer joyfuly rang out, “GTA San Andreas is old news! Bring on Halo!” It was an exciting time that seemed to last forever. We made our way to the front as the people before us came out of the store showing off their copy of the game, no doubt heading to their house to partake in the continuation of Master Chief’s epic journey. Alongside the game I also bought a dorky Halo 2 t-shirt, one that I still wear today. Bryan came to my house after my copy was in our possession and the first thing we did was play the online multiplayer. Console gaming online was a pretty new feature to us and exciting none the less. I played the first few games as two in the morning inched closer to us. Bryan took over as I lay down on my bed to watch, but I knew little of how tired I actually was and woke up six hours later to Bryan still playing the game! I thought it was a tad silly that he didn’t buy the game himself, but we made a short trip to circuit city (RIP) so he could get a copy for himself before he went home to catch some Z's.
Halo 2’s greatest feature was in its multiplayer, a feature that I feel Bungie spent more time on. The story was good, but I suppose, and this goes for all things, that the sequel will never live up to the original. Part of the reason the campaign wasn’t as good is because of some of the glichy errors that weren’t fixed prior to the game releasing. This annoyed my Uncle so bad that he didn’t even care to play it (but we did, and on co-op our first time as well). Another reason the campaign didn’t live up to our expectations is because it was relatively short and it ended with the worst cliffhanger ever. I don’t think the ending was terrible because the story sucked, and in fact, whenever I see it, I still get goose bumps. It sucked because the story was great and suspenseful and it just ended abruptly making us want much, much more. Halo 2 was a great game, probably my favorite in the entire series, but I think it’s my favorite because of how amazing the multiplayer was (RIP). I spent more hours playing against people online than I ever did playing Halo one, period. It was because of the online play that our LAN parties began to die down considerably. We would rarely come together to own each other because it lacked the competition that the online portion gave us. When we did get together, we would still experience the same old natural fun, and we would often refer back to Halo one for some old school game play. One memorable moment in a Halo 2 LAN came when we played a community created custom game called Zombies. One person would start out as the zombie and was only allowed to use the sword, while everyone else could use their guns. If the zombie killed someone, the honor system came into check and the person would switch to the zombies team. We would have epic confrontations on an awesome map called Headlong and all survivors would stick together to wipe out any approaching bad guys. Cupid and my brother eventually dubbed this gametype “La Résistance”, a name that we still use to call it, even though it was dubbed "Infection" by Bungie.
Halo 2 kept us occupied for another three years as we waiting for the long overdue conclusion to the trilogy. I had joined the military since (as well as Bryan), and would only be able to receive updates on Halo 3 when my uncle mailed me articles about it. My TI called me a fat nerd when he saw what was being sent to me, but I didn’t care, he was a total douche bag anyway. In September of 2007, Halo 3 was finally released. I was now married with a kid on the way and lived in Mississippi, far away from the family that helped keep this game so fresh to me after all those years. Luckily for us, online co-op was an added feature. I again waited in line with one of my new friends from the dirty south and when I got home, I played the campaign online with Bryan and my Uncle until the game was beat. We stayed up all night “finishing the fight” and it's one of my favorite Halo memories. If it wasn’t for the online co-op, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it as much. The story was much better than that of Halo 2, and close in comparison to Halo one’s story. Months after this game released I noticed a pattern, I started growing up a little bit (although my wife would disagree), and played much less Halo 3 than the other two. It was going out of style for me, and that’s hard because I’m so connected to the game. Two years later they released Halo 3 ODST, which was a sign that the series was devolving that much more. That game sucked so bad that I wasn’t sure I would buy another Halo game. I'm a nut for Halo though so I did buy the next game. It was a year later that Halo Reach came out. The game was changed completely. So much so that it didn’t feel like Halo anymore. I don’t even want to talk about it to be honest. The game was pretty good, but it was too big of a change to make me drool anymore.
Now what does Halo mean to me in my eyes of how games evolved? It’s simple; it’s the game series that opened my eyes to how well stories can be told in a way that makes me, the gamer, feel like I’m a part of the fictional world that was created. It’s the game that started me on a path to being a gamer because I feel a special connection with it. It opened my eyes to a different way to tell a story and get involved with its universe. I’ve had so many experiences with this game and it’s story, shared them with so many people, that it has become more than just a game, it’s become a time honored tradition, and no matter how many crappy Halo games they plan on releasing in the future, this Halo nut will continue to fork out money from his tiny paycheck to play them. Oh, and did I mention that I own and read all the other six books that were released over the years? Yeah, they rock man.
Hey, stay tuned for Part III, I’ll be talking about the games that I played alongside Halo that kept me intrigued with the different types of game play and unique story telling. I may also be talking about another Epic (clue) game that has further evolved the gaming industry and was the inspiration for this entire blog series. Thanks for hanging in there, see you next time.
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