The Halo Story

Sorry about that. So today we're going to talk about something we've actually had requests about this for ages. We've had people ask us about Halo and the games of Halo, and all my notes are about Beyonce. Is that a problem you can see your Halo? Yeah, that is a problem in more ways than one. But we'll talk about

that after the show. So we want to talk about the games of Halo and sort of the development the story of Halo, if you will, because to talk about the technology that's within Halo is kind of silly in a way because the games are set in the twenty sixth century, and as it turns out, the technology of the twenty six century is different from the technology we have today. In order to explain how things would work,

we'd have to make stuff up. Well, we've talked about the tartists, yes, and we had to make stuff up. Uh So, not entirely. We're gonna talk about kind of the development of these games and when, where they came from, and how they evolved over time. Uh So, let's let's cast our minds back to the mid nineties. Actually, if you don't mind, I'd like to go back just a hair further. Oh all right, you go round on the head just just a little. I will follow you wherever

you may go. Um, there's a song in there. Somewhere there is a mountain two high. A couple of a couple of guys, Alexander's Seropian and uh Jason Jones. Um basically got together. They had both been working on writing software. Um. In fact, Alexander came up with the amazing game, which was a clone of Pong called knop Ah. So what did you play a ball that had knock paddles back and forth? Um? Well, I don't know. I actually haven't seen stuff. But they essentially they got together. They wanted

to do this. Uh for well, let let me start by saying this all of all of you out there who have a project, and I'm speaking to myself also in addition, UM, who have a project and you want to do it, not because you want to become the next billionaire, but mostly because you can, and you just trying to get motivated to see what happens if you can do it, but you just haven't gotten there yet. Listen, you know, to the story of of Jason and Alexander.

Not Jason Alexander. That's different, UM, because they essentially started writing these programs because they wanted to see if they could do it. And at least according to the information I dug up on the Bungee website, UM, because what what they essentially did was they started writing software and they wanted to see if they could sell it. And they were selling, you know, a couple of thousand copies

copies of their early games like Minotaur, UM. And then you know, they they basically made it through the early nineties and started Bungee, this software company that was making games primarily for the Macintosh simply because um, that was the operating system they knew well more than any other really, UM. And they they started growing bigger and bigger, and they were one of many UH Macintosh game developers in the early to mid nineties. Um, but you know, they they

moved up. As as Jonathan was get ready to say before I interrupted him so harshly. Um, you know they with every game they released, they were gradually more successful. And Uh. But one of the things is that they wanted to create games that had something more to them than just uh, straight gameplay. They wanted to have a story and a narrative that went along with it exactly. And and in the mid nineties, Bungee, which was called Bungee Software Products Corporation at the time, began to work

on a series of games called Marathon. It's called the Marathon Trilogy. There's Marathon, Marathon to Durandall, and Marathon Infinity, which were released in nine respectively. And Uh. These games set up a science fiction, futuristic world. They were first person shooter games. They were for the Mac platform, so therefore the mac os and UH you took the role of a character who was aboard at least in the first game, you were board a colony ship called Marathon.

And Uh. There were certain themes that were created in this game that would later end up re emerging in the Halo series, So having a first person shooter having to be a science fiction setting. Uh. There were aliens in the games, and of course in the Halo series there aliens. Will talk about them in a minute, Uh.

They It also created the idea and this is not unique of course to games that Bungees created, but it created the idea of a an ancient civilization that's responsible for some incredibly sophisticated technology that has since been lost. Everybody else, like you occasionally come across a remnant of it and you think, wow, this must be really amazing and maybe this can still work in some capacity, but you have very little understanding of it. That was sort

of established in these games. Also, another important element that ended up playing a big role in various parts of Halo is the idea of artificial intelligence. So you have these these personalities, these AI personalities that are individuals. You know, they have a sense of identity and personality. Um. And the idea of an AI going rampant, rampantcy rampantcy is in the Marathon universe and also somewhat in the Halo universe.

This idea that an AI can become not only self aware but self actualized, like it can start to behave on its own, and it starts to lose coherence insanity over time, so that it actually starts to break down, and it can become a dangerous thing. This this AI can become destructive, and it can become resentful of its creators, of the whatever physical construct it inhabits. And these are ideas that also carry over into the Halo Universe to

some extent. We haven't seen a lot of it in the direct Halo games, but a lot of it has come out in the various novels, um and other tie ins to the Halo universe, including one that I'll talk about briefly, Uh, the Red Versus Blue series. You know, we had the creator of that series, Bernie Burns, We had him on our show not too long ago to talk about the development of Red Versus Blue. Well, Red

Versus Blue also continues this idea of rampancy and AI. Uh. It becomes a very central part of the story in Red Versus Blue. So they sort of took that same sort that same idea and adapted it for their story. Now, keep in mind, the Red Versus Blue universe and the Halo universe are kind of uh like cousins. You know, the Red versus Blue universe does not directly tie into the story of Halo. They just kind of splits splits off, sort of like the Evil Goatee version of Spock and uh.

The Marathon Games took place in the twenty eight and twenty ninth centuries, so it actually, from the perspective of Halo, takes place in the future. Right. Anyway, the Marathon Universe and the Halo universe are a kind of spiritual cousins, but not directly related. So the the things that happened in Halo are not necessarily things that will take place in the history of the Marathon Universe. It's just meant to Like, some of the ideas that came up in

Marathon also came up in Halo. So the Marathon games come out for the Mac in the nineties and in nine one other element I meant to mention, all three of those games had very important story elements. What you

were talking about, this idea of creating a story. They had very important story elements that would be told to the player through the use of terminals that had these Ai personalities inhabiting them, and you would get missions through the terminals, you would also get more information about the world and the mythology that was being built around this whole game system or a series of games rather and UH and Bungee was very proud of that, and it was again a very central part of this game, and

it kind of set it apart from other first person shooters, which when you get boiled down to it, a lot of first person shooters essentially boiled down to You're a dude in a place with a lot of bad guys, you got a gun, try to get to the other side of the map, like that's the that's the extent of the story for a lot of these games, and

Bungee wanted to make something a little more deep and complex. Well, Bungee announced the successor to the Marathon series in a way, again the spiritual successor, and this was the Halo game UH.

In fact, originally it was thought of as just a standalone game Halo what would eventually become Halo Combat evolved and the first unveiling of this was it wasn't early an official unveiling, but they held closed door sessions at E three and where they would invite certain people to come back and see the game that was in development, and at this time it was in development for the Mac. Yeah.

One of the things that that Bungee did, um well Marathon really established him is one of the leaders in Mac game development, and um you know talking about that in the mid nineties is basically establishing yourself among a small handful of other developers really, um because gaming for the Mac at that time was just not that strong. Speaking as a Mac user of that time, yeah, their their entire videos online from that era that are devoted

to you know, the the laments of the Mac gamer. Yeah, yeah, well there um uh Bungee and Blizzard both were very devoted to the Mac and UH Marathon was something of a appointed pride in a way for a lot of my friends who um, you know, there were there were games. There were gamers in the Windows side who were interested in playing and they couldn't because they had a PC. Well they did port. Um they began to port the

UH Marathon series over two windows. Um and you know they became a Bungee became a more um, well rounded developer. They started releasing things for Windows and Mac. But um uh you know, they had a series of others like myth the Myth series. One into UM, which was you know, sort of a strategy type game you weren't playing as a as a third player, the third person game UM, and then UH and then Only, which was sort of a third person shooter. I am actually wearing my on

E T shirt which I got in Mac World. UH. And they when they announced Halo at Macworld, which was which was earlier in the year than E three, which I think is kind of important to point out for the timeline of this UM. The fans were excited because here was this you know, it was planned for the Mac. They were really excited about playing this brand new game. If if you were around back when they released Halo

or you know, we're starting to promote Halo UM. They were going to release it for multiple platforms UM, Windows, PC and UH and Mac and UM at least one console if I remember correctly. And the thing is, you know this it started generating buzz at Macworld, It picked up at E three well heck, I mean Steve Jobs himself came out during the keynote from Macworld and he talked about this game. And again this was a way to show how the Mac could be a great platform

for games. And so he was pointing this out as an example, and uh, yeah, I got a great reaction when people saw what the demo for this, this game, which you know, in in compared to what eventually came out, was fairly primitive, although it's still look great. Well. Then in two thousand, everything changes because Microsoft acquired Bungee in that year, and uh, the development of Halo switches from primarily being a Mac game to being an Xbox title,

one of the launch titles for the Xbox System. And I read that the Bungee executives at the time, we're really you know, considering this carefully when Microsoft came to them with this acquisition deal, because they had a couple

of different pathways open to them. Remaining independent would have been uh probably the I think everyone would have preferred that the most, except for the fact that it's uncertain when you're an independent company and you don't have that that benefit of a larger parent company to help get you through tough time times. You know, you you stand or fall based upon how your products do, and the success of one product is not necessarily guarantee necessarily guaranteed

the success of the next product. However, they were also worried about selling to a company that would just want to turn them into a production company, that all it did was port games from other platforms to the Mac and that would be all they would do. They didn't want that to happen. But then when Microsoft came to them, they saw Microsoft as a company that was getting very very interested and very serious about games, and they felt that that was a good match for their their work culture,

and so they did make that deal with Microsoft. And so that's when Halo switched from being primarily a mac os game to an Xbox game, although it elso came out for PC um and it was in on November two thousand one when Halo Combat Evolved released for the Xbox m man I was. I was an Xbox owner, early Xbox owner, and Halo was one of the games that I played throughout the entire time that I had

that Xbox. I mean, i've I was a hardcore Halo fan, and I loved playing the the the campaign, even the infamous Library level, which I will talk about in a second. And uh I also loved hooking up the Xbox to other Xboxes and playing in land parties against other players, which was a preview of what was to come once Xbox Live launched and people were able to play online against each other and call each other names that I didn't even know could exist until I got online and

heard a twelve year old called them out to me. Um, yeah there are Um. This really through the gaming world into a bit of a tizzy. UM. You know, Bungee had made some some deals. They had a partnership with Take two. Uh you know them from the Grand Theft Auto series. Um and uh you know this was right about the time Only was supposed to have been released. Um. Take two ended up with the rights to owny and

and published it. Um and Uh, Bungee did shift primarily to developing for the Xbox, although um, the Windows and later the Mac got their copies eventually. UM. Uh so you know, but this was this was a bit of a major shift. Uh. The PlayStation two, by the way, never did see its version of Halo. I wonder why. You can't imagine why. Um, but yeah, this was this was kind of a big deal. UM. I understand too that Activision was courting Bungee as well, but Microsoft ended

up on top. Um and then it was released with I don't know some minor you know, praise. Yeah. So, if you are one of the few people out there who has no idea what the storyline of Halo is all about, I'll kind of boil it down for you. And keep in mind, this story has been fleshed out quite a bit with supplemental material in the form of novels,

comic books, um and and other media as well. But if you were to just take the content that's in the games themselves and string it together chronologically based upon the release of the games, this is how the story unfolds. So the game opens up, Halo Combat Involved opens up with this massive spaceship coming out of what it's called slipstream space, and it's essentially like warp drive. You're working

space around so that you can travel faster than light. Uh. It is in an era where faster than light travel is is uh not only you know, not only something we can do, but something that's fairly common in human space travels at this point, and you and the overpopulation problems of Earth have gotten to the point where the colonization of other plants was a necessity. And one of the plants that that humans colonized was called Reach, and on Reach, you had this massive human colony which covers

most of the planet. But twenty years before the opening of the game, the humans came into contact with a confederation of alien races called the Covenant. The Covenant have this very uh hierarchical religious view of the galaxy, and they think of humans as being evil and they need to be wiped out, their unclean creatures that have to be destroyed. And so there's this massive battle that took place on Reach before the events of Halo open, and the ship that your character is on the Pillar of

Autumn has just escaped Reach into slipstream space. It comes out of slipstream space, and no one's really sure where they are because they just had to make a getaway as fast as possible and they couldn't really plan it out. So your character is known as John H. John one seventeen. You're never really given a full identity for your character, and he's mostly known by his H, his designation of

master Chief, his Master Chief petty Officer um. And he is a spartan, which is a super soldier, a cybernetic, biologically engineered soldier who is stronger, faster, more capable than your typical soldier. Is also has the ability to store and artificially intelligent UH personality within his armor, so he can carry around with him in AI that can further

augment his abilities. He's incrogenic sleep at the beginning and has woken up when the ship comes out of slipstream space and it is right in front of this enormous ring shaped space station. And the space station is huge.

It's ten thousand kilometers in diameter, and UH it's so large that there are ecosystems that have developed upon the surface, both surfaces, the inner and outer ring of this space station, and on Most of the stuff in the space station, of course, is on the interior of the ring, the inside the rings guts, but there's all this other stuff that's on the outside. And meanwhile, the Covenant guys are right hot on the tail of the Pillar of Autumn.

So Master Chiefs UH purpose in the first game is really to protect the artificial intelligent UH construct called Cortana, and to protect the location of the Earth so that the Covenant don't figure out where the Earth is, and also to figure out what the heck this ring thing is, because no one seems to know, and the Covenant they don't know, but they it's something in their legends that they think that this is a tool they're supposed to use in order to reach their religious enlightenment to go

on the Great Journey. And it turns out that the Ring is something that was built by this ancient race of aliens that were very, very advanced called the Forerunners. So again that's pulling that same sort of idea that they developed a marathon and employing it in Halo. And as the game progresses, I mean, there's gonna be lots of spoilers in this, but if you haven't played the first Halo game, then I don't know why you're listening

to this episode. Uh, the on that Ring, they discover that there is a race of parasitic aliens called the Flood, which can infect other races, sentient races and take them over. And uh, you discover throughout the story that the Halo devices themselves are actually a weapon, a defense system designed by the Forerunners to wipe out the Flood. The way they do this is they flood the entire galaxy and

energy that kills any sentient creature. So, in other words, you kill off the Flood by killing off the food supply. Here's The problem is that humans are technically essentient creatures, so if they were to actually turn on this device, they would wipe themselves out. So then on top of everything else, Master Chief needs to try and destroy this Halo device to make sure that the Covenant doesn't turn it on and kill everybody, and as you play the game,

you end up being able to do that. Uh. You do have this one level called the Library, which is filled mostly with the flood but also some covenant, which goes on forever and has essentially the same hallway like five times. It's crazy, especially if you're playing on the harder difficulties. It was one of those levels that gamers often would sort of complain about because they felt that one it was really repetitive, and two it was really really difficult, and three it was incredibly long, So it

had all those things going for it. Oh, and the armor you wear, I love the name of the armor you wear, the Older Mark five. The Older or Mew Mew is of course the name of Four's Mighty hammer. So there are a lot of things like that in the game, where different chips and UH and and equipment have these cool names to it and um in the game you have the human based weapons, which are all sort of things like you know, battle rifles, so they're

kind of like machine guns, things like that, pistols, sniper rifles. Uh. Then you have the Covenant weapons, which are all these sort of energy based weapons, and the two have very different abilities and they're useful in different situations, and that kind of set the basic premise of the Halo series.

And again, there was a lot more story going on than you would necessarily first notice if you were just playing the game through as a first person shooter and you weren't really paying attention to that, And that story ended up getting fleshed out quite a bit by the

other materials. So that's the that's the basis for the first game, and and the end of the first game, assuming you succeed, you destroy the Halo structure, and then you uh you are the only really the only person to escape, while one of two depending upon how you look at it, and you make your way back to uh, the Earth to figure out what the heck is going on. So that game ended up being really, really, really popular. It was not meant to be the first of a

series of games. It was kind of a self contained story However, with the game like this, with with it being such a hit, and it being owned by Microsoft, which had such high expectations for the Xbox and this title, how could you not have Halo two? Yeah? And uh, Fortunately, I would say the sequels of Halo, a game that did not was not made to be the first in a series, they were much more successful at continuing that

story than say a movie like Highlander too. Once again, if you watched the first Highlander, you realize this is a movie that was not meant to be the first in a series. It has a very definitive end um. But Halo managed to succeed in areas where Highlander did not. So on November nine, two thousand four, Halo two comes out, and it is incredibly popular. It's already I mean, people are eager to continue the story, and you have the

added bonus of online multiplayer games. Yeah. Yeah, the uh Halo two first debuted well at any point where people could see it at E three, two thousand three, um, at the Halo two theater, yep um. And if you've ever seen pictures of any of these expos you know that, um, the companies that are find them spend a lot of money on the stuff they really want to promote, um and it could include anything from lots of banners and lights and all sorts of funky electronic stuff to giants.

It it's it can be amazing. But yes, they they Microsoft built a a theater so that people could actually see Halo two in action. You walk into this big conference room floor and it's it's not even recognizable as a conference from floor in some parts, because you've got these massive structures in place, including theaters, which show off

various games. And yeah, you can actually find videos on YouTube of the different Halo preview events where people get that look and the reaction you hear from the crowd, like these are hardcore fans of these games. Now E three is supposed to be an industry only event, although in certain years they did open to the public. Um But even as an industry only event, you hear people really react in a very vocal way when they see these Halo games. M previewed well. When it came out

in two thousand four, it was very popular. It did make some interesting there were some interesting choices in the game. Uh, it picks up where the first game left left off, but the Covenant end up discovering the location of Earth, and they're because there's a big battle that takes place on Earth to try and fight off the Covenant and to cut them off before they can tell the rest

of the Covenant where Earth is. Because this is just one little branch of the Covenant Armada, they're actually looking for something and they happen to find Earth because they're looking for something else that turns out to be on Earth. Uh spoiler alert for the end of this story, Master Chief ends up having to fight them off. Then he has to pursue a fleeing Covenant ship before it can find the rest of the Covenant Armada and let them know where Earth is. And in the process, they discover

a second Halo Ring. So this is where you find out that they there are several Halo rings throughout the galaxy that are set up in this defense network, and the first one was just one of many. Uh. Aboard that second Halo Ring, they discover a creature called the Grave Mind, which is the leader of the flood on that particular installation, installation five, and it turns out it's very intelligent and it's very manipulative. It ends up manipulating

Master Chief and an Elite. Now, the Elites are one of the races of aliens that are belown to the Covenant, and one of the elites is called the Arbiter, which was a disgraced Elite. Was disgraced because it's the one that takes the blame for the first Halo blowing up in the first game. So this is the elite that takes the blame for that and gets UM. It's title changed to Arbiter and it ends up being one of

the controllable characters within the game. So unlike the first Halo where you just play his Master Chief, in Halo two, you play as Master Chief and also as the Arbiter, and it kind of alternates between chapters UM, which some

people liked and some people didn't. But anyway, the storyline plays out where again you've got the the Grave Mind manipulating the Arbiter and Master Chief and Cortana trying to bring about um a series of events they'll allow the Grave Mind to start infecting other areas because it's been confined to this Halo ring for ages, and this is its attempt to try and spread itself kind of like

an think of it like a virus. Is trying to spread to a new host really, and in the process the Halo ring gets switched on, which switches on all the Halo rings across the entire galaxy. And they discovered that the activation for these rings is in another location called the Arc. And here's the kicker. The entran to the Arc is back on Earth. So that means there's a race to Earth. That's how Halo two ends. Now in two thousand five, it's of the Covenant, no and

no different arc uh. No Covenant faces melt off at the end of this. In two thousand five, Bungee then this is getting back to the marathon just for a second, releases the full Marathon trilogy for the mac os for free online distribution, which is a shame because I paid for the online I mean for I was about to say, it's a wonderful thing for all the Bungee fans, but I'm glad that Chris could turned something nice into something that was a personal and no, that's the same thing

I would have said. In two thousand six, another interesting development, there was an announcement from a certain fellow named says here Peter Jackson, who had who was he that he was famous for making that, um that movie, The Frighten Nurse with Michael J. Fox. That one. Oh, also those Lord of the Rings movies. Um So, Peter Jackson in two thousand and six announced that he was going to produce a Halo live action film and this so you

can see the Halo Halo Yeah, yeah, there are. There's a YouTube video where Peter Jackson actually talks about the Halo film. Uh. Sadly, this never really made it out of development. It just kind of sat there in various stages of development and never really progressed into actuality. Um. You occasionally still hear rumors that people are kicking around the idea of bringing back this and making a Halo movie. It just hasn't happened. So September thousand seven, Halo three

comes out. Now. In Halo three, the storyline continues again. Uh. Master Chief has to make his way to the Arc. So he has to first go to Earth because that's where the entrance to the Arc is. Um. So he fights Covenant and flood forces. Uh, and they find a portal in on Earth that leads to a local Chian that's outside of the Milky Way. That is the activation

point for the Halo defense system. Yeah, it's a long way. Well, you have to be a long way away, because if you're using a defense system that's going to kill everything that's sentient within the galaxy, you gotta get outside the galaxy in order to do it without dying. So uh they make their way to the Arc uh and they and Master Chief also discovers a new ring is being constructed to replace the one that he destroyed back in

Halo one. Because you have all these these artificially intelligent constructs that still exist that we're built by the for Runners, that still exist and can still h do their jobs, although most of them are pretty crazy by now because they've had millennia where with nothing to do. One of those was Guilty Spark three four three, and that three

four three becomes important in a little bit. But um, so you've got these uh this ring being constructed, Master Chief discover and and the Arbiter discovers that if they are to activate the rings before the newest one is finished, it's going to destroy the Ring and the Ark. So there's a big battle between them and the Flood and uh Forerunner technology in order to do this, and of course eventually they managed to activate it, which makes a self destruct sequence begin UH. They try to escape in

a ship that goes into slip stream space. The arc and the ring blow up, and the the resultant shock wave through space disrupts the slip stream UH pathway and cuts the ship in half. The ship that the Master Chief and Arbiter were both on, the Arbiter is on the front half, which continues to crash into Earth. So the Arbiter actually survives and everyone assumes Master Chief is dead.

Turns out Master Chief is not dead. He's just floating in half a ship out in space and goes into cry genic free sleep again and tells Cortana to wake him up when he's needed, and Cortana sets out a a distress beacon which will probably not be um discovered for several years according to her. So that's that story. And then September twenty two, two thousand nine, two years later, Halo three O D s T comes out. Now this is the first game where you aren't playing as Master

Chief at all. You're playing as a member of the United Nations Space Command Orbital Drop Shock Troopers or O d s T. And the story in O d s T takes place sort of between Halo's two and three, because in Halo two you've got that big fight on Earth between humans and the Covenant. When Master Chief then

goes off to Chase after the escaping Covenant ship. Well O d s t takes place on Earth as a member of this group of Shock Troopers that are fighting off the Covenant forces that are attacking Earth at that time. So there's that story. And then in September, Bungee releases their last Halo game, which is called Halo Reach and was a prequel, So it takes place on Reach, which is that planet I was talking about the very beginning

when the Pillar of Automn ship is escaping Reach. This is the planet that takes place on and you are. You play a Spartan who is designated as Noble six

as part of the Noble Strike squad Um. It's a six member squadron, and your job is to do these various missions while trying to fight off the Covenant, and ultimately the purpose is to try and get Cortana, the artificially intelligent construct, from Reach onto the Pillar of Autumn so that the information Cortana has can escape the clutches of the Covenant because Cortana has information about four Runner technology, which ultimately becomes this whole Halo program and arc thing.

So this again takes place before the events of Halo Combat evolved, just before in fact, and again you're not playing as master Chief, You're playing as a different spartan um. It turns out that master Chief is one of the few Spartans left by the beginning of Halo Combat evolved. And it depends on whether or not you've read the movies or read the movies, read the books or or graphic novels, uh as to whether or not other Spartans are still alive at this point. And then on June,

Microsoft announced Halo four. Halo four was a big deal because Halo four is the and I didn't talk about the the rerelease of Halo Combat evolved where it was and it updated the game engine, which was technically three H three or four three Industries first foray into developing this without Bungee. But Halo four is the first new game with news story by three four three Industries, which is the new production company that's in charge of the

Halo franchise because Bungee has left. Bungee left Microsoft and left the Halo franchise behind after Halo Reached. That was their last title in that series, and now the company is concentrating on other projects. So Halo four is three four three Industries baby, and it is going to come out on November six. Recording this in the end of June. Um it comes out on November six, and it's going to pick up about four years after the conclusion of

Halo three. It features Master Chief, it features Cortana Uh, and it has a new series of stories that involved the fore Runners. So these this ancient race that developed all this technology that that various races are just now really learning more about. You know, they've heard about the Four Runners, but now they're actually starting to learn more about them. And most of it apparently takes place upon an artificial planet that the Four Runners created called Requiem. Okay,

but that's about all we know. I mean, there's there's been some video of some of the gameplay that shows some new enemies that you'll run into that are probably Four Runner based. Um, but that's that's about all we know. I'm going to get to know about it more after next weekend because I get to play it early. Yeah. Yeah, Now, you know, people people are familiar with Bungee's take on these things. So I know that Halo four is going is something of a um, maybe a mild question mark.

You know, people are wondering if they can, uh you know, if this series will survive the transition. Um. I think it's probable that it will. Yeah. For one thing, well, the proper he is very popular. For another, three or four three Industries does have some former Bungee employees on staff, so it's not like it's a totally new group of

people who have never touched the project before. Right, But you know, for those uh, you know, especially um, devoted fans who are are concerned about something like that, you know, yeah, it'll happen with all kinds of properties like that, comic books or movies or you know TV series and the oh well, the lead writers. I don't just don't know if I can keep following it, you know, Right, people are going to be concerned about that, But I think, um,

I think the series is in good hand. Yeah, there's series loyalty, and then there's company loyalty, and then there's the the complicated place in between. Um. It was also interesting when when Bungee said that, you know, Halo. Halo Reach was their last game. Uh in the Halo series.

They also released UM stats when they gave up all the player information that had been collected over time, because you know, Bungee was responsible for that for the longest time, and then they transferred that information over because they were no longer the caretakers of the Halo series. Um if uh, let's see, I'll see if I can read up this numbers. That's that's that's thousand, that's millions, all right, so since

September nine, two thousand four. This was one of the figures Bungee released when it gave over the information players had played twenty billion, eight hundred eighty million, two hundred fifty thousand, one hundred twenty three games of Halo. Yeah, and uh, then they broke it out by title. UM. And they also said how many minutes had been played in Halo, which was over a hundred and twenty three

billion minutes of Halo? Is that broken down my platform to or is that just a box they just played it. They just broke it down by title, So it's not um, not by as far as I can tell, not by platform. Uh. They also broke down the you have killed each other one thirty six billion times and assist assisted each other forty three billion times, which tells you something about Halo players. I think they like those. They like those Slayer matches.

I can't blame them, my I like Slayer matches to the problem with the cooperative matches is you have to work with other people, and unless you're able to select who those people are, that can be a less than ideal situation, as I found out last night when I was playing Halo Reach online. Uh yeah, if you guys want to play against me, you know, jump on Halo Reach. I am an easy target, as it turns out, I got.

I got involved in the online play for Halo early on when it started, but then I started having some real problems with my internet service provider. This was back in the Halo two days and uh. In fact, I had so many problems that it was starting to seem like I was using a method to cheat when I was playing online. There was a people discovered that if they used the standby mode on their routers, on their you know, their their modems, that they could cheat in

Halo online. What would happen is you would hit standby, which would make you break your connection to the Microsoft servers, really the Bungee servers, and you you continue to play. Well. The way with the way Bungees servers would interpret this is they would just keep having your guide do whatever it was he was doing when you broke the connection. So if you're running in a straight line, you would continue running, but you wouldn't really be there. It would

just be a placeholder for you. When the connection would re establish, assuming it did re establish an enough time, like it was just a few seconds, your your ense of you would suddenly disappear, and you would reappear wherever you really were, based upon what you were doing locally on your machine. So let's say I'm playing a game of Capture the Flag. I pick up the flag, I start running in a straight line. I hit a standby

button on my modem. I've broken my connection. I immediately hang a sharp right, run that way several yards, then hang a left and continue running. My pursuers see me continuing to run in a straight line because their connection is still to the servers. But every time they try and shoot me or knock me down or run me over, it doesn't seem to work. Nothing's happening it's because I'm not really there. The servers are just trying to keep

track where I should be. My connection re establishes. Suddenly the computer has to resolve where I really am versus where it thought I was. The representation of my character disappears. My actual character reappears on the map in a totally different spot than where everyone thought it was, because of course I had moved in a different location. So this was a way of cheating, you know, you would people

did use this. They would grab the flag that used stand by, and then they would suddenly be in a different location than where you thought they were, and the flag would get to the other end of the map and you'd lose. And everyone thought this was awful, and it was because you were gaming the system. You were finding a hardware solution to solve for the fact that

you were not very good in Halo. Um well, I had a problem because I had an internet service provider where I was getting severe lag, and that lag was acting the same way like a little dropped connections. Every now and then my connection would drop, and so it was acting just like this standby uh bug, And so I ended up I stopped playing because people thought I was cheating, and I didn't want to play that way. That was no fun for me. I wanted to play

on a level playing ground. I'm not a great player, but I don't want to I don't want an unfair advantage. So I just stopped. And until recently, I just didn't have a fast enough connection to get back on Xbox Live and really play on line again. So for years I just I just that part of the game was off limits to me. I just wouldn't play that. I played the single player campaign and that was it. So I was missing out on a big part of what

makes the Halo games so interesting to players. Well, I finally got back into it, and now my problem is that there are only certain people who still play Halo Reach online because it's a game that's been out for a while now, right, so it's not as popular as it was when it first came out. Um, And the people who are playing online for the most part are people who have been playing for a while, so they know all the maps, they know all the tricks, they

have developed their playing style. I'm still learning, so I'm eating a lot of shotgun blast to the face. Not fun, No, it's fun for the other players. They love it. I see my name pop up and they're like, oh man, I'm going to get a lot of points in this round because me, Jonathan the Walking Target is playing. You know, you might want to rename your character. I'm just saying that, right, yeah, my kick them in. In case you want to know my my game handle, I will go ahead and give

it out. I don't. I don't mind because even if I get tons of request that doesn't mean I have to accept them. But my game gamer tag is John B. Strickland. Because I use my name as my handle everywhere. It keeps me accountable. So yeah, if you want to play against me, go ahead, and I'm I'm terrible. I'm telling you right now. You don't. You don't need to tell me. I already know, all right. So anyway, that's the story

of the Halo franchise as it stands right now. We may we should also say there are lots and lots of books that tie into the Halo franchise that really flesh out the mythology um, depending upon you know, they may or may not really be cannon to the games. It's kind of like the Star Wars stuff, right, it

doesn't happen in the game. It's not really cannon, but most of them deal with events that happen around the games, not they aren't necessarily novelizations of the games themselves, so they really are supplemental material that can flesh out that world. If you're really interested in it, um, if you are interested in a totally different topic and you think that we should talk about it, you should contact us our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or you

can let us know on Facebook or Twitter. Are handled. There's tech stuff hs W Chris and I will talk to you again, probably not about video games really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot Com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you