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| 5 | [[caption-width-right:1000:Cue the [[https://youtu.be/0jXTBAGv9ZQ Gregorian chant.]]]] |
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| 10 | ->''"Thought I'd try shooting my way out. Mix things up a little."'' |
| 11 | -->-- '''The Master Chief''', [[LampshadeHanging summarizing the series]] in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' |
| 12 | |
| 13 | ''If you were looking for the trope, see HolyHalo.'' |
| 14 | |
| 15 | ''Halo'' is a SpaceOpera and MilitaryScienceFiction franchise that began life as an Platform/{{Xbox}} exclusive FirstPersonShooter created by Creator/{{Bungie}} Studios and published by Creator/XboxGameStudios. It has since blossomed into multiple sequels, {{Gaiden Game}}s, a substantial ExpandedUniverse, and the centerpiece of Creator/XboxGameStudios. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | In the 26th century, Earth and its colonies are at war with an [[ScaryDogmaticAliens alien theocracy]] known as the Covenant, whose leaders have declared humanity an affront to their gods. While the United Nations Space Command is vastly outmatched by the Covenant's superior numbers and [[{{Precursors}} Forerunner]]-based technology, mankind has one advantage: the [=SPARTAN-II=] SuperSoldier program. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | The Spartans, clad in PoweredArmor and led by [[ASpaceMarineIsYou Master Chief Petty Officer John-117]], are unmatched as warriors, but even they are not invincible, and by the start of the first game the Chief is among TheLastOfHisKind. Over the course of the series, he and Cortana, his [[ArtificialIntelligence A.I. sidekick]], battle the Covenant and discover the "Halos": massive Forerunner {{Ring World|Planet}}s hiding immense power. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | The core of ''Halo'' gameplay revolves around the wrinkles it presents in the FirstPersonShooter formula. |
| 22 | * [[LimitedLoadout You can only carry two guns at a time]]; there is no HyperspaceArsenal to speak of (although in the first two games, the weapon you didn't have equipped was invisible to other players). The guns all have different purposes and performance, so adapting your loadout to fit the situation is a smart idea. There's no UniversalAmmo: finding ammo for your assault rifle requires you to find another assault rifle. Finally, BlatantItemPlacement is averted; you can grab any weapons dropped by anyone, even the enemies, so you'll never run out of guns. You could also swap weapons with AI teammates. |
| 23 | * You have access to three different methods of attack: your firearm, QuickMelee with said firearms, and grenades. All three have their own dedicated controller buttons and all three can be used ''at all times'', with no delays for RealTimeWeaponChange. PistolWhipping is a OneHitKill if delivered from behind (and decent damage from any other angle), while grenades come in "[[StuffBlowingUp standard frag]]" and "StickyBomb" varieties; later entries to the series added "[[KillItWithFire sets things on fire]]," "[[SpikesOfDoom shoots spikes]]", "[[DeflectorShields shield]]-[[SuckingInLines drain]]" and "[[ShockAndAwe electric shock]]" flavors. The available tactics are a lot broader when you've got three different triggers to pull. |
| 24 | * Vehicles are prevalent and are integrated seamlessly into gameplay: if you run across a jeep, or a hoverbike, or a tank, or even a SpacePlane, you can jump right in and the game [[CameraPerspectiveSwitch shifts instantly to a third-person perspective]], with no LoadingScreen or separate map or anything. As a consequence, many of the franchise's campaign levels are absolutely enormous, with some levels largely about driving from Point A to Point B while avoiding enemy fire. While it is possible to finish the level on foot (assuming there aren't any ramps to jump, high spots to get to or timed sections), it is in your best interest to use a vehicle whenever possible. |
| 25 | * Movement speed is a lot slower than older games (comparatively, you move about half as fast as prior FPS heroes; the series didn't get a "sprint" function until ''Reach''), partly to compensate for the inaccuracy of a joystick and partly for more "serious" gameplay. This is evident in how absolutely mandatory it is to pay attention to the SceneryPorn and navigate through any given location. You also have an extremely "floaty" jump, able to clear obstacles as tall as your character to facilitate some mild platforming. |
| 26 | * There is also an extreme amount of effort made both within the games and AllThereInTheManual to justify why the PlayerCharacter is able to be a OneManArmy and not just a [[HandWave blanket excuse]] of "he's just ''that'' badass." The short end is that your character is wearing some of the most cutting-edge technology available to enhance his [[TheGift natural talent]], extensive BioAugmentation, and TrainingFromHell, the foremost of which being the MJOLNIR PoweredArmor. Among the features of this armor include: |
| 27 | ** DeflectorShields that can only absorb so much damage but will regenerate to max if you avoid fire for a few seconds. Games vary on how they treat your health bar; the first game used RegeneratingShieldsStaticHealth, while others have featured regenerate-to-the-nearest-segment lifebars (as seen in ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'') or even turning you into a OneHitPointWonder. [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe Luckily, Your Shield Will Protect You]]; they provide what is essentially RegeneratingHealth, giving you tactically infinite HitPoints if you know when to retreat for a moment. This overcomes a common issue about players [[ResourcesManagementGameplay worrying how to survive a level with no way to recover lost health]]. The corollary of this to keep the game from getting too easy was that, compared to other FPS heroes such as [[Franchise/{{Doom}} the Doomguy/Doom Slayer]], VideoGame/DukeNukem, VideoGame/SeriousSam, and [[VideoGame/HalfLife Gordon Freeman]], the Master Chief was not only slow and lightly armed, but fairly weak as well; it only took a dozen assault rifle rounds or a single shotgun blast or sniper rifle shot to knock down his shield, and a similar amount of punishment to his non-regenerating health to kill him outright (much less if the enemy got a headshot). |
| 28 | ** The HUD built into your helmet includes a motion sensor to help prevent yourself from being shot in the back or reveal enemies just out of sight (although is only useful against moving enemies and at a certain range, making snipers more threatening). It also justifies the use of waypoints to direct your movement through a level and not getting lost trying to find the exit. Of course it keeps the standard weapons loadout and shield/health bar as well. |
| 29 | ** Customization features that vary wildly depending on the options presented in any given game. This ranges from DualWielding weapons to deployable tactical equipment to physical customization of the armor itself. |
| 30 | |
| 31 | Of course, Bungie took advantage of these unique gameplay quirks to stage intense and frantic battles, increasing the emphasis on having the right guns, using all your attacks and knowing when to retreat and recharge your shields. The gameplay style is both twitchy and cerebral, with room for the guns-blazing approach ''and'' significant tactical depth. The style has been preserved, with only a few tweaks for the sequels (DualWielding, new or rebalanced weapons, new vehicles, some power-ups, etc) throughout the franchise... not to mention [[FollowTheLeader nearly every modern shooter]] since. OnceOriginalNowOverdone is in full force, of course, but the fact that so much of it seems like a ClicheStorm gives you an idea of just ''how'' influential this franchise has been. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | The plot is also fairly complex and sometimes combines with the gameplay to require you to engage in atypical combat. The music and voice acting are nothing to sneer at either. What has made the series so long-lasting is the multiplayer component; starting with ''Halo 2'', the game connected through Xbox Live and brought to Console FPS the kind of multiplayer experience which previously only really existed on Windows-based personal computers. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | ''Halo'' is one of the best-known {{Killer App}}s. When the original Platform/{{Xbox}} was announced, there was a lot of skepticism from those who had already experienced the MediaNotes/ConsoleWars and had no reason to believe the Xbox would go anywhere. Their reasoning wasn't inaccurate: [[FourIsDeath Three Is Death]] in the console market (at the time, mind you), which (until then) had trouble supporting even ''two'' consoles; Microsoft's collaboration with Sega from the Platform/SegaDreamcast didn't turn out so well (though the Xbox essentially was a Dreamcast 2); and, as released, the Xbox didn’t (seem to) have anything worth playing. (The fact the original Xbox was an ''American-made console'' didn't help, after the then-recent disaster the Platform/AtariJaguar was and the struggles of American-made consoles in general following MediaNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983.) But once gamers got their grubby little hands on it, ''Halo'' singlehandedly kept Microsoft in the race and the Xbox consoles were seen as impressive, despite being American-made. All of its sequels have set "biggest-opening-day" records. The franchise in October 2012 was [[http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/20536/halo-4-most-expensive-microsoft-title valued]] at a cool $3 billion. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | The game also inspired the term "''Halo'' Killer". Fans of the series joke that the only game to be a ''Halo'' Killer was ''Halo'' itself. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | ---- |
| 40 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 41 | |
| 42 | !!Video games in the ''Halo'' series: |
| 43 | |
| 44 | [[folder: FPS Games]] |
| 45 | [[AC:Main Titles]] |
| 46 | [[index]] |
| 47 | * ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' (2001): Opens TheVerse and depicts the battle between the humans and the Covenant aboard the titular Forerunner ring.[[/index]] |
| 48 | ** ''Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary'': A [[UpdatedRerelease rerelease]] of ''Combat Evolved'', debuting [[MilestoneCelebration ten years later]]. It uses the same engine from the original game, but adds [[ArtEvolution updated graphics]] and other bonus content. |
| 49 | [[index]] |
| 50 | * ''VideoGame/Halo2'' (2004): The sequel, which ([[TrailersAlwaysLie briefly]]) takes the battle to Earth and introduces a second protagonist, [[VillainProtagonist the Arbiter of the Covenant]].[[/index]] |
| 51 | ** ''Halo 2: Anniversary'': An UpdatedRerelease marking the [[MilestoneCelebration ten year anniversary]] of ''Halo 2'', with updated graphics and other bonus content. It was included with ''The Master Chief Collection''. |
| 52 | [[index]] |
| 53 | * ''VideoGame/Halo3'' (2007): The first on the Platform/Xbox360, concluding both the original trilogy and the Covenant War. |
| 54 | * ''VideoGame/Halo4'' (2012): The first part of the "Reclaimer Saga"[[note]]Previously called the "Reclaimer Trilogy"[[/note]] continuing the Master Chief and Cortana's story. |
| 55 | * ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'' (2015): The second entry in the "Reclaimer Saga" and the first on the Platform/XboxOne, involving a new threat to humanity and Master Chief going AWOL to confront it, and featuring a second protagonist hunting him down, former [[StateSec ONI agent]] Jameson Locke. |
| 56 | * ''VideoGame/HaloInfinite'' (2021): The third title in the "Reclaimer Saga", featuring the Master Chief going up against a new foe, [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilised the]] [[ContrastingSequelAntagonist Banished]], on another ringworld, Zeta Halo. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | [[AC:Side Stories]] |
| 59 | * ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'' (2009): A [[GaidenGame side-story]] set during ''Halo 2'' about a team of [[BadassNormal Orbital Drop Shock Troopers]] ([=ODSTs=]) fighting in one of Earth's most important cities. Features [[{{Series/Firefly}} Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk]]. Its campaign was re-released in May 2015 as a {{DLC}} for ''The Master Chief Collection''. |
| 60 | * ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' (2010): A prequel to ''Combat Evolved'' revolving around a group of Spartans in the largest battle of the war; [[DoomedByCanon the fall of the UNSC's second-most important planet]], Reach. |
| 61 | [[/folder]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | [[folder: Other Games]] |
| 64 | * ''VideoGame/HaloWars'' (2009): A RealTimeStrategy spin-off developed by Creator/EnsembleStudios. It focuses on events at the start of the war with the Covenant. |
| 65 | * ''VideoGame/HaloSpartanAssault'' (2013): A top-down action shooter developed by Creator/VanguardGames taking place between ''Halo 3'' and ''4''.[[/index]] |
| 66 | * ''Halo: The Master Chief Collection'' (2014): An Xbox One CompilationRerelease of the first four main series ''Halo'' games (plus the "Anniversary" remakes of ''Combat Evolved'' and ''2'') that has all their multiplayer modes with online play added (including a new multiplayer mode for ''Halo 2''[='s=] anniversary update), plus several more bonus features. A later update also adds the campaign from ''Halo 3: ODST''. In 2019, Microsoft announced that the collection would be released on PC that year, with a staggered release for each game in the collection (in internal chronological order), starting with the newly remastered version of ''VideoGame/HaloReach''. In 2020, the game is set to be released on the Platform/XboxSeriesXAndS one week after the launch of both consoles. |
| 67 | [[index]] |
| 68 | * ''Halo: Spartan Strike'' (2015): A sequel to ''Spartan Assault'' revolving around the struggle for a Forerunner artifact known as "The Conduit". |
| 69 | * ''VideoGame/HaloWars2'' (2017): A sequel to the original set after the events of ''Halo 5'', co-developed with Creator/CreativeAssembly. |
| 70 | * ''Halo Online'' (Canceled): A PC-only "free to play" multiplayer FPS exclusive to Russia, taking place on a joint SPARTAN-IV and Sangheili training facility. It was canceled, but the beta was left as an open-tools game for modders. In 2021 content made for ''Halo Online'' began to be added to ''The Master Chief Collection'', where it is integrated into the multiplayer of ''Halo 3''.[[invoked]] |
| 71 | * ''VideoGame/HaloFireteamRaven'' (2018): A [[UsefulNotes/ArcadeGame coin-op arcade]] cooperative arcade RailShooter taking place during the events of ''Halo: Combat Evolved''. |
| 72 | [[/folder]] |
| 73 | |
| 74 | ''Reach'' was Bungie's last ''Halo'' project, with all subsequent works in the franchise managed by Creator/XboxGameStudios subsidiary [[Creator/ThreeFourThreeIndustries 343 Industries]]. There are also several novels and various other media that make up the ExpandedUniverse. |
| 75 | |
| 76 | !!''Halo'' Expanded Universe: |
| 77 | [[folder:Books]] |
| 78 | * ''The Eric Nylund Trilogy'': A loose trilogy which became the primary foundation of the franchise's expanded universe. |
| 79 | ** ''Literature/HaloTheFallOfReach'' (2001): A prequel to ''Combat Evolved'' which established its primary background lore, including the origin story of both the Master Chief and Cortana. Reissued in 2010 and 2011 with retcons and bonus content. |
| 80 | ** ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'' (2003): An interquel bridging the events of ''Combat Evolved'' and ''Halo 2''. Reissued in 2010 with retcons and bonus content. |
| 81 | ** ''Literature/HaloGhostsOfOnyx'' (2006): A companion piece to ''Halo 2'' (with which it mostly takes place concurrently with) that also serves as a semi-sequel to ''First Strike'' and the origin story for the SPARTAN-III program. |
| 82 | * ''Gray Team Series'': A pair of novels which focus on the trials of Gray Team, a trio of Spartan-[=IIs=] trained for conducting long-term missions without any support. |
| 83 | ** ''Literature/HaloTheColeProtocol'' (2008): A standalone story set early in the Human-Covenant War about a massive GambitPileup in a markedly rebellious corner of the Outer Colonies. |
| 84 | ** ''Literature/HaloEnvoy'' (2017): A story set nearly six years after the end of ''Halo 3'' about inter-species tensions on a joint human-Sangheili colony. |
| 85 | * ''Literature/TheForerunnerSaga'': A trilogy of novels that document the fall of the Forerunner empire through the eyes of several characters. |
| 86 | ** ''Literature/HaloCryptum'' (2011): Told by the young Forerunner Bornstellar, whose discovery of the [[SealedGoodInACan exiled Didact's Cryptum]] tosses him right into the center of a myriad of grand plans and conspiracies. |
| 87 | ** ''Literature/HaloPrimordium'' (2012): Told by the prehistoric human Chakas about his adventures on the seventh Halo ring. |
| 88 | ** ''Literature/HaloSilentium'' (2013): A collection of records compiled by Forerunner investigators about the final years of the war with the Flood and the activation of the Halo Array. |
| 89 | * ''The Kilo-Five Trilogy'': A series bridging ''Halo 3'' and ''Halo 4'' which focuses on the eponymous ONI black-ops team and its rather morally dubious missions to ensure humanity's dominance in the wake of the Covenant's [[EnemyCivilWar Great Schism]]. |
| 90 | ** ''Literature/HaloGlasslands'' (2011): Explores the immediate aftermath of ''Halo 3'', and also serves as a semi-sequel to ''Ghosts of Onyx''. |
| 91 | ** ''Literature/HaloTheThursdayWar'' (2012): Primarily focusing on the opening salvos of the Sangheili's [[CivilWar Blooding Years]], the novel also serves as a semi-prequel to ''Halo 4'' with its introduction of the UNSC ''Infinity'' and the Covenant remnant. |
| 92 | ** ''Literature/HaloMortalDictata'' (2014): The conclusion to the trilogy, centering around a multi-sided race to seize a wayward Covenant battlecruiser, while also focusing on the moral fallout of the SPARTAN-II program. |
| 93 | * ''Alpha-Nine Series'': A pair of books focusing on the ODST squad Alpha-Nine featured in ''Halo 3: ODST''. |
| 94 | ** ''Literature/HaloNewBlood'' (2015): A novella detailing what Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck and the rest of Alpha-Nine were up to in the years after the events of ''ODST''. |
| 95 | ** ''Literature/HaloBadBlood'' (2018): A direct sequel to ''New Blood'' focusing on Alpha-Nine's exploits in the immediate aftermath of ''Halo 5: Guardians''. |
| 96 | * ''Ferrets Series'': A series focusing on the "Ferrets", a Spartan-III team led by a former civilian detective who are tasked with covertly investigating various threats to humanity. |
| 97 | ** ''Literature/HaloLastLight'' (2015): A novel set right after the events of ''Glasslands'', detailing a joint Spartan-II/Spartan-III mission on a remote human colony, where a seemingly simple serial murder investigation uncovers something much bigger... |
| 98 | ** ''Literature/HaloRetribution'' (2017): A direct sequel to ''Last Light'' detailing the Ferrets' investigation into the murder of a UNSC admiral and the abduction of her family. |
| 99 | ** ''Literature/HaloDivineWind'' (2021): Set after the events of both ''Halo 5: Guardians'' and ''Halo Wars 2'', the Ferrets must now infiltrate a Covenant splinter group to prevent them from activating the Halo Array. |
| 100 | * ''Rion Series'': A series focusing on the adventures of the independent salvage ship ''Ace of Spades'' and its captain Rion Forge, daughter of ''VideoGame/HaloWars''[='s=] Sergeant Forge. |
| 101 | ** ''Literature/HaloSmokeAndShadow'' (2016): A novella set slightly before ''Halo 4'' about Rion's attempts to find out what happened to her father and the rest of the UNSC ''Spirit of Fire''[='s=] crew. |
| 102 | ** ''Literature/HaloRenegades'' (2019): A continuation of Rion's quest to find her father that also serves as a followup to certain plot threads from ''The Forerunner Saga''. |
| 103 | ** ''Literature/HaloPointOfLight'' (2021): A sequel to ''Renegades'' set concurrently with ''Halo 5: Guardians'' which focuses on the newest crewmate of the ''Ace of Spades'', a remnant of ancient times with a mission to right one of the Forerunners' greatest wrongs. |
| 104 | * ''Netherop Series'': A loose trilogy of books that all feature the planet of Netherop. |
| 105 | ** ''Literature/HaloSilentStorm'' (2018): A stylistic throwback to the early ''Halo'' novels that focuses on a desperate covert operation in the first year of the Human-Covenant War, one that must succeed if humanity is to survive another year. |
| 106 | ** ''Literature/HaloOblivion'' (2019): A sequel to ''Silent Storm'' centering on a mission to capture a Covenant ship filled with valuable technology. |
| 107 | ** ''Literature/HaloOutcasts'' (2023): A distant sequel to ''Oblivion'' featuring Arbiter Thel 'Vadam and Spartan Olympia Vale in the aftermath of ''Halo 5: Guardians''. |
| 108 | * ''Battle Born'': A duology of young adult stories about the trials undergone by four teenagers when their colony is invaded by the Covenant. |
| 109 | ** ''Literature/HaloBattleBorn'' (2019): In the opening days of the aforementioned invasion, an injured Spartan-III must quickly teach a small group of teenage survivors how to effectively fight back before the Covenant kill them all. |
| 110 | ** ''Literature/HaloMeridianDivide'' (2019): A direct sequel to ''Battle Born'', with the now-experienced teenagers joining a local militia's efforts to prevent a Forerunner artifact from falling into Covenant hands. |
| 111 | * Standalone Books: |
| 112 | ** ''Literature/HaloTheFlood'' (2003): A novelization of ''Combat Evolved'' which expands on the events on the first Halo ring. Reissued in 2010 with retcons and bonus content. |
| 113 | ** ''Literature/HaloContactHarvest'' (2007): A prequel that showcases humanity's first contact with the Covenant and the political machinations behind the start of the war. |
| 114 | ** ''Literature/HaloBrokenCircle'' (2014): A story detailing San'Shyuum political intrigue and Sangheili rebellion at the beginning of the Covenant, then following up on their long term consequences during the Great Schism. |
| 115 | ** ''Literature/HaloHuntersInTheDark'' (2015): A novel about a joint human-Sangheili mission to the Ark which take place about two years after the events of ''Halo 3'', and introduces future Spartan-IV [[VideoGame/Halo5Guardians Olympia Vale]]. |
| 116 | ** ''Literature/HaloSaintsTestimony'' (2015): A short story about Iona, a "smart" AI who launches a legal appeal protesting her own termination. |
| 117 | ** ''Literature/HaloShadowOfIntent'' (2015): A novella about what happened to Rtas 'Vadum (aka the Shipmaster/"Half-Jaw") right after the events of ''Halo 3''. |
| 118 | ** ''Literature/HaloLegacyOfOnyx'' (2017): A novel revolving around a group of young teenagers living in a multi-species research facility on a Forerunner Shield World, and the vengeful Sangheili fanatic who seeks to destroy everything they represent. |
| 119 | ** ''Literature/HaloShadowsOfReach'' (2020): An interquel set between ''Halo 5: Guardians'' and ''Halo Infinite'' that features Blue Team returning to a glassed Reach to recover potentially vital assets. |
| 120 | ** ''Literature/HaloTheRubiconProtocol'' (2022): A prequel to ''Halo Infinite'', focusing on the efforts of scattered UNSC forces to mount a resistance against the Banished during the early stages of the conflict on Zeta Halo. |
| 121 | ** ''Literature/HaloEpitaph'' (2024): A novel focusing on the Ur-Didact set after ''ComicBook/HaloEscalation''. |
| 122 | * Anthologies: |
| 123 | ** ''Literature/HaloEvolutions'' (2009): An anthology of short stories by several authors. Rereleased as two volumes in 2010, with two additional stories and new cover art for each of the original tales. |
| 124 | ** ''Literature/HaloFractures'' (2016): Another anthology of short stories by several authors. |
| 125 | [[/index]] |
| 126 | [[/folder]] |
| 127 | |
| 128 | [[folder:Comics]] |
| 129 | * Published by Creator/MarvelComics[[note]]Marvel's ''Halo'' comics stay in the canon ''Halo'' universe ''à la'' their ''Franchise/StarWars'' and ''Franchise/UltraSeries'' works, rather than getting integrated into the Franchise/MarvelUniverse ''à la'' Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian[[/note]]: |
| 130 | [[index]] |
| 131 | ** ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel'' (2006): Contains four supplementary stories taking place around the first two games, plus an extensive art gallery with contributions from the staff of Bungie, Marvel, and elsewhere. |
| 132 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloUprising'' (2007-2009): A four-issue series that bridges the gap between ''Halo 2'' and ''Halo 3''. |
| 133 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloHelljumper'' (2009): A five-issue prequel to ''Halo 3: ODST''. |
| 134 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloBloodLine'' (2009-2010): A five-issue series about a black ops Spartan-II team. |
| 135 | ** ''Halo: Fall of Reach'' (2010-2012): A twelve-issue comic book adaptation of ''The Fall of Reach''.[[/index]] |
| 136 | * Published by Creator/DarkHorseComics:[[index]] |
| 137 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloInitiation'' (2013): A three-issue series detailing how ODST [[VideoGame/{{Halo 4}} Sarah Palmer]] became a Spartan-IV, leading into ''Spartan Assault''. |
| 138 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloEscalation'' (2013-2015): An 24-issue series about the impact of the events of ''Halo 4'' on the wider galaxy, serving also as a prelude for ''Halo 5: Guardians''. |
| 139 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloTalesFromSlipspace'' (2016): An anthology of several stories by different authors. |
| 140 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloRiseOfAtriox'' (2017-2018): An five-part mini-series delving into the past of Atriox, ''Halo Wars 2''[='s=] BigBad. |
| 141 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloCollateralDamage'' (2018): A three-chapter mini-series centered around one of Blue Team's missions during the Human-Covenant War. |
| 142 | ** ''ComicBook/HaloLoneWolf'' (2019): A four-issue mini-series about Spartan-II [[ColdSniper Linda-058]] being sent on a solo mission to stop a rogue scientist.[[/index]] |
| 143 | [[/folder]] |
| 144 | |
| 145 | [[folder:Live-Action Projects]] |
| 146 | * Various promotional commercials for ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'', ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'', ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'', and ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians''. Notably, Creator/NeillBlomkamp directed the ''Halo 3'' "Landfall" shorts, with the intent to [[DevelopmentHell eventually begin production on a Halo movie]] with Creator/PeterJackson [[note]]Early production development ended up being used for ''Film/{{District 9}}'', while props and costumes made for the short films were recycled in later ''Halo'' projects[[/note]]. |
| 147 | [[index]] |
| 148 | * ''Film/Halo4ForwardUntoDawn'' (2012): A five-part film about freshman cadet Thomas Lasky, [[VideoGame/{{Halo 4}} the future commander]] of the UNSC ''Infinity''. |
| 149 | * ''Film/HaloNightfall'' (2014): A five-part series produced by Creator/RidleyScott, starring ONI agent [[VideoGame/Halo5Guardians Jameson Locke]]. |
| 150 | * ''Series/{{Halo 2022}}'' Television Series (2022-?): An AlternateContinuity series produced by Creator/{{Showtime}} and Creator/StevenSpielberg's [[Creator/AmblinEntertainment Amblin Television]], and premiering on Creator/ParamountPlus. The first season is nine episodes, with a second season confirmed to be in the works.[[/index]] |
| 151 | [[/folder]] |
| 152 | |
| 153 | [[folder:Alternate Reality Games]] |
| 154 | * ''The Cortana Letters'' (1999): The very first piece of ''Halo'' media to be released, involving a series of emails sent to a ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' fan site. The letters are written from Cortana's perspective, and represent a radically different version of the story that we got in the final version of ''Combat Evolved''. As such, the ''Cortana Letters'' are considered non-canon, though they have been recontextualised and referenced in a BroadStrokes capacity on occasion. |
| 155 | [[index]] |
| 156 | * ''ARG/ILoveBees'' (2004): A ''Halo 2'' viral marketing campaign which took place on an amateur beekeeper's personal website that had been taken over by [=AIs=] inadvertently sent back in time from 2552 all the way to 2004, revolving around four disparate strangers in 2552 trying to uncover a Forerunner artifact at an amnesiac AI's behest. |
| 157 | * ''Iris'' (2007): A ''Halo 3'' viral marketing campaign which centered on the Forerunners. |
| 158 | * ''Section 3'' (2012-2014): A ''Halo 4''-related forum-based campaign centering on the activities of ONI's Section Three. |
| 159 | * ''ARG/HuntTheTruth'' (2015): A ''Halo 5'' marketing campaign starring Creator/KeeganMichaelKey as journalist Benjamin Giraud, who is trying to find out the truth of Master Chief's backstory.[[/index]] |
| 160 | [[/folder]] |
| 161 | |
| 162 | [[folder:Other Works]] |
| 163 | * Bonus fiction: |
| 164 | ** ''Halo Wars: Official Strategy Guide'' (2009): A StrategyGuide for ''VideoGame/HaloWars'' which also contains several single-page short stories. |
| 165 | ** Dr. Halsey's personal journal (2010): A book included with the Limited Edition of ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', written by Eric Nylund. It is a replica of Dr. Halsey's in-universe journal, containing many insights into the history of the Spartans, her research and the events during the Battle of Reach. |
| 166 | * ''A Halo Waypoint Chronicle'': A series of short stories released via the ''Halo Waypoint'' website. |
| 167 | ** ''Vertical Umbridge'' (2022): Released to celebrate the 10th anniversary of ''Halo 4'', covering a boarding action by Fireteam Shadow during the events of ''Spartan Ops''. |
| 168 | ** ''Winter Contention'' (2023): A prequel to ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', covering a mission conducted by NOBLE Team with two of their former members: Thom-[=A293=] and Rosenda-[=A344=]. |
| 169 | * Reference works: |
| 170 | ** ''Halo Encyclopedia'' (2009): A book compiling details of the ''Halo'' expanded universe. Received a revised edition in 2011 which fixed many errors and included new information related to ''VideoGame/HaloReach''. |
| 171 | ** ''Halo Mythos'' (2016): A chronological history of the ''Halo'' universe, framed from the perspective of Curator, a UNSC AI. |
| 172 | ** ''Halo: Warfleet'' (2017): A reference book containing details and schematics for the various spacecraft and space stations in the ''Halo'' universe. |
| 173 | ** ''Halo: Official Spartan Field Manual'' (2018): A {{Defictionalisation}} of the field manual given to Spartan-IV's on the ''UNSC Infinity''. |
| 174 | ** ''Halo Encyclopedia'' (2022): A completely new encyclopedia focusing on the entire ''Halo'' universe until ''VideoGame/HaloInfinite''. |
| 175 | ** ''The Official Halo Cookbook'' (2022): A SpinOffCookbook, presented as an in-universe compendium of human recipes across the galaxy. Each section is dedicated to [[{{Defictionalization}} Defictionalizing]] the menus of various restaurants seen throughout the games and expanded universe. |
| 176 | [[index]] |
| 177 | * ''Anime/HaloLegends'' (2010): An {{Anime}} MiniSeries containing several mostly unrelated shorts by different studios. |
| 178 | [[/index]] |
| 179 | * ''Canon Fodder'' (2013-): A series of monthly blog posts on the ''Halo Waypoint'' website that present a mix of meta discussions about the ''Halo'' lore, as well as new pieces of written and visual story material. Unless stated otherwise, lore details introduced in ''Canon Fodder'' are considered canon. |
| 180 | * ''Halo: Fleet Battles'' (2015-2017): A miniatures-based [[TabletopGame tabletop]] [[WarGaming wargame]] centering around spaceship combat. |
| 181 | * ''Halo: The Fall of Reach - The Animated Series'' (2015): A three-act animated adaptation of ''The Fall of Reach''. |
| 182 | * ''Halo: Ground Command'' (2016-2017): Another miniatures-based [[TabletopGame tabletop]] [[WarGaming wargame]], this time centering around terrestrial combat. |
| 183 | [[index]] |
| 184 | * ''AudioPlay/HaloInfiniteMemoryAgent'': A six-part narrative podcast following an ONI agent on a mission to deliver vital intel to the Master Chief sometime before the events of ''Halo Infinite''. |
| 185 | [[/index]] |
| 186 | |
| 187 | [[/folder]] |
| 188 | |
| 189 | !!Other |
| 190 | [[folder:Other]] |
| 191 | [[AC:GuestFighter appearances]] |
| 192 | * ''VideoGame/DeadOrAlive'': A CanonForeigner SPARTAN-II, Nicole-458, appears as a playable character in ''Dead or Alive 4''. |
| 193 | * ''Videogame/GearsOfWar'': As {{dualvertisement}} for the ''Master Chief Collection'' release of ''Reach'', Kat and Emile appear as DLC COG characters in ''Gears 5''. |
| 194 | * ''VideoGame/KillerInstinct2013'': A CanonForeigner Arbiter appears as a playable character in the game's third season. |
| 195 | * ''VideoGame/{{Fortnite}} Battle Royale'': Master Chief's armor is a purchasable outfit for player characters. |
| 196 | * ''VideoGame/{{Forza}}'': The Warthog can be viewed in ''Motorsport 4'', complete with narration by Creator/JenTaylor in-character as Cortana, and driven in the ''Horizon'' series since its third title. ''Horizon 4'' also features a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV1RTUVaKoI rather extravagant]] ''Halo''-themed showcase event. |
| 197 | * ''VideoGame/RocketLeague'': A CanonForeigner Warthog variant, the Hogsticker, can be driven exclusively on Xbox consoles. |
| 198 | * ''VideoGame/SuperBomberman R'': Master Chief appears as a Xbox-exclusive playable character. |
| 199 | |
| 200 | [[AC:{{Fan Game}}s]] |
| 201 | * ''VideoGame/HaloZero'', a 32-bit side-scrolling ShootEmUp. |
| 202 | * ''Halo 2600'', a VideoGameDemake of ''Combat Evolved'' for the Platform/Atari2600 developed by Ed Fries, an ex-Microsoft employee who led the buyout of Bungie back in 2000. The game is essentially ''VideoGame/{{Adventure}}'' with a ''Halo'' skin. Amazingly, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GDZsFQ_haQ 2600 carts were actually made]].[[http://members.shaw.ca/jeffv/halo2600.html The game is playable here]]. |
| 203 | * ''VideoGame/SPV3'', a GameMod of ''Combat Evolved PC Custom Edition'' which extensively overhauls the campaign, adding in updated graphics, new enemies and weapons, expanded levels, etc. |
| 204 | * ''VideoGame/SinsOfTheProphets'', a GameMod of ''VideoGame/SinsOfASolarEmpire'' and ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' that focuses on depicting the space battles of the Human-Covenant War. The mod's development team have contributed to the ''Halo'' universe [[PromotedFanboy in an official capacity]] with the 2022 ''Halo Encyclopedia'', which features art from the mod's artists depicting both UNSC and Covenant ships. |
| 205 | |
| 206 | [[AC:Other Notable Fan Works]] |
| 207 | * ''WebAnimation/RedVsBlue'': A [[FanWork fan-created]] military WorkCom filmed in the ''Halo'' engine (a "{{machinima}}"). It has become a lucrative franchise in its own right. Creators Creator/RoosterTeeth have been recruited by [[PromotedFanboy Bungie and 343i themselves]] to promote the newer games and reveal new features, as well as having EasterEgg cameos in both ''Halo 3'' and ''Halo 4''. Grifball, the gametype they invented, was even made official, with its own icon, announcer line, and playlist. |
| 208 | * ''Webcomic/HaloAFistfulOfArrows'': A [[FanWebcomics Fan Webcomic]] by Levi "Leviathan" Hoffmeier which follows Jun on his mission to escort Dr. Halsey to CASTLE Base after the events of ''VideoGame/HaloReach''. It is near-universally loved among ''Halo'' fans and developers for its high production quality, with 343 Industries themselves suggesting that it should be considered BroadStrokes canon. |
| 209 | [[/folder]] |
| 210 | |
| 211 | Further information on the ''Halo'' franchise can be found on its [[https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us official website]]. |
| 212 | |
| 213 | Check out the [[Characters/{{Halo}} character sheet]]. |
| 214 | ---- |
| 215 | !!TheVerse of ''Halo'' provides examples of the following tropes ('''UNMARKED SPOILERS BELOW'''): |
| 216 | |
| 217 | [[folder:Halo General]] |
| 218 | * AbnormalAmmo: |
| 219 | ** The Needler, Needle rifle, and related weapons shoot pink/purple crystals (made of a material called "blamite") that detonate a few seconds after impact. Additionally, the Covenant Carbine fires ammo made from a poisonous and radioactive compound. |
| 220 | ** The weaponry wielded by Promethean constructs utilize hard-light ammunition. Some of it can completely disintegrate even MJOLNIR armor. |
| 221 | * AdaptationalAttractiveness: Captain Keyes looks ''much'' younger in ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' and ''Anniversary'' than he did in the original ''Combat Evolved'', where he's 57. Inversely, his daughter Miranda looks much more age-appropriate for a veteran commander in the HD remake of ''Halo 2'', compared to the original game where she could easily be mistaken for a teenager. |
| 222 | * AdvancedAncientAcropolis: Forerunner structures are all several aeons old, with many being constructed out of a mix of crystal glass and HardLight that looks like silver. |
| 223 | * AdvancedAncientHumans: As revealed in ''Literature/TheForerunnerSaga'' and ''Halo 4'', humanity used to be nearly on par with the Forerunners themselves. The Forerunners themselves were originally intended to be this trope, but that was later retconned away. |
| 224 | * AerithAndBob: Not so much for any human characters, but for UNSC ship names. The ones featured the games tend to be poetic and/or even just [[CloudCuckooLander a little bit weird]]: ''Pillar of Autumn'', ''Spirit of Fire'', ''Aegis Fate'', ''In Amber Clad'', ''Forward Unto Dawn'', and ''Say My Name''. But ships from the novels tend to have more normal names like ''Leviathan'', ''Fairweather'', ''Gettysburg'', and ''Texas''. The odd ship names are very likely a nod to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_%28The_Culture%29 the ones]] in [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]]'s [[Literature/TheCulture Culture]] universe, a setting which also has giant ringworlds. That said, this trope's prevalence in ''Halo'' really [[DependingOnTheWriter depends on the writer]]. For example, the ''Literature/HaloEvolutions'' story ''Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian'' (written by former Bungie staffer and current 343i Franchise Development Director Frankie O'Connor) takes place in a ship called ''The Heart of Midlothian''. Even the later novels that aren't written by Bungie/343i staffers have indulged in this trope a little more, with names like ''[[Film/DirtyHarry Do You Feel Lucky?]]'' and ''All Under Heaven''. |
| 225 | ** You also have the funny variations for civilian freighters: ''This End Up'', ''Contents Under Pressure'', ''Bulk Discount'', ''Horn of Plenty'', or ''Wholesale Price''. |
| 226 | * AggressiveNegotiations: The first battle of the Human-Covenant War begins after a nervous Grunt disobeys orders and kills a human during a peace negotiation. |
| 227 | * AgriWorld: |
| 228 | ** Harvest, as the name implies, is a chiefly agricultural world and covered with extensive areas of farmland. This is not uncommon in the setting -- some planets have more hours of daylight than is typical for Earth and happen to have huge tracts of very rich volcanic soil, leading to very large crop yields. Agriculture on such planets is both cheap and productive, and it costs less for other planets to import food from the farm worlds than to grow it locally. |
| 229 | ** This is subverted later as the war rages on, as many of the Outer Colonies where much of the farming goes on are lost, and the Cole Protocol restricts interstellar travel, leading many inner planets to reluctantly take to growing their own food instead of importing it. |
| 230 | * AIIsACrapshoot: There is an actual, InUniverse term for this - Rampancy. Man-made "Smart" [=AIs=] generally have this happen about seven years into their lifetime, at which point they are usually destroyed. Forerunner [=AIs=] can stay sane for much longer, but aren't immune to rampancy either. |
| 231 | * AKA47: |
| 232 | ** The Sniper Rifle System 99 series (particularly the 99D-S2 Anti-Matériel) bears a heavy resemblance to the South African-made NTW-20 (manufactured by the Mechem division of the DENEL group), sharing many of the same features; chambering for the 14.5 x 114mm round, the stock, carrying handle/scope guard and the muzzle brake. The only major differences are that the ''Halo'' weapon is semi-automatic versus the NTW's bolt-action, and loads magazines from the bottom rather than the side. |
| 233 | ** According to Robert [=McLees=], the [=MA5=] series of assault rifles is ''[[AvertedTrope not]]'' based off of the Belgian FN F2000, though he grudgingly admits that people would have reason to think it was after comparing the two. |
| 234 | --->'''Robert [=McLees=]''': I don't know when the images of the FN F2000 appeared, but I didn't see them until three or four months after the game shipped, and I thought 'Oh great. Now everyone's going to think I swiped the design from Fabrique National.' It was surreal to see how close the Halo assault rifle was to its real-life counterpart... and it was all totally by accident. |
| 235 | * AliensAreBastards: Zigzagged with most factions. |
| 236 | ** The Covenant. Though many of its members are shown to be absolute bastards to both humanity and each other, most of the Covenant isn't evil, they're just being manipulated, coerced, or enslaved by the Prophets (and even ''they're'' not ''completely'' evil). Even the Brutes, the most [[BloodKnight brutal and violent of the races]], have some decent people. The Flood ''are'' evil, but there's an implication that the Gravemind genuinely thinks that it's doing the right thing by assimilating everyone (though ''Literature/TheForerunnerSaga'' implies its true purpose may be far more malevolent). By the time of the second game, a combination of the Prophets' backstabbing of the Elites and revelations about the Halos' true purpose causes many members of the Covenant to rebel and join with humanity. |
| 237 | ** Even Jul 'Mdama's Covenant remnant, which still seek to wipe out humanity, somewhat avoids this; they're motivated by a mix of misguided religiosity and genuine concern about humanity's intent towards the rest of the galaxy, with the organization's lesser members likely coerced into the whole venture. |
| 238 | ** The Banished are shown to be much more egalitarian than the original Covenant, with people of any species able to climb the ranks if they prove themselves, and Atriox was even willing to permit humans to join the Banished, a first for any of the series' villains (though very, very few humans seem to have done so). And their motivation is a simple case of NeverBeHurtAgain. They're harsh and brutal, but they're motivated by fear of being oppressed rather than lust for power. |
| 239 | * AliensInCardiff: When the Covenant attack Earth, little to no mention is given to them invading New York, Tokyo, L.A, or any of the other usual cities. They did hit Cleveland and the Kenyan city of New Mombasa, however, as they were looking for Forerunner relics there. Why waste time invading a city with no Forerunner artifacts? [[ApocalypseHow Let it burn,]] [[NuclearOption let it burn]], [[DeathFromAbove let it burn...]] However, New Mombasa ''is'' treated as one of the most economically important cities on Earth (complete with its own space elevator), not nearly as obscure as Mombasa is today. Similarly, future Cleveland has become a prosperous resort city, though unlike the area around Mombasa, it doesn't actually have any Forerunner artifacts; Colonel Ackerson simply tricked the Covenant into thinking there was, so they wouldn't just destroy it from orbit, giving its residents (including his brother) a chance to escape. |
| 240 | * AliensSpeakingEnglish: |
| 241 | ** In most of the games, you can hear the cowardly Grunts shout things like "he's everywhere!" and "run for your lives!" when you attack them, along with many other goofy bits of dialogue. They're the only Covenant who speak English in the first game, with the official explanation being that the UNSC hadn't quite finished translating the other Covenant languages yet. In the subsequent games (with the exception of ''Reach'' and ''4''), the Brutes and Elites will also shout at you in English, presumably because MJOLNIR models from the Mark VI onward have updated translation software, due to Cortana accessing a Covenant lexicon aboard the ''Ascendent Justice'' in ''First Strike''. There are also scenes of the Covenant speaking English among themselves, which is obviously TranslationConvention at work. |
| 242 | ** Averted in ''Reach'' and ''Halo 4'', where the Covenant - even Grunts - do not speak English. ''Reach'' is justified by Noble Six not having the necessarily translation software, but there's no real explanation for ''4'', since Master Chief's and Fireteam Crimson's translation software should be up-to-date; this could be because the Covenant remnant spoke in a then-untranslated dialect. |
| 243 | ** The Covenant in ''Halo 4'' deliberately do not speak English due to an edict by their leader Jul 'Mdama. It still doesn't explain why the various languages are not translated by your armour however. |
| 244 | ** Not only do the Elites and Grunts return to speaking English in ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'', but the Jackals now speak it too. |
| 245 | ** The expanded universe features this trope too, with all of it justified by translation software, said aliens being trained in English, or simple translation convention. |
| 246 | * AllGravityIsTheSame: All the planets and superstructures visited in the series have the same gravity as Earth. A few species like Brutes are said to come from planets with higher gravity but they seemingly have no trouble walking around in Earth-scale gravity. |
| 247 | * AllThereInTheManual: Think Halo is just some generic thoughtless ASpaceMarineIsYou ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''-clone? [[http://www.halopedia.org Think again.]] There's ''tons'' of supplemental material for the multimedia universe, often including ''the actual manuals''. |
| 248 | * AlternateRealityGame: Apart from ''ARG/ILoveBees'' for ''Halo 2'', ''IRIS'' for ''Halo 3'', and ''ARG/HuntTheTruth'' for ''Halo 5'', there was also the ''[[http://www.haloarchive.com/forum/topic/287-onis-section-3-tots/ Section 3]]'' ARG, which took place on the old Halo Waypoint website around the time of ''Halo 4''. Hell, simply visiting the old Bungie.net could have qualified, due to their love of PaintingTheMedium and hiding clues to future projects in unassuming places. |
| 249 | * AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Flood, except for their [[BlueAndOrangeMorality master]]. |
| 250 | * AndIMustScream: '''Jenkins''' and Keyes when the Flood absorb them. Jenkins remained conscious of what was happening to him because the infection form that got him was still weak from containment, while Keyes actively fought back by [[SurvivalMantra continually reciting his name, rank, and number]], though it didn't last. |
| 251 | * TheAntichrist: The Covenant sees all Spartans as this, ''especially'' the Master Chief, to the point that they translate 'Spartan' as 'Demon'. |
| 252 | * AnyoneCanDie: Very much so. Indeed, despite 343i's claim that the franchise was not going to be like ''Series/GameOfThrones'', they themselves have killed off a number of established characters, most notably Cortana in ''Halo 4'', and the Rookie in ''New Blood'', with the latter death being particularly noteworthy because a playable protagonist got unceremoniously killed off in a ''short novel''. |
| 253 | * ArbitraryWeaponRange: Tanks without a side gunner are unable to shoot an opponent boarding them without hurting themselves. |
| 254 | * ArchaeologicalArmsRace: The Covenant and the humans are pretty keen to get their hands on any Forerunner technology they can find. |
| 255 | * ArcNumber: [[RuleOfSeven Seven]], and its powers, including 7^3 (343), 7^4 (2401) and 7^6 ('''117'''649). In particular, they have correlations with which Monitors live at which Halo installations; for example, 343 Guilty Spark is assigned to Installation 04 (7^(4-1) = 343), 2401 Penitent Tangent is assigned to Installation 05 (7^(5-1) = 2401), and 049 Abject Testament was assigned to Installation 03 (7^(3-1) = 49). |
| 256 | * ArcWords: Starting with the Reclaimer Saga: "The Reclamation has begun." |
| 257 | %% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample * ArmorMeter: The Spartans wear armor with in-built energy shielding. The shield drains away as the player takes damage and once it's completely depleted, their HP starts taking hits. |
| 258 | * ArtEvolution: The imagery of the original game was quickly overwhelmed by the graphical power advancements made in the years following, and as such by ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' the series really started hitting the issue with CosmeticallyAdvancedPrequel. ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'' made a deliberate overhaul to the visual elements, maintaining some recognition factor but it was clearly a new design and not the original armor with modern graphics. BroadStrokes can also be applied to some things as between what is seen in the games, talked about in the expanded universe and visualized in media projects varies depending on the needs of the medium. |
| 259 | * ArtifactTitle: Several of the games and most of the ExpandedUniverse don't actually feature the Halos. A Halo installation is present in ''Reach'', but only in multiplayer and the ShotForShotRemake of the first game's opening shown at the end. In ''4'' and ''5''[='s=] campaigns, a Halo only shows up briefly in the former, and the latter features zero Halos until the very last scene of the Legendary ending. |
| 260 | ** The animated film of ''The Fall of Reach'' doesn't feature the fall of Reach- while it is an adaptation of the book of the same title, it omits the final act which covers the eponymous battle. |
| 261 | ** The ''Master Chief Collection'' was originally a collection of all the ''Halo'' games that featured Master Chief as a main character. However, 343 later added ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'' and ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' to the collection, which are side stories and don't feature Chief as a player character. |
| 262 | * ArtificialBrilliance: The series is widely renowned for its very impressive enemy AI. However... |
| 263 | * ArtificialStupidity: The allied AI was never nearly so advanced. |
| 264 | * ArtisticLicenseSpace: Harvest, one of the most remote Human colonies, and the site of first contact with the Covenant, orbits the star Epsilon Indi and is about 12 light-years away from Earth. Reach, the "Second Military Capital" of the UNSC and "gatekeeper" to Earth's doorstep, orbits the star Epsilon Eridani at about 10.5 light-years away, making it closer to Harvest than it is to Earth. In addition, the UNSC has, by the time of First Contact, settled around 800 other colony worlds, yet they had never encountered the Kig-Yar, whose home system is only about 41 light years from our own. This was later semi-rectified by establishing that "remoteness" in the ''Halo''verse is measured in how long it takes to get to a location through slipspace, which does not always correspond to the "topography" of real space; while Harvest is physically almost as close to Earth as Reach is, a Harvest-Earth trip is much longer than a Reach-Earth one if one is using FTL drives, thanks to the wonkiness of slipspace. |
| 265 | * TheAtoner: |
| 266 | ** The role that Elite Arbiters are expected to play after their appointment. The current one (Thel 'Vadam) eventually grows out of it, given that the disaster which landed him the role wasn't even really his fault, but he does still have genuine regrets about his role in attempting to wipe out humanity. |
| 267 | ** Sergeant Ghost from ''[[Anime/HaloLegends Prototype]]'', for losing the entirety of his former squad. |
| 268 | ** Mendicant Bias, in repentance for helping the Flood against its Forerunner creators, decides to try to aid humanity from behind the scenes. |
| 269 | * AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: |
| 270 | ** Elite Zealots and Ultras/Generals/Warriors > all lower ranks. The method of climbing the ranks for Elites is [[AsskickingLeadsToLeadership by kills;]] literally, the more enemies you kill, the higher up you go in ranks, ''and nothing else matters''. |
| 271 | ** Brutes operate on MightMakesRight; if a Brute Chieftain isn't the strongest fighter in his clan/pack/etc, he'll inevitably be overthrown by a stronger underling. |
| 272 | ** Some of the upper-level UNSC members, specifically Captain Jacob Keyes and Admiral Preston Cole. ''Especially'' Admiral Cole; the in-universe biography ''[[Literature/HaloEvolutions The Impossible Life and Possible Death of Preston J. Cole]]'' serves as irrefutable proof that he will rock your shit. |
| 273 | * BadassCreed: The unit motto of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the 105th is "Feet first into hell," hence their moniker "Helljumpers". ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' gives us an additional tidbit: |
| 274 | -->"[[ItsRainingMen Jumping into hell isn't the job]], making sure it's crowded when you get there is." |
| 275 | * BadassCrew: |
| 276 | ** The Spartans in general, the [=IIs=] in particular. |
| 277 | ** The ODST squad Alpha-Nine in ''ODST'' also count. |
| 278 | ** Noble Team in ''Reach''. |
| 279 | * BadassNormal: This may be a franchise starring {{Super Soldier}}s, but normal humans do plenty of asskicking themselves. |
| 280 | ** Sgt. Johnson seems to be this. But he's actually a [[SuperSoldier Spartan-I]]. |
| 281 | ** Marvin Mobuto: In the book ''The Flood'', halfway through the Library, Master Chief is almost overwhelmed by the huge numbers of Flood as he fights his way to the Index Room. Then, he finds the corpse of Sgt .Mobuto, a very normal Marine who, in spite of his lack of Spartan training, energy shielding, and so on used by the Master Chief, still managed to get within a few rooms of retrieving the Index. What he did was so badass, the Master Chief himself says "I didn't know you, Sarge, but I sure as hell wish I had. You must have been one hard-core son of a bitch." |
| 282 | ** Sgt. Forge, who fights The Arbiter with a knife and wins. According to the ''Halo Wars'' timeline, he also gets into a brawl with one of the ''Spirit of Fire'''s Spartan-[=II=]s and appears to have held his own. One of the same Spartan-[=IIs=] who were able to [[CurbStompBattle defeat]] multiple Helljumpers unarmored. At the [[TykeBomb tender age of 14]]. |
| 283 | ** Orbital Drop Shock Troopers ([=ODSTs=]) are the poster children for this trope in the entire franchise, being as a whole the most badass non-Spartan humans in the entire verse. The squad Alpha-Nine from ''ODST'' are particular exemplars, especially Gunnery Sergeant Edward "If he were any better, he'd be a Spartan" Buck. |
| 284 | ** Sadie Endesha and Mike Branley from "[[VideoGame/Halo3ODST Sadie's Story]]", in an ActionSurvivor kind of way. |
| 285 | ** Miranda Keyes: Takes down two Brutes by herself and wounds several others with just a shotgun and a pistol, despite being an unaugmented ship commander. |
| 286 | * [[BaseonWheels Base on Wheels]]: Both the UNSC and Covenant are known to utilize absolutely gigantic ground vehicles. For the Covenant side, theirs will cross into HumongousMecha territory too. |
| 287 | ** For the UNSC they have: |
| 288 | *** The Elephant, the ''smallest Base on Wheels'' in Halo but nevertheless, still remains the largest drivable vehicle in Halo to date. The Elephant is a giant heavy troop transport/command center hybrid the size of a two-story building. Don't expect it to move any faster than a snail though. |
| 289 | *** The Mammoth one-ups the Elephant by being twice the length, at nearly ''70 meters long'', the Mammoth, like the Elephant, is a mobile command and control firebase, but with the added benefit of also being a anti-ship weapons platform. |
| 290 | ** For the Covenant they have: |
| 291 | *** The Scarab, you know'em you love'em. Scarabs are giant quadrupedal mechs designed to act as heavy siege engines. Despite this, they have a dual-use purpose as Scarabs were originally civilian mining vehicles. Nonetheless, the Scarab can just as easily bore through UNSC armor just as easily as mountains. |
| 292 | *** The Super Scarab is a even bigger version of the regular Scarab that is only encountered in one mission in Halo Wars. They are rarely seen and are only utilized to mine the more sacred of Forerunner artefacts. |
| 293 | *** The Draugr is a Covenant {{Literature/Bolo}}. No serious. These land battleships are one of the most powerful Covenant ground vehicles. At ''168 meters long, 100 meters wide and 58 meters tall with a mass of 71,000 metric tons'', these monsters are armed with ''[[MoreDakka five focus cannons]]'' and use ''Scarabs as support vehicles''. Yes, it is a Base on Wheels that uses ''other'' Base on Wheels as support platforms. |
| 294 | *** The Harvester is the king of all Covenant walkers save for the Kraken. These gigantic mining platforms is a giant walking landship may be armed with just one ultra-heavy focus cannon, but it is ''219 meters long, 148 meters wide, 133 meters tall and weigh at around 211,660 metric tons.'' To give you some perspective, this is twice the weight of the real world Gerald R. Ford supercarriers. |
| 295 | *** The Kraken is the largest Covenant ground vehicle ever known. These are seige engines that are big enough that even ''mountain-sized'' boulders can be thrown like frisbees. They are ''527 meters tall, 177 meters long, 179 meters wide and weigh at a colossal 800,000 metric tons.'' |
| 296 | * BeautyEqualsGoodness: Just how bestial certain races such as the Elites appear often varies from game to game, seemingly dependent on whether they are villains in that particular one or not. In ''Halo 3'', where the Elites are on your side, they have smoother features, while in ''Halo 4'' and ''Halo Wars'', where they play a solely antagonistic role, they are far more monstrous, looking closer to orcs. Averted in ''Halo 5'', where both allied and enemy Elites and Grunts look physically alike. |
| 297 | * BeneathTheMask: Every AI that is still hiding their rampancy, with Cortana herself gradually falling into this. Additionally, the Prophet of Truth's calm mask comes off in ''Halo 3'', although his newfound zealotry indicates that he might, to some degree, have actually ''[[BecomingTheMask become the mask]]''. |
| 298 | * BigBadEnsemble: In the first trilogy, your top enemies are: |
| 299 | ** The Covenant, lead by the Prophet of Truth, is a religious, genocidal coalition of ScaryDogmaticAliens bent on (unknowingly) causing intergalactic extermination by activating the Halo Array, as a means to "begin the [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence Great Journey]]". |
| 300 | ** The Flood are a parasitic and mutated virus, represented and led by the Gravemind, that seek to literally feed on every organic species in the universe. |
| 301 | ** The Sentinels, spearheaded by their Monitors (i.e. 343 Guilty Spark), were created to contain the Flood, as well as anyone else who presented a potential threat to the Halo rings (which was often interpreted to include those who simply wanted to prevent the firing of the rings). |
| 302 | ** In the second trilogy, there is still the Covenant, along with the ones who built the Sentinels (Forerunners) and a rebellion of AI (Created). |
| 303 | * BigDumbObject: The titular Halo installations. |
| 304 | * BigGuyFatalitySyndrome: {{Exaggerated}}: ALL of the Big Guys on Blue Team suffer from this - [[spoiler: Samuel's EVA suit is breached and he's forced to remain behind with a bomb, James is blasted off into space, Joshua's Banshee is shot down, and Will dies fighting two Hunters]] - while the rest of the team remains intact. Also, Jorge is also the first member of Noble Team to die in ''Halo Reach''. |
| 305 | * BinomiumRidiculus: all the Covenant species, in addition to having a nickname (e.g., "Elites") and a formal name ("Sangheili"), also have a faux-Latin scientific name ("Macto cognatus"). You can read all the names and the meanings behind them in [[http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive29.pl?read=865756 this forum post]]. |
| 306 | * BiologicalWeaponsSolveEverything: The first trilogy can be loosely interpreted to end this way. The eponymous Halos are installations which can wipe out all life within a certain radius, meant to "starve" [[TheVirus the Flood]]. The Halos aren't biological weapons themselves, but they're clearly built to target anything with a biological nervous system (though certain forms of life like plants and fungi are safe). |
| 307 | * BirdVsSerpent: When the capture the flag mode is played, the blue team will have an image of a bird of prey on their flag, while the red team has an image of a snake on theirs. This tradition began with the original ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'' and continued until ''VideoGame/Halo4''. |
| 308 | * BlackAndGrayMorality: |
| 309 | ** The [[TheEmpire UNSC]] is a totalitarian military dictatorship that runs [[ChildSoldier Child]] SuperSoldier programs [[WouldHurtAChild that kill the bulk of their recruits]], gives cloned kids cancer in order to cover it up, backstabs their own allies in order to maintain the BalanceOfPower, [[https://www.halopedia.org/Far_Isle nukes civilian populations off the face of the planet in response to rebellion]], etc. Its semi-shadow government, the Office of Naval Intelligence, veers much closer to the black side of things, with its willingness to do things even the rest of the UNSC doesn't approve of. It borders on StupidEvil when they nearly start a war between the Elites and humanity after ''4'' by supporting the Servants of Abiding Truth against the Swords of Sanghelios, the latter of which is led by the Arbiter, who saved humanity from extinction. The UNSC would be the BigBad in most other works, but [[EvilVersusOblivion against the Covenant and Flood, they come off as the lesser of the evils.]] |
| 310 | *** ''Forward Unto Dawn'' fully reveals the level of the UNSC's indoctrination of its own citizens, as well. They named their top military academy after a Roman general who committed suicide because his emperor ordered him to, purely because said emperor saw him as a threat to Imperial power. The UNSC glorifies said general as an example of what all UNSC officers should be, and even makes the FinalSpeech that he used to ''justify his suicide'' the official motto of the academy. Additionally, ''Forward Unto Dawn'' confirms that the UNSC's population on Earth was largely not even aware of how the war was going in space, even as they were losing horribly and about to be invaded, indicating an absurd level of state censorship and information control. |
| 311 | ** The [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized Insurrectionists]] have legitimate grievances with the UNSC's aforementioned heavy-handedness, but extremist elements pushed them towards full-out terrorism. It should be noted, though, that they only resorted to weapons of mass destruction ''after'' the UNSC had already done so, and their decentralized structure ("Insurrectionists" is just a convenient name given to a bunch of separate movements) means they can't really be lumped together. |
| 312 | ** The [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Covenant's]] ruling caste is highly corrupt (and in some cases, possibly borderline insane), but the rest are either [[CorruptChurch misguided by religious fervor]], [[CannonFodder expendable slaves for all intents and purposes]], [[ActualPacifist just tagging along to fix stuff]], otherwise coerced into serving the Covenant, or simply [[PunchClockVillain mercenaries with no real grudge against anyone]]. Even the [[KillerSpaceMonkey Brutes]], who are [[BloodKnight aggressive and violent by nature]], have admirable traits and are capable of existing with other species in good faith under the right circumstances. They are, however, actively and (for the Brutes and Elites at least) willingly engaging in a mass genocide of tens of billions, marking them as a clear black.\ |
| 313 | The Prophet of Truth, on the other hand, seems like a definite OmnicidalManiac in the games. [[DoubleSubversion However]], [[AllThereInTheManual in the books]], his conversations and inner monologue make it clear that he believes that the truth about the Forerunners and the Halos would destroy the Covenant and bring about a deadly civil war. [[JerkassHasAPoint He wasn't completely wrong]], even though the actual civil war that breaks out was almost entirely his fault. That said, even the novels make it clear that he's still a power-hungry sociopath at heart. |
| 314 | ** The [[AbusivePrecursors Forerunners]] genuinely wished to protect the galaxy and its inhabitants, but they grew arrogant and complacent because of their extremely advanced technology, to the point where they eventually became imperialists who prioritized their own self-aggrandizement at least as much as the rest of the galaxy's well-being. When [[TheVirus the Flood]] came knocking, they realized that they had left their charges weak and dependent, and could only defeat the Flood through a desperate last resort plan - killing all remaining sentient life in the Milky Way, including most of the surviving Forerunners, in order to starve out the parasite. Ultimately, the end of their ecumene could be interpreted as a HeroicSacrifice or the cost of their foolishness/sins, depending on how idealistic/cynical one is. (and that's not counting the Forerunner remnants fought in ''Halo 4'', whose leader, The Didact, wants to enslave if not exterminate mankind, and was downright exiled for extremism) |
| 315 | ** The [[ZombieApocalypse Flood]] have killed and infected trillions upon trillions of people, but their hive mind, [[EldritchAbomination the Gravemind]], [[OrangeAndBlueMorality sincerely believes]] that it simply [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans bring peace and prosperity]] to a galaxy which simply doesn't understand the Flood due to ignorance and fear (''The Forerunner Saga'' hints that its true intentions might be far more malevolent, though). While its seemingly utopian goals are never explicitly stated, there are many allusions to it, particularly after it becomes clear to the Gravemind that it has lost: |
| 316 | -->'''Gravemind:''' Do I take life or give it? Who is victim, and who is foe? |
| 317 | -->'''Gravemind:''' Resignation is my virtue; like water I ebb, and flow. Defeat is simply the addition of time to a sentence I never deserved... but you imposed. |
| 318 | * BoardingPod: In ''Combat Evolved'', the Covenant attach these to the ''Autumn's'' lifeboat launch tubes and board through them. Seen again in ''2'' when the Prophet of Regret attacks Earth, sending pods to board and blow up three of the Super MAC stations guarding the planet, though the Chief manages to stop the destruction of one of them. |
| 319 | * BookEnds: |
| 320 | ** ''Combat Evolved'' and ''Reach'' do this for the Bungie-made games. The first stage of ''Halo: Combat Evolved'' is "The Pillar of Autumn". The final mission of ''Halo: Reach'' is also "The Pillar of Autumn" (not counting the "Lone Wolf" bonus mission). Additionally, the final cutscene of ''Reach'' is the beginning of the first cutscene of ''Combat Evolved'', complete with the same lines from Keyes and Cortana. [[note]]The only thing missing in the ''Reach'' cutscene are the Longswords escorting the titular ship.[[/note]] |
| 321 | -->'''Captain Jacob Keyes:''' Cortana, all I need to know is did we lose them? |
| 322 | -->'''Cortana:''' I think we both know the answer to that. |
| 323 | ** Master Chief's involvement in the original trilogy starts when he emerges out of a cryotube and shortly thereafter places Cortana in his helmet. His role ends when he removes Cortana from his helmet and enters a cryotube. |
| 324 | ** ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' and ''VideoGame/Halo3'', which are chronologically the first and last of the Bungie-developed games, have one of these. The last two missions of both games involve the player retrieving and escorting Cortana and a vital piece of data that she carries. |
| 325 | * BroadStrokes: Initially, the games themselves were internally consistent, but the ExpandedUniverse has done a great deal of rearrangement of facts and details over the years. Nowadays, even the games aren't completely consistent with each other. Current official canon policy is that when new material and old material conflict, [[{{Retcon}} the new material wins]] unless otherwise stated. |
| 326 | * TheBrute: The Jiralhanae, otherwise known as, well, Brutes. The Hunters are another Covenant member species who serve this role. |
| 327 | * CainAndAbel: Forerunner [=AIs=] Mendicant Bias and Offensive Bias. Except this time it's Abel (Offensive) who defeats Cain (Mendicant), by leading him into a trap. |
| 328 | * CapitalLettersAreMagic: Standard formula for a ''Halo'' enemy, faction or MacGuffin; capitalise a regular English word. The Covenant, Halo, The Flood, The Librarian, The Index, The Arbiter, The Great Journey, The Ark, The Didact, The Composer... |
| 329 | * CarbonSkin: The MJOLNIR armor worn by Spartans has a black nanocomposite bodysuit in its inner layer. Despite being skintight, it's still thick and heat-resistant material that can deflect enemy weapons, albeit not to the same extent as the thicker outer shell that makes up the green parts of Master Chief's armor. |
| 330 | * CatchPhrase: The phrase "I would have been your daddy" shows up in almost every game in the series, either as a spoken line, a mission title, or an unlockable skull. |
| 331 | * CentrifugalGravity: While all Covenant/Forerunner space-craft/stations can produce artificial gravity without needing centrifugal forces, the books indicate that older human ships still use rotating sections to produce gravity, though the ones featured in the games are the new ones equipped with actual artificial gravity devices. |
| 332 | * CharacterExaggeration: The Covenant's potential to "[[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt glass]]" entire planets is subject to a strong degree of exaggeration InUniverse. While they certainly have the capacity to reduce an entire planet's surface to glass using their energy weapons, it is a very lengthy process, and [[AwesomeButImpractical though impressive, is rarely worth the time it takes]], leading the Covenant to focus on glassing major population centers and doing some crisscrossing sweeps across the rest of the world. With atmospheric convection, the destruction is equally deadly if less absolute. For their part, the Covenant boast of their ability to cleanse entire planets, while reports to the UNSC exaggerate the destructive potential to galvanize humanity into action. This is backed up by information from one of the datapads in ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', saying that the Covenant do not have the resources to glass an entire planet and wage a multi-system war at the same time, and that to '''entirely''' glass Earth would require about thirty years of continuous bombardment by a fleet of equal size to that possessed by the UNSC.\ |
| 333 | That said, said datapad was written only about a year into the war, when the Covenant were still only committing a relatively small percent of their fleet to the war effort; another datapad written around the fifth year of the war gives a conservative estimate of about one to over three ''centuries'' just to re-terraform only ''four'' colony worlds. Additionally, while glassing is no longer shown as destroying literally everything on a planet's surface, post-''Reach'' media still depicts its destructive effects as near-apocalyptic, with ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'' showing that even a rushed glassing is still capable of boiling away every ocean on a small planet. |
| 334 | * ChainsawGripBFG: Spartans, Elites, Brutes, and Promethean Soldiers can all wield heavy turrets, and even directly rip them off their mounts. The cast of ''ODST'' can do this as well, though at least some of that is GameplayAndStorySegregation. |
| 335 | * TheChosenOne: Master Chief has been set up within the games and in the expanded universe as being a particularly special Spartan. |
| 336 | * ColdSniper: |
| 337 | ** Linda-058, who's cold and quiet even by [[TheStoic Spartan-II standards]]. |
| 338 | ** Played with by Romeo; he's an absolute jackass, but a relatively social guy all the same (as well as a self-proclaimed Casanova). |
| 339 | ** Also played with by Jun-A266, who actually comes off as fairly friendly and chatty in ''Reach''. While his in-universe profile describes him as having [[http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=personnel&cid=24522 "an unhealthy emotional detachment in regards to the consequences of his actions"]], his own CO completely disagrees with that assessment. His appearances in ''ComicBook/HaloInitiation'' and ''Literature/HaloNewBlood'' depict him as coldly professional, but still fairly civil (that said, he's no longer a sniper by that point). |
| 340 | * ColonCancer: ''Halo: Combat Evolved: Anniversary Edition''. |
| 341 | * ColonizedSolarSystem: Taking place in the 26th century, humanity has had plenty of time to branch out into the rest of our home system: Mercury is used for antimatter production and solar research; Venus is the site of a failed terraforming project ([[DeathWorld no surprise there]]); the Moon has a sizable population and an OCS Academy; Mars has been terraformed, heavily populated, and is one of the UNSC's main industrial centers; Jupiter's moons have colonies and bases while the planet itself is mined for gases; Saturn is mostly a tourist trap; Uranus is a mostly-ignored backwater; Neptune is used as a gravity slingshot; and Pluto has an early-warning detection station keeping an eye out for extrasolar activity. |
| 342 | * CoolShip: ''Pillar of Autumn'', ''In Amber Clad'', ''Forward Unto Dawn'', ''Truth and Reconciliation'', ''Shadow of Intent'', ''Spirit of Fire'', ''Infinity'', and a slew of others from the games and expanded universe. Many of these also make AGoodNameForARockBand. |
| 343 | ** Humorously enough, there is an actual band called "Pillar of Autumn" that got their name from the ship. |
| 344 | * ContinuityNod: |
| 345 | ** Quite a few of them. Regret's carrier being able to jump inside Earth's atmosphere in ''Halo 2'' is probably a nod towards the scene in ''First Strike'' in which Cortana discovers that this can be done by making the ''Ascendant Justice'' enter slipspace within a gas giant. |
| 346 | ** ''[[Anime/HaloLegends The Package]]'' has the Master Chief interact with Dr. Halsey face to face and she acts exactly like Cortana, right down to telling him "Don't make a promise to a girl if you know you can't keep it." |
| 347 | * ContinuityDrift: ''Halo'' canon has been continually experiencing this, though it's up in the air if some of the retcons are justified or not. This mainly applies to the books, which by the old official policy were only canon if they did not contradict the games, even if the book came out first. |
| 348 | ** One notable example is that in the original print of ''The Fall of Reach'', Hunters are first encountered on Sigma Octanus in 2552, and the Elites were hypothesized but not confirmed until the battle of Reach of that same year. However, Bungie was quite unhappy about Nylund establishing specific dates for first encounters, and therefore, as mentioned in the Retcon entry below, almost all other media showed that humanity had been fighting them since pretty much the beginning of the war; the 2010/2011 reprints basically settled the issue by eliminating any and all mentions of the Elites being newly encountered. |
| 349 | * CorpseLand: Before you encounter the Flood, you'll often come across areas filled with ravaged Covenant and human corpses. |
| 350 | * CosmicDeadline: It's AllThereInTheManual, but the UNSC-Covenant war drags on from 2525 to 2552, with the campaign over Harvest alone taking at least six years. The UNSC is constantly said to be on the road to defeat from Day One, losing colony after colony to the Covenant for a full 27 years, with the Spartans being in active service basically the entire time. Everything hits the fan at a breakneck pace right at the end though, within the span of July to December 2552 (just ''six months''): |
| 351 | ** July 2552: Keyes becomes a captain at the Battle of Sigma Octanus. |
| 352 | ** August-September 2552: [[VideoGame/HaloReach Reach]] [[Literature/HaloTheFallOfReach falls]], the ''Autumn'' [[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved discovers the first Halo]], and the events of ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike'' take place. |
| 353 | ** October-November 2552: The Covenant [[VideoGame/{{Halo2}} invade Earth, enter a civil war, and fight to secure Installation 05]]. |
| 354 | ** December 2552: The Covenant loyalists [[VideoGame/{{Halo3}} try to take over the Ark]]. The Prophets get killed, the Gravemind and its forces get destroyed, and the war ends. |
| 355 | * CrapsackWorld: "Welcome to the galaxy, mankind! Incidentally, our religion has decreed you to be a race of demons and we're going to genocide you now, no offense or anything. Oh, and don't mind the Gravemind over there, it hardly ever {{Mind Rape}}s anyone." |
| 356 | ** Oh by the way, think that before the Covies and Flood, it was nice? Nope! You live in a semi-authoritarian government with rebellion just about everywhere in the outer and inner colonies, and both sides are willing to use nukes should it be effective. |
| 357 | ** The Covenant sucks too. Imagine being a Unggoy (Grunt), the frontline fodder destined to be the first to have their face booted in by the Chief so the Sangheili (Elites) and Jiralhanae (Brutes) might have a slightly easier time with him, all because that's your caste in the religion you were forced into (a religion built on a false pretense, no less). |
| 358 | ** However, things have a chance to improve significantly now that the Prophets have been overthrown and the war is finally over. But first, everyone will need to defeat a whole smorgasbord of new foes, ranging from a resurgent Insurrection and Covenant splinter groups, to brigands and slavers, to ONI becoming a dictatorial shadow government, to (last but not least) Forerunner machines seeking to destroy/conquer everyone else in the galaxy. |
| 359 | * CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Forerunners basically fit in this trope. There are crystals, sleek and ornamented structures, and lots and lots of spires. Their society model also fits in with this. |
| 360 | * CulturalTranslation: The Japanese localizations of ''Halo'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6NFOyE7oG0 lean heavier on the Sangheili's samurai inspirations]], with the Arbiter in particular having his speech patterns resemble the common image of a samurai lord. |
| 361 | * DarkMessiah: Covenant Prophets in general, particularly the Prophet of Truth (a blackmailer and generally ne'er-do-good). In the post-war scene, Jul 'Mdama plays this role to his Covenant remnant followers. |
| 362 | * DataCrystal: For storing human [=AIs=]. |
| 363 | * DeadMansTriggerFinger: An enemy killed by shooting often fires a couple rounds into the floor/air before dying. |
| 364 | * DeadpanSnarker: |
| 365 | ** [[VideoGame/HaloWars Serina]], in spades! Cortana too. Really, "Smart" [=AIs=] in general. |
| 366 | ** Hell, even the Chief has his moments. |
| 367 | ** Romeo so very much, even when he probably shouldn't be, like at a funeral. |
| 368 | * DefectorFromDecadence: The Arbiter and the former members of the Covenant who follow him. |
| 369 | * DeflectorShields: Used extensively by the Covenant, and to a more limited extent by the UNSC after reverse-engineering the Covenant's shield technology. |
| 370 | * DespotismJustifiesTheMeans: The three High Prophets discovered that the humans are the rightful inheritors of the Forerunners' legacy, and this would undo the Prophets' rule over the Covenant. So they set out to eliminate humanity to maintain their rule. |
| 371 | * {{Determinator}}: The Spartans, especially the Master Chief. |
| 372 | ** By extension, the entire human race. They went from having an fledgling interstellar domain to nothing more than Earth and a handful of scattered colonies, yet humanity were still throwing literally everything they had at the Covenant by the time the latter invaded Earth. The Elites respected humanity for its sheer determination, and even before the civil war, many wondered why they were never offered a chance to join the Covenant. And in only a few years after the end of the war, the UNSC had already reestablished itself as a significant power in the Orion Arm.\ |
| 373 | Not to mention that in the prehistoric past, even after the Forerunners completely dismantled humanity's previous interstellar society and partially devolved them after a major war between the two species, they still were able to quickly redevelop a thriving, if still primitive, world civilization. And the actual war itself took ages to resolve, due to the humans continuing to fight until they were down to their last worlds. And this was all after successfully driving back the Flood (if only temporarily). |
| 374 | * DivergentCharacterEvolution: Originally all Spartans wore identical Mjolnir armor, with it noted that Dr. Halsey knew who each Spartan was on body language alone. The first two games had only color options for their character based on the Master Chief design for the game, but for CharacterCustomization purposes ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' was the first to offer helmet, shoulder and chest piece variations. For a time the Mark IV armor remained identical but ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' started a trend of Mark V and VI and above were made with a wide variety of personalized options, both for the InUniverse Spartans and for player preferences, and eventually even Mark IV could see some modifications. Lastly, it also became commonplace for the Spartan II's to have their numerical tag included on the armor, including Master Chief's 117. |
| 375 | * DoomedHometown: The colony of Reach (which was effectively home for the Spartan-[=IIs=]). Also, the homeworld of every single Spartan-III, due to all of them being orphans from glassed planets. Many other human characters also come from worlds/towns that were glassed or otherwise completely destroyed, including 4/5 of Fireteam Majestic and 3/4 of Fireteam Osiris. |
| 376 | * DoomsdayDevice[=/=]DepopulationBomb: The purpose of the Halos. |
| 377 | * DrawSwordDrawBlood: The Sangheili/Elites, a ProudWarriorRace, claim that no weapon should be drawn without intent of using it, or else it demands blood. In ''VideoGame/HaloWars'', though, the [[DragonInChief Arbiter Ripa 'Moramee]] draws his energy swords in the presence of one of the Prophets, a double blasphemy; it's a sign of his disrespectful attitude toward his own culture and religion, and his high rank is the only reason the Prophet's Honor Guards don't kill him on the spot. |
| 378 | * DropPod: Human Entry Vehicles, the main mode of transport for the [=ODSTs=]. The Covenant have their own, ranging from small single-Elite pods to large containers carrying entire mixed-species squads. |
| 379 | * DropShip: The UNSC has their sturdy and reliable Pelicans to transport troops, vehicles, mechs, and cargo, as well as provide fire support against both air and ground targets. The rarer and much larger Albatross is a troop and cargo transport with heavier armor at the expense of firepower, while the helicopter-like Falcon serves as squad transport and fire support. The Covenant use the Type-25 Spirit, used as an atmospheric transport, and the Type-52 Phantom, the Covenant's answer to Pelicans. |
| 380 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''[[https://www.halopedia.org/Cortana_Letters The Cortana Letters]]'' are this for the franchise as a whole, to the point that only the parts directly referenced by material considered canon are themselves canon. (For example, those parts directly referenced by Cortana in the announcement trailer for ''Halo 3''.) There's some interesting things to note about the letters. |
| 381 | ** Overall, the letters imply that ''Halo'' had a ''much'' closer link to the ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' series. Not only does Cortana act a ''lot'' like the snarky AI Durandal from that series, he might even be the "he" Cortana refers to when saying "I am still not sure what he ever saw in you," given that Durandal was known for his disdainful-yet-protective attitude toward humanity once he reached the metastable phase of Rampancy. In fact, in December 2021 Bungie alums Martin O'Donnell and Paul Russell confirmed that ''Halo'' was originally set within ''Marathon's'' universe, and it was going to be a plot point that Cortana's base code is based on Durandal's. Which would have made her name a MeaningfulName, given the sword that is her namesake is said to bear the inscription "My name is Cortana, of the same steel and temper as Joyeuse and Durendal." |
| 382 | ** The W'rkncacnter (AKA the Dreaming God of ''VideoGame/PathwaysIntoDarkness'') is referenced as "a Demon folded in black clouds" as well as creatures inching along the fiery tracks of a black sun, who also guard something Cortana wants--much to the ire of the Covenant. |
| 383 | ** In the Letters, Cortana doesn't appear to have been the shipboard AI for the ''Pillar of Autumn''. Rather, some "BW - AI Class III" that Cortana refers to as "the family hound" appears to fill that role, although it's left ambiguous because its messages are referred to as coming from "BW-AI aboard(?) [=PoA=]." |
| 384 | ** Speaking of the Master Chief, Cortana seems to have a much less amicable relationship with him in the Letters. After the ''Pillar of Autumn's'' shipboard AI corners her, it appears she gets confined to the Chief's systems not unlike how she's often uploaded into his armor in canon. However, Cortana refers to the Chief as a "hybrid war machine" "complicated by such useless clutter as a conscience," implying it's not so much his ''armor'' she's been forced to inhabit but ''his mind''. That brings to mind ''Marathon's'' MJOLNIR Mk. IV Battleroids. (And, recall that in ''Combat Evolved'', the Chief wore the Mark IV version of the MJOLNIR armor ... ) Master Chief having originally been intended to be a cyborg rather than super soldier seems to be corroborated by the earliest trailers for ''Halo'', before he acquired his trademark voice actor--in which he sounds robotic and emotionless, complete with a mechanical echo. |
| 385 | ** The Cortana Letters have some parallels to the ''Halo 2'' ARG ''ARG/ILoveBees'', particularly in how Cortana enjoyed trolling ''Marathon'' fans with her means of contacting them (including from a NASA JPL e-mail address!) much like how The Operator/Durga/Melissa made free use of ''anything'' connected to a network. Like her, Cortana is overtly disdainful of computer technology from the late 90's/early 00's--Cortana called it (among other things) an "antiquated excuse for a network," while Melissa considered it "little better than an abacus." |
| 386 | * EarthShatteringKaboom: |
| 387 | ** What happened to Alpha Halo. And Alpha Halo's replacement. And the titular planet in ''Ghosts of Onyx'': after nuclear warheads were set off in its core, it was revealed to be made of trillions of Sentinels. Really, Forerunner worlds have a thing for getting blown up directly, or indirectly, by Spartans. |
| 388 | ** Also from ''Ghost Of Onyx'', the so-called "Nova Bomb" (also a ChekhovsGun from ''First Strike''). The bomb was accidentally set off aboard an Elite ship orbiting one of their outpost planets, and it proceeded to instantly vaporize much (if not most) of an Elite fleet of hundreds of ships (which had been preparing to totally crush the Brutes), shatter a nearby moon to pieces, and vaporize an entire quarter of the planet below it (also producing winds that flattened entire cities and formed immense tidal waves). The weapon in question was perhaps the size of a mini van... and [[http://www.halopedia.org/Nova_bomb Halopedia's calculations]] put the thing's likely megaton yield at 1.2 ''billion''. |
| 389 | ** In ''Halo Wars'', the crew of the UNSC ''Spirit of Fire'' destroys a Forerunner Shield World by overloading the ship's fusion core and sending it into the planet's artificial sun. The result is a Death Star-like explosion. |
| 390 | ** In ''Halo: Evolutions'', Admiral Cole fires a hundred nuclear warheads into the gas giant Viperidae's core, turning it into a momentary star and decimating the Covenant fleet. Also a case of NoKillLikeOverkill and a possible HeroicSacrifice. |
| 391 | ** At the end of ''[[VideoGame/{{Halo 4}} Spartan Ops]]'', Jul 'Mdama sends Requiem into its sun, which then goes supernova as part of its Flood containment protocols. |
| 392 | ** While the glassing of the most human colonies doesn't technically count, it does render those planets uninhabitable. |
| 393 | * EarthThatUsedToBeBetter: |
| 394 | ** Though the Covenant invasion caused massive damage to Earth, it still serves as the center of the UNSC's power, with its people hard at work rebuilding and resettling it. |
| 395 | ** In the past, the UNSC's earliest FTL colony fleets were used partly as a way to relieve Earth of its overpopulation, which seems to have actually worked. |
| 396 | * EccentricAI: |
| 397 | ** [=UNSC=] Smart AIs suffer from "Rampancy" after seven years of operation: their neural networks overload as they steadily "think themselves to death", leading to emotional instability and erratic behaviour. This befalls Cortana in ''VideoGame/Halo4''. |
| 398 | ** 343 Guilty Spark is the [[AncientKeeper Monitor of Installation 04]] who's gone more than a little loopy after being [[GoMadFromTheIsolation left by himself for tens of thousands of years]]. He's in the habit of babbling nonsensically to himself, and encourages the Master Chief to fire the Halo ring, even though this would wipe out all life in the galaxy, with no way of restoring it this time. Later, near the end of ''VideoGame/Halo3'', he fully snaps when Cortana [[{{Irony}} proposes to fire and destroy Installation 04's replacement]] to take out the Flood, [[spoiler:killing Sergeant Johnson]] and forcing Chief to destroy the Monitor. |
| 399 | * ElCidPloy: Given the huge morale boost the Spartans provided to the [=UNSC=], [=ONI=] developed the "Spartans never die" policy. In the event one is actually killed, which happened with increasing frequency as the war with the Covenant dragged on, they were listed in official records as "Wounded in Action" or "Missing in Action" to preserve the myth of Spartan invincibility. |
| 400 | * EldritchAbomination: The Gravemind and its Flood. Also, the Precursors in general, who turn out to be the progenators of the Flood. |
| 401 | * EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Master Chief (aka Master Chief Petty Officer [=SPARTAN=]-117, aka John), the Arbiter (aka Thel 'Vadam), the Rookie in ''ODST'', and Noble Six (aka Lieutenant Spartan-B312) in ''Reach''. |
| 402 | * EvilerThanThou: The Gravemind vs. the Prophet of Truth; Gravemind wins easily. |
| 403 | * EvilOverlord: Truth has shades of this, given that his underlings are religious zealots that believe they'll AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence if they ''murder the entire universe''. |
| 404 | * EvilVersusEvil: Given there is a BigBadEnsemble, one can witness in the original trilogy the Covenant [[EnemyCivilWar against itself]], the Flood (in ''3'', they downright have a brief truce with Master Chief lest the Prophets activate the Halo and kill everything) and the Sentinels, and in ''4'', the Covenant against the Forerunners. |
| 405 | * ExpandedUniverse: Anime, literature, live-action shorts, and even films, among other things. |
| 406 | * ExpositionFairy: Cortana is the main one, but Serina fills in for ''Halo Wars''. Really, pretty much every AI character is this, given their intellect and knowledge. |
| 407 | * ExtremelyShortTimespan: |
| 408 | ** ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' begins on July 24th, 2552. In ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'', the last battle is on December 11, 2552, with the war officially ending on March 3rd, 2553. The first five [[VideoGame/HaloWars first-person-shooter]] [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative games in the series]] take place during those five months. |
| 409 | ** Additionally, ''Halo 4'' takes place over the course of a few ''days'', as does ''Halo 5''. The LowerDeckEpisode nature of ''Halo 3: ODST'' means its timeframe is less than 24 hours. |
| 410 | * FaceFullOfAlienWingWong: The Flood is more of a "[[BodyHorror all of your internal organs turned into Alien Wing Wong]]" example. |
| 411 | * TheFaceless: Master Chief again. Same goes for the Rookie and Noble Six. |
| 412 | ** In ''The Flood'', the Chief is described as having graying hair, and ghostly skin from wearing the armor all the time. Somehow, knowing that only makes him look more badass in-game. |
| 413 | ** ''A'' face is visible under '''just''' the right conditions in ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3bQPHT6lrE Halo 3]]''. But it's actually the face of Marcus Lehto, the Creative Art Director at Bungie. The inclusion of his face in the ''Halo 3'' beta was an easter egg, as he's known for many within the series. Ultimately, the only image that Bungie ever released of an adult Master Chief without a helmet was their [[http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/2/27/Holiday_Card_2010.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120123031921 2010 Christmas Card]]... which shows the back of his head. |
| 414 | ** However, we do have several images of John's face as a child and teen; the comic book and animated adaptations of ''The Fall of Reach'', the ''Halo 3'' trailer [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnYKHJz_6XY Starry Night]] (although his face is darkened by the night), and ''Halo 4''[='s=] "Scanned" trailer, where the Chief is shown as a child and as a teenager up until the point when he first dons his [=MJOLNIR=] armor. |
| 415 | ** The opening sequence of ''Halo 4'' shows the young Master Chief, presumably shortly after he "joined" the SPARTAN training. The freckled boy is sitting on his bed, arms wrapped around his knees, but you can still make out that the front of his shirt reads JOHN. The Legendary ending actually goes so far as to show the area around his eyes. |
| 416 | * FantasticRacism: All over the place; the Covenant in particular seems to have been deliberately designed so that each of its various species would be at each others' throats instead of the Prophets', with the hatreds lasting even after the collapse of the Covenant (the Elites and Brutes in particular still waging massively destructive conflicts against each other). The Forerunners themselves, despite their ideology of being galactic guardians, treated other species in ways that were overly paternalistic ''at best'', such as suppressing their client species' native technological development and showing absolutely no mercy to anyone who challenged their rule. Additionally, the Human-Covenant War had plenty of racial hatred in it, even outside of the whole "kill all humans" thing, with the slurs to match. Indeed, even after the Elites turn against the Covenant and end up allying with humanity, there are still a lot of bad feelings on both sides, with ONI actively attempting to sabotage the Elite leader ''most favorably disposed'' to humanity, and various Elite-led groups who are ''still'' trying to finish what the Covenant started.\ |
| 417 | However, a central theme of the Reclaimer Saga is the ability to, while not forgive or forget ''per se'', ultimately end hostilities and even form alliances with people you'd otherwise detest, which fits the Librarian's plans for humanity to become galactic caretakers who would actually be worthy of the title. By the post-war period in ''Halo 4'', we're seeing much more cooperation and tolerance than before. ''Spartan Ops'' mentions several ex-Covenant refugees have been granted asylum on Earth, a new generation of reasonably thriving worlds have mixed human and Covenant populations, and ''Escalation'' shows that the UNSC and the Arbiter's faction are still working quite closely together, with humanity even sending the ''Infinity'' to escort the latter during his peace negotiations with the Brutes (itself a step up from the absolute hatred his faction held for them five years earlier, despite the absolute failure of said negotiations). We further see this in action in ''Literature/HaloHuntersInTheDark'', where a joint Elite-human team saves the galaxy once again, and in ''Halo 5: Guardians'', where the Arbiter and his Elites help Fireteam Osiris track down the Chief in exchange for their help in taking out the last of the Covenant on Sanghelios, with the two sides coming to mutually respect each other in both cases. |
| 418 | * FantasticRankSystem: The Covenant have a completely different rank system, with different ranks existing for different races. |
| 419 | * FantasyCounterpartCulture: The Covenant are a theocratic, imperialistic hegemony with a sword-wielding warrior class. The "official" {{Reporting Name}}s of their weapons and vehicles have a Type-(Number) system. Their point of pride is their navy and they fight against Eaglelandish marines. Imperial Japan anyone? |
| 420 | * FastRoping: The [=ODSTs=] do this in ''Uprising'' to save a stadium of humans. |
| 421 | * FixedForwardFacingWeapon: UNSC ships have a forward facing [[MagneticWeapons MAC cannon]] that acts as a primary weapon. |
| 422 | * FlawedPrototype: |
| 423 | ** The original SuperSoldier program, Project Orion, was deemed a complete failure for producing only marginal improvements on existing soldiers (Sergeant Johnson was one candidate). Dr. Halsey felt it gave good insight into her revamped Spartan program, which is why she retroactively called Orion candidates Spartan I's as she moved on to create the Spartan II's. |
| 424 | ** Spartan II's, while near unstoppable, also had very restrictive selection parameters, a decade-long training program and their cybernetic/biological implants had a 50% fatality/maiming rate. The Spartan III's (made without Halsey's oversight or knowledge), expanded the selection process, truncated the length of training and modern medical technology allowed near universal survival rates on surgical enhancements. As a whole they were not as impressive soldiers as the Spartan II's but they were far more numerous, letting the UNSC use them for a SuicideMission ''without'' [[TooAwesomeToUse costing them their entire Spartan program]]. |
| 425 | ** The Mjolnir PoweredArmor was put into development at the same time as the Spartan II's began training, but early designs were very clunky, weakly armored and needed a power tether to operate for any significant period of time. It wasn't until the Mark IV with a miniature fusion core that the Spartan's actually started using the armor in combat. The Mark V, the one the player has in ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'', was the first to feature a DeflectorShield. The Mark VI and beyond have merely been incredemental improvements from there. |
| 426 | * FollowingInRelativesFootsteps: Miranda Keyes went to the Navy to follow her father, the commander of his own starship, and also to distance herself from her mother [[spoiler:Dr. Halsey]], who wanted to keep Miranda out of danger. Her mother eventually pulls some strings to have Miranda assigned to a hospital ship far away from the frontlines, but it backfires when Miranda pulls off an astonishing victory with a weaponless ship, earns herself a medal, and becomes commander of her own ship shortly after. |
| 427 | * GameChanger: |
| 428 | ** In ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'', the war on the ring progresses in a military fashion, with humans beating back [[ScaryDogmaticAliens the Covenant]]. Then the ring turns out to have been carrying an EldritchAbomination, which is set free and proceeds to start infecting anyone it encounters. A later game changer is when the ring turns out to be a super weapon, which [[GoMadFromTheIsolation its insane curator]] is trying to fire [[WellIntentionedExtremist to contain the infection]]. |
| 429 | ** A meta one in ''{{VideoGame/Halo 2}}''. The game opens with Master Chief's bold defense of Earth. But the Covenant carrier flees and the second half of the game turns into a political plot playing as [[VillainProtagonist the Arbiter]]. ''2'' also plays it straight with the Covenant falling into an EnemyCivilWar (and inadvertently providing humanity with its best chance of survival), and the Flood escaping from Delta Halo and preparing to invade the rest of the galaxy. |
| 430 | ** ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'': Master Chief and the UNSC break a hole through the Covenant's defenses so that they can deactivate the Ark artifact on Earth. The artifact turns out to not be the Ark, but a ''portal'' leading to the Ark, which is outside the Milky Way galaxy. |
| 431 | ** ''{{VideoGame/Halo 4}}'': Master Chief and Cortana hurry to activate a satellite so that they can escape the abandoned planet they're trapped on and be rescued. The satellite turns out to be [[SealedEvilInACan actually the containment pod of the Ur-Didact]], who breaks free and resumes his genocidal campaign on humanity. |
| 432 | ** ''VideoGame/HaloReach'': |
| 433 | *** Dr. Halsey explains to NOBLE Team that on its current course humanity is doomed to extinction. The only solution lays in the Forerunner information she and Cortana have managed to decipher, explicitly calling it a Game Changer. This info reveals the location of Halo, and leads into the main trilogy, where the Covenant's resolve was broken when the Halo's true purpose was revealed. |
| 434 | *** Inverted with the previous events of the campaign. No matter what the UNSC tries to stop the Covenant on Reach, some new complication is revealed that just escalates the conflict. Destroyed their corvette attacking their base? Covenant Zealots still got the data they were looking for. Infiltrated their radar dark zone? It turns out to be hiding an entire Covenant army. Destroyed their spire bases? Those turn out to be cloaking ''a Covenant super carrier''. Destroy the super carrier? A fleet of hundreds more ships immediately arrive to take its place. |
| 435 | ** In ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'', we find out that the activation of the Guardians is part of Cortana's plans to conquer the galaxy with an army of Forerunner robots and rogue [=AIs=]. |
| 436 | * GasMaskMooks: Grunts, since they are methane breathers. |
| 437 | * GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: The Master Chief Collection was originally just a compilation of mainline games to that point as an UpdatedRerelease with newer graphics and a few superficial changes to the levels themselves. Once all games were included and a seasonal content model was implemented, the collection started offering brand new gametypes and character customization options to unlock that were not available in the original release. This turned out to be [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools very well respected by the community]], as no one expected them to give such attention to the older games like this. |
| 438 | * GodzillaThreshold: The Forerunners built the Halo installations specifically in the event that they could not win and repel the Flood in their war, and thus would destroy the Flood, depriving them of their food source by destroying all life in the galaxy, to prevent it from spreading to other galaxies and infecting them. |
| 439 | * GratuitousIambicPentameter: The Gravemind speaks in trochaic [[ArcNumber septameter]]. |
| 440 | * GravityIsPurple: The gravity lifts employ gratuitous purple gravity effects. |
| 441 | * GreaterScopeVillain: |
| 442 | ** In the first trilogy, whilst humanity is fighting the Covenant in a decades-spanning war, both forces discover the Flood is a greater threat to life in the galaxy. |
| 443 | ** From ''Halo 4'' onward, the Forerunners (specifically the Didact) and their Prometheans constructs are recognized as a greater threat than the Covenant remnants, something which is further expanded upon in the end of ''Halo 5''; all organic life in the galaxy now face subjugation by Cortana's army of Forerunner deathbots and rogue [=AIs=]. |
| 444 | ** By the last book of ''The Forerunner Saga'', the Precursors are known to be the greatest threat to all life in the galaxy; though they originally seeded the Milky Way with life, they now intend to subjugate and consume said life. Their current form? ''The Flood''. In fact, the Didact's own murderous grudge against humanity was a result of him being semi-brainwashed by the Flood. |
| 445 | * HelmetMountedSight: The UNSC Armed Forces equip its soldiers with [[http://www.halopedia.org/Neural_interface neural interfaces]] in the back of their skulls. One of its many functions is to help identify friend from foe by lighting people up in [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience different colors]]. The purpose is to prevent friendly fire. |
| 446 | * HeroAntagonist: |
| 447 | ** Sesa 'Refumee's Heretics are disillusioned Grunts and Elites that found out the truth about Halo and formed a independent resistance movement against the Covenant, and are attempting to sway more defectors to their cause. |
| 448 | ** The better sorts of Insurrectionists are this as well, though even their [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized methods of combating the UNSC]] aren't as noble as [[DefectorFromDecadence their motives for wanting out of it]]. |
| 449 | * HeroicSacrifice: The correct procedure for a heroic sacrifice seems to be a fundamental a part of SPARTAN basic training. Most [=SPARTAN=]s who die on-screen do so to destroy a vital enemy target or as part of a last ditch vanguard to allow an escape. It could even be said that this is their defined role within the UNSC prior to the end of the Human-Covenant War, due to their incredibly high skill being matched only by the overwhelming odds their missions regularly involve. |
| 450 | ** Sergeant John Forge stays behind to detonate the ''Spirit of Fire'''s slipspace drive in ''Halo Wars''. |
| 451 | ** The Arbiter tries to do this early in ''Halo 2'', until Tartarus rescues him at the last minute. Whoever holds the title is typically sent on suicide missions anyway, so it's to be expected. |
| 452 | ** Spartan Kurt-051 does this in ''Ghosts of Onyx'', setting off a [=FENRIS=] nuke to prevent the Covenant from accessing the Shield World. |
| 453 | ** In ''Halo 3'', CDR. Keyes almost sacrifices herself and Johnson to prevent activation of the rings, but Truth guns her down himself. |
| 454 | ** In ''First Strike'', Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb and LT. Haverson lure an entire Covenant fleet to the doomed Covenant station ''Unyielding Hierophant''. When it explodes, it destroys almost five hundred vessels, achieving one of the greatest UNSC military victories in the war, and delaying the invasion of Earth. |
| 455 | ** [[http://www.halopedia.org/Thom-A293 Thom-A293]], best known for the ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKRlWLDWhGI Deliver Hope]]'' trailer, who saved Kat's life (and the entire mission) by delivering the tac-nuke to the Covenant ship himself. Noble Six, the protagonist of ''Halo: Reach'', has to replace him afterwards. |
| 456 | -->'''Carter:''' I'm not gonna lie to you, Lieutenant. You're stepping into some shoes the rest of the squad would rather leave unfilled. |
| 457 | ** In ''Halo: Reach'', Jorge has a sacrifice when he manually detonates a "slipspace bomb" to destroy a Covenant supercarrier. Carter has a sacrifice when he flies a Pelican into a Scarab to save Emile and Six. The ''[[PlayerCharacter player]]'' has a sacrifice when s/he stays behind on Reach to cover the Pillar of Autumn's escape, which s/he only has to do in the first place because Emile is killed just before attempting to do the same thing. Reach is basically ''made of'' HeroicSacrifice. |
| 458 | ** {{Averted}} in ''Halo 4'' when Master Chief is wholly ready to detonate the nuke inside the Composer, an act which would definitely kill him, and would have, if the sacrifice wasn't made by Cortana instead. |
| 459 | * HighSpeedHijack: Starting with ''Halo 2'', enemies can hijack your vehicles in single-player, you can hijack theirs, and there's a medal for doing it to another player during a multiplayer game. [=Spartan-IIs=] can also hijack enemy vehicles in the ''VideoGame/HaloWars'' series. |
| 460 | * HitAndRunTactics: |
| 461 | ** You'll need these for dealing with ''Halo 2'''s final boss, even on Easy. Just take a look at what happens to your allies and decide if you want to repeat their performance. |
| 462 | ** In ''Halo'' in general, it's best to use your rechargeable shields to pick off enemies one by one, retreating when under too much fire. This allows you to wittle down their numbers slowly rather than taking the whole squad on at once. Particularly important in the first ''Halo'' and ''Reach'', where your health doesn't recharge like your shields do. |
| 463 | * {{Hivemind}}: The Gravemind. Its computing power rivaled the entire Forerunner empire's data capabilities, with its physical manifestations being immense masses of biomatter and corpses, the largest encompassing entire ''planets''. You also have the Proto-Gravemind that's present on the ''Truth and Reconciliation'' with Keyes inside, as well as the Proto-Graveminds which serve as Flood bases in ''Halo Wars''. |
| 464 | ** ''Primordium'' shows that Installation 07 has ''ten'' Proto-Graveminds contained within it, while the Timeless One itself turns out to be a Gravemind; when its original body is killed, it simply reincarnates in time to show up in ''Silentium''. |
| 465 | * HoldingBackThePhlebotinum: Why the UNSC did not field their emerging [[DeflectorShields shield technology]] more widely during the war. [[AllThereInTheManual According to Dr. Halsey's diary]] that accompanies the SpecialEdition of ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', humans have a very good understanding of shield technology now, but it is limited by two major related factors: size and power. As the volume of area to be shielded grows, the power requirements to maintain the shield increase exponentially. Shielding an entire starship would require several times more power than that ship can generate. However, shielding an infantryman or small vehicle has more modest power requirements, albeit still much more than an infantryman or small vehicle would typically have a power plant capable of producing. Humanity can make small enough power generators in the form of micro-fusion cells, but [[AwesomeButImpractical they are rarely cost-effective to produce]], making each one almost the cost of a small starship. However, the [[SuperSoldier Spartan-IIs]] already incorporate such a device into their PoweredArmor by necessity, making adding shields to their existing systems relatively trivial. As for the Covenant technology they reverse-engineered their shields from? Humanity still has no idea how '''those''' things are powered, and from all appearances [[ClarksThirdLaw lack an obvious power source altogether]]. |
| 466 | ** In the post-war era, however, humanity's understanding of shielding technology has grown to the point where they can now both mass-produce shielded PowerArmor ''and'' provide energy shields to all their new spaceships. |
| 467 | * HoverBot: 343 Guilty Spark and the rest of the Forerunner Monitors. |
| 468 | * HugeGuyTinyGirl: Chief towers over Cortana. And Keyes. And pretty much any other non-Spartan human character. |
| 469 | * HumanPopsicle: The Cryotubes used by the UNSC during space travel. |
| 470 | * HumansAreSpecial: Hinted at strongly throughout the games, but ultimately confirmed in ''The Forerunner Saga'', though not without being played with a bit. Humans were a cousin species to the Forerunners, and the ones the Precursors apparently truly wanted to give the "Mantle of Responsibility" to. Nonetheless, humanity's technology lagged just a little bit behind their more advanced cousins, and when the two species fought a war because [[GreyAndGrayMorality because the humans were trying to escape the Flood by expanding their own holdings (which the Forerunners perceived as a threat)]], the Forerunners only won after a long and difficult slog. The Forerunners then took the few surviving humans, devolved them, and reduced their technology back to the Stone Age. However, while most Forerunners cared little for humans, the Librarian and her allies and followers still saw great potential in them, and did their part to slowly guide humanity on their path back to civilization. Finally, near the end of the Forerunner-Flood War, the Librarian and the [=IsoDidact=] issued emergency directives giving humanity "Reclaimer" status, officially making them the designated heir to the Forerunners' technological legacy. At this point, the few surviving Forerunners had already decided that they would no longer meddle in the galaxy after the Halos were fired, and so were willing to go along with it. |
| 471 | ** Humanity also managed to apparently discover a means to defeat the Flood, but refused to give the Forerunners that information, destroying it when it was clear the Forerunners would win their war. However, it later turns out the Flood had merely faked being defeated for their own purposes. |
| 472 | * HumansAreWarriors: Many species of the Covenant believe it, especially the Sangheili, and the Gravemind believe that Humans are a greater threat to the Flood than the Covenant, who he only see as arrogant good-for-nothing fodder. |
| 473 | ** This trope is explored in the ''Halo Legends'' episode ''Origins'', remarking both the achievements that led humanity to be a growing civilization, and the unfathomable slaughter that war had caused upon them. After reviewing the story of both the Forerunners and Humanity, Cortana wonders whenever if warriors will ever be gone from the world... and, bitterly, she comes to the conclusion that they will never disappear, and that there would always be war. |
| 474 | ** ''The Forerunner Saga'' reveals that humanity's prehistoric interstellar civilization was pretty good at war too, to the point where they could put up a fight against the ''Forerunners'' themselves. |
| 475 | * HumongousMecha: The Covenant [[SpiderTank Scarab]], though it's partially organic (functioning to some degree like armor for a massive Lekgolo colony). Straight Covenant examples include the even larger Harvesters and Krakens. |
| 476 | * InsectoidAliens: The Covenant Drones. |
| 477 | * IronicName: Most of the Prophets' titles are hypocritical in some way: |
| 478 | ** The Prophet of Truth is in charge of spreading the lies of the ScamReligion. He at least knows it, and took the name on purpose to remind himself of the truths he had to keep secret. |
| 479 | ** The Prophet of Mercy is a bloodthirsty zealot. |
| 480 | ** The Prophet of Regret was never really shown regretting anything in his life. |
| 481 | ** The Prophet of Temperance was guilty of repeated sexual misconduct. |
| 482 | ** The Prophet of Inner Conviction is full of self-doubt and humorously berates himself for this. |
| 483 | * ItsRainingMen: |
| 484 | ** The [=ODSTs=] , aka the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. |
| 485 | ** In ''Halo 3'', MC falls two kilometers, lands on his back, and is pretty much only stunned. Apparently, he survived it because he surfed through the sky on a hunk of metal taken from the Forerunner Dreadnought. |
| 486 | ** Noble Six performs a similar act in ''[[VideoGame/HaloReach Reach]]'' and survives a fall from orbit. However, a cutscene in the level preceding this occurrence shows that s/he is wearing a Reentry Pack, with the following level showing him/her holding his/her left arm and starting on low health, making this a justified instance of the trope. |
| 487 | * JackOfAllStats: Master Chief is this compared to his fellow [=IIs=], as noted on his character page. In ''The Fall of Reach'', Dr. Halsey notes that other Spartans are faster or stronger but Master Chief is the bravest and best out of all of them (possibly in fact due to his wider and varied skill set and leadership skills). According to Cortana, she chose him because he had something "the others didn't; luck. Was I wrong?" |
| 488 | * {{Jerkass}}: Romeo, and O'Brien from ''The Package''. The latter grows to regret it later, while the former never really changes. |
| 489 | * KillerSpaceMonkey: Brutes, which the Spartans described as rabid gorillas. |
| 490 | ** In universe, Brutes are given the derisive nickname "[[Film/KingKong Baby Kongs]]" by UNSC forces, often just expressed as "[[MilitaryAlphabet Bravo Kilos]]". |
| 491 | ** In ''The Master Chief Collection'', there is an achievement for killing 1000 Brutes titled ''Dankey Kang''. |
| 492 | * KineticWeaponsAreJustBetter: |
| 493 | ** 500 years into the future, we have [=AIs=], FTL ships, and PoweredArmor; however, most of the UNSC's weapons and vehicles are just shinier versions of ours (in fact, their assault rifle ammo, 7.62x51mm NATO, can be bought at your local gun dealer today). Stuff like Spartan Lasers, MAC cannons, and Gauss cannons are exceptions, of course. In-game though, UNSC weapons tend to be more effective against fleshy foes like the Flood than the Covenant's (with the exception of Pure Forms), with plasma being better against shields. |
| 494 | ** The Brutes also favor kinetic weaponry of their own design (often augmented with select Covenant tech), despite their access to Covenant energy weapons. |
| 495 | * LargeAndInCharge: The Gravemind, being a collection of thousands of corpses, is insanely big. During the time of the Forerunners, there were even planet-sized versions, referred to as "Key Minds". |
| 496 | * LargeHam: |
| 497 | ** Truth and Gravemind are constantly contesting for the title. Sgt. Johnson and Rtas 'Vadum also do quite good jobs. |
| 498 | ** Most Elites in the games fit this as well. How, considering their bizarre mouths, are they able to so epically chew the scenery at times? The ones in the expanded universe have their moments as well: |
| 499 | -->'''[[Anime/HaloLegends Thel 'Lodamee]]:''' I HAD HIM! ''"COMMANDER, YOU FOOL!'' '''A THOUSAND HELLS AWAIT YOU!!!'''" |
| 500 | ** Elites aren't the surprising ones. SPARTAN-1337 from the non-canon ''[[Anime/HaloLegends Odd One Out]]'' manages to chew the scenery ''with a helmet on''. |
| 501 | * LegacyCharacter: The Arbiter, a position that is at least several thousand years old, going back all the way to a time before the Elites had even discovered gunpowder. |
| 502 | * LethalJokeItem: The Plasma Pistol and Needler, in a way. In the hands of a Grunt or a Jackal (the most likely places to find them), they hardly do ScratchDamage except on the higher difficulties, but in the hands of a player the pistol alone has been the basis of several game-bending-if-not-[[GameBreaker breaking]] combos (such as the infamous "Noob Combo" of Plasma Pistol/Battle Rifle), and the Needler has the unique distinction of being one of the few Covenant weapon that is particularly effective against unshielded targets (along with its ranged counterpart in ''Halo: Reach'', the Needle Rifle). |
| 503 | * LimitedLoadout: TropeCodifier for the modern FirstPersonShooter. Because of ''Halo'', "two guns, plus some accessories" [[FollowTheLeader became incredibly popular]]. The exact amount of firepower has changed throughout the series, with [[GunsAkimbo duel wielding]] premiering in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'', equipment and armor abilities debuting in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' and ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' respectively, and the amount of grenades available to the player always in flux from one title to the next. Later games have gone in the direction of paring things down, with ''Reach'' removing duel-wielding, and ''5'' replacing equipment and armor abilities with more general "Spartan abilities". |
| 504 | * LivingLegend: They call him Master Chief. And ''Halo 2'' adds the Arbiter. |
| 505 | * MagneticWeapons: |
| 506 | ** You've got the M99 Stanchion, a coilgun sniper rifle that fires a .21-caliber round at 15 km/sec, capable of reducing anyone the round hits to LudicrousGibs from over 4 kilometers out. Originally expanded universe only, until ''VideoGame/HaloWars2''. |
| 507 | ** You've the ARC-920 Railgun for infantry, which is powerful and accurate against enemies but poor against vehicles. Essentially a weaker Spartan Laser with no zoom (until ''5''). |
| 508 | ** You've got the M68/M555 Gauss Cannon, mounted as turrets and on some Warthogs, firing a 25 by 130 mm slug at around 13.5 km/sec, useful for punching through tanks (or [[OneHitKill one-shotting]] infantry). |
| 509 | ** Then you've got the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon (MAC), the main weapon on UNSC ships. The standard one on a frigate or destroyer fires a round ranging from "several tons" (per ''Warfleet'') to 600 tons (per a round seen in ''First Strike'') at speeds ranging from [[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supersonic "supersonic"]] i.e. <1.7 km/s (per the same scene in ''First Strike'') to ~5 km/s (most visual depictions, including ''The Fall of Reach: The Animated Series'', ''Halo 2'', and ''Halo Reach'') to 18 km/s (''Conversations From The Universe''). Packing triple digit tons to low kilotons of kinetic energy, it is capable of taking out the shields of a much larger Covenant destroyer or battlecruiser in just one or two hits,[[note]]This happens multiple times in ''The Fall of Reach'', with one of the clearer scenes having three MAC shots at Sigma Octanus IV gut a mile-long Covenant destroyer that had explicitly been undamaged up to that point: the first two knock out the shields and the third annihilates the ship. Keyes later states in the same book that it takes "one, maybe two" MAC rounds in general to annihilate most shields.[[/note]] and it's the only weapon on UNSC ships that really makes them competitive with the Covenant besides their scant (and interceptable) nukes. The downside is a long charge time: the reactors of a UNSC ships only output "gigawatts" (per ''First Strike''), and there are only a few reactors per ship. As a result it takes from a little over thirty seconds[[note]]In ''The Fall of Reach'', the UNSC ships at the Battle of Sigma Octanus IV fire their rounds, charge all the 22 seconds it takes for the enemy's retaliatory fire to arrive, keep charging for an undisclosed extra period, and ''then'' Hikowa informs Keyes that they'll be ready in 3 more seconds. The dialogue exchanged in between these two events alone should have taken over five seconds to be spoken.[[/note]] to a dozen minutes[[note]]At the beginning of the same battle, Hikowa says that the MAC guns are charging at a rate of 2% per minute, for both guns, while the ship was explicitly operating at 50% of its normal power output.[[/note]] depending on how much energy they choose to divert from other systems. Obtaining the fastest charge rate (which is still fairly slow) renders UNSC ships static targets.[[note]]In fact, Keyes compares them to 18th century line infantry in the aforementioned battle, and notes that he's not sure whether the admiral's tactic of having all his ships do this is brilliant or suicidal.[[/note]] |
| 510 | ** Lastly you've got the Super MAC, found only as part of space stations in geosynchronous orbit over key worlds. The ones around Earth fire slugs weighing hundreds of tons[[note]]You actually see the rounds being loaded in the first combat level of ''Halo 2''. They're cylindrical shapes roughly 10 meters in length and 1.5 meters in diameter, which at tungsten density would put them at 341 tons.[[/note]] at "several kilometers per second" (per ''Warfleet'', and as seen in ''Halo 2: Anniversary'''s terminals), and unlike the guns mounted on ships, their groundside reactors are powerful enough to let them fire once every few seconds (as seen in ''Halo 2''). Then there are the unique ones around Reach: suckers fire a 3000-ton slug at "point four-tenths" of light speed; they're strong enough to punch clean through virtually any Covenant vessel (even capital ones), shields and all, blow a big-ass hole through the ship (often obliterating it into a million fragments), and keep going with enough force left over to punch through (or at least deal extreme damage to) ''another'' ship. |
| 511 | * MsFanservice: |
| 512 | ** Cortana. Even back in the first game, where her appearance was relatively "unsexy", almost butch, compared to her later incarnations, there were still plenty of jokes about her appearance. |
| 513 | ** Also probably also the reason that they dialed down Dr. Halsey's visual age from 52 to 20 AT MOST in ''The Package''. |
| 514 | * MilitaryScienceFiction: One of the most [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises popular]] military science fiction franchises in history, in fact.[[note]]Only ''Gundam'' and (if you count it) ''Star Wars'' are higher. ''Call of Duty'' and ''Star Trek'' are more popular franchises in general, but the specific sub-series that fall under the mil-sci-fi genre (most of those respective franchises don't) are not.[[/note]] |
| 515 | * MissionControlIsOffItsMeds: 343 Guilty Spark, in the one level in ''Combat Evolved'' where he's your ally. Cortana has a few moments of this in the third and fourth games. |
| 516 | * MotherlyScientist: Zigzagged with Dr. Catherine Halsey. She was very much of a mother figure towards the Spartan-II children and this maternal influence is believed to be a major contributor to the emotional stability of the [=Spartan-IIs=] compared to the [=Spartan-IIIs=]. This is even directly discussed in easily missed side-dialogue in ''Halo 5''. But at the same time, she was only their "mother" because she had them kidnapped from their real families, put them through TrainingFromHell and administered the augmentations that killed or permanently disabled most of them, and was a rather lousy mother to her actual daughter, Miranda. Whether the pros outweigh the cons is a matter of some debate in-universe. |
| 517 | * NoBiochemicalBarriers: Averts "All Atmospheres are Breathable" with the Grunts having to wear SCUBA gear since they breathe methane. Plays "Multispecies Plague" straight with the Flood, since they can infect any creature that's A) sapient, and B) large enough to carry the basketball-sized Infection Form in its chest. This excludes Hunter worms and Drones, since they lack the complex neural systems needed for direct infection (though they can still be easily converted into Flood biomass). |
| 518 | * NoCampaignForTheWicked: Played straight for the most part in the story campaigns. For example, in ''Halo 2'', you get to play a Covenant soldier, but you only get to fight heretical Covenant forces[[note]]Zigzagged in that these heretics qualify for HeroAntagonist[[/note]] or the Flood. Everywhere else, the games are played almost exclusively from the humans' POV, and even then, you never get a mission where you have to kill humans, while killing too many human allies (besides your co-op mode buddies) causes any survivors to automatically attack you. |
| 519 | * NoOneCouldSurviveThat: |
| 520 | ** In the third game, the Chief swan-dives off of Truth's Forerunner Dreadnought from orbit, but is mostly unscathed, with his only protection being his armor and a Forerunner door (which he used as a heat shield). |
| 521 | ** Johnson escaping Alpha Halo is treated this way in ''Halo 2'', but ''First Strike'' had already revealed that Johnson was able to escape on a Pelican with a few others. |
| 522 | * OddlyNamedSequel2ElectricBoogaloo: |
| 523 | ** Strangely inverted, with the first game getting the subtitle of "Combat Evolved" (because Microsoft insisted that the game couldn't just be called "Halo"). Other than that, the only main series game to play this straight is ''Halo 5: Guardians''. |
| 524 | ** ''Halo 3: ODST'' is a strange case; the game takes place concurrently with ''Halo 2'', but it gets its name because it uses ''3'''s engine. |
| 525 | * OhCrap: The reaction of anyone, human or alien, after getting stuck with a plasma grenade. |
| 526 | * OminousFloatingSpaceship: Part and parcel of a Covenant invasion. |
| 527 | * OminousLatinChanting: The main theme. Though the chant is technically wordless, the second game hints it may be in the Prophets' language. |
| 528 | * OmnicidalManiac: |
| 529 | ** The Covenant are this by accident, particularly the more devout Prophets, given that most of them have no idea what the Halos really do. |
| 530 | ** The Flood are unapologetically this. |
| 531 | * OneManArmy: |
| 532 | ** Master Chief and the Arbiter. Really, any sufficiently badass Spartan or Elite is this. |
| 533 | ** To a lesser extent, the refit ''Pillar of Autumn'' with Captain Jacob Keyes commanding. Of course, we only see it in the books, but, still... |
| 534 | ** Noble Six is particularly notable too. S/he used to eliminate entire militia groups solo for a living. |
| 535 | * TheOnlyOne: The Master Chief is one of a very small handful of surviving SPARTAN-II {{Super Soldier}}s (of which there were never very many to begin which), and generally the only one available in his combat theater. |
| 536 | * OralFixation: Quite prominent in the verse, particularly with regards to Sweet Williams Cigars, a popular in-universe brand. |
| 537 | ** Captain Keyes and his pipe, especially in the books. Given UNSC No-Smoking regulations inside ships, Keyes simply chews the tip to calm himself. |
| 538 | ** Sergeant Major Avery Johnson and his Sweet Williams Cigar. Chief Petty Officer Mendez's own cigar chomping in the books probably counts, too. |
| 539 | * OurClonesAreDifferent: A process called "flash cloning" can be used to replicate human tissue at a dramatically increased rate of growth, normally used for [[CloningBodyParts replacing lost or damaged organs]]. It ''is'' possible to clone an entire human, but incurable physiological problems caused by the accelerated growth mean that the resulting clone's life expectancy is measured in weeks, with few exceptions. Human cloning is, as a result, illegal and deeply unethical, but that didn't stop [[TheUnfettered Catherine Halsey]] and [[StateSec ONI]] from creating flash-clone replacements for the 75 children they abducted as part of the [[ChildSoldiers SPARTAN-II Program]]. |
| 540 | * OurZombiesAreDifferent: The Flood, especially given their impressive technological capabilities. |
| 541 | * PosthumousCharacter: The entire species of Forerunners is this, with their artifacts and machines being all that's left of them. Until ''Halo 4''. |
| 542 | * PoweredArmor: |
| 543 | ** The Spartans' MJOLNIR armor. Rank-and-file human soldiers sometimes use powered exoskeletons to move heavy equipment, while the original [=Spartan-IIIs=] wore semi-powered armor with a watered down version of active camouflage. Post-war, elite unaugmented soldiers begin wearing semi-powered armor as well. |
| 544 | ** While Elite armor provides some physical enhancement, Brute armor doesn't (though they both provide shields). Then again, [[LightningBruiser neither race need much enhancement]]. |
| 545 | * PrecursorKillers: The Flood, which ironically didn't ''kill'' the Forerunners, but forced them to commit suicide with the Halos. According to ''The Forerunner Saga'', the Forerunners wiped out their own Precursors. It is then later revealed that the Flood are in fact the mutated remains of Precursors, who are out to get their revenge on all their creations, particularly the Forerunners. So you basically have a Precursor Killing-loop going on here. |
| 546 | * {{Precursors}}: Double time! You've got the Forerunners, then it turns out that [[RecursivePrecursors they had their own forerunner race]] called, you guessed it, the Precursors. |
| 547 | * PrecursorWorship: The Covenant religion is based on the holiness of the Forerunners. The Forerunners themselves revered the Precursors, though they didn't necessarily think of them as literal gods. Ironically the Precursors might aswell be literal gods given their power if they aren't literal gods outright. |
| 548 | * {{Privateer}}: Unlike the other core Covenant races, the Kig-Yar (Jackals/Skirmishers) are not completely a part of it. Instead, they operate more like paid mercenaries who have to at least pretend to believe in the holiness of the Forerunners (though some have become genuine believers). They operate their own ships and are allowed to raid non-Covenant ships and colonies. |
| 549 | * ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Elites and the Brutes, especially the former, less so for the latter. The Hunters sort of fall into this as well, as did the Forerunners' Warrior-Servant caste. |
| 550 | ** [[{{Deconstruction}} Deconstructed]] in the ''Halo: Evolutions'' tale ''The Return''. Years after the end of the Human-Covenant war, but with the Great Schism still raging on, many Elites (including the protagonist Shipmaster) face a spiritual crisis. Without the Prophets to give them answers, many Elites don't know what to do now that everything they used to fight for was proven a lie. The Brutes are also victims of the {{Deconstruction}}; they happily waged war with the equipment gifted to them by the Prophets, but their cohesiveness crumbled once the Prophets disappeared, and their savagery led them to fight more among themselves than against the Elites. |
| 551 | ** Also deconstructed in the ''Kilo-Five'' books, which show the Elites struggling to maintain their technology without the aid of the Prophets and Engineers in the immediate aftermath of the third game. However, later media indicates that the Elites have made impressive progress in (re)developing respectable technical skills by the time of ''Halo 4''. |
| 552 | ** The Elites take it so far that they even have the official Latin species name of "Macto Cognatus"[[note]]literally "I glorify my kin"[[/note]]. |
| 553 | * PunyEarthlings: Played straight for normal humans when compared with the Elites, Brutes, Hunters, and most Flood forms. Averted when it comes to the Grunts, Jackals, and Drones, though even these species are still often physically stronger than humans, with the Jackals and Drones also being bigger on average. |
| 554 | * PyrrhicVictory: While humanity wins the war against the Covenant, it comes at a great cost: At least 23 billion casualties (plus several billions killed during the battle for Earth), thousands of UNSC starships lost and the loss of many colonies due to the Covenant glassing them. |
| 555 | * RapeAsDrama: Strongly implied in the third game with the interactions between Cortana and Gravemind. This was confirmed in the story ''Human Weakness'' in ''Halo Evolutions'', which shows that the Gravemind was also making Cortana live the experiences of individuals who were consumed by the Flood, with its constant {{breaking speech}}es questioning not only her actions, but her very existence, driving Cortana to a tragically broken state by the time the Master Chief saves her. |
| 556 | ** On the level "Cortana", a message plays on the crashed Pelican which draws about as close a parallel as possible, given that the victim isn't corporeal. |
| 557 | -->'''Cortana''': I tried to stay hidden, but there was no escape! He cornered me, wrapped me tight... and brought me close... |
| 558 | * {{Retcon}}: ''Lots'' of them. The books, video games and other media frequently contradict each other on the dates of the timeline, the history of the Covenant and the level of technology that humanity has. Current official policy is that new material trumps old material, unless otherwise stated. |
| 559 | ** Some stories which takes place before the original ''Halo'' neglected the fact that ''The Fall of Reach'' states that Spartan-[=IIs=] did not have energy shields until just before the Battle of Reach. In the case of ''Halo Wars'', Ensemble admitted that this was merely a gameplay decision and that, canonically, Red Team never actually had energy shields...until the ''Essential Visual Guide'' changed all that by saying that they were actually field-testing an early prototype. Current canon seems to be that ''all'' pre-2552 examples of human energy shields were simply prototypes that were still being field-tested. |
| 560 | ** ''The Package'' shows the UNSC ONI Prowlers having stealth field technology that puts the Elites' Active Camouflage to shame, but in their original appearance in the novels, they were just immune to sensors and painted black to hide in space. It was later established that there are multiple types of Prowlers, with the more advanced types having genuine Active Camo. The short also shows the Spartans dogfighting in space with ships that have energy shields, which should have been impossible due to when it takes place, as mentioned above. |
| 561 | ** ''The Fall of Reach'' originally claimed that humanity had never encountered the Elites until they attacked Reach...but they're encountered by the Spartan-[=III=]s of Beta Company during Operation: TORPEDO in ''Ghosts of Onyx,'' by the crew of the ''Spirit of Fire'' in ''Halo Wars'', and by several Spartan-[=II=]s and marines in ''Halo Legends'', ''Halo: Evolutions'', and ''The Cole Protocol'', all of which took place long before the Battle of Reach. Finally, the 2010 re-release of ''The Fall of Reach'' eliminated any mention of the Elites being a newly encountered species, and the new "Adjunct" section outright showed several instances of direct Human-to-Elite contact taking place decades before the invasion of Reach. |
| 562 | ** The events of ''First Strike'' was supposed to be the first time UNSC forces had ever engaged the Brutes, and then ''Contact Harvest'', ''Halo Legends'', ''Halo: Evolutions'', and ''Halo: Reach'' all showed that they had been fighting each other since the beginning of the war. Once again, the 2010 re-release eliminated any reference to them being a newly encountered species. |
| 563 | ** Also, ''The Flood'' had Master Chief cutting and breaking the spinal cords of Hunters (supported by the fact that 1 pistol shot to the back would kill them), but ''Halo 2'' would establish that they're actually giant colonies of worm-eel aliens with no central nervous system. Although they do have spine-like bracers running up their backs in ''Reach''. |
| 564 | ** ''Halo: Reach'' (and the journal that came with the Limited/Legendary editions) reveals that Halsey already figured out that there were other Spartan programs other than her own before the events of ''Ghosts of Onyx'' (though she's not aware of the true nature of the S-III program until said book). |
| 565 | ** ''Halo: Reach'' also shows the Pillar of Autumn in drydock during the battle (which never happens in ''The Fall of Reach'', where it spends the entire fight up in space). Additionally, the game and Halsey's journal has it so that Cortana split herself before the battle, with the main fragment going with the Chief and the smaller piece staying with Halsey to translate a Forerunner artifact which would end up providing the main Cortana AI with the coordinates to Halo, seemingly invalidating the significance of the Sigma Octanus symbols from ''The Fall of Reach''...unless the information from the Reach artifact was what allowed Cortana to ''translate'' the Sigma Octanus symbols in the first place. |
| 566 | ** ''Halo: Reach'' (see a theme here?) also extends the length of the titular battle from a single day to about a month. While the official explanation is that ONI kept the first stages of the battle secret, there are still some unresolved timeline discrepancies. |
| 567 | ** ''Videogame/HaloWars2'' retconned a lot of the events of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'', albeit plausibly so. The Ark was previously confirmed to have survived the events of the game in other media despite 343 Guilty Spark's claims that prematurely firing the incomplete Halo would destroy the Ark, but this game reveals that the Halo foundry at its core is still functioning and has a ring ready to be deployed, while the ''Awakening the Nightmare'' DLC reveals that despite being ostensibly destroyed by the Master Chief in ''3'', both [[spoiler:High Charity and the ''Flood'' inside are still intact, though the Gravemind is still dead for now]]. It also features a Catrographer in a very different location to its appearance in ''3'', though it's possible the Ark has multiple Cartographers given its size. |
| 568 | * RememberTheAlamo: Remember [[Literature/HaloContactHarvest Harvest]]. [[VideoGame/HaloReach Remember]] [[Literature/HaloTheFallOfReach Reach]]. |
| 569 | * {{Retraux}}: The Atari 2600 port. |
| 570 | * RevisitingTheRoots: ''{{VideoGame/Halo 2}}'' and ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}'' added all sorts of fronds and foofaraw that evidently no one liked, because the GaidenGame (''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'') and prequel (''VideoGame/HaloReach'') deliberately scaled them back, hewing closer to the original gameplay model presented by ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved''. ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'' continued with the trend (though it introduced a few unpopular features of its own), and ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'' went even further by paring back the changes made in both ''Reach'' and ''4'' (though it also added in some useful movement-based abilities of its own). Likewise, ''VideoGame/HaloInfinite'' rolls back many of the highly disputed changes made by 343 in ''Halo 4'' and ''Halo 5'', returning to art style, character design, and gameplay more in line with the classic ''Halo 1'' to ''Halo 3'' games. |
| 571 | * RuleOfSymbolism: ''Halos'', ''the Covenant'', ''the Ark'', ''John 117'', ''the Flood'', etc. It helps that a lot of these are alien terms deliberately translated into the closest English equivalent. |
| 572 | * SaltTheEarth: Taken to its logical extreme with glassing; the Covenant render entire ''planets'' barren. And it's a lengthy process, requiring multiple ships carrying out the bombardment from space after receiving approval from a Prophet. That said, full-scale glassings are rare; they require far too much time and resources, including several Covenant capital ships that would be otherwise better used elsewhere. Mostly, a glassing targets the population centers and otherwise blasts large crisscrossing orbits across a planet's surface, with convection burning out the areas in between. That said, even these lesser efforts are still effective in boiling away oceans and otherwise rendering the planet nigh-uninhabitable. However, glassed planets ''can'' be rehabilitated, as in the case of Reach, though it takes a lot of time and effort; one conservative estimate early in the war gave a timespan of about one to over three centuries just to re-terraform four worlds, and ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians'' shows that deglassing even a small world is a slow and arduous process. |
| 573 | * ScarabPower: The Scarab Tank. A SpiderTank (actually a massive congregation of [[TheWormThatWalks Hunters]]) which is ''one of the most devastating land vehicles in the setting''. |
| 574 | * ScaryDogmaticAliens: The Covenant are religious extremists, though the piety of individual members varies widely. |
| 575 | * ScienceMarchesOn: In-universe. Human technology in many cases has come a long way since the Covenant war, due a combination of reverse-engineering Covenant and Forerunner tech and plain old R&D. Post-war human ships are bigger and more powerful than their earlier counterparts, have energy shielding, and can usually hold their own against an equivalent Covenant force. They've also solved a lot of their slipspace issues; the newest human ships can now jump ''exactly'' when and where they want, and they appear to be able to cross large swathes of galaxy in mere days. To top it off, they can even mass-produce Spartans now. |
| 576 | * SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: The Expanded Universe is ridiculously bad about this: |
| 577 | ** The novels cite insanely light masses for ships. The 480'ish meter long titanium armored frigate for instance is given a loaded mass of just 4,000 tons. Some rough math says that this results in a ship that's not quite lighter then air, which is about 1.2 kilos per cubic meter, but seeing as the frigate works out to something like 1.8 kilos per cubic meter it's damn close. It gets even more insane when we consider that the ship is supposed to be armed with a main gun that fires ''600 ton slugs''. |
| 578 | ** Then there's the SPARTAN-II armor, which (including the wearer) supposedly weighs in at close to 1000 pounds. A set of armor that weighs as much as a Fiat. This would make much more sense in reference to [[https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL_Mark_I(J)_Armor_Defense_System prototype armor]] that the Mjolnir suits improved upon. In reality, the fact that it's mostly made of titanium alloy would put it closer to 200 lbs if it was double-layered shotgun-resistant plating. Plus, it's never explained how they don't sink into the ground when walking or destroy every ladder and staircase they ever use. While later media try to justify it by saying UNSC vehicles and equipment are heavily ruggedized, 1000 lbs is way heavier than most people realize. |
| 579 | ** The population numbers given in the ''Halo 3'' Bestiarum seems to be this for people who don't realize that they only refers to ''homeworld'' populations (hence why the number of Engineers is given only as "n/a", since they don't actually have a homeworld, not even an ersatz one like High Charity for the Prophets). |
| 580 | * SealedEvilInACan: The Flood. Multiple times. ''Halo 4'' also has the Didact on Requiem, while ''Halo 5'' involves Cortana unsealing a bunch of powerful Forerunner Guardians designed to police lesser species. |
| 581 | * SergeantRock: |
| 582 | ** Forge and Johnson are the main ones. |
| 583 | ** Sergeant Stacker may be the true exemplar. He's that white sergeant whom you'll come across in ''Halo: Combat Evolved'', ''Halo 2'', ''Halo 3'', ''Halo 3: ODST'', ''Halo: Reach'', ''and Halo 4''. First, he leads civilian evacuation efforts during the Fall of Reach, before escaping on the ''Pillar of Autumn''. On Halo, he gets rescued by Master Chief a few times, attacks the Silent Cartographer alongside Chief, and helps him to reach the control room, before managing to somehow escape Halo. He then fights in the Battle of Mombasa, leads the [=ODSTs=] supporting the Chief's assault on the Prophet of Regret, and gets captured alongside Johnson and Sergeant Banks. They then break free and capture a Scarab, and help Arbiter to save the Galaxy, before returning to Earth. After all that, he helps recover the Chief, then leads a convoy evacuating to Voi, before taking joint command of a force that successfully destroys an entire Covenant anti-air battalion. He then survives a Flood attack. Finally, he gets deployed onto the Ark alongside the rest of his fellow Marines and the Chief, where he leads an impromptu armored division that destroys a Covenant division and a Scarab, assaults the Citadel, then escapes off the Ark safely to return to Earth. And that isn't where his story ends. Several years later, he's assigned to the UNSC ''Infinity'' for the very voyage to Requiem in which they find the Master Chief, reprising his role as a tank commander. |
| 584 | * ShoutOut: |
| 585 | ** Crosses over with MythologyGag, but the number of references to Bungie's other shooter, ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'', is a LongList, as [[https://www.halopedia.org/List_of_Marathon_references_in_the_Halo_series noted]] by the Halopedia. |
| 586 | ** The Master Chief is John, Spartan #117 and is awakened from cryostasis at the start of the first game. The protagonist of ''Film/DemolitionMan'' is John Spartan, who was prisoner #117 of the cryogenic prison facility where he was kept for 40 years. |
| 587 | ** A lot of inspiration was taken from the ''Franchise/{{Alien}}'' franchise: |
| 588 | *** The Pelican drop ship is nearly identical to a ship with a similar purpose in ''Film/{{Aliens}}''. |
| 589 | *** Speaking of ''Aliens'', look at Sergeant Johnson. Then look at Apone from ''Aliens''. Heck, look at the entire USCM from that movie and compare it to the UNSC. |
| 590 | *** Even better, in the first game you could find a bulletin board on the ''Pillar of Autumn''. One of the signs on it is a lost pet sign for [[Film/{{Alien}} a cat named Jonesy]]. |
| 591 | ** A small one in ''Halo Wars''; the hero unit Spartan-[[Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy 42's]] real name is [[Creator/DouglasAdams Douglas]]. |
| 592 | ** Another in ''Halo Wars'': sometimes, when selecting or moving UNSC flamethrower [[KillItWithFire Hellbringers]], they will sing [[WebAnimation/HomestarRunner "Burninating the countryside!"]] |
| 593 | ** Many of the achievemenets in ''Halo: Reach'' recall [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1yAf2pFJGM&feature=youtu.be moments]] in previous ''Halo'' games. |
| 594 | ** Many of the Daily and Weekly Challenges are quotes from well-known sci-fi names, such as "[[ElegantWeaponForAMoreCivilizedAge An Elegant Weapon/Not So Clumsy or Random]]" of ''Franchise/StarWars'' fame. |
| 595 | ** "Foehammer", the call sign used by Pelican pilot Carol Rawley, is the English equivalent for the name of [[Literature/TheLordOfTheRings Gandalf's]] sword, Glamdring. |
| 596 | * SightedGunsAreLowTech: Many human weapons have them, but only a handful of Covenant ones do. It's surprisingly averted with a few of the Forerunner weapons; for example, their two shotgun-esque guns, the Scattershot and Boltshot, both seem to have them. |
| 597 | ** Averted in ''Halo 5'', where virtually every weapon can activate a sight of some sort, even the Plasma Pistol (which has a very rudimentary holographic one). |
| 598 | * SigilSpam: Not so prevalent in most of the games, but in ''Halo: Reach'' the UNSC and the Covenant put their logo on basically everything. |
| 599 | * ''SemperFi'': The UNSC Marine Corps, including the [=ODSTs=]. |
| 600 | * SlaveMooks: The Grunts and Flood Combat/Carrier forms work as this. |
| 601 | * SociopathicSoldier: The Spartan-[=IIs=] have been known to display sociopathic tendencies, to the point some feel that it's at least part of the reason they were so effective to begin with. One [=AI=] ([[spoiler:Cortana, while going through rampancy]]) notes that the Spartan they are attached to is arguably more of a machine than they are. |
| 602 | * SpaceFighter: The Seraphs and Longswords. Rarely seen in-game, but the expanded universe makes clear they are threats to be reckoned with. In ''Halo: Reach'' and ''Halo 4'' you actually get to fly some Space Fighters, in the form of the Sabre and Broadsword. |
| 603 | * SpaceMarine: |
| 604 | ** Mostly played straight by Master Chief John-117 and the other Spartans. There's just one wrinkle; the Spartan-[=IIs=] and [=IIIs=] are actually part of the UNSC Navy, with Master Chief Petty Officer being John's actual rank. In general, the S-[=IIs=] and [=IIIs=] are either commissioned (Lieutenant, Captain, etc.) or non-commissioned (Petty Officer 1st Class, Master Chief Petty Officer, etc.) naval officers, making them closer to Navy [=SEALs=]. In the case of the Spartan-[=IVs=], they operate in their own branch, meaning that they're ''still'' technically not marines. |
| 605 | ** Averted by the actual UNSC Marine Corps, with one exception; the [=ODSTs=], who have the armor, operate from space (their whole job is being dropped from orbit into battlefields, and always work as a squad (contrasting the often solitary operation of many Spartans). |
| 606 | * SparseListOfRules: The Cole Protocol is the UNSC's most important naval code, since it lists the actions they are not allowed to do to prevent the Covenant from discovering Earth. However several rules are often ignored because they're just technicalities. We only hear one of those ignored rulings in Subsection 7: "No captured Covenant vessel can be brought back to human space without a thorough search for tracking devices." This is useless because the Covenant self-destruct all their vessels in danger of capture (or try to; John and friends manage to grab one in ''Literature/HaloFirstStrike''). |
| 607 | * StarfishAliens: Engineers (artificial gasbags with tentacles), Hunters (colonies of wormlike organisms in humanoid armor), Drones (insectoids with a semi-HiveMind), the Flood in general (particularly their previous form as the Precursors). |
| 608 | * TheStarscream: ''Halo 2'' and most of the ExpandedUniverse stories since then have indicated that Regret was this with regards to Truth. ''The Cole Protocol'' states this is because Regret realized that he'd be offed by the Prophet of Truth as soon as he outlived his usefulness, so he tried to get his own agenda fulfilled before Truth does. Then the Chief punched Regret to death, because Truth didn't bother sending reinforcements to aid his fellow Prophet. |
| 609 | * StandardSciFiArmy: Naturally. Infantry dominate in the games (from Light to Elite, and of course the Super Soldiers), although both sides use field aircraft and armored vehicles. ''Halo Wars'' expands on this, giving the UNSC Heavy infantry in the Hellbringers, [=APCs=], and anti-aircraft units. Several of the Covenant vehicles are effectively Technicals, being repurposed mining equipment. |
| 610 | * StandardSciFiSetting: As the tropes on this very page will tell you. |
| 611 | * StateSec: The Office of Naval Intelligence; they do some morally questionable actions for the sake of the UNSC's survival, and sometimes just their own. |
| 612 | * SuicideMission: Occurs throughout the series, such as the Arbiter's first mission in ''Halo 2''. The opening cinematic of ''ODST'' describes the squad's initial mission to board a Covenant carrier while it's still in the air over New Mombasa as one. And the [=Spartan-IIIs=] are expendable SuperSoldiers designed to be sent on suicide missions. |
| 613 | * SuperPrototype: |
| 614 | ** Inverted with the Arbiter armour, which has a cloaking system inferior to modern Elite armour. |
| 615 | ** Master Chief and the [=Spartan-IIs=] are this compared to the [=IIIs=] and [=IVs=], though in different ways; the [=IIs=] are more highly selected than both their successors, and have superior augmentations to the [=IVs=] and superior equipment to most [=IIIs=]. |
| 616 | ** Averted with the true prototypes, the Spartan-[=Is=] of the ORION Project. Even the "successful" [=Is=] were nowhere near as powerful as the [=IIs=], [=IIIs=], and [=IVs=], and many suffered severe side effects or even death. Sergeant Johnson is the only Spartan-I encountered officially in the games, and while certainly a badass who's survived at least fifty years of combat, he's certainly not ''quite'' as badass as any of the later Spartans. |
| 617 | * SurvivalMantra: [[TearJerker "Keyes, Jacob. Captain. Service number 01928-19912-JK."]] |
| 618 | * ThemeNaming: |
| 619 | ** With the exception of the ''Halo Wars'' sub-series, all terrestrial/atmosphere-based UNSC vehicles in the games are [[AnimalThemeNaming named after animals]], while Covenant vehicles are [[ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming named after supernatural creatures]]. However, space-capable human aircraft tend to be named after types of swords. And even ''Halo Wars'' only broke the pattern with the ShoutOut Cyclops and the appropriately named Gremlin. |
| 620 | ** Covenant spacecraft generally have florid names which are often religious allusions, such as the ''Truth and Reconciliation'' or the ''Long Night of Solace''. UNSC ships are generally named based on importance to the plot - unimportant ships, if given a name at all, have perfunctory one-word names such as the ''Iroquois'' or the ''Savannah'', while more important ones have poetic names like ''Pillar of Autumn'' or ''Forward Unto Dawn''. |
| 621 | * TronLines: A common feature for Forerunner technology, especially weapons. Also some Covenant tech, appropriately (as they were reverse-engineered from Forerunner tech). |
| 622 | * {{Tykebomb}}: The [=Spartan-IIs=] began training when they were six, and some [=IIIs=] started even younger. |
| 623 | ** [[http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/halo/images/5/50/John-117_fighting_ODST_team.png This is what the IIs were capable of doing]] after literally just getting their augmentations at the age of ~14. |
| 624 | * TragicMonster: |
| 625 | ** Captain Keyes, mutated into a Flood "proto-Gravemind" form. Chief finally puts Keyes out of his misery when he retrieves the latter's neural implants. |
| 626 | ** ''The Flood'' features Jenkins, who remained conscious of what his body was doing under the Flood's command. |
| 627 | * TrueCompanions: Quite a few examples. Spartans (both [[LaserGuidedTykebomb Type-II]] and [[SuperSoldier Type-III]]) are trained together from childhood and quickly become like family. [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Sangheili/Elites]] refer to each other as "brother" and are hardly ever seen without another of their kind nearby. And the squad in ''ODST'' is fairly tight-knit as well, though events after the game end up irrevocably breaking them apart. |
| 628 | * {{Tyrannicide}}: Throughout the series, two of the High Prophets of the Covenant, dogmatic leaders that were responsible for the war with humanity and the betrayal of the Elites, are assassinated. |
| 629 | * UniverseBible: Bungie literally called it the ''Halo Story Bible''. |
| 630 | * UpdatedRerelease: |
| 631 | ** ''[[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved Halo: Combat Evolved: Anniversary]]'' is a bit of both this and VideoGameRemake. The single-player mode actually runs on the original ''Halo: Combat Evolved'' engine, but with updated graphics using resources taken from ''VideoGame/HaloReach''. The multiplayer mode, on the other hand, has been rebuilt from the ground up using the ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' engine. |
| 632 | ** ''[[VideoGame/{{Halo 2}} Halo 2: Anniversary]]'' is similar, if more extensive; its campaign has new graphics built from the ground up, and the engine for its exclusive multiplayer mode is also completely new. However, unlike the original ''Combat Evolved Anniversary'', the old multiplayer is still available. |
| 633 | * VirtualGhost: Cortana, who is based on the mind of Dr. Catherine Halsey. In fact, all human "Smart" [=AIs=] are created by scanning human brains. |
| 634 | * TheVirus: The Flood. |
| 635 | * WeDoTheImpossible: |
| 636 | ** The Master Chief, and all Spartans in general, really. It's even said to be the "short definition of a Spartan." |
| 637 | *** After ''Halo 3: ODST'', it is now common knowledge that the [=ODSTs=] are held only a little below the standard Spartans are, except they don't get augmentations, PoweredArmor, or DeflectorShields. |
| 638 | * WheresMyGun: For being a cybernetic super soldier, the Master Chief seems to never have an available weapon on hand whenever trouble starts at the beginning of most of his games. He usually gets one within about five minutes of the player being handed control, but still, hasn't anyone thought to have at least a set of emergency pistols in the cryo rooms? |
| 639 | * TheWormThatWalks: Mgalekgolo/Hunters are a collection of worm/eel things called Lekgolo, combined to form a single entity with a single consciousness (single as in using "I, me, my" instead of "We, us, our"). Lekgolo can form a variety of other gestalts as well, such as Scarabs. |
| 640 | * YouAreNumberSix: True to a certain extent with all Spartans, who are given numeric designations. Typically they will retain their personal name, suffixing the numeric designation to this (i.e. Cal-141, Douglas-042, and John-117). |
| 641 | ** This trope is also '''literally''' true in ''Halo: Reach'', where the otherwise unnamed primary player character joins Noble Team as their new "number six". |
| 642 | * ZombieApocalypse: The Flood, especially when you find out that they are all but stated to have already completely infected/destroyed ''at least'' one other galaxy, before the Forerunners even encountered them at the edge of the Milky Way. |
| 643 | [[/folder]] |
| 644 | |
| 645 | [[folder:Halo Books]] |
| 646 | * ApocalypticLog: The Covenant is founded on a series of these, except they thought it was holy writ. |
| 647 | * BadassBoast: Nylund is particularly fond of these. Happens in ''First Strike'' (by VADM Whitcomb), ''Ghosts of Onyx'' (by Whitcomb again, through a recording) and ''The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole'' (by the title character), in all cases before the character who delivers the said boast destroys a large Covenant fleet. |
| 648 | * BrainUploading: Human "Smart" [=AIs=] are created this way. Dr. Halsey was smart enough to clone herself so she could create Cortana while keeping her own brain safely inside her skull where she needed it. |
| 649 | * ColonelBadass: Colonel Ackerson somewhat as withstood interrogations by Brutes and still managed to protect Earth before being decapitated. It seems that Colonel Deen was he managed to break a Covenant Siege behind enemy lines. |
| 650 | * ConvectionSchmonvection: Averted in the case of Covenant [[KillSat stategic glassing]]. Carefully placed Covenant warships in orbit rain beams of plasma down onto a planet's surface in a choreographed grid pattern. What does not die instantly from getting hit with the plasma will die somewhat less quickly from the convection as the atmosphere boils around them... |
| 651 | * CovertDistressCode: The Spartans' classified distress call is a simple "Olly Olly Oxen Free". |
| 652 | * CosmicHorrorStory: The Forerunner Saga. Especially [[spoiler: Silentium.]] |
| 653 | * CreativeSterility: The Covenant, though technologically superior, are only so because they depend on weapons and ships salvaged from the ruins of the ancient Forerunner race, which they slavishly copy with religious reverence. Humans are the only species capable of innovation, and often incorporate and improve upon captured Covenant tech. The Master Chief's energy shields are based on the similar Elite model, for instance. |
| 654 | ** Though it's not so much that the Covenant are incapable of innovation as much as that they generally see even simply changing the settings on Forerunner technology as heretical. The Elites and the Prophets, for example, were already about as technologically advanced as 26th century humanity ''before'' they began messing around with Forerunner tech. |
| 655 | *** In ''Literature/HaloCryptum'', the Prophets are noted to be a scientifically-gifted species whose technology equals that of their [[spoiler:prehistoric human allies, who were nearly a match for the Forerunner themselves]]. |
| 656 | * DarkerAndEdgier: The novels (particularly ''The Fall of Reach'') are much darker than the games, almost to the point of being a deconstruction. They don't shy away from just how horrible fighting a war against an unstoppable alien juggernaught would be or how awful your life would be if you were a SPARTAN-II . They also portray the amount of damage that the human body can take much more realistically, with soldiers dying from a single plasma rifle shot, etc. |
| 657 | ** ''Especially'' the ''Literature/HaloEvolutions'' short-stories. Dear God, don't read "The ''Mona Lisa''" or "Stomping On the Heels of a Fuss" if you have a weak stomach. To elaborate, "Stomping" details [[spoiler:Brutes treating prisoners like chew-toys, living in a complex surrounded by a field of corpses, and eating humans around a campfire like freakin' hotdogs]], while "The ''Mona Lisa''" is [[spoiler:a graphic depiction of a Flood infestation. One Elite even stomps a human corpse into pulp simply to prevent it from being used by the Flood.]] |
| 658 | * DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength: The Spartans have trouble adjusting to their new strength right after the augmentation, to the point where John-117 thinks that the ArtificialGravity in the ship's gym is broken since he can lift the heaviest weights without effort. |
| 659 | * FasterThanLightTravel: [[SubspaceOrHyperspace slipstream space]], which is more-or-less shortcutting through another dimension. One of the reasons for Covenant space superiority was their greater ability to emerge from slipspace at pinpoint locations, whereas UNSC exit points might be inaccurate by as many as 100,000 kilometers. |
| 660 | ** Not only was the location more accurate, so was the timeframe. Travel time between stars didn't remain constant, and UNSC ships that departed at roughly the same time could arrive at their destination hours or even days apart, reason of which was not clear to the scientists but attributed to "eddies" in slipstream currents. |
| 661 | * TheFederation: The UNSC. |
| 662 | * ForegoneConclusion: The title of the first book is ''Halo: The Fall of Reach''. Guess what happens. |
| 663 | ** You know exactly what will happen in the Forerunner Trilogy. |
| 664 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: Most famously, by Dr. Catherine Halsey in ''The Fall of Reach'', when describing John-117: |
| 665 | -->"This child could be more useful to the UNSC than a fleet of destroyers, a thousand Junior Grade Lieutenants ? Or even ''me''. In the end, that child may be the only thing that makes any difference." |
| 666 | * GenerationXerox: Well, if you consider having your brain cloned and then used to create an AI as having an offspring, Dr. Halsey and Cortana definitely qualify. [[spoiler: Particularly when we finally see Dr. Halsey in person in ''The Package''---she looks exactly like Cortana's hologram and says several of her lines word-for-word.]] |
| 667 | * GeniusBruiser: Spartans, Elites, and to a lesser extent Brutes. [[AllThereInTheManual Hunters, too]]. |
| 668 | * GrowingTheBeard: Creator/BrianDavidGilbert [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEWEdIcx1DI read every book]] in the series, and noted that the books started from being generic tie-ins to thoughtful {{Deconstruction}}s of the 'Verse, such as ONI being bastards for stealing children and leaving flash clones, and all the consequences that would bring.[[invoked]] |
| 669 | * HandWave: Though there is a decent-enough explanation for why Sgt. Johnson was able to resist getting nommed by the Flood, it's never really explained how he, Lt. Haverson, Cpl. Locklear, and [=PO2=] Polaski were able to commandeer a Pelican despite being separated from other UNSC forces on Halo. |
| 670 | * HeroicBSOD: Admiral Cole sure gets one when he finds out that [[spoiler: his wife and the mother of his child, Lyra, is a high-level Insurrection operative.]] |
| 671 | * HonorBeforeReason: The Sangheili honor codes are well beyond the point of ridiculousness. Especially apparent in ''Halo: The Cole Protocol''. |
| 672 | ** The various Human characters end up taking advantage of this. |
| 673 | * HopeSpot[=/=]DiabolusExMachina: In ''Ghosts of Onyx'', Admiral Patterson is down to one carrier and three destroyers, facing two damaged Covenant destroyers. One is taken out, leaving a single Covenant ship utterly defenseless. [[spoiler:And then a Covenant fleet 32 ships strong comes out of slipspace between the lone destroyer and the four UNSC ships, and promptly annihilates the human vessels.]] |
| 674 | * IDidWhatIHadToDo: Haverson kills an Engineer who just repaired John's armor in order to keep the Covenant from getting any data on it. He finds the act just as despicable as Cortana does, but stands by his decision. |
| 675 | * {{Jerkass}}: Antonio Silva hates the Spartans, especially the Master Chief due to John accidentally killing an ODST member a long time ago. Silva seems to have forgotten how this was a result of half a dozen of the best soldiers attacking a supposedly average fourteen year old. |
| 676 | * [[spoiler:TheLastDance]]: [[spoiler:Admiral Preston Cole. After being depended upon for so long in the Human-Covenant War by the UNSC (compared in ''The Impossible Life and Possible Death of Preston Cole'' as being in command of the battles of the Alamo, Termopylae, Stalingrad, and Cold Harbor, and repeating them over, and over), it was believed that he began to fall under the psychological strain, to the point it was speculated that he fell into another HeroicBSOD... but one that led him to face three hundred Covenant ships around a gas giant, killing plenty of them with slingshot maneuvers, using gravity as both a lure and a shield against the Covenant Plasma shots, mocking them with a BadAssBoast that angers them and drives them towards him, and ending with [[RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun an implosion using said goddamn gas giant into a sun]], killing all three hundred Covenant ships.]] |
| 677 | -->"Listen to me, Covenant. I am Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole commanding the human flagship, ''Everest''. You claim to be the holy and glorious inheritors of the universe? I spit on your so-called holiness. You dare judge us unfit? After I have personally sent more than three hundred of your vainglorious ships to hell? After kicking your collective butts off Harvest - not once - but twice? From where I sit, we are the worthy inheritors. You think otherwise, you can come and try to prove me wrong." |
| 678 | ** [[spoiler:The best part? If the ONI officer reviewing Cole's life is correct, Cole [[BeyondTheImpossible SURVIVED by executing an in-atmosphere slip-space jump]], and is most likely finally living a life of peace far outside UNSC or Covenant space. [[EarnYourHappyEnding He deserves it.]]]] |
| 679 | * LightningBruiser: Kelly in the novels was always the fastest Spartan, even when they were children. Once she goes through augmentations, she's described as being so fast that nothing could touch her if she didn't allow them too. She can reliably reach speeds up to 62 KPH (roughly 38 miles an hour). |
| 680 | ** Of course, ''all'' the Spartans are Lightning Bruisers compared to normal humans. |
| 681 | ** Jorge-052, Noble Teams [[TheBigGuy Heavy weapons specialist]] carries a massive [[{{BFG}} Heavy Machine gun]] which would require an entire crew of regular humans to man and would probably be cumbersome in the hands of even the other Spartans. Jorge however doesn't seem to be slowed down by it in the slightest. |
| 682 | * MacrossMissileMassacre: UNSC ships of the line also carry ludicrous numbers of Archer missle pods that can produce this effect. Unfortunately they are not particularly effective against Covenant energy shielding. They are however ''very'' effective against unshielded Covenant ships. |
| 683 | ** Indeed, standard policy during the war was to attempt to use MAC rounds to drop Covenant shields, before executing this manoeuvre. |
| 684 | * MacGuffin: The Forerunner Crystal in ''First Strike''. |
| 685 | * MadeOfPlasticine: |
| 686 | ** A vehicular example is seen courtesy of the many starships in the series, especially the UNSC's vessels when confronted with [[KillItWithFire the Covenant's plasma weapons]]. It is basically unheard of for a ship to come out of an engagement without being gutted within an inch of its life and/or requiring several months' stay in drydock to fix the myriad of meltdowns and decompressions. Apparently, all that armour and structure is like so much tissue paper. |
| 687 | *** Averted for the ''Pillar of Autumn''; even in-universe it was described as basically being a [[LethalJokeCharacter Lethal Joke]] LightningBruiser CoolShip. It and its entire class were reputed as being MadeOfIron, even if they sucked in the offensive department. |
| 688 | *** The Covenant ships subvert this trope: while their shields are up, they are basically MadeOfIron, and only [[{{BFG}} MAC cannon]] rounds generally make a dent. Knock down the shields, though, and they can get blown apart with otherwise-useless [[MacrossMissileMassacre Archer missiles]]. |
| 689 | ** A more straight example comes from the descriptions of the effects of [[KillItWithFire Covenant weaponry]] and [[BodyHorror Flood attacks]] on human UNSC Marines. |
| 690 | *** And also averted for the [[SuperSoldier Spartans]] -- they repeatedly come back from injuries that would cripple or kill an ordinary human. Linda, in particular, came back to full fighting readiness after being ''clinically dead''. |
| 691 | * MeaningfulName / IronicNickname: The Prophet of Truch is a habitual liar and blackmailed the Prophet of Regret, The Prophet of Regret is impetuious and doesn't seem to regret his actions (except the ones the Prophet of Truth is blackmailing him for), and The Prophet of Mercy is completely merciless, to the point of psychopathy. According to ''Contact Harvest'', Regret used to be the Vice Minister of Tranquility and was known for his confrontational attitude, and Truth got his later position after blackmailing the Prophet of Restraint over his illegitimate children. This sort of thing seems to be a RunningGag throughout the Halo universe. |
| 692 | ** Truth at least is intentional. He chose it to remind himself of his own lies and hypocrisy. |
| 693 | ** {{Lampshaded}} in ''Literature/HaloBrokenCircle'' by Mken 'Scre'ah'ben, known as the "Prophet of Inner Conviction" because of the purity he displayed in his youth. By the time the Covenant is established, he's already begun to have private doubts that the Halo Array is a means of divinity, thinking the texts he's read sound more like weapons, showing he lacks inner conviction. Unlike most Prophets, Mken is self-aware enough to recognize this and chastise himself for it. |
| 694 | -->'''Mken:''' "Prophet of Inner Conviction" indeed--what irony! Find your own inner conviction! |
| 695 | ** The name "John-117" also may have meaning; from biblical references (various passages in the Book of John or in Revelations with the numbers "1" and "7" could be read as relating to ''Halo'''s plot) to a ShoutOut to ''Film/DemolitionMan''. |
| 696 | *** It's also often pronounced one-seventeen, 1:17 is 77 seconds and 7 is Bungie's ArcNumber. |
| 697 | * TheMetricSystemIsHereToStay |
| 698 | * NavalBlockade: The UNSC blockaded the 26 Draconis System in an effort to keep FTL drive components from being shipped out, leading to an incident that sparked the Insurrection. |
| 699 | * NecessaryDrawback: The Spartan I training program was a mixture of TrainingFromHell and chemical enhancements but didn't result in a significant battlefield improvement. The Spartan II's had TrainingFromHell, chemical enhancements, cybernetic augmentation, and a custom-built PoweredArmor but because of the high risk of deformities and death from the implants (low "graduation" numbers) it was deemed to not be cost efficient. Spartan III's (the subjects of Halo: Reach) were a balance between the previous programs to get higher numbers of {{Super Soldier}}s that could affect the tide of battle. |
| 700 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: During the fall of Reach, Admiral Whitcomb re-purposes one of the UNSC's new experimental [[EarthShatteringKaboom NOVA Bombs]] and leaves it booby trapped so that if the Covenant took it back to one of their planets, it'd induce massive casualties. By the time the bomb detonates however, the Covenant is fractured under civil war and ending up annihilating a major reorganizing fleet of the faction that ended up siding with Humanity. |
| 701 | ** Though it is possible that if the fleet remained, they wouldn't have been desperate enough to side with the humans at all. |
| 702 | ** Also note that those Elites hadn't sided humanity, and were still hell bent on annihilating us. |
| 703 | ** If you consider [[StateSec O.N.I.]] [[NominalHero heroes]], their plot of fracturing the Elite society only created more forces who would take up The Didacts mission against humanity. And for causing Dr Halsey to side with them. |
| 704 | ** Taking one of the Spartans to train to fight the Insurrection actually causes some of the suspicious parents to become part of the Insurrection. Although that may be more of a source of irony... |
| 705 | * {{Novelization}}: The first game has one, titled ''Halo: The Flood''. |
| 706 | * PsychicStatic: A way of fighting back the Flood if you ever get infested and [[MindRape Mind Raped.]] |
| 707 | * ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Haverson, despite outranking the Master Chief, willingly concedes command of the mission to the Spartan. Later when the mission changes and he retakes command, Haverson is still agrees to take them back to Reach even though he knows that Master Chief really only wants to go to check for surviving Spartans. |
| 708 | * RememberWhenYouBlewUpASun: |
| 709 | ** Or in the case of Admiral Cole, [[spoiler: remember when you turned a gas giant into a sun and then it wiped out a hundreds-stong Covenant armada in a giant supernova?]] |
| 710 | ** As a real-life Out-of-Universe inversion of the trope, there is a painting inside an ONI base in Australia called ''Admiral Cole's Last Stand'', described in ''Halo: First Strike''. The book was published nearly five years prior to ''Halo Evolutions'', but in-universe, it was ten years before the end of the war. |
| 711 | * RestrictedExpandedUniverse: {{Averted}}. The video games are rather [[ExcusePlot light on plot]], allowing the ExpandedUniverse to go hog-wild on it. The [[AdaptationExpansion multimedia adaptations]] give characters new backstories and personality traits that are never hinted at in the games; not to mention that they introduce and kill off new characters. They also flesh out the origins of both the [[TheFederation UNSC]] and [[ScaryDogmaticAliens the Covenant]]. As a bonus, they add new weapons and vehicles. As a result, the fans regard them as better than the source material. When Creator/ThreeFourThreeIndustries takes over development duties from Creator/{{Bungie}}, the ExpandedUniverse becomes much more integrated with the games from ''VideoGame/{{Halo 4}}'' onward, especially regarding [[BigBad the Didact]]. |
| 712 | * RightHandVersusLeftHand: The political machinations within the Covenant in ''Halo 2''. The ExpandedUniverse shows that the UNSC is not wholly united either. |
| 713 | ** Taken to a whole new extreme with the infighting at the Office of Naval Intelligence. There the right hand doesn't even know the left even exists. Even more blatant when you consider the context behind [[http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=personnel&cid=24040 this]] communication. To put it short, Ackerson kidnaps one of Halsey's Spartans(Kurt) to help start his own [[CannonFodder Mass Produced]] Spartan unit to compete with Halsey's. Kurt then covertly spirits a number of those Spartans from the S-III companies in order to form his own secret team of Elite [=Spartan III's=] outfitted with [[PoweredArmor Mjolnir armor]] like the original Spartan II's. And everybody is in the dark about getting conned by somebody else. |
| 714 | * TheRival: Spartans and ODST generally don't get along. |
| 715 | * RockBeatsLaser: Used and/or subverted depending on certain circumstances. Human firearms can outperform Covenant energy weapons in some cases, such as against the Flood. Humans also tend to defeat the Covenant on ground battles. That said, in space combat the Covenant tend to have a massive advantage over the UNSC. |
| 716 | * SacrificialPlanet: Most of the story takes place in late 2552, after [[ScaryDogmaticAliens the Covenant]] destroyed the planet Reach during their war against humanity. The Covenant had already burned 800 human colonies in the twenty-seven years of war before, but Reach, being humanity's second most important military stronghold after Earth, is viewed to be the point-of-no-return, the point where humanity has been dealt a crippling blow and needs to land a killing strike on the Covenant right away before they destroy Earth. The Fall of Reach is described in [[Literature/HaloTheFallOfReach the first Halo book]] and playable in the prequel ''VideoGame/HaloReach'', where you are DoomedByCanon. |
| 717 | * ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: The Office of Naval Intelligence has a very complicated relationship with both civilian and military law. They have classified orders to ensure the Cole Protocol is carried out fully. It states that all navigational data must be destroyed upon contact with the Covenant, but that leaves a flaw. The navigational officer. ONI's exact orders are to "destroy all navigational data stored digitally or organically." They ignore the orders of anybody who could or would stop them. |
| 718 | * ShotgunWedding: Admiral Cole, ''twice.'' Subverted both times--- it looks at first like he's being forced to marry Inna Valkov, his first wife and an admiral's daughter but it turns out that he ''wasn't'' the father of her son. His second wife, Lyrra, is also pregnant when they get married [[spoiler: which is too bad because she turns out to be a high-level Insurrection operative and the captain of the frigate that Cole has been hunting for years.]] |
| 719 | * SpaceIsAnOcean: Averted, as the ships use the 3-dimensional, zero-gravity nature of space to their advantage, such as by flipping the ''Pillar of Autum'' 180 degrees in order to point the majority of their point-defense guns at the Covenant ships attacking their underside. |
| 720 | * TheSpartanWay: The training regimen of the [=SPARTANs=] as seen in the novels. |
| 721 | * SpaceRomans: The Elite culture is basically Imperial Japan [[RecycledInSpace IN SPACE]]. |
| 722 | * SuperPersistentPredator: Why humans call the Mgalekgolo "Hunters". |
| 723 | * SuperSoldier: The Spartans. You've been kidnapped by the army, kid, will never see your family again, and have been replaced by a clone that will die soon. You will have to go through grueling training and risky augmentation, then get stuffed into a suit of armour that makes people wonder if you're actually a robot, and have difficulty bonding with anyone not a SPARTAN II. Oh, and no one will ever know your real name, if you die you're listed as "MIA" or "WIA", [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and you no longer have any sex drive whatsoever]]. Who wants to volunteer? |
| 724 | ** Further deconstructed in ''Ghosts of Onyx''. [[spoiler:The SPARTAN III's are prepubescent {{Laser Guided Tykebomb}}s assembled from thousands of orphans of Earth's lost colonies, and trained to assault and hopefully destroy Covenant installations ''en masse'' as mostly cannon fodder to slow the Covenant's advance. The first chapter of said novel details the carnage of one such mission, one that leaves only two survivors out of ''hundreds'', and renders one of them forever mute from Post Traumatic Stress. The worst part? [[ShootTheDog If it hadn't been done, humanity wouldn't have lasted long enough to become nearly extinct in]] ''[[ShootTheDog Halo 3]]''.]] |
| 725 | * SuperToughness: The Spartan II's. Less so with the Spartan III's, who were elite cannon fodder with the less powerful SPI armor. |
| 726 | * TemptingFate: Guess who kicks the crap out of Master Chief & Co. after the following statement: |
| 727 | ---> '''Cortana''': "Also, be advised, Chief, that there are ceremonial guards in this temple - a race we have not encountered before. Roughly translated from Covenant dialects, they are called 'Brutes.' They shouldn't be a significant threat or they would have been used in previous military situations." |
| 728 | * ThemeNaming: This series and ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' are part of one. ''Durandal, Cortana...'' [[spoiler: Here's betting their next series will have a character named Joyeuse in it.]] |
| 729 | * ThreeLawsCompliant: Mentioned by name. The default setting of the AI constructs. Disabled for normal military use, since the laws would force the AI's to prevent soldiers from sacrificing or even risking their lives in war. |
| 730 | * TimeDelayedDeath: In ''Ghosts of Onyx'', Dante, after a particularly hectic firefight, offhandedly mentions "I think they got me." [[spoiler:''He then drops dead.'']] Upon closer inspection, it turns out that nearly ''half of his torso'' had been blown off or melted, and he didn't even notice. |
| 731 | * {{Tsundere}}: Sif in ''Contact Harvest'' is a textbook version. |
| 732 | * {{Tykebomb}}: The Spartans were drafted/kidnapped when they were six years old, and due to their training were better fighters than most adults. Then they got augmented. |
| 733 | * TheWarOfEarthlyAggression: In the expanded universe, pre-contact with the Covenant, and continuing through the war, there was a huge ongoing rebellion movement in the Outer Colonies. |
| 734 | * WhamEpisode: ''Literature/HaloCryptum'', SO MUCH. You were wondering how humans and Forerunners first met 100,000 years ago? How about... [[spoiler: humans had an interstellar empire so large that it rivaled the Forerunners', until it was destroyed by the Forerunners for infringing on their territory while running away from the Flood, which humanity eventually ''defeated'' before falling themselves. That's right, ancient humanity was the first to find and fight the Flood (with the help of the Prophets). We even invented a cure for the Flood that DIDN'T involve the total annihilation of life in the galaxy, but it was destroyed (either out of human bitterness or Forerunner ignorance) when the Forerunners invaded, DEVOLVED OUR SPECIES and erased all traces of the earlier civilization, restricting us to our homeworld. The Librarian mentioned in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' was actually intended to keep us in check.]] |
| 735 | * WhamLine: Again, the ''Forerunner Saga'' is full of these. Often mentioned offhandedly, as, at the time, they are commonly known facts that seem to have no relevance. A big one is [[spoiler: offhandedly mentioning that humanity and the Forerunners were ''at war'' at one point, after which the Forerunner victors de-evolved us and confined us to earth]]. |
| 736 | ** About every time we learn something new about the Precursors, it turns out to be this. |
| 737 | [[/folder]] |
| 738 | |
| 739 | [[folder:Halo Games]] |
| 740 | * AgriWorld: Harvest, as the name implies, is a chiefly agricultural world and covered with extensive areas of farmland. This is not uncommon in the setting — some planets have more hours of daylight than is typical for Earth and happen to have huge tracts of very rich volcanic soil, leading to very large crop yields. Agriculture on such planets is both cheap and productive, and it costs less for other planets to import food from the farm worlds than to grow it locally. This is subverted later as the war rages on, as many of the Outer Colonies where much of the farming goes on are lost, and the Cole Protocol restricts intersteller travel, leading many inner planets to reluctantly take to growing their own food instead of importing it. |
| 741 | * TheAllSeeingAI: Noteably averted, in all games including the first ''Halo: Combat Evolved''; Enemies are only aware of your last known position once they lose sight of you, so it's possible to flank and sneak up behind them in a firefight if you use walls as cover. One of the skulls in ''Halo 2'' makes the game harder by making enemies aware of your position at all times. |
| 742 | * AllThereInTheStinger: All of the first three games: |
| 743 | ** ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'''s stinger shows Guilty Spark escaping Halo's destruction and fleeing into space. |
| 744 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'''s stinger shows The Gravemind approaching Cortana, who agrees to answer its questions. |
| 745 | ** ''VideoGame/{{Halo 3}}'' ends with everyone believing that Master Chief is dead, but the stinger reveals that he and Cortana survived in the aft end of the frigate ''Forward Unto Dawn'', and ends with his going back into stasis. Then the ship's hulk is seen drifting towards a planet. |
| 746 | * AlmightyJanitor: Subverted and played straight with the Rookie. After learning he fought his way through war-torn Mombasa by himself for several hours, Dare thinks he's one of these. The truth is he was knocked out in his pod for most of it. However, it's perfectly possible to confirm her suspiciouns through gameplay. Heck, if you get all the audiologs, a cutscene changes so Rookie knows more about what's going on than Dare does! And Dare's the intelligence officer! |
| 747 | * AncientKeeper: 343 Guilty Spark. |
| 748 | * AntiRageQuitting: Every mainline ''Halo'' game incorporating matchmaking has enforced this, with penalties up to and including temporary matchmaking bans for excessive quitting. Titles from ''Halo: Reach'' onward also provide experience only upon completion of a match. |
| 749 | * AscendedMeme: In ''ODST'', the location that played the [[OnceAnEpisode Siege Of Madrigal]] also had a short, looping animation of Marty O'Donnell dancing and little winged hearts flying everywhere. The heart effect is available as a purchasable "dying armor effect" (like Grunt Birthday Party confetti) in ''Reach''. |
| 750 | %% * ASpaceMarineIsYou: Seriously. Look at the checklist. '''Administrivia/ZeroContextExample, Administrivia/WebLinksAreNotExamples''' |
| 751 | * AttackAttackRetreatRetreat: Occationally, caused by the Marines' combat dialogue acting up. |
| 752 | -->'''Female Marine''': [[BadassBoast Not a tango in sight.]] |
| 753 | -->'''Male Marine''', less than a second later: [[OhCrap I see tangos...]] [[ZergRush lots of tangos!]] |
| 754 | * AttemptedRape: [[spoiler:Commissioner Kinsler]] attempts to rape [[spoiler:Sadie]] in the Audio Files' story. [[spoiler:He tries and fails three times, and the third failure gets him brutally ''torn to shreds'' by an angry mob that he had his men fire on.]] |
| 755 | * AuthorUsurpation: {{Creator/Bungie}}, despite making ground-breaking series such as ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Myth}}'', will forevermore be known as the studio that created the ''Halo'' series. |
| 756 | * AutobotsRockOut: It has the literal [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO1y7WQfD9c Rock Anthem for Saving the World]] that would play during more intense parts of the game. |
| 757 | ** ''And'' OminousLatinChanting aplenty. |
| 758 | ** In the second game, an instrumental version of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS6vwmrFxGo Blow Me Away]]" plays when the Master Chief enters the Mausoleum of the Arbiter, where the EnemyCivilWar is at its most epic. Cue the urge to kick ass and ChewBubblegum. |
| 759 | *** Cortana even tells you it'd be better to sit this one out and wait for the enemies to kill each other. But with this music it's just impossible to do. |
| 760 | ** And not to mention that the second and third games had [[SugarWiki/MomentofAwesome Steve Vai]] shredding over the more intense themes. |
| 761 | ** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a43xjc6iT9k Mjolnir Mix]] of the main theme yet. |
| 762 | ** And then ''ODST'' pretty much blows everything that has come before away with a little thing called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFIoYcaqWG4 Air Traffic Control]]: imagine that playing while fighting against hordes of Covenant air support hundreds of feet in the air on the edge of a skyscraper. |
| 763 | * AxCrazy: |
| 764 | ** Kinsler, the New Mombasa police commissioner featured in Sadie's Story, is a rephrehensible jackass, who is willing to sacrifice the safety of the citizens in his bid for payback as the city falls apart. |
| 765 | ** According to his profile, Noble Team member Emile-239 seem to fit this rather well, apparently so brutal that his superiors are reluctant to field him against anything but aliens, for fear of his brutality giving the media real "excess" to comment on. In at least one section of the game, we're told "He says he wants to win the war, but he really just wants the enemy to die." |
| 766 | ** The Arbiter from ''VideoGame/HaloWars''. The guy unsheathed his Energy Swords while speaking to the Prophet of Regret, an act which is a complete violation of both Covenant doctrine[[labelnote:*]]Weapons are never to be drawn in the presence of a Prophet[[/labelnote]] and Sangheili culture[[labelnote:**]]Any weapon drawn must shed blood before being put away[[/labelnote]]. The only reason he wasn't killed on the spot was the fact that 'Moramee wouldn't hesitate to use his swords on the Honor Guards. |
| 767 | * BadassBack: Aka Cheating Bastard Back, the Jackal snipers. In games 2 and 3 the Hunters can melee you behind their back too, which is instant death on Legendary. |
| 768 | * BadassBoast: |
| 769 | ** After being told that a message from the covenant keeps repeating, over and over, the word "Regret": |
| 770 | --->'''Johnson:''': Dear Humanity, we ''Regret'' being alien bastards! We ''Regret'' coming to Earth! And we most definitely ''Regret'' that the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!\ |
| 771 | '''Pilots''': Oorah! |
| 772 | ** The Heretic Leader in the same game speaks to the Arbiter and accompanying strike team through a hologram. It's short, but it implies a lot. |
| 773 | --->'''Rtas 'Vadumee:''' Come out, so we may kill you! \ |
| 774 | '''Heretic Leader:''' Heheheh... Get in line. |
| 775 | * BashBrothers: Hunters always come in pairs of two. In most games, they're identical and equipped identically. |
| 776 | * TheBattlestar: Any ship that figures into the main plot, such as the ''Pillar of Autumn'', the ''In Amber Clad'', or the ''Forward Unto Dawn''. In ''Halo 3'', the Separatist vessel ''Shadow of Intent'' takes the place of the Rebel Basestar. In ''Halo 4'', we get the massive ''Infinity'', which was originally constructed to be a last bastion of humanity should Earth fall, and is capable of launching entire ''flotillas of frigates'' from its internal bays. |
| 777 | ** The ''Mantle's Approach'' puts all other ships seen so far to utter and complete shame, being the former flagship for the greatest navy ever built. It's so large it needs its own teleportation grid, being ''230 miles'' at its longest, and it's crewed by a total of ''one man''. |
| 778 | * BeatingADeadPlayer: The infamous teabag in multiplayer. Additionally, campaign [=NPCs=] and enemies will occasionally shoot enemy corpses (including yours) and shout at them. |
| 779 | ** During gameplay, Marines will occasionally shout "Get up, so I can kill you again", showing that this trope is in full force even InUniverse. It becomes slightly less funny when [[ZombieApocalypse the Flood actually]] ''[[ZombieApocalypse do]]'' [[ZombieApocalypse get back up]]. |
| 780 | * BeehiveBarrier: The Bubble Shield. Back again in Reach with a healing ability. |
| 781 | * BerserkButton. Don't try to destroy the Halo ring in front of 343 Guilty Spark. Just ask [[spoiler:Sgt. Johnson]]. |
| 782 | ** Or kill a Hunter in front of its partner. |
| 783 | * BigDamnHeroes: Happens quite a lot during cutscenes, and sometimes you can do it yourself. |
| 784 | ** In ''Halo 3'', when Johnson is beaten up to make him activate the rings, you have a good view of the large window behind Truth, with a small dropship growing larger in the distance. |
| 785 | * BilingualBonus: Regret refers to the Halo pulse as a "divine wind" in his sermon in ''Halo 2''. In Japanese divine wind is ''kamikaze''. Considering that the activation of the Halo array is essentially a suicide attack... Well, he was more on the money than he knew. |
| 786 | * BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:To the original trilogy; both humanity and the Covenant races have been badly mauled by their war, with most human colonies destroyed and billions of its people dead. Earth's defenses were badly mauled and many of its cities razed. The upside is that the war ends with the Covenant races freed from the Prophets' rule and humanity avoiding extinction and making peace with their former adversaries (with hope for future friendship), not to mention our heroes stopping the Flood from retaking the galaxy. The Chief and Cortana are presumed dead, but are actually floating in space in the back half of the ''Dawn'', with no way to get home.]] |
| 787 | * {{BFG}}: Spartan Laser, [[RemovableTurretGun detachable turrets]], fuel rod gun, etc. |
| 788 | * BodyArmorAsHitPoints: The games have the overshield pickups. Depending on the game, the pickup will give one or two layers of overshields that will multiply the player's effective health by a factor of 2-4. In the single-player campaign, overshields last until depleted by damage, but they also decay over time in multiplayer matches. |
| 789 | * BolivianArmyEnding: [=FireFight=] in ''ODST'' can only end in this. |
| 790 | ** [[spoiler: ''Halo: Reach'']] |
| 791 | * BookEnds: [[spoiler:Master Chief begins the trilogy by climbing out of a cryochamber and ends it by climbing right back into another one.]] |
| 792 | * BorderPatrol: Invisible instant-death barriers prevent shortcutting or wandering out of bounds; some multiplayer maps, such as "Snowbound", have plausible border control devices. |
| 793 | ** According to Bungie, the number of these (at least in campaign) are going to be reduced allowing the maps to be more explorable. |
| 794 | * BossInMookClothing: Brute Chieftains, Gold Elites (first game), Silver Elites (second game), and Hunters (second and third games). |
| 795 | ** Enforcers in ''Halo 2''. |
| 796 | ** Prometheon Knights in ''Halo 5: Guardians'' |
| 797 | * BottomlessMagazines: |
| 798 | ** Any armed vehicle you drive will have these. So do turret weapons, unless you detach them. |
| 799 | ** All [=NPCs=] have this, which becomes a ''major'' problem when up against RPG-wielding Flood combat forms. From ''Halo 2'' onwards, when it becomes possible to exchange weapons with friendly [=NPCs=], the player can exploit this by giving a limited-ammo {{BFG}}, such as an RPG or fuel rod gun, to an ally. |
| 800 | * ButtMonkey: The Grunts. They get a lot of abuse, and are so funny at receiving it, too. |
| 801 | * CaptainObvious: Sometimes, randomized combat dialogue can lead to this. |
| 802 | --->'''Marine''' (in the middle of an enormous gun battle): The Covvies are shooting at us! |
| 803 | * ChallengeRun: In most games, you have the option to turn on various "skulls" for the campaign mode (in some games you have to find them before you can use them, in some games not) which affect the gameplay in various ways. There's one that causes your shields to recharge only upon meleeing an enemy, one that causes every enemy's health to double, one that removes your entire first-person HUD ''and arms'', leaving you with ''no way to tell what gun you're currently using'' unless you fire it or tediously look at its shape with your own shadow, one that causes you to restart the whole level if you die on solo or revert to the last checkpoint if ANY player dies on co-op, and those are just a few. Some skulls are actually helpful (though those are mostly just in ''VideoGame/{{Halo 2}}'' and ''[[VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved Combat Evolved]] Anniversary''), but in most cases, they greatly increase the games' difficulty in many unique ways. |
| 804 | * ChargedAttack: The Plasma Pistol, which doesn't do much more damage, but instantly drains the shields of Spartans and Elites, and [[ElectroMagneticPulse temporarily disables vehicles]] |
| 805 | ** The Needler also counts. It would be virtually useless, despite the homing feature of the needles, except for the fact that once a target has enough needles in them, they simultaneously explode. So the needler can be useful, assuming a player can get enough needles in an opponent to cause the explosion. |
| 806 | ** Also, the Spartan Laser. |
| 807 | ** ''Reach'' adds the Plasma Launcher, which charges to fire more grenades, as well as an artillery target painter. |
| 808 | ** ''Halo 4'' adds the Boltshot, a Prometheon pistol, which charges to fire a shotgun-like burst. |
| 809 | ** And introduced in ''Halo 5: Guardians'', the Plasma Caster, which charges to fire a single large grenade at a higher velocity, relative to an uncharged shot firing two grenades at a lower velocity. Additionally, a charged attack was added to the Incineration Cannon for a bigger shot with more SplashDamage. |
| 810 | * ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: The Index]] |
| 811 | ** [[spoiler: So much so that it took three whole games, and traveling over '''250,000 Light years''' to actually get to ''using'' it.]] |
| 812 | ** ''"I'm a thief... but I keep what I steal."'' |
| 813 | ** The Halos themselves. If a Galaxy destroying superweapon is found in the first game it will be fired by the end of the third game. |
| 814 | * CliffHanger: The first game ended with plenty of more story to tell, but still self-contained. ''Halo 2'' has merely a pause in the story. |
| 815 | * CommandRoster: A Bungie [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs2TPo7z0sM ViDoc]] for ''Reach'' spells it out fairly well: |
| 816 | ** Carter "Noble 1": TheCaptain. |
| 817 | ** Kat "Noble 2": TheEngineer[=/=]TheCracker. |
| 818 | ** Jun "Noble 3": ColdSniper. |
| 819 | ** Emile "Noble 4": The Marine, who also is a bit HotBlooded. |
| 820 | ** Jorge "Noble 5": The Security Officer, and the residential "tank" who also seems to carry the excess supplies. |
| 821 | ** "[[NoNameGiven Noble 6]]": SixthRanger, and the player character who's new to the team. |
| 822 | * TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: On Legendary difficulty, most notably in the second game. Rapid-fire plasma pistols, faster-shooting plasma rifles, insta-death melees, BadassBack sniper shots, attacks that allies and enemies can survive but are instantly fatal to the player (Two words: Beam Rifle), unfair vehicle damage allocation, X-ray vision, sniper-accurate grenade throws, stupid friendly AI, etc. |
| 823 | * CopyAndPasteEnvironments: |
| 824 | ** In the original game, the last level is the first level backwards. The second-to-last level is the second level with different textures. The third level is one half going in, one half going out. The levels after the library are the same as the ones before the library. Except, well, backwards. |
| 825 | ** Also, these are noticeable: |
| 826 | *** [[strike:The Library]] ''Every'' interior level in the original game. |
| 827 | *** The multiplayer map ''Death Island'' from the original game is essentially a remake of the level ''The Silent Cartographer''. All they did was replace the override with 1 base and the map room with another... |
| 828 | *** The Level Floodgate in ''Halo 3'' is pretty much the previous level, backwards. Except everything's apocalyptic, and the Covenant is replaced with the Flood. |
| 829 | *** There's also a slight subversion of this trope in the very end of ''Halo 3''. The control room to fire the Halo is almost identical to the one in the first game, hinting that all Halos are merely copies of each other. |
| 830 | *** Although, since this Halo is an exact replica of the one from the first game, it's not that much of a stretch. |
| 831 | *** Oh yeah, the collapsing structure that you are driving through? It's the framework for that same [[http://images.wikia.com/halo/images/4/41/IslandCompare.jpg island]] from Silent Cartographer. |
| 832 | *** Reach does this in the opposite way you'd expect: the multiplayer maps were designed first, and then tweaked to appear in the campaign. |
| 833 | *** Also in Reach, the campaign level "The Package"'s first half takes place in the same area as the previous level "ONI Sword Base", except it's set at night, all apocalyptic, partially-flooded, you have a Scorpion to make the outside areas go by faster, and the elevator is out indoors so you have to use maintainence tunnels. |
| 834 | * CosmeticAward: The multiplayer armor permutations in ''Halo 3''. ''Reach'' takes it a step further by forcing you to purchase them with in-game "cR". The prices are...[[OhCrap Extortionate.]] |
| 835 | ** It's worth noting you can get cR by doing [[MoneyForNothing just about anything.]] |
| 836 | * CosmeticallyDifferentSides: Elites and Spartans (though quite possible on the same team) are the same aside from visually in the multiplayer. ''Reach'' is supposed to be avert the trope, making the Elites take more damage and have an ability to roll, while the Spartans have the ability to sprint and are smaller targets. |
| 837 | ** Although the different body shapes between humans and Sangheili mean that scoring headshots on each is different, and there are some other profile-related differences. |
| 838 | * CrewOfOne: Mostly. |
| 839 | ** Averted only with the Warthog, sadly. |
| 840 | *** The Mongoose as well. |
| 841 | * {{Crunchtastic}}: "Killtacular", etc. from {{Kill Streak}}s |
| 842 | * CutsceneIncompetence: This affects the titular members of ''ODST'', mostly because the game's [[TheRashomon Rashomon]]-style narrative leaves them in the interesting position of being both {{Player Character}}s ''and'' {{Non Player Character}}s, depending on whose {{flashback}} you're watching. If you, The Player, establish a habit of displaying awesomeness while playing as any given squad member, that squad member will ''not'' continue in similar style when the AI takes over again. |
| 843 | ** [[spoiler: Kat's death. I mean, really now?]] |
| 844 | * DarkerAndEdgier: ''Halo 3'' is the darkest of the original trilogy, the first two games largely avoided the implications of just how many had died/were dying in the Covenant War, but this game has Earth AfterTheEnd and takes an AnyoneCanDie approach to the main characters. |
| 845 | ** ''Halo Reach'' feels more like a war movie, with Reach falling and [[spoiler: almost all of Noble Team dying]]. |
| 846 | * DecoyProtagonist: The Rookie. If anything, ''Halo 3: ODST'' is the story of Buck, Dare, and [[spoiler: the Superintendent/Virgil.]] |
| 847 | ** [[spoiler: ..unless you get all the audio logs, which makes you the one who knows more about the story than Dare, the ''Intelligence Officer,'' and you also get access to a bazillion guns in secret caches all over the city, thus making you a OneManArmy HeroicMime who ''really'' wants to get back to sleep.]] |
| 848 | ** ''Halo: Reach'' implies that [[spoiler:Noble Six was this to Master Chief in the series as a whole. Considering that Noble Six is completely customizable and is stated to have the same combat rating as Master Chief, this makes it one of the more sadistic examples.]] |
| 849 | * DeflectorShields: Used by Elites, some Brutes, and Tartarus, whose shield can only be taken out with a Beam Rifle. |
| 850 | ** In ''Halo: Reach'', there is an armor ability that lets you, temporarily, have unbreakable shields. As soon as the shields run out, however... |
| 851 | * TheDragon: Tartarus. |
| 852 | ** The entire Brute species in general in ''Halo 2'', ''3'' and ''ODST''. |
| 853 | * DegradedBoss: The Brute Chieftains fought as semi-standard enemies throughout ''Halo 3'' are essentially weaker versions of ''Halo 2'''s final boss. |
| 854 | * DevelopersForesight: Flipping an Elephant[[note]]The Elephant tank is so large, heavy, and slow-moving, that you can't really cause it to flip by maneuvering or conventional means. It's almost always either due to a glitch.[[/note]] tank in ''Halo 3'' elicits [[http://au.gamespot.com/users/BraindeadRacr/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25178371 this response.]] |
| 855 | ** In the third game, there is a glitch that allows you to [[spoiler:save Sergeant Johnson from his scripted death in a cutscene late in the game. However, when you perform this glitch, he is now able to be infected by Flood.]] If this happens, he'll state "Aren't I supposed to be immune to this?" |
| 856 | * DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Noble Six is a killing machine that tends to go about it by herself/himself without any particular previous coordination. [[PlayerCharacter Sound familiar?]] |
| 857 | * DoomedByCanon: Reach. Energy projectors turn the surface of Reach to glass. The survival rate of you and your teammates in ''Halo: Reach'' is understandably slim. |
| 858 | * DoomedHometown: The colony of Reach. |
| 859 | * DoNotDropYourWeapon: Played straight with most enemies, [[DamnYouMuscleMemory making it all the more frustrating when you forgot that it was averted with the flood combat forms.]] |
| 860 | * DoppelgangerAttack: The Heretic leader's holo-drones. |
| 861 | * DualWielding: Added in ''Halo 2'', kept in ''Halo 3'', removed in ''ODST''. |
| 862 | ** And are still out as of ''Halo Reach''. |
| 863 | -->'''Medic:''' [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments Careful, I think you just strained a metaphor there.]] |
| 864 | * EasterEgg: Lots of them. One favorite is [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqHttdEwn4o the Insulting Grunt]]. |
| 865 | -->'''Grunt:''' Hey, demon! The jerk store called and they're all out of YOU! |
| 866 | ** Then there's the WebAnimation/RedVsBlue [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waL8K2SGR1M "What's the Password" scene]] in ''Halo 3''. |
| 867 | --->"We need ammo!" "Well why don't you go ask your Brute buddies then?!" |
| 868 | * ElevatorActionSequence: Seen on The Oracle, Regret, Quarantine Zone, etc. |
| 869 | * EliteMooks: Zealot (gold) Elites, Spec-ops (black/purple) Elites, Ultra (silver) Elites, Honor Guard Elites, Spec-ops Grunts, Ultra Grunts, Brute Captains, Brute Chieftains, etc. |
| 870 | * EnemyCivilWar: The Covenant Civil War in ''Halo 2: Elites'', Hunters and Grunts versus Brutes, Jackals and Drones. Beforehand, there was the Heretic uprising, with Spec-Ops Grunts, Elites and the Arbiter eradicating the defectee Grunts and Elites. |
| 871 | * EnemyMine: This quickly becomes a theme. The Elites join with the humans during the Covenant Civil War. Guilty Spark assists Master Chief after the destruction of his station. Even Gravemind lends a tentacle in his debut [[spoiler: and again to stop Truth.]] Of course, some of these alliances are more lasting then others... |
| 872 | * EscortMission: The final parts of ODST have you, [[spoiler:Buck, and Dare escorting the alien Engineer who's absorbed the Superintendent's data out of the data center, along a highway while it's inside a near-indestructible garbage truck, and finally defending it and yourselves while waiting for the rest of the squad.]] The escortee is relatively tough, though, so it's not as bad as some. |
| 873 | ** The Escortee also offers the player some very useful buffs when they're in close proximity. |
| 874 | ** Played much straighter in the "Shut Up and Get Behind Me... Sir" segment of the ''Truth and Reconciliation'' level in the first game, where the player has to escort Captain Jacob Keyes off a Covenant cruiser. |
| 875 | ** Some [[invoked]][[WordOfGod commentary]] revealed that there was a bug in earlier releases of the game where Keyes would [[BeatingADeadPlayer shoot corpses]] just like any other marine in the game. [[EpicFail Keyes has a Needler, though.]] |
| 876 | * EveryEpisodeEnding: Of sorts- ''Halo CE'', ''Halo 2'', ''Halo 3'', ''ODST'' and ''Reach'' all have a driving sequence in their respective final level, some more prominent than others. |
| 877 | * EverybodysDeadDave: [[spoiler:Both ''Halo'' and ''Halo 3'''s endings]]. |
| 878 | * EverybodyLives: [[spoiler: The end of ''Halo 3: ODST''. Unless you count all the dead Covenant and the Superintendent, and the latter is debatable.]] |
| 879 | * FakeStatic: "Dad, * chhhhkkk* , you're breaking up, I * chhhhkkk* can't hear you." "...Sadie, it's a video feed. I can see you making those noises." |
| 880 | * FakeUltimateMook: Hunters in ''Halo 1'' were just sad once you figured out their weak point and how to exploit it (one pistol shot to the orange bits and it's game over). Their cannon shots were powerful but easily dodged, and their melee attacks were so predictable that even the NPC {{Redshirt}}s could dodge them with reasonable consistency. They majorly TookALevelInBadass in the sequels, though. |
| 881 | ** In the sequels, they become a BossInMookClothing. They can no longer be one-hit killed except with the sniper rifle, their armor completely deflects projectiles instead of simply reducing their damage (so you can ''only'' hurt them by shooting their weak point), their weak points are much harder to target (nearly impossible to get behind them now), and both their cannon and melee attacks can OneHitKill you. |
| 882 | ** ''Reach'' makes them even more difficult by buffing their health and making them larger... |
| 883 | ** ... and ''Halo 4'' tops that by only throwing them at you in extremely close quarters on a couple different occasions. |
| 884 | * FalseProphet: |
| 885 | ** The High Prophet of Truth, leader of the Covenant, is ultimately revealed to be this. When he learned that humanity were the chosen race by the Forerunners, he realized this knowledge had the potential to break the Covenant, or at least the Prophets' control over it. So he lied to his faithful, claiming that humans were heretical, demonic creatures whose very existence could not be tolerated. It's also implied that he knows the truth about the Halo rings, but still tries to activate them because he'd rather die in power than admit reality. He gave himself the name "Truth" as an ironic nod to this, so he'd always be reminded of his deception. |
| 886 | ** Jul 'Mdama is an Elite who tries to rally the remnants of the Covenant faithful under him post-war. He styles himself as a prophet and calls himself "The Didact's Hand" (the Didact being a Forerunner, whom the Covenant religion worshipped). However, Dr Halsey comes to learn that Jul himself is not a believer in the Covenant's religion. |
| 887 | ** Dasc Gevadim is a cult leader who created the religion Triad, amassing followers and then retreating to a remote planet while his believers claimed he had "ascended". He later returned a decade later claiming to have "willed" himself back into the material world, and used the emergence of the Guardians and their curious effects on planets' local gravity to fake displaying telekinetic powers. |
| 888 | * {{Fanservice}}: Cortana. She's not naked, but welllll... |
| 889 | ** Gets lampshaded occasionally by the Marines dialogue. Especially when the [[spoiler: IWHBYD]] skull is active. |
| 890 | ** She actually has a little bit of JigglePhysics in some of the ''Halo 3'' cutscenes. |
| 891 | ** In every game in which she's featured, she is bare-bottomed, and the camera angles almost always manage to make that very visible in every cutscene she is featured in. |
| 892 | * FishingForMooks: Known as the Trap-door Spider Method, luring off single opponents and killing them out of the way of their fellows is often the only way to win in some circumstances when you are low on ammo. |
| 893 | * FissionMailed: Cortana's transmissions in ''Halo 3''. |
| 894 | * FiveTokenBand: Reach's Noble Team is a relatively mild form: Jun is apparently of Indian or Middle Eastern descent, Kat appears to be of Latin-American ancestry, and Emile [[TheFaceless at least sounds like he's black.]] |
| 895 | ** Kat is Russian or Eastern European... And Jorge is Hungarian. |
| 896 | * FlavorText: The numerous customizable armor variants in ''Halo 3'', ''Halo: Reach'', ''Halo 4'' and alongside the numerous REQ vehicle and weapon variants in ''Halo 5: Guardians'' include text descriptions detailing their place of manufacture and intended specialized role - information that has no effect on gameplay effectiveness. |
| 897 | * FlunkyBoss: Regret and Tartarus. Tartarus isn't so bad as the Brute reinforcements only show up at two or three pre-scripted points in the fight, and every time they do you usually get a fresh squad of Elite reinforcements to help you. Regret, on the other hand, can reach ThatOneBoss status due to the endless waves of respawning Honor Guard Elites and Grunts coupled with the lack of good cover and necessity to charge right out into the open to melee damage the boss. |
| 898 | ** On the other hand, [[BackToBackBadasses co-op mode]] usually makes the battle against Regret into a CurbstompBattle that lasts all of very quick. One guy on door duty and the other on face-punching. If you both have a heavy weapon (and you should, as they come by the dozens in the area), it usually breezes past, except on [[NintendoHard Legendary.]] |
| 899 | * FriendlyEnemy: A few humorous non-canon Easter Eggs in the first game show Johnson is this to the Covenant. "This is it, baby. Hold me." |
| 900 | * FrontlineGeneral: High-ranking Sangheili are often seen battling with their men, due to them [[AsskickingLeadsToLeadership earning their ranks through asskicking]]. Human generals are more practical, however, and remain safely in bases or command warships instead. |
| 901 | * GameplayAllyImmortality: Averted in the 1st game, by simply ignoring it if a plot-critical character (ie. Sgt. Johnson) should happen to buy the farm. Played straight in all other members of the trilogy, as well as in ''ODST'' and ''Reach''. |
| 902 | ** In the first game, if you look closely, Johnson is in every level with human [=NPCs=]. Combine that with the cutscene in the Library, he IS immortal. He just never gets up when you see him "die". Only when you get the next checkpoint does his dead body disappear. |
| 903 | ** Zigzagged in ''Halo 5: Guardians'' with members of Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris as [=NPCs=] still being treated as Player Characters, where they can be downed, needing to be revived before bleeding out, and by then respawning only after the area is clear of a fight. |
| 904 | * GenericanEmpire: The United Nations Space Command and the Covenant. |
| 905 | * GlassCannon: The ''Reach'' version of the Scorpion. Its cannon will make mulch out of any vehicle with one hit and its large damage radius means that you have to miss by a fair margin to not kill someone you're shooting at. Downside? An enemy with just his grenade can kill it in an instant while boarding. With the addition of Armor abilities like [[SprintShoes Sprint]], Evade, [[IWantMyJetPack Jetpacks]], the Plasma pistols charged {{EMP}} make getting boarded a very common occurrence. |
| 906 | ** ''Reach's'' Revenant is another example. It's powerful but leaves its operators exposed. |
| 907 | * GravityBarrier: Notoriously overused in the second game, where falling only a few meters in the wrong place is fatal. |
| 908 | ** Hell, on the last level of ''Halo 2'', if you go to the bottom (during the final fight) and even CROUCH, you'll die. |
| 909 | * GunsAkimbo: Introduced in ''Halo 2'' and removed since ''Halo: Reach'' |
| 910 | * HarderThanHard: Legendary difficulty. Halo 3 describes it as "Tremble as hordes of invincible alien monsters punish the slightest mistake with instant death... again and again." At least they're honest. One optional skull bonus basically boosts the difficulty by one more level, and turning on every skull, for all sorts of added difficulty, is nicknamed Mythic Difficulty. |
| 911 | ** The legendary Recon multiplayer armor requires you to 4-man the final level of Halo 3 ODST, among other things. On Legendary. With Iron activated. Without using the scorpion tank or any of the warthogs, and you will wish you could use them, while [[EscortMission protecting the elephant]] to the Last Exit. However to make it "easier" you do get to use a [[MacrossMissileMassacre infinite ammo rocket launcher.]] (For the record, Iron is a skull that punishes a single death with utter failure. Good luck.) |
| 912 | *** The Vidmaster Challenge achievement "Annual" from Halo 3 also counts, as it has similar conditions as ''ODST'', but on the level Halo. The main difference is instead of using the warthog, or mongoose, you have to use ghosts. |
| 913 | * HeroicMime: The Rookie, which is repeatedly lampshaded. Subverted in ''Halo 1'' through ''3'' as neither the Arbiter or Master Chief speak when playing as them in First Person, but do say a few words in third person cutscenes. The other troopers in the ODST squad completely avert this trope, often speaking out both in and out of cutscenes while you're inside their head. |
| 914 | ** Master Chief averts this in ''Halo 4'', though mostly conversing with Cortana outside of cutscenes. |
| 915 | ** Averted in ''Halo 5: Guardians'' with Blue Team and Fireteam Osiris, more so with the latter actively sharing banter outside of cutscenes. |
| 916 | * HomingLasers: The charged Plasma Pistol shot. |
| 917 | * HomingProjectile: Besides missiles and rockets, the Needler is infamous for this in all games in the series. |
| 918 | ** The Prometheon Suppressor and Boltshot gain this in ''Halo 5: Guardians''. |
| 919 | * HumansNeedAliens: |
| 920 | ** Humanity can only guarantee {{Pyrrhic victor|y}}ies at best against [[ScaryDogmaticAliens the Covenant]], until circumstances cause [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy the Elites]] to secede and ally with humanity. With their union the Covenant is defeated, but humanity rushes to rebuild itself quickly, because there is little guarantee that the Elites can protect them forever, especially since not all agreed with allying with humans in the first place. |
| 921 | ** Inverted in the backstory. In prehistory humanity had an interstellar empire that beat back the Flood. They then tangled with the Forerunners and were forcibly devolved, only for the Forerunners to encounter the Flood and discover that without the humans, they were screwed. |
| 922 | * HyperspaceArsenal: Famously averted -- Master Chief can only carry two guns at a time. He can ''carry'' five guns, but not use them ''effectively''. But he should still be able to carry two one-handed guns and one two-handed gun. |
| 923 | * IneffectualSympatheticVillain: The poor hapless cannon fodder Grunts often get this response, to the point where they became your Ineffectual Sympathetic Sidekicks about halfway through ''Halo 2''. Somewhat less so in ''Halo 3'', what with their annoying new kamikaze run of death ability. |
| 924 | * InkSuitActor: In ''ODST'', "Buck" looks exactly like Nathan Fillion, and Dare bears a strong resemblance to Tricia Helfer. |
| 925 | * InnocentInnuendo: "Please enjoy my BRIGHT... BLUE... BALLS!" (Grunt suicide bomber) |
| 926 | * InsertGrenadeHere: Introduced in ''Halo 2'', a player can latch onto the hull of a Scorpion or Wraith tank if they manage to get close enough; they then can smash through the armor and plant a grenade on the inside, destroying the tank. |
| 927 | * InvincibleMinorMinion: A squad of these show up to kill you if you break the plot and kill your CO in the beginning of the first game. |
| 928 | * ItsUpToYou: well, you ''are'' the PlayerCharacter after all. |
| 929 | * {{Jetpack}}: Make their debut as an Armor Ability in ''Halo: Reach''. |
| 930 | * JokeItem: Several civilian vehicles can be driven in Reach, such as a forklift, which of course has no weapons and doesn't move fast enough to run over enemies. It can be placed in multiplayer maps, perhaps for incredibly slow-paced races, or driven on a Firefight map if you feel like fooling around and have a death wish. |
| 931 | ** The forge exclusive golf club,tin cup also. |
| 932 | * JustifiedTutorial: ''Halo 1'' had you going through a mandatory check-up after getting out from cryo. ''Halo 2'' had a checkup to see if your new suit worked. ''Halo 3'' had a "how many fingers do I have" simple field check. Service keeps getting more [[{{Pun}} spartan]] with the games. In ''ODST'', the Rookie has to look around his pod in order to break out of it. ''Reach'' has Noble Six surveying the ground below before landing in the first mission. |
| 933 | * KickTheDog: [[spoiler: Miranda Keyes' death at the hands of Truth, and potentially Johnson's death as well.]] |
| 934 | ** It wasn't so much the death, it was Truth's subsequent ReasonYouSuckSpeech. |
| 935 | * KillItWithFire: Flamethrower in the third game. Its range is short and it slows you down quit a bit, however, in close quarters it can ruin anyone's day. Also, the [[DemonicSpiders Flood Pure Forms]] pretty much die as soon as they're lit up. |
| 936 | ** On higher difficulties they still have enough time to run up and hit you a couple times before they die. Which is made worse since they're on fire now. So yes, in close quarters the Flamethrower can ruin anyone's day. Often, though, your day is also ruined. For more controlled flames, the incendiary grenades were usually a better choice. Unless your aim was terrible. |
| 937 | ** Another previous version was available in the form of the multiplayer of the original game's PC port, alongside other exclusive weapons, which didn't slow you down and allowed you to keep your melee and grenades which 3's version didn't allow for. It was also the only weapon to function on a dual combination of overheat and magazine ammo mechanics, which otherwise were used separately for any given weapon. |
| 938 | * KingMook: Sesa Refumee (the heretic leader), and Tartarus to some degree. |
| 939 | * KnightOfCerebus: The [[PuppeteerParasite Flood]] are this in all games they appear in. While the Covenant are indeed a serious threat, they at least have some charm and can be endearing and entertaining, particularly in their dialogue. The Flood, on the other hand, are BodyHorror NightmareFuel through and through, and their appearance generally marks a shift from the games being full First-Person Shooters to semi-Survival Horrors. |
| 940 | * LampshadeHanging: When rescuing Cortana from High Charity near the end of Halo 3: |
| 941 | --> '''Cortana''' ''Got an escape plan?'' |
| 942 | --> '''Master Chief''' ''"Thought I'd try shooting my way out; mix things up a little."'' |
| 943 | * LateToTheTragedy: The ODST squad arrives at New Mombasa just as it's devastated by a jumping Assault Carrier. While most of the squad jumps straight into the action that follows, the Rookie (who we play as the most) wakes up six hours later and spends most of his time trying to find the rest of the squad. |
| 944 | ** Master Chief arrives on Earth in ''Halo 3'' after the Covenant has already ravaged the planet. |
| 945 | * LastOfHisKind: Master Chief was originally said to be the last of the [[SuperSoldier Spartans]] after the fall of Reach. It turns out [[ThereIsAnother there are several others who survived]], but they were never shown outside of [[AllThereInTheManual supplementary materials]] until Creator/ThreeFourThreeIndustries took over the franchise. |
| 946 | * LawOfChromaticSuperiority: |
| 947 | ** Following in the tradition of Bungie's ''VideoGame/{{Marathon}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Oni}}'', enemies in ''Halo'' are color coded to denote rank; orange or blue for rookies, red for veterans, black for spec ops, and silver or gold for the super-tough BossInMookClothing types. |
| 948 | ** This is somewhat subverted by the Brutes in ''Halo 3''... of the dozen or so Brute variants, 6 are all armored in almost the exact same shade of blue (with only a very minor variance in shade to denote different ranks). That blue-armored Brute with the horned helmet could be either a low-level Brute Captain Minor, an extra-hard Brute Captain Ultra, or a Brute Bodyguard, and you have absolutely no way of knowing exactly which unless you've got an HD TV, are ''really'' good at telling the difference between very close off-shades of blue, and for some reason he's standing still long enough for you to examine his armor. |
| 949 | ** Reach subverts it again. The old ranks are the same, but the new highest ranks...cycle back to red. |
| 950 | %%* LeadTheTarget |
| 951 | * LeitMotif: Although the composers said they weren't doing a "Music/PeterAndTheWolf" approach, some characters and locations do have musical themes associated with them, such as the Delta Halo theme, the High Charity theme, the first part of "Enough Dead Heroes" (sort of Cortana's theme), the middle third of said piece (often heard when fighting Hunters), "Shadows" (the Flood's theme in the series), "The Last Spartan" (the MC's theme in the second and third games), the Arbiter's characteristic theme (aka "Falling Up"), and "Farthest Outpost" (the Ark theme). Many of these are also {{recurring riff}}s, ie they play in scenes unassociated with the character or location. |
| 952 | * LosingTheTeamSpirit: Killing the elites or brutes that are leading a group of grunts will temporarily throw them into panicked disarray. It can happen from time to time with low-ranking jackals as well in the first game, but they're usually disciplined enough to stand and fight. |
| 953 | * LowerDeckEpisode: ''Halo 3: ODST'', dealing with some relatively normal, if badass, soldiers fighting off Covenant. |
| 954 | * MadeOfIron: In ''Halo 2'', Brutes were walking tanks who could soak several dozen hits from bullets or plasma fire before dropping. Headshots from high-powered semi-auto rifles were essential to beating them. Bungie received massive fan feedback that this was "lame", so in ''Halo 3'' Brutes have energy shields and play much more like Elites, dropping after a reasonable amount of fire from most weapons (although the Brute Chieftains are still massively tough, and can take almost 2 full clips of assault rifle fire to drop even after you break through their shielding). |
| 955 | * MisplacedWildlife: Red-tailed hawk calls, etc. |
| 956 | * MisplacedVegetation: Temperate plants, eg ivy and rhododendrons, in the African jungles. |
| 957 | * MooksButNoBosses: With the exception of ''Halo 2'', the games generally lack any traditional boss fights. The final fight against [[spoiler: 343 Guilty Spark]] in ''Halo 3'' is more of an interactive cutscene[=/=]ZeroEffortBoss, and [[spoiler: the Covenant Field Marshall]] at the end of ''Halo: Reach'' is only marginally stronger than a regular [[EliteMooks Gold Elite]]. ''Halo 2'' was widely criticized for its boss fights, so presumably Bungie decided that boss fights just weren't their thing. |
| 958 | * TheMothership: High Charity |
| 959 | * MoreDakka: "Hold RB to detach turret." |
| 960 | * MusicalPastiche: Some examples: |
| 961 | ** Main theme => The Maw/Remembrance, The Last Spartan, the Arbiter's theme, the Delta Halo theme, etc. |
| 962 | ** Arbiter's theme => High Charity => Intro of Finish the Fight |
| 963 | ** The Last Spartan, superimposed on the main theme => Finish The Fight and Keep What You Steal |
| 964 | ** Unforgotten and Heavy Price Paid => Rue and Woe/Heroes Also Fall |
| 965 | ** On A Pale Horse => Leonidas/Leonidas Returns |
| 966 | ** Beat of Heretic, Hero, and Delta Halo Theme melody=>Penance (heard during Delta Halo intro cutscene) |
| 967 | ** Under Cover of Night => In Amber Clad => Farthest Outpost |
| 968 | ** The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe => Impend, and the firet half of Heretic, Hero. |
| 969 | ** Blow Me Away => Broken Gates/Out of Shadow (one version has the same intro as BMA) |
| 970 | * TheMusketeer: Both Master Chief and the Arbiter can use an energy sword or a hammer as one of their two weapons. |
| 971 | * NeckSnap: One of the standard assassination animations for Halo: Reach Multiplayer, when one falls on a player that is on the ground. Justified since Spartans have enough strength to pretty much turn any human skull into paste. |
| 972 | * {{Nerf}}: Most infamously to the pistol, which went from a powerful mini-sniper rifle in ''Halo: CE'' to a dual-wieldable shield-eater in ''Halo 2''... then it went to standard weak-ass FPS pistol land in the ''updated'' version of ''Halo 2'' (though it regained much of its usefulness in ''ODST'' and ''Reach''). Additionally, the later games noticeably weaken the Plasma Rifle as well as making it much less accurate (at least when the player's the one using it) to compensate for the fact you could now [[GunsAkimbo wield two at once]] (making it more of a Plasma submachine gun). The plasma pistol is likewise much weaker than its ''Halo: CE'' counterpart when not using overcharge shots. |
| 973 | ** Elites in ''Halo 2'' are significantly weaker without their shields than they were in ''Halo 1''. In fact, an unshielded Elite in ''Halo 2'' can survive less damage than even a mid-level Grunt. |
| 974 | ** In ''Halo 3'', the Brutes lose their MadeOfIron status, instead being dependent on energy shields and playing much more like Elites (although unshielded Brutes still have higher-than-average health and can take 15-30 assault rifle bullets (depending on class) to kill). |
| 975 | ** Almost all weapons suffered this effect over the series. |
| 976 | *** Of the ''Halo 1'' weapons, the plasma rifle lost its stun effect, the needler lost range and homing ability in ''Halo 2'', the shotgun became much closer range, and the frag grenade became less powerful. |
| 977 | *** In ''Halo 3'', the rocket lost the homing ability from ''Halo 2''; the rockets fired became slower; the assault rifle holds less rounds; the plasma pistol constantly loses charge in its overcharged state; and the grenade inventory fell from four of each type to two of each type, and since the fourth grenade is not standard on any multiplayer map and rare in the campaign, this effectively drops your grenade total from eight to six. |
| 978 | * NeverTrustATrailer: In the Halo 1 trailer, we see Master Chief holding an Energy Sword, Marines driving a Warthog, a different Warthog mounted turret, Elite with an energy shield... Which most aren't available until Halo 2. Thanks, Bungie. |
| 979 | * NicknamingTheEnemy: Most alien names fit this trope: Grunts, Jackals, Brutes, Elites, Hunters, Drones/Buggers, Grubs, and Prophets are all nicknames given by humans to refer to the separate races that compose the coalition of aliens they're at war with. Even their vehicles (Ghosts, Wraiths, Banshees) are nicknamed. |
| 980 | * NoCampaignForTheWicked: Even when playing as the Covenant Elite in ''Halo 2'', you ''never'' fight against Human forces, instead spending those levels battling Covenant rebels and The Flood. |
| 981 | * NonStandardGameOver: In multiplayer, if you die in a way that can't be explained by standard death circumstances (e.g. getting hit by the train on ''2'''s Terminal map, killed by the rocket/grenade of a player who left, getting crushed by a falling object/vehicle) the game will attribute the kill to "the Guardians". |
| 982 | * NoOSHACompliance: ''High Charity'' and the Halos are full of bottomless pits and narrow catwalks. |
| 983 | %%* NotDistractedByTheSexy: Cortana |
| 984 | * NothingIsScarier: The first half of the level "343 Guilty Spark" consists of a small battle against the Covenant, running away from the facility you're going into - running ''toward'' the OneManArmy they call "The Demon". Then, the rest of the level plays out with next to no battles and almost complete silence. Just about the only other living thing you meet is a Marine who's so paranoid about something that all he does is huddle in a corner, shoot at anything that moves, and scream random things. The facility is obviously in disrepair, as well as blood all over the place, but it's not clear ''what'' caused it. Upon finding the remains of the squad you were looking for, you're treated to a [[ApocalypticLog video log]] of them being attacked by... something. Something starts banging on all the doors in the room, and your motion tracker goes berserk. |
| 985 | * NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: Lord Hood is supposedly a British noble. Does Ron Perlman sound British to you? |
| 986 | * NotSoHarmlessVillain: A gameplay example is basic Grunts. Somewhat comedic on their own, irritating in small groups and only dangerous in numbers, the game doesn't even count them as enemies for the purposes of plot advancement (in ''Reach'', for instance, dialogue triggered by killing all the enemies in the area will be audible even if grunts are still there). Then you kill their leader, and half of them flee, whilst the other half activate two plasma grenades in their hands and suicide bomb you. |
| 987 | * NotTheFallThatKillsYou: The first game has falling damage. In the latter two games, which lack falling damage, you still die instantly after falling a certain height (determined by a "fall timer") or through one of the anti-shortcut [[InvisibleWall invsible death barriers]]. This [[GameplayAndStorySegregation contradicts]] the cutscenes in ''Halo 2'' and ''3'' where MC falls from orbit, or at least the stratosphere. |
| 988 | * OddlyNamedSequel: ''Halo 3: ODST'' technically takes place concurrent with ''Halo 2'', but was built on ''Halo 3'''s engine. |
| 989 | * OnceForYesTwiceForNo: The Superintendent Municipal AI in ''Halo 3: ODST''. Because it's a "dumb" AI, incapable of learning, and only used to maintain New Mombasa, it only has preprogrammed responses available as dialogue. For example, if it wants the Rookie to turn right at an intersection, nearby screens with light up with signs like 'DETOUR' and 'KEEP RIGHT'. |
| 990 | * OrchestralBombing: Even if you didn't have you own music playing, aerial sequences in ''3'' tended to be this. |
| 991 | * PhotoMode: The Theater Mode added from ''VideoGame/Halo3'' onwards serves as this. It lets you review a replay of last 25 games with full movement within the recording, which gave birth to many Halo {{Machinima}} like WebAnimation/RedVsBlue. |
| 992 | * PillarOfLight: When the Forerunner artifact underneath the former New Mombasa activates, it produces a huge pillar of light that rises and ends in a blinding flash. Also, this happens basically every time when a Forerunner artifact is activated. In Halo's control room, in the Apex site in Halo Wars, etc. |
| 993 | ** "[[ArcWords This is the way the world ends]]." |
| 994 | * PrecautionaryCorpseDisposal: In ''{{VideoGame/Halo 2}}''[='=]s and ''{{VideoGame/Halo 3}}''[='=]s levels with the Flood, corpses of dead Flood victims can be sliced up or smashed to prevent them from resurrecting should more Flood pod infectors possess them. This only works on prior Flood victims; bodies that haven't been infected yet cannot be destroyed. |
| 995 | * PreMortemOneLiner |
| 996 | -->'''Truth:''' I! AM! TRUTH! THE VOICE OF THE COVENANT! |
| 997 | -->'''Arbiter:''' And so... you must be silenced. |
| 998 | * ThePromise: |
| 999 | --> ''"You know me. When I make a promise..."'' |
| 1000 | --> ''"...You... keep it. I do know how to pick 'em."'' |
| 1001 | * PsychoStrings: Musics associated with the Flood. |
| 1002 | * RecurringRiff: Countless examples, eg "A Walk In The Woods", "Rock Anthem For Saving The World", "On A Pale Horse", "Enough Dead Heroes", "Under Cover of Night", "High Charity", "The Last Spartan", and "Finish The Fight". |
| 1003 | * RedEyesTakeWarning. 343 Guilty Spark turns red [[BerserkButton when he's really upset]], and about to go AxeCrazy. |
| 1004 | * RedshirtArmy: The human Marines, though they TookALevelInBadass in the sequels (but even in the last game they still can't drive worth a crap). |
| 1005 | ** Indeed, Marines go from easily killed cannon fodder in ''Halo 1'' to serviceable NPC companions who can fight an Elite one-on-one and ''win'' in the sequels. |
| 1006 | * RunningGag: The Rookie naps whenever he has free time. |
| 1007 | * SceneryPorn: And how. Has some of (if not) the best sky boxes in videogames. |
| 1008 | * SequenceBreaking: Common in the first two games, although Bungie tried to patch up the holes in the second, eg with instant-death {{Invisible Wall}}s. |
| 1009 | * SerialEscalation: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCcmrL29WII Forge World]] in ''Reach'' is the biggest playing area Bungie has ever created, basically larger than any of the campaign levels they've made, including a remake of Blood Gulch nestled in a corner of it. Made specifically for Forge, it has over 150 Forge objects available, in addition to new Forge mechanics, such as making an object float in place, snapping to specific degrees, or nudging it by single coordinates. Bungie is so proud of it that they're shipping five maps made in Forge World on the disc. |
| 1010 | * ShooOutTheClowns: In ''Halo:CE'' and ''Halo 3'', you are usually accompanied by UNSC Marines that lighten the mood with their chatter. Near the end of both games, when the Flood spreads and main characters begin to die, they are absent. |
| 1011 | * ShortRangeLongRangeWeapon: Besides the usual "close range shotgun", the assault rifle in the first ''Halo'' is criminally inaccurate and essentially useless past about a couple dozen feet. This gets corrected in ''Halo 2'', where they give you what is functionally the same weapon but make it a small submachine gun instead (which can be dual wielded), and in ''Halo 3'', where the revamped assault rifle is more accurate but has a lower rate of fire and smaller magazine size as a a trade off, making it much more like a "modern day" standard FPS assault rifle. |
| 1012 | * ShortRangeShotgun: The shotgun in the first game actually has a reasonable range, being effective up to a few dozen feet. However, in later games the shotgun's effective range is reduced to about a dozen feet, as it was balanced to match the plasma sword (a ''melee weapon''). |
| 1013 | * SillinessSwitch: A couple of the recurring skulls do this. The "I Would Have Been Your Daddy" Skull inverts the chances of common and rare dialogue playing, which often results in a lot more off-script EnemyChatter. A more immediately obvious one, however, would be "Grunt Birthday Party", which causes Grunts to explode into confetti and children's cheers when hit with a headshot. |
| 1014 | * SlapSlapKiss: Buck and Dare have this relationship. |
| 1015 | * SniperRifle: All the ''Halo'' games feature these. The Bungie.net website hosts [[http://downloads.bungie.net/presentations/Griesemer_Jaime_DesignInDetail_Sniper.pdf a 134-slide presentation]] all about the process of balancing the ''Halo 3'' version of the weapon. |
| 1016 | * SoftWater: Played straight at least twice, where MC jumps into a pool from the ''Truth and Reconciliation'' in the first game, and when he gets knocked into the lake during a cutscene in the second game, but subverted most other times, where of course, falling too far is instant death, water or not. |
| 1017 | * SoundtrackDissonance: Intense battles with elevator music, anyone? Examples: several rooms in the Assault On The Control Room mission, where many of the enemies are sleeping when you first enter, but the music stays the same when they are alerted, the Cairo Station hangar battle with New Age style music, and the first mission of ''Halo 3'', which is anything but "A Walk In The Woods" (the name of one of the musics). |
| 1018 | * TheStinger: The games frequently have a short teaser scene post-credits, hinting at the next game. Often, the player needs to beat the game on Legendary difficulty to see them. In particular, the original game had [[spoiler:343 Guilty Spark flying through space, showing he survived the Halo's destruction]], and ''Halo 5'' had [[spoiler:one of Cortana's Guardians coming across an as-yet-undiscovered Halo ring]]. |
| 1019 | * StealthPun: In ODST, you get the achievement "Audiophile" by listening to audio files. |
| 1020 | * StickyBomb: Plasma Grenades and Spike Grenades will both stick to an enemy if they hit them directly,. Plasma grenades will also stick to vehicles. |
| 1021 | * StuffBlowingUp: The games love their random explosions. Vehicles blow up, random types of scenery blow up, disposable equipment blows up, rocket launchers, fuel rod guns, wraith mortars, brute shots, not to mention that grenades dropped by enemies also explode if anything blows up near them, often resulting in sudden chain reactions in an area where you've just killed a bunch of enemies. Whenever you die, expect a bunch of random things to explode all around you for no reason. |
| 1022 | * SuicidalOverconfidence: Brutes, true to their name, are programmed with highly aggressive AI that usually causes them to charge their enemies directly. In some games, they're tanky enough that this makes them a terror, but in others where their health was nerfed, it makes them easy shotgun fodder. |
| 1023 | ** Averted with the Grunts, who will commonly break ranks and flee if you kill their more powerful allies. But sometimes in ''Halo 3'' and beyond, they will get desperate and [[TakingYouWithMe grab two plasma grenades, prime them, and charge at you screaming at the top of their lungs]]. |
| 1024 | * SuperDrowningSkills: Mostly averted, but in some places, such as on the level "Sierra 117", bodies of water are made [[BottomlessPits instant-kill zones]] to prevent the player from SequenceBreaking or [[{{Unwinnable}} getting stuck]]. |
| 1025 | * SupportingLeader: Buck fulfils this in ''ODST''. |
| 1026 | * SuspiciousVideogameGenerosity: Just stumbled across a shiny new rocket launcher/fuel rod gun, plus a stack of spare rockets/rods? Yeah, you'll probably be seeing either a tank or a Hunter pretty soon. |
| 1027 | * SwampsAreEvil: Guess where the Flood is discovered. Overall the atmosphere of that level in the first game. |
| 1028 | * TankGoodness: Some marines seem to hold this opinion of the Scorpion. |
| 1029 | %%* TentativeLight |
| 1030 | * TheSquad: The main focus in ''Halo 3: ODST'' and ''Halo: Reach''. |
| 1031 | * TransformationTrauma: The real-time assimilation of allies and enemies by the Flood in ''Halo 3''. At least you have a second to shoot the infection form off of them. |
| 1032 | * TropeCodifier / TropeMaker: The original ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' didn't actually ''pioneer'' any of the unique gameplay features it's famous for (all of them, from vehicle sections, to radar, to limited inventory, to regenerating health, to melee attacks, to seperate buttons for firearms and grenades, had all been done before in previous PC FPS games), but it is unquestionably the game which combined them all into one package and popularized them to the point that most modern First Person Shooters now use most of them by default. |
| 1033 | * TwoPartTrilogy: Halo 2 and 3, though it was in part because they ran out of time after finishing the engine. |
| 1034 | * UndeadCounterpart: |
| 1035 | ** The Flood (basically space zombies) develop distinct forms based on the lifeforms they infect, and after [[Videogame/HaloCombatEvolved Halo 1]] they infect enemies to get Sangheili combat forms ([[EliteMook which tend to have energy shields and plasma swords]]) and Brute combat forms ([[LightningBruiser the strongest combat variant]]). Some species lack Flood forms, due to either being too weak to be useful beyond providing bio-mass (Grunts and Jackals), or being [[StarfishAlien too alien in biology]] to properly infect (Hunters and Engineers). |
| 1036 | ** Though flood-infected humans are in almost every Halo game, normal people don't show up as enemies in most Halo games. ''Videogame/HaloWars'' is an exception and has both human enemies and flood-infected human enemies, fulfilling this trope. |
| 1037 | * UnexpectedGameplayChange: Combat Evolved ends with a timed driving mission through an obstacle course. |
| 1038 | ** ''Halo 3'' repeats that, but is has become undeniably more perilous in nature since its ''Halo 1'' days. |
| 1039 | ** The Banshee and Hornet flying sequences may fit this too. |
| 1040 | * UnexplainedRecovery: When Johnson shows up in ''Halo 2'', a Marine asks him how he got off Halo alive (the player saw him being overrun by Flood on video, and even if he lived the Halo exploded soon after.) His response? "That's classified." The actual answer is a major subplot in ''Halo: First Strike'' and in ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel''; [[spoiler:he's immune to the Flood as a side effect of his Spartan-I augmentations, which have been covered up as a fictional disease called "Boren's Syndrome". As for getting off of Halo, he flew off with a Pelican and regrouped with Chief to steal a Covenant starship.]] |
| 1041 | * UnitedNationsIsASuperPower: The United Nations in Halo founded both the Unified Earth Government (UEG) and the UN Space Command (UNSC); the UEG absorbed its parent organization into one of its branches, but was itself eventually subsumed during the Human-Covenant War - by the UNSC, which now rules all of humanity in the Milky Way galaxy. |
| 1042 | ** It's also implied and at points shown that individual nations and cultures not only retain some degree of autonomy but are very much alive within the UNSC. Examples include mentions of the United Kingdom and the ''very'' Filipino Katagalugan colony on Mars. |
| 1043 | * VideogameCaringPotential: The common AI marines. Some may also feel very sorry for the [[{{Mooks}} Grunts.]] |
| 1044 | ** The Engineers as well. Simple creatures who take no hostile action against you, they provide energy shields to the Covenant, which can make killing them necessary but cruel. [[spoiler: Even if you don't kill them in ODST, the bombs strapped to them still detonate when you kill the Brute Captain leading the opposing Covenant.]] |
| 1045 | * VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Plasma Grenade + Grunts = HilarityEnsues. Also more hilarious if they run into their allies, making them a suicide bomber. |
| 1046 | ** [[NoodleIncident "OH NO! NOT AGAIN!"]] ''*boom*'' |
| 1047 | ** And you can shoot specific limbs on the grunts. Watch them slowly try to limp away... |
| 1048 | ** The effect of the "Grunt Birthday Party" skull, which causes confetti to pop out of a Grunt's head upon scoring a headshot, [[CrossesTheLineTwice accompanied by the sound of small children shouting "Hooray!"]] Bungie confirmed it to be a shout out to ''VideoGame/VivaPinata'', even mentioning that the ''Viva Piñata'' team sent them the actual audio file used in the game. |
| 1049 | *** ''The Master Chief Collection'' takes it even further with the "Grunt Funeral" skull (available only in Halo 1 & 2), which makes dead Grunts explode like grenades shortly after the body stops moving. This basically turns the poor Grunts into walking explosive barrels. Unlike grenades, other enemies won't move away from Grunt corpses, either. And Grunt corpse explosions are also doubled in size and power by the "Boom" skull. Combine with "Grunt Birthday Party" for maximum hiliarity. [[HoistByTheirOwnPetard Just try to avoid blowing yourself up in the process.]] |
| 1050 | * VictoriousChorus: The ''Halo'' theme is sometimes used for victories. |
| 1051 | * VillainDecay: The Brutes get weaker in every game. In ''Halo 2'' they had no shields, yet could shrug off tons of damage and attempting to melee them was pretty much suicide. In ''Halo 3'' they have shields, yet once those are gone they are pretty weak (outside of EliteMook versions) and they can be beat around in melee combat. In ''Reach'' they rarely have shields yet aren't much tougher than unshielded Halo 3 Brutes (and can be beat around just as easily), and even the elite versions go down in a few headshots (bar the few that do have shields). This is [[{{Nerf}} an intentional move on Bungie's part]], since they believed it would have been just too painful to fight a Brute that had a shield on top of the high health they had in ''Halo 2'', but it also coincides with them having less influence on the plot; they start off very important, but by ''Reach'' are just another type of {{Mook}}. |
| 1052 | * VirtualPaperDoll: In ''Halo 2'' multiplayer you could choose to be a Spartan or Elite. ''Halo 3'' added a range of customisation options for each. And ''Reach'' is playing this to the hilt, with an impressive number of unlockable items, which carry over to campaign (and vice versa). [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgo3pFRQeO4 And how!]] |
| 1053 | ** AndYourRewardIsClothes: In ''Halo 3'' and ''Reach'' getting achievements gets you a better selection of armour. |
| 1054 | * VoiceWithAnInternetConnection: Cortana. |
| 1055 | * WaveMotionGun: The Scarab's cannon, and the Fuel Rod Cannon somewhat. |
| 1056 | * WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: If Cpt. Keyes dies on "Truth and Reconciliation", it's [[NonstandardGameOver Game Over]]. |
| 1057 | * WhatTheHellPlayer: Shoot your commanding officer in the face, and your crewmates' reactions are, well, interesting to say the least. |
| 1058 | * WeaponTombstone: The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzkL-vg8MHE&feature=related live-action trailer]] for ''ODST'' features the 'Helmet, boots, rifle' field burial with the equipment updated appropriately. |
| 1059 | ** A few of these can be seen by the [[http://www.halopedia.org/File:Memorial_pictures.PNG Hillside Memorial]] in the Halo 3 ending. |
| 1060 | * YouCantKillWhatsAlreadyDead: Subverted. Flood Combat Forms can be eliminated with a precise shot to the Infection Form "piloting" the body. When this happens, the Combat Form will fall over as if dead, and a gaping hole will be seen where the Infection Form once was. However, from ''VideoGame/Halo2'' onward, another Infection Form may wander over at any time and take control of the Combat Form again, with the Combat Form having the same amount of health it had before it was "killed." This means that in order to prevent dead Combat Forms from coming back to life in this manner, the player either has to either kill every Infection Form in the room or manually dismember each Combat Form killed by a "headshot" after it hits the ground. |
| 1061 | * YouJustHadToSayIt: In ''Halo 1'''s third level. |
| 1062 | * YourMom: Avery Johnson makes reference to this, saying "I would have been your daddy but the dog beat me over the fence!" in the first game, which has been referenced throughout the series numerous times. |
| 1063 | [[/folder]] |
| 1064 | |
| 1065 | ---- |
| 1066 | -> ''"Oh. And your poet [[Creator/TSEliot Eliot]] got it all wrong. '''This''' is the way the world ends."'' |
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