Xbox

Halo: Combat Evolved

Trivia

Halo went through many changes during its development. As originally conceived, it was a real-time tactical game for Windows, something like a sci-fi version of Myth. The focus shifted toward direct control of one of the individual units and it became a third person shooter and work began on a Macintosh version as well. This is how the game was originally announced.

After Microsoft bought Bungie, Halo was shifted to being an Xbox exclusive. Around the same time, it became a first person game, with Bungie saying there wasn't any way to get precise aiming to work in third person. Many of the art assets changed too, with the Master Chief's armor in the game as shipped looking quite different than the original trailer. Eventually, Halo was ported back to its original platforms of Windows and Macintosh bearing no resemblance to how it started.

On August 31, 2003 has Halo (Xbox) won the Gold-Award from the German VUD (Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland - Entertainment Software Association Germany) for selling more then 100,000 (but less then 200,000) units in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

As of this trivia note (June 2005) there are a total of THREE Halo tie-in novels: Fall of Reach (prequel), The Flood (novelization of the game), and First Strike (so what happened after events in Halo?).

The PC version (and Mac I believe) of Halo adds a few bonus features for the multiplayer mode, these include two weapons: a Flamethrower (which was scrapped from the game at the last minute) and a Fuel Rod Gun (the weapon that the Hunters use in the main game) as well as allowing you to use the Banshee and a rocket-launcher version of the Warthog.

Bonus trivia: Beat the game in Legendary difficulty and you get an additional funny cutscene at the end.

Halo is the best-selling Xbox game of all time. As of this writing, it has sold three and a half million copies.

Halo has a strange enemy hidden in the game code called the Engineer. You can only access it using a mod chip. It's a pink, blobby thing that just sort of floats around. It's the same creature as seen in one of the earliest videos of the game, the one with the marines going into the huge building.

Halo was originally rated T for Teens.

There are several references to the Marathon series of games, also by Bungie: The Marathon logo can be on the hull of the Pillar of Autumn, and on the chest of Captain Keyes. The architecture in Halo is very similar to Jjaro architecture - the Jjaro were an equally ancient race in Marathon. Cortana claims the Master Chief has "gone rampant" if he shoots the Captain - Rampancy being a key concept in Marathon. Cortana also shows signs of Rampancy (arrogance and distain of humans) once installed into Halo's control systems. According to Marathon, installing an AI to a large computer system (as Halo's obviously must be) could cause an AI to become Rampant. Marines will occasionally refer to you as a "Mark Five". Marathon's main character was a Mjolnir Mark IV cyborg, and the Master Chief wears Mjolnir Mark V armor.

Some of the dialogue spoken by the marines, comes directly from the film Aliens.

If you highlight the "Edit Gametypes" section in the multiplayer section of this game, you come across an image of Master Chief with text that, to the reader, seems to be schematics for each of his body parts. If you look closely, some of the text aren't schematics, but text: Text on Head/Gun: "UV Protectant Sun Visor for Protection from Elements". Text on Upper Right Leg: "Sometimes I give myself the creeps, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me" (lyrics from the Green Day song "Basket Case"). Text on Lower Right Leg: "Hydraulic Suspension Thigh Pads with cool Kevlar crap". Text on Left Leg: "Directional Locks MJOLNIR cyborg dealer parts". Text on Arm: "Action/Reload see may flexible joint system". Text on Torso: "All your base are belong to us".

Many people believe that Halo takes place during a one-hundred-and-thiry-nine year gap in the Marathon timeline, in which the creators wrote "This century intentionally left blank. Seriously, nothing really happened."

Much of the dialog of the "Grunt" characters is taken from the Human characters in Marathon 1: "Thank God it's you" was spoken by characters called "Exploding Bobs", which were sythetic Humans who would run at the player and explode. The line "They're Everywhere" was spoken by frightened Humans the player would come across.

Much of the dialogue spoken by the Covenant Elites is in fact dialogue by the human Sergeant, reversed, with some pitch alterations.

If you look closely at the shotgun shells taken out when Master Chief reloads, you'll see there are hippo heads pictured on them.

The storyboards for the FMVs were drawn by the same artist who did the storyboards for The Fifth Element.

Was introduced at Macworld Expo in 1999 by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs set for a release on the Macintosh. Then Bungie was bought out by Microsoft.

Halo was the first game to be inducted into the Walk of Game.

On May 5th, 2004, Halo Custom Edition was released for free. It is a multiplayer only, 170MB standalone version of Halo PC which enables gamers to play user created content created with the halo editing kit. It requires the original cd and a valid key to play. Download it here.

Contributed by Sciere (118910) on May 06, 2004.

Halo is used to film the machinima web series Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, which is currently in its second season with Season 1 released on DVD.

At the center of the Halo logo, you can see the Marathon logo (Marathon being the FPS series Bungie was previously famous for). The Marathon logo can also be seen in several places throughout the game, including on the hull of the human battleship, on Captain Keye's uniform, and on several of the doors found around Halo. The character design of 343 Guilty Spark, one of the game's pivotal characters, also strongly resembles the Marathon logo.

Halo also contains several references and similarities to Marathon, including:

The cyborg Master Chief wears a suit of Mjolnir battle armor. The hero of the Marathon series was a Mjolnir class cyborg.

The alien grunts sometimes scream out "They're everywhere!" in combat. The human civilians from Marathon would also scream the same thing during the alien invasion.

Certain weapons have similar names and appearances in both games, such as the SPNKR rocket launcher.

Both games have very whimsical chapter names, like "Wait! It Gets Worse!" or "Fourth Floor: Tools, Guns, Keys to Superweapon" in Halo or "Kill Your Television" or "You Think You're Badass? You're Going to Die Badass!" in Marathon.

Rampancy, or "When AIs go nuts and rebel against humanity", played a major part of Marathon's story. If you kill the command crew in Halo's opening level, Cortana will complain that you've gone Rampant and will sic the Marines on you.

The hero of the Marathon series spend most of his time taking orders from Durandal, a megalomaniacal A.I. named after a mythological sword who had few qualms about breaking a few eggs (using humans as expendable pawns) to make an omelet (liberating a slave race). The hero of Halo spends most of his time taking orders from Cortana, an A.I. named after a mythical sword who's beginning to show signs her ego is expanding, and who has few qualms about breaking a few eggs (destroying Halo and killing the marines on it) to make an omelet (saving Earth).

Gearbox took over programming of Halo PC and discovered that they can't use much of the existing networking code (for the XBox). They had to rewrite that entire section, delaying the title for PC by several months.

"Halo: The Fall of Reach", written by Eric Nylund and published by Del Rey, is an official prequel novel that tells how the Master Chief became the warrior he is today. It also gives some back story into the history behind the conflict between the Earth forces and the Covenant and the events that directly lead up to the start of the game.

Halo won 4 awards at the 2002 Interactive Achievement Awards, held annually by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS). Halo picked up awards for the Console Action/Adventure Game of the Year, Console Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering, and the all important Game of the Year.

Contributed by Kartanym (9910) on Jun 04, 2002.

'Halo' was named Game of the Year by the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly in the April 2002 issue.