Halo 3

0:18 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle, I'm Andrea. And my name is Tom. And here on The Other Castle, we do the plot, lore, and more behind all your favorite video games. So today, we're gonna get into the production, the behind the scenes, and the actual plot of... Halo 3. Well, hello 3 to you. So yeah, we are gonna be closing out the first original trilogy of the Halo franchise. We've done the first two on our show. And you can find those episodes either wherever you're listening to this, frankly, or if you wanna get spunky with it, you can check out theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. That's our website. It has all the games we've covered, all the Halos, all the non-Halos, which I guess you can categorize all games into.

1:01 Yeah, I was gonna say most all the other games. Halos and non-Halo games. Yes, over there, you can also sign up for our Discord. Anybody can join us over there. We have great discussions. We have discussions on every single episode. We have some just general gossip that we go through. We do gaming news, all sorts of fun things. We're trying to bully Tom into picking an onion. Yes, I guess I choose the onion. Yes, you do. Okay. And then we also have our Patreon. Patreon's got this episode a day early, and they get some pretty cool shout outs at the end. They do, they get that. And also monthly episodes, especially during our off season. Oh shit, that's right. We need to do that.

1:42 We still need to record next month, don't we? We do, but it's super fun. You can check that all out at theothercastlepodcast.com. Again, that's the othercastlepodcast.com. And our Patreon is just $2 a month, and we do have a seven day free trial over there as well. Hell yeah, that's what's up. Anyway, this game is Halo 3. And as we learned in our previous outing, Halo 2 was one of the last major releases on the original Xbox prior to the release of the Xbox 360. Having revolutionized multiplayer matchmaking on console, and thanks to the 360s backward compatibility, Halo 2 remained the most played game on the new console for two years. Hell yeah.

2:23 Up until the release of Gears of War. This put a ton of pressure on Halo 3 to be the biggest and best Halo yet. If you'll recall, Halo 2 left gamers on a major cliffhanger. Oh my God, that's right. And this was mainly due to the fact that the final act of the game was scrapped during production in order to get it released on time. Well, I know you mentioned that they had some things they wanted to include that didn't make it. I didn't realize they scrapped a whole fucking act of the game. Yeah, the entire finale they scrapped. That's fucking crazy. Yeah, right? So the team at Bungie felt they had a few loose ends to tie up on top of having to produce a new game with a story that won't make people that are new to the series feel lost.

3:09 Yeah, they had to finish the last fucking game. Yeah, right? Nobody else had. Oh no. The big problem was the production of Halo 2 had gotten so chaotic and the hours had gotten so long that the creative director and co-founder of Bungie, Jason Jones, decided he needed to take a break from making video games. So he took a sabbatical to clear his mind as the pressure of making a sequel had proved too much for him. Yeah, burnout is fucking real, especially in video game culture. Oh my God, yeah. And you know, mental health is important, so good for him. Absolutely. However, he didn't really prepare the team for his departure.

3:49 Oh, he just kind of was like, I'm having a meltdown, I'm out. Yeah, and he just kind of left them leaderless in his absence. Oh shit. With no leader in place, head story writer of the Halo series, Joseph Staten, gotten to many arguments with the team left behind over the direction of the third game. And he decided that he too would need to take an extended leave of absence and departed Halo 3 as well. Like dominoes, they're falling. Yeah. This left Halo 3 without any direction whatsoever, really, for a majority of its development process. For a majority of the development, so I apologize, in my head, I saw this as like, one is like, ah, man, I'm going to fucking Bermuda, don't call me.

4:31 And then he dips, and then the next week, the guy's like, well, shit, they're not listening to me. I'll meet you in the fucking triangle, let's go. No, this was most of the fucking development. Yeah, most of the development. Holy shit. The story was eventually developed by committee, and then run up the flagpole to the remaining heads of Bungie for approval. Yeah, because they're like, we don't have a specific leader, let's all fucking put our hats in the ring, figure it out. Yeah, just take the best ideas. You know, there's something wild about that too, because it was such a coveted and critically acclaimed property that like, it feels like it should be a home run. It feels like the path should be there. The path was not fucking there. It wasn't, and the issue is, is that there are a lot of opinions on what needs to happen next.

5:12 Yeah, I get that, holy shit. And as the script made its rounds through the studio, resident composer, Martin O'Donnell, got his hands on a copy of the script and called it out for being awful. Oh shit. It dropped plot points and characters from the other games entirely. They just wrote Master Chef and made him a cook for half the fucking game. Yeah, and then ultimately, the game didn't have any stakes. Martin O'Donnell had recently watched a movie called Serenity. Yeah, and in that movie, major characters get killed off like they're nothing more than a leaf on the wind.

5:55 Why are you doing this to me? So he made some suggestions, and they managed to convince Joseph Staten to come back from his vacation to finish the story once they had an outline they liked. Also, fun fact about Martin O'Donnell. In the years since, he has retired from composing in order to spend more time with his family. That's lovely. In his own words, his family didn't want him spending more time with them. Oh my God, what? So, I don't know, maybe just he might be a difficult person to get along with. Oh God, he was like, I'm committed to crunch culture.

6:35 I haven't seen my family in years. He gets home and they're like, no, thank you. Dad, go away. Yeah, well, he decided to go and get a hobby. Uh-huh. As of this recording, literally yesterday, he announced he is going to be running for a congressional seat in the state of Nevada. I'm sorry, what the fuck? Did you just fucking say to me? The Halo composer may soon represent you and me in Congress. It sounds like Mad Libs, what you just said to me. So he was like, I'm a composer, a very storied one.

7:18 I really appreciate his career. The Halo music is eye fucking conic. And it's not just Halo he's done. He's done tons of other games as well. Oh, amazing. I'm assuming a lot of the bungee catalog. Through the Destiny series, yeah. Beautiful. So he does that. He's like, man, I poured my heart and soul into my music. I'm going to go spend time with my family. Family says, no. They push him out of the house. Then he's like, all right, you pushed me out of this house. I'm going to get in the fucking state house, bitches. You know, there's something about being a musician who's somewhat tone deaf to not know where his place is in the world. You know, that's fucking wild. Why is this happening? I don't know, because honestly, I have looked into his politics, and yeah, he's not getting my vote.

8:02 Probably not getting mine. You and I align on a lot of things. Oh, no. Yeah, I think there's got to be a reason that his family didn't like having him home all day. Fuck me. And honestly, in watching the documentary about like the making of Halo, one of the people working on the game was like, I really don't want to give Marty credit for this, but this was his idea. Oh, so at no point has anyone been around him liked him. Yeah, it doesn't seem like people have ever liked him. Well, great fucking composer. Yeah. But you know, sometimes artists are very difficult to fucking get along with. Certainly.

8:44 So he's like, I'm going to take to the desert. Yeah, so he represents someone. He lives here in Las Vegas, and yeah, he wants to represent Las Vegas for Congress. Okay, he don't speak for all of us. I'm going to throw that out there right now. But okay, that's fucking wild to have a second win as a politician. I guess that keeps fucking happening. I know, right? Especially in the entertainment industry, but okay, sure. Well, anyway, despite the chaos of the storyline, the development of the game itself was actually quite smooth. It doesn't sound like it was based on everything you've said so far. Well, especially compared to the development of Halo 2 anyway. Okay.

9:24 So there was no more crunch. Wow. And most of the assets had already been created, so they just got to focus on features instead. They're like, we don't have to build shit, we just have to place shit. This is great. Yeah, they just had to make it look better on the 360. Beautiful, smooth, shape it out, make it cool. Yeah, so they tweaked the weapons, created new power ups, vehicles and mechanics. Love that. They also took notes on the things players didn't like from Halo 2 in an effort to create a better experience. The composer's like, they don't like hanging out with their families. I can relate. While the story was important, this was Halo. Multiplayer was slightly more important than single player.

10:06 Hell yeah. And they wanted to make that experience worth playing for years to follow. Adding additions like new and larger maps, as well as the ability to save your best moments and share them with your friends. That's so cool. Yeah, and it was like a precursor to Twitch and YouTube clips. There was also Forge mode, where people could custom build their own levels using assets from the game to build wild and original maps that can be played by anyone. They wanted to get an idea for how well they had done on the multiplayer of the game and decided to release a beta version four months prior to the release of the game. That's great marketing to be like, we'll give you a little taste, you can play with your friends, but the campaign is still close to the heart.

10:49 A completely unrelated 360 exclusive title called Crackdown was about to release. Crackdown? I haven't even heard of that. Yeah, it was a new franchise and it really wasn't getting any buzz whatsoever. So they were like, we'll piggyback some Halo shit into it. Yeah, so they included the beta to Halo 3 with copies of Crackdown, making it the only way to access this sneak peek. I remember I bought it, thinking the beta would be there on release. And it wasn't. Oh no, so you immediately feel cheated. A little bit. The beta released a little while after while I was backpacking through Europe. Oh, so you're like, first of all, I have to wait. Second of all, I can't even plug this in to the right fucking outlet if I brought it with me.

11:32 I didn't bring my 360 with me. Well, that's good because you wouldn't be able to plug it into any of the fucking outlets. No, and the beta ended a day after I returned. Oh, so it was timed. You did not get to enjoy this at all. No, I got to play it for like a day. Did you play Crackdown? I did, and to their credit, Crackdown was a pretty fun game. I think it got two sequels. Oh, shit. Yeah, think Spider-Man meets Grand Theft Auto, but you play as Super Cops instead of criminals. That's wild as fuck. Are we going to do that on this show? We might someday, because honestly, I did it. I don't remember what happens, but I remember that I enjoyed it. Sometimes that's all you could ask for.

12:12 With an insane budget of $40 million. I was like, the budget for the game was $40 million? No, the marketing budget was $40 million. Fuck all the way off, just the marketing. Just the marketing. Okay, what the fuck? I'm a marketer. I haven't spent that much money in my lifetime buying ads. That's fucking crazy. $40 million. You could take neighborhoods out of poverty with $40 million. Yeah, right. You could have saved lives with $40 million. Okay, one of the most widely recognized and renowned films. Everything Everywhere All At Once.

12:54 You know what the budget is entirely for that entire fucking movie? The one with the everything bagel? $25 million. Holy shit. You could have made one of the most acclaimed movies of all time and then had $15 million to sell Halo. It's a system exclusive. It's not even a cross-fucking platform, and they have $40 million. I'm losing my mind. Are you fucking kidding me? What the fuck? You could have made Blair Witch ten times. Honestly, they bought, I think, a couple Super Bowl ads during this time. Oh, there's half your budget. Never mind. I understand. Yeah. The ad campaign featured a live-action fake documentary about a battle that takes place during Halo 3.

13:40 That's fucking sick. Okay, so I see where the budget went now. Yeah, right. They did make a movie. They tried to. And it could have been the Blair Witch Project. Essentially. No, they actually got District 9's Neil Blomkamp. Oh. Now, this is before he made District 9, actually. This was District 8? Let's fucking go. He actually got District 9 because he was working on a Halo movie, and then that got scrapped. So they were like, well, we've got all these assets. Let's make another movie entirely. That's cool. But apparently, he got that Halo movie off of doing these shorts. That's fucking great. So he was already kind of in with Team Halo. He knew the Master Chief. That's great.

14:20 He understood the world, right? It features a war memorial with elderly men talking about the battles if they were soldiers who had survived the war. Oh, that's heartbreaking. Yeah. It also featured a diorama with figures frozen in a battle scene. The documentary even found cool ways to incorporate behind the scenes footage of the making of the game, disguising it as the work being put into the war memorial. They're like, here's some renderings of us just making a mountain, but also we're going to say, oh, we like recreated the fucking war zone. Yeah. To put love into this memorial. That's fucking funny. Yeah. It was such a cool way to advertise a game. Totally. And you know, you don't see things like that even now.

15:01 No, you don't. But really, they were competing with the originality of the Gears of War trailer, which had just come out like a couple years earlier. I find that kind of funny. I find it a little sad, honestly. Instead of doing something similar, they went fully original and it worked. Hell yeah. For the voice actors in Halo 3, we of course have Steve Downs returning as Master Chief. Iconic. We also have the legendary Keith David back as the Arbiter. He's so fucking good in everything he's in. He has got just one of the smoothest voices of all people. Seamlessly sinister. It's fucking perfect. Julie Benz did not return to play Commander Keyes, and she was replaced by an actress named Justice Bolding.

15:48 They also scored a plethora of celebrity cameos as well, starting with the amazing Terrence Stamp, who came in to replace the original actor for Prophet Truth. Now, Terrence Stamp played General Zod in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Oh, shit. As well as many great characters throughout cinema and television history. Neil. We have Katie Sackhoff, as she was one of the leads in the sci-fi classic Battlestar Galactica. Nerd shit. Love it. She's also one of the very few actors in the entire Star Wars franchise to play an animated character and then play the live action version of that character as well.

16:29 That's great. And remember we said Serenity was a big influence on the story of this game? Yes, indeed. Well, stars Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and Alan Tudyk. Wow, they got the whole boy squad. All the boys appear as soldiers fighting alongside Master Chief. Holy shit, that's fucking great. Well, Nathan Fillion would actually go on to voice one of the major characters in Destiny as well. He loves nerd shit so goddamn much. He loves paychecks so goddamn much. Okay, I'm not going to knock someone for getting the bag. He did an uncharted fan film where he was like, I'm just going to be Nathan Drake today. It has nothing to do with Naughty Dog.

17:11 He was just like, I'm going to go do this shit. If you bring a camera, that's on you. Good for them. I really do appreciate that whatever Marty's doing now, he did make the entire fucking Firefly squad come back together for this. True, right? That's great. Then Marcus Fenix himself, John DiMaggio, also makes a cameo just to show there's no bad blood between the franchises. He also loves a paycheck. You can't knock that. Then there's the coolest of the cameos. Oh. Almost the entire cast of Red vs. Blue got to voice random soldiers as well. Oh, that's so sweet. It really is. They got to be a part of the thing for real.

17:54 That's so great. Now, can you explain what Red vs. Blue is, if anyone is a little too, let's just call it what it is, young for that reference? I'm not, but you know, it's fine. Well, it's where Rooster Teeth got its start. Red vs. Blue is a Machinima series that came out on early YouTube. Yeah, it's so dated. And Machinima is when you use a video game to kind of make your own movies. Yeah. And they were using Halo 2 to make these little funny cartoons about soldiers just kind of fucking about in their day. Just shooting the shit. We'll drop the link in the Discord if you guys want to catch up on it, because it is a wild corner of the internet. I don't know how well it's aged, so don't come for my neck.

18:34 Yeah, right? That early internet was pretty rough, guys. It could be, yeah. Yeah. But for the nostalgia. Yeah, for the nostalgia. And yeah, it's just really cool that these guys got to be a part of the actual universe in the end. That's such a signifier of how we're seeing influencers showing up in games and shit now and stuff. That's true, yeah. This was the first domino to fall from Markiplier to actually have a legit VO career. And he is doing a shit ton of games. Yeah. A lot of them are. It's really impressive, actually. No, it's really cool. Didn't a couple show up in Bendy? I think so as well, yeah. There's a whole bunch in Bendy. Yeah, you know, this was the first fucking brick in that wall. Yeah. Halo 3 released on September 25th, 2007, and broke the world record for most sales of a video game in a 24-hour period, pulling in $170 million on the first fucking day.

19:28 The marketing dollars were well fucking spent. Yeah, very well spent, because they beat the previous record holder, Halo 2, by $50 million. Whoa, so a significant margin and also for this to be a platform exclusive. We haven't even really touched that, though. This is just for the Xbox crowd coming correct with the money, and we're seeing that shift now back to the PlayStation crowd, where Xbox isn't getting those numbers and PlayStation's like, we have Naughty Dog and Last of Us, fuck you, you know? Oh, this game is one of the big reasons why 360 dominated that console generation. I mean, this title alone entirely, yeah, I fucking see it. And to only beat yourself is such a fucking flex, to be like, top one and two bitch, come for it.

20:14 That's some James Cameron shit right there. Yeah, I only have myself to beat. Within two months, they had sold over five million copies worldwide. Today, it still holds a 94 out of 100 Metacritic score. When Halo 2 released, people expected Halo 1.5 and were surprised with the game they ended up getting. With Halo 3, they expected Halo 2.5, and once again were surprised with the innovations and upgrades they received. Well, from the last one, they were like, we didn't get a full fucking game with Halo 2. That's fair. They really did get kind of just a half a game. Yeah, they're expecting Halo 2.5 just because that was the.5 they were missing.

20:56 Halo 3 overtook Gears of War as the most played game online. And went on to be the 360's highest selling software. Well done. 2007 was still a messy time for Game of the Year awards. When you mentioned that year too, we were in a huge recession and approaching a big housing market crash. So seeing that money and that affinity and that love for that game come through all the crazy shit that people were going through in the country and worldwide. Fuck yeah, Halo. Well, it did go on to win the Spike TV Game Award for best multiplayer game as well as the classic most addictive video game fueled by Mountain Dew award.

21:37 Fuck all the way off. Shut the fuck up. Why did we lose that? We as a country were better when we had the Mountain Dew awards when it came to video games. What the fuck? Wait, can you tell me one more time what that award title is? The most addictive video game fueled by Mountain Dew. Is the game fueled by Mountain Dew or is the award fueled by Mountain Dew? I'm not sure. It is fundamentally unclear what that means grammatically. They did introduce Gamer Fuel Mountain Dew with Halo 3, so... Oh, shit! Yeah! It might actually be related to the game being fueled by Mountain Dew.

22:19 Gamer Fuel isn't even in the top three fucking Mountain Dew flavors. It obviously goes Code Red, Call of Dew, which is a seasonal, Original Flavor Dew, Baja Blast, and then Pitch Black. Oof. Putting anything above Original Flavor is just blasphemy. Have you had Code Red? It's a cherry blast of flavor. I fucking love that shit. I haven't had it in years, and I think it would kill me at this point. I was going to say, I haven't had any kind of soda in a long time, but when I did, it was Mountain Dew. I haven't had anything caffeinated since 2019, and I genuinely think a Mountain Dew would send my body into shock. But I will die on this hill that Code Red is goaded. But Gamer Fuel's not that good.

23:01 No. The fact that Mountain Dew's marketing dollars bought them a specific slot in the Spike Gaming Awards, and that also that relationship did not transfer over when it changed into the Video Game Awards. Jeff Geely needs to get on this shit. He needs to pick up the fucking phone and say, Mountain Dew, baby girl, we got to get back together. Doritos just bought out the Luxor pyramid and made the pyramid a giant potato chip. I know PepsiCo has the fucking money. Actually, that was a tortilla chip. It was a Doritos chip. Yeah, that's not a potato chip. Oh, you're right, it is a tortilla that's cheesed. Yeah. Well, in this case, it was a fucking pyramid, Tom.

23:46 It was none of the above. I just think that culture was better when Mountain Dew was participating in awards. And not as a recipient, as a giver. Yeah. That's fucking crazy. The early aughts were a wild time for a video game and food integrations. We're getting Subway in Uncharted 2, we're getting fucking Verizon commercials in Alan Wake 1, and now we're getting Master Chief chugging a Mountain Dew. Does he chug a Mountain Dew? No, we don't see him chugging a Mountain Dew. He's just on the Mountain Dew. Okay, so honestly, that's good protection of brand. Oh, yeah. With your in Halo, you're not going to break your sense of wonder and, you know, being involved in the story by him being like, Ah, 7-Eleven, time to refill all my Mountain Dew.

24:33 Glug, glug, glug, I'm going to kill you. Fuck the flood. Also, why wouldn't you put the word flood in there? Right, exactly. Gamer flood. That sounds sticky. Yeah. I mean, it's Mountain Dew. Of course it's fucking sticky. I'm unraveling. Keep going. Not even Mountain Dew thinks it would survive to 2,500. They're like, there is no fucking... They'll be using it as fuel by then. Yeah, actual fuel. That's why it's gamer fuel, because it's running all the fucking Warthogs in the Halo world. That's the only use case they can figure out with all the Tareen, I think, is in there. The chemicals that would kill me or a Victorian child. The yellow number five. Yeah, exactly. It kills your sperm count, but man, it can drive a fucking car.

25:16 But you can drive all the way to the moon, bitch. Exactly. Well, Time Magazine did give it their own Game of the Year stamp, and IGN gave it a bunch of awards as well. Those are unsponsored. Who gives a shit? There's no Mountain Dew involved, so who cares? I want the Snackwell Fig Newton Award for Best FPS. It's since been remade with the Master Chief Collection, and it looks absolutely stunning on modern consoles and computers. That's how you played it, right? Yeah. I mean, you obviously played the original, but you got to run through it again. That's great. Yeah, on my PC, yeah. To date, it has sold somewhere around 15 million copies across its releases. It also marks the last time Bungie worked on a numbered entry in the Halo franchise.

26:00 Their deal with Microsoft would dissolve shortly after Halo 3, and Bungie would go their own way after making a couple spinoff titles, eventually making their next monolithic franchise Destiny, with Jason Jones back at the helm once again. For many, this was the last time Halo was great. Not to bash the titles that have come since, as quite a few hold a special place in the hearts of many gamers. But none of them have had the hype that Halo 3 brought. The 360 was a multiplayer haven, and Halo was the series that pioneered it all. However, we're not here to talk about online multiplayer. We're here to talk about the story, which we already have heard, might be a bit messy.

26:44 And by might, I mean definitely is. But it's still a great romp and an exciting conclusion to the first Halo trilogy. And a refreshing caffeinated beverage, sponsored by Mountain Dew. This is not the Alan Wake episode. You're not going to be doing all that product placement. I love marketing. Yeah, this is the last game actually in the franchise that I've played personally. And it's the game I think of when I think of the Halo franchise. Now, here's the thing. I think since it's been such a long time since we covered the first two Halo games, we should do a quick recap on the series so far, especially since Halo 2 left us on a cliffhanger and 3 picks up right where it left off.

27:28 Oh yeah, absolutely. For the first game, Halo Combat Evolved, you play as Spartan Number 117, Master Chief, an Earth Defense Space Marine who has been enhanced into a super soldier-like living weapon. Think Space Force Captain America. Hell yeah. In a spinoff book, of which there are 29. Oh my god! No, I did not read them all. But Brian David Gilbert has, and he made a wonderful Polygon Unraveled episode about it if you're interested, which you can find on YouTube. Oh, we'll put that in the Discord too. I just love BDG. Yeah, we'll throw that in the Discord for sure. In the first book, you find out that Spartans have one of the most fucked up origin stories humanly possible.

28:13 No way, the super soldier? Yeah, they're kidnapped by the military from a normal ass family as a young child. Oh my God. Then, they're cloned and a near exact copy is made. The clone is then quote unquote found and returned to the family. Oh God. It's almost like the sci-fi version of that Jordan Peele movie, Us. Like, they're fucking tethered comes back and it's just a little wrong. Oh, it gets so much worse. I said they're a near exact copy, because the clone dies within a year.

28:54 Like there's a ticking time bomb on the clone. Yeah. Oh, God. That's... The family first of all goes through missing a child. Which is so traumatic, so horrible. And then to lose that child after finding it within a year is so traumatic for everyone involved. It's just destroying so many fucking lives. That's so wild. Then, the kids that were kidnapped... Yeah?... were put through all sorts of horrific trials and human testing. Ah! Of which only about one-third survive. Oh, shit! This is so fucked up. Oh, it's horrifying.

29:35 Then that one-third go on to live their lives like the Clone Army in Star Wars, learning how to be super soldiers from a young age into adulthood. Because what else do they have? These are the good guys of the series. These are the proud, the few, the Marines. And by that, I mean very few, because again, two-thirds of them died. Fuck, that's wild. And I want you to remember this origin story for a few minutes from now when we get into Halo 3 itself. Okay, I don't think I could erase this from my mind if I tried. So fucked up. Yeah, right now, we're gonna keep recapping one and two. It's the 2550s, and you're being called off to a distant planet to fight the Evil Covenant.

30:21 They're a bipedal, reptilian-esque alien species, and they're the sworn enemies of the human race. Well, two legs good, four legs bad, right? Exactly. Upon reaching an alien planet, you discover a giant ring floating nearby. This ring is called a halo. You land on the halo and fight the covenant you find there. With you on your journey is your AI companion, Cortana. She's a blue hologram that can appear physically in front of you, but also as AR and also just kind of talk to you in your head. If you drink enough Mountain Dew gamer fuel, you will see her in real life.

31:02 Yeah, she's whatever they need her to be, really. She is also genuinely the reason Microsoft named their virtual assistant Cortana at damn near the demand of gamers. I like that. That's fucking clever. If Siri was secretly fucking Atlas in Bioshock and was like, would you kindly do a system update? Well, I'd be nervous, but it would be fucking sick, you know? I know. I just remember this happening. And it was like, yeah, Siri had come out first, and then Microsoft was coming out with theirs, and it had a different name at first. I don't remember what it was, but everyone was like, wait, why the fuck aren't you calling this Cortana? It's built in. You dumb dipshits do this. And they've kind of just caved in. You're like, yeah, you're right. We should call this Cortana. Because once again, bullying works.

31:45 Gamer bullying always works. No, don't do it. No, no. Cortana has valuable information, and your mission is to keep her away from the Covenant at all costs, but also to wipe out any Covenant you find. While exploring the Halo, the game takes a sharp turn from a sci-fi shooter into a horror shooter. This is where I got really excited about the game. Yeah. As the reason the Halo exists is to prevent the spread of a species called the Flood. The Flood is a parasitic alien that resembles any and all face-hugging creatures across movies and video games. They turn any creature they encounter into a space zombie, essentially, which you encounter human and Covenant versions of the Flood as you continue through the inner workings of the Halo.

32:32 You meet a flying robot ball thing called the Monitor, who looks like Wheatley from the Portal series or The Ghosts in Destiny. In another spinoff book, we find out that the Monitor used to be a living being, and they were the one who designed the Halo in the first place. And now they're trapped to computer servitude forever? Yeah, he got his brain uploaded into this robo ball and was left behind to guard it. Yeah, it's a little bit like B-12 in Stray. That sucks. It tells you that the reason the Halo exists is to destroy the Flood if they ever get loose. The Flood can overtake an entire planet in a matter of days, and all it takes is a single facehugger to do it. Hmm.

33:13 So you team up to activate the Halo in order to destroy the Flood. Cortana manages to get into the Halo's computer system, and she finds out the full story about the purpose of the Halo. It doesn't just destroy the Flood. It destroys all matter in a 25 light-year radius. Oh, shit! Yeah, that's a long, long way. She manages to stop you seconds from deleting everything and everyone. That is helpful, Cortana. You decide to destroy the Halo itself instead. That should handle the Flood, since they're only found on the Halo and haven't escaped to a planet. You blow it up, save the day, and the game is over.

33:55 Yay! Halo 2 introduces us to a second playable character called The Arbiter. He's a Covenant Special Forces general whose job it was to stop Master Chief from blowing up the Halo. He gets punished for losing, while Master Chief gets a party for winning. They each get sent on separate missions to the same planet, where they find... another Halo. Dun dun dun! It's Halo 2! There's the second Halo! Master Chief's mission is pretty straightforward. Destroy the Halo. For Arbiter, you go on a whole political espionage story where you discover the Covenant's three elders, Prophet Truth, Prophet Mercy, and Prophet Regret, are releasing the Flood on purpose, in the hopes of activating a Halo.

34:46 They're trying to bring about a prophecy called The Great Journey. They're not entirely sure what that means or what a Halo will do, but they know that if they free the Flood, the monitor of that Halo will activate it. It sounds like the journey that Heaven's Gate took as well. Yeah, right. It's very culty. A lot of space death. Master Chief also discovers all this information pretty much simultaneously when he confronts and kills Prophet Regret. You eventually meet up with the monitor from the previous Halo, and he gives you information about this one. He is just plagued with knowledge at this point. I honestly just kind of feel for Monder. He was a scientist engineer, and now he's a ghost.

35:27 Yeah. No, the ghosts are in destiny. God damn it, Tom. Eventually, both Arbiter and Master Chief separately encounter the Flood, and after an epic battle, they both get taken by a giant, tentacled creature that looks like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Hell yeah. Or the Sarlacc from Star Wars. Two very specific fan bases that will understand that reference now. Thank you for breaking it down for the musicals and for the Star Wars' the two genders. Right. It's the central hive mind for all of the Flood. It says that right now, all three of you have a common enemy, the two remaining prophets.

36:10 If they activate a halo, you're all fucked. So right now, the three of you need to work together to defeat the remaining prophets. That's valid. The monitor is there, too, and it tells you not only that, but if they activate this halo, it puts the other seven halos around the universe in a standby mode. Oh, shit. Also, he's like, but maybe you can kill me. I think he may have an underlying like, I'm kind of done, you know? But for your sake, because I'm a good computer ghost, just know that you're going to kind of set off a chain reaction. Yep. Well, there's a central computer called The Ark, where they can be remotely detonated.

36:54 The prophets don't care if you stop this halo from doing its thing. All they want to do is activate it, even momentarily, so they can put the others into standby mode. One prophet is on their way to activate the halo you're on, and the other is on their way to Earth with a spaceship full of the flood. Oh, fuck. On Earth is a map to the Ark, since it's technically a secret base. Hmm. Master Chief hitches a ride on Prophet Truth's ship toward Earth, and the Arbiter goes to stop Prophet Mercy from turning on the halo. Hell yeah. Well, the halo gets activated. Oh, god damn it. The Arbiter gets Prophet Mercy killed, shuts down the halo, and Prophet Truth continues toward Earth with a ship full of the flood.

37:40 And one Master Chief. Master Chief arrives just outside Earth and sees the Covenant forces, which now are being run by a group of ape-like creatures called the Brutes, the muscle of the Prophets. The invasion has begun, and the Prophets' ship is close to bringing the flood to Earth. Cortana chooses to stay behind on the Covenant ship, see what information she can steal from it. You jump out of the ship into open space, ready to bring the pain. And the game fucking ends. Oh, god damn it. I know it was an abrupt thing where you're like, fuck yeah, let's go. But it's clearly the beginning of the third act of this game.

38:21 And they're like, yeah, nah, that's the beginning of the third game of this game. Shit, that's so cool. You're not going to end on Earth. You're going to start the next one on it. Welcome to Earth. Yeah. In our Halo 2 episode, I said that the theme of the second game was cliffhangers, and damn did they leave us hanging. Fortunately, it only took three real time years for us to get the answer. Charge up your plasma pistols, Goombas, for the exciting conclusion to the first Halo trilogy. This is Halo 3. Remember I said to keep Master Chief's origin story in mind? I can't not.

39:01 It's so sad. It's because of this opening line that we get from Cortana. If you don't know his origin, it comes across a lot more innocent than if you do know it. It's like that one meme with the Mr. Incredible where it's like, those who know, those who don't know. The happy and the sad dark one, yeah. Yeah, now you guys know. You, like the monitor, are plagued with knowledge. The game opens on an inky black view of outer space. White specks spread across the darkness, the many stars that are threatened should any of the seven remaining Halos activate. Cortana's voice comes over the scene, and she says that she's not sure if she's ever told you this, but they let her pick the Spartan she wanted to be paired with.

39:49 Out of the lineup of stolen children, she picked you? She watched you grow and train and become the Spartan you are today. She says that while you had everything the other Spartans had, you also had one thing that the others didn't. Luck. Which, if any of the Spartans were lucky, they wouldn't have gotten kidnapped and turned into warrior slaves. That's what I'm saying. It feels like he hit a patch of very specific un-luckiness. That's why he's here. It's also weird that she got to draft which stolen child she wanted. Yeah, right? Don't love that. Seems a little wrong. But again, the whole origin story is only found in a book and doesn't get talked about in the game itself.

40:32 It's the implication. But it's the implication, right? The screen shows a shooting star, and it gets closer and closer to the camera, eventually flying right by it. It becomes apparent that the camera has been on a planet looking up at the sky, as we see the shooting star crash into some trees. After the crash, the screen goes completely black, and Cortana asks, Was I wrong? We come back to the crash site. We see a group of three regular human soldiers surrounding the body of a Spartan who, judging by the crater they just created, crashed down to earth from roughly 2 kilometers above. Oof. Sergeant Johnson, your right hand from the previous game, is one of the three, and he's giving up on reviving the unmoving Spartan.

41:20 He knows the value of the armor, so he calls in an EVAC ship to pick up the fallen warrior. He pulls the chip out of the back of the head of the lifeless Spartan, and tells his men to get ready to pull out. Hmm. The Spartan finally moves and grabs his hand. He is, in fact, Master Chief. Yay. And you take control of him from here out. Let's go. Fun fact about this scene. Master Chief is revealed at 1 minute and 17 seconds into the cutscene. Oh, and he's Spartan 117? And he's Spartan 117. That's kind of sick. I'm not going to lie. Yeah. Johnson asks where Cortana is, and you tell him that she's stayed behind.

42:01 She's also kind of all around us at all times, you know? Yeah. No, for sure. She's gone now. She is like fully on the other ship. Gotcha. She is on Prophet Truth's ship. Right now, you need to stop Prophet Truth from unleashing the flood on Earth. You see something moving just over Johnson's shoulder, and realize it's a Covenant soldier cloaked with their invisibility power. You run up to it and put your gun right up under its chin as it drops the invisibility and materializes. Oh, that's so fucking cool. Johnson tells you to calm the fuck down. That's the Arbiter, and he's a friend. That's our homie. Yeah. Which, you know who the Arbiter is? You met him a couple hours ago and teamed up. You just landed via falling, though.

42:43 Yeah, that's true. There's some minor concussion at work. And in all defenses, he was invisible. Yeah, and you know, all those people look alike. Oh, them? Those people. I didn't like you saying that. You're giving real composer energy right now. Real composer energy. I'm gonna need you to compose yourself. So sorry. Yeah, that's Master Chief speaking. That's not me. Your group of five needs to join up with the rest of the military that are already fighting the invading Covenant forces. Along the way, you encounter brutes and Covenant soldiers torturing humans. What's cool is if you act fast enough, you can stop these soldiers from getting killed.

43:28 Oh, that's great. And then they join your group. But if you treat it like a cutscene and just watch, they fucking die. And you're kind of fucked up. Yeah. But these were very interactive cutscenes though, which made it very cool. I love that. I love that they can join you. It's not just, oh, they'll drop and catch their breath. Like now they're going to join the fucking front lines. Yeah. And they'll like pick up a gun from a fallen soldier or like a fallen covenant. That's very advanced AI for just this specific sequence. We're barely into the game, and this is fucking sick. Yeah. While escaping, you get your first of many of what I'm going to call cork-tana flashes. Every once in a while, you'll start moving slowly and your vision will begin to blur, kind of like V in cyberpunk, and cortana will fill your vision and talk to you.

44:16 But it's not like she's actively trying to communicate with you. She's not reaching out to be like, come help me. It's more like she's saying abstract things and asking rhetorical questions. She's just like, when you have a friend that's really stoned and you're trying to talk to them, they're like, philosophically though, what do you think flowers are for? Yeah, she asks questions like, can you sacrifice her to complete your mission? Oh, oh God. And she also appears to be hurt as she's usually lying down, even though she's a virtual assistant. But these flashes are pretty short, only about 5 to 10 seconds. Once they're over, you're back to running and gunning the Covenant. You get separated from Johnson and his men and have to reconvene with them.

45:00 But they get caught by the Brutes and are being tortured for information. So you and Arbiter head into the Covenant Camp to free him. After freeing Johnson and his squad, an evac ship flies in and picks up the lot of you. You head back to the home base where you are greeted by Commander Miranda Keyes, a character we met in the previous game. She's the one in charge around here, and she welcomes you back and launches right into the information she has on the ground war going on. It's just some exposition for anyone new to the franchise. The Flood are on their way, and Prophet Truth is trying to find the map to the Ark. That son of a bitch. And he wants to use that to detonate the other seven. Prophet Truth even takes over the TV screens in the base and makes a bunch of threats to the human race.

45:45 Commander Keyes orders an evacuation of the base, figuring that the threat means the Prophet is coming directly for them. When asked where she wants everyone evacuated to, she cocks her pistol and responds, to war. Honestly, big dick energy. That's fucking cool. I love Commander Keyes. She is so fucking badass. So it doesn't come off as like, I don't know, you figure it out. We're going to war. It's like, we're going to war. Yeah. She's a beefy beef boy. No, what's really great is that a lot of the other soldiers, you can feel the respect they have for Commander Keyes. That's just good writing and acting. I know the script went through some drama, but that's a great piece if she can drop that, and everyone's like, fuck yeah, let's roll.

46:28 Yeah, no. All of her soldiers really respect her. Everybody fucking loves Commander Keyes. Good for her. You spend the next few minutes helping the evac, killing the Covenant as they attack the base, escorting soldiers to their escape vessels. You also set up a bomb to blow up the base once everyone is out. Through all this, you keep getting those Cortana flashes. Again, not really talking to you, but it seems to be shit you probably have heard before. Things like the motivational speech you probably heard on your first day of boot camp, saying things like, you will become the best of the best kind of shit. A little highlight reel of your Spartan career.

47:08 Yeah, a little bit. You don't make it out before the bomb goes off, and you find yourself in the basement of the bunker with a group of soldiers. You locate a grip of Warthogs, the ever famous and trustworthy Humvee style vehicles of the Haloverse. The Pumbas? Yeah, in the basement. You mount up as either the driver or the gunner, and take off toward a rendezvous point. Johnson calls over the radio to tell you that there are supply ships there, and they'll pick you up. Through this section, you get a nice sampling of all the vehicles available in this game for both Covenant and the humans. You'll be able to hijack them and take them over if you want, or you can just keep your warthog.

47:51 They give you a lot of new weapons to try out through this section as well, and you also find out that the reason the Covenant were attacking this specific location is because the map to the Ark is hidden inside an ancient Egyptian temple. Oh, they have an issue with Egypt in this entire franchise. Right, they really do. They blew up Cairo in Halo 2, right? Yeah, they did. Holy shit. Now they're back again. And they do end up finding it, and Prophet Truth recalls his troops back to their ship. He got what he needed. The Ark is located a little ways outside the Milky Way Galaxy, and he's heading there right now. Also, I know we talk about light years and shit in this game and how important they are, but they're also meaningless.

48:35 Oh! For example, if a Halo detonates, it kills everything in a 25 light year radius, and it does so instantly. Even assuming the blast travels at light speed, that would take 25 years to complete the blast to its edges. Oh, shit. So, like, don't think about it too hard is all I'm getting. Yeah, not in Halo. It would be instant from center to the edges. This also seems to apply to space travel. Oh, we're just like, what's up? We're here. Yeah, the Milky Way itself is 100,000 light years wide. And the Ark is located 250,000 light years outside the Milky Way Galaxy, which makes the 25 light year radius seem minute in comparison.

49:22 You're like, actually, that's not a big deal. Yeah, there's just like even seven of them. You could Halo Pluto and it's fine on here. Like, who gives a shit? It's not even a planet. It's actually considered a sub planet due to its mass shrinking because of how distant it is. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. But despite that distance, space travel is super quick, especially when you open portals big enough to fit an entire armada through it. Oh, there you go. Because, yeah, we've got just kind of portal technology too here. Portals exist. Yeah. I fucking love science. Let's go. Yeah, it's just to kind of like get rid of the whole like, yeah, we got to travel through space kind of shit. I do see the holes of like, what's at stake immediately? Yeah.

50:04 Maybe some holes didn't get resolved. That's okay. Yeah, like I said, it's a little messy, but it's still cohesive. You need to clear a path for the rescue ships to enter the area and have to fight off a couple of the Covenant's giant four-legged tanks. They were in the previous game as well, but this time they're a lot more dynamic and can move around the map a bit more freely than they did before. Unfortunately, your fighting isn't enough, and Prophet Truth activates a device that opens a giant portal in the sky, and the Covenant ships fly through it. Oof. Johnson calls over the radio and asks, what the fuck just happened? You're like, well, look up, man. It's pretty self-explanatory. Big hole in the sky. Yeah, well, just as the last Covenant ship escapes through the portal, another one comes flying back through it towards the Earth.

50:51 Never a good sign. It's on fire and is set to crash. Worst sign. Johnson asks, is that more Covenant? And you respond, no. Worse. It's the shit that killed the dinosaurs. The ship crashes, and Commander Keyes comes over the radio to inform you that the Flood have just crash-landed, and that they are quickly taking over the area. You have to kill every last one of them, quickly, if you want to stop them from taking over the entire planet. I bet that's such a good sequence. And remember, it takes just one survivor, and they can take everything. You and the Arbiter go to the crash site where you are swarmed by the Flood, and the two of you kill them off slowly but surely.

51:33 Do you play as Arbiter at all through this, or is it only Master Chief? Only as Master Chief. This game did not let you control Arbiter again. Really? Yeah, I think if you do it in two-player mode, the second player can play as Arbiter. But traditionally for campaign, all Master Chief. For the campaign, it's purely Master Chief, unlike Halo 2, yeah. Got it. All the while, you keep getting those Cortana flashes in your field of view, saying more cryptic shit. Bitch, I'm busy. Can you hold off on the fucking trolley problems that you're trying to drop on me? I have to kill the flood. Well, it's actually starting to be a little bit more personal and direct. Okay, she's not like, is the life of this worth the life of that?

52:13 No, Cortana's finally speaking to you instead of at you. Saying, there's not much time. The ship she was left behind on got taken over by the flood, and now they have her and are getting information out of her. Ah, shit. The Covenant discovers that Cortana is on the crashed flood ship, and so they also send soldiers in to try and retrieve her as well. Cortana, as we discovered in the first game, has all of Earth's defensive capabilities and strategies stored inside her. That information is too important and can't be taken by enemy forces. You make it to the crashed ship, and it is fully overtaken by the flood.

52:55 Like, the ship itself is part of the flood now. Oh, that's gnarly. There's one big facehugger across the front of the ship. Yeah, right, no. It's not quite like that. It's more like fungus growing on the walls. You know, like in the original live action Mario Brothers. Oh, God, that's so gross. Or maybe a little bit like The Last of Us. With the spores and shit everywhere. Yeah. Gross. As you enter it, the Gravemind speaks to you. That's the big Audrey 2 Sarlacc pit guy. Yeah. And these come to you much the same way the Cortana flashes were. It's telling you that the Flood are not destroyers. They are liberators. They bring peace once they overtake an entire planet.

53:36 Do they? Well, they are life's salvation because they can't die as long as nobody kills them. I feel like Monitor would have some words to say about this. Right. You eventually find the console containing Cortana, but her information is scrambled. Monitor X Machina shows up and offers to help repair Cortana. You yell at him saying that back on the first Halo, he tried to kill Cortana and everyone else. He says that since you destroyed that Halo, he no longer has a mission, so he's going to help you instead. Why are you bringing up old shit? Yeah. I've been updated since then. I'm changed.

54:18 He informs you that friendly Covenant Rebels have arrived, and they're going to quote unquote, glass all of Egypt. Glass it? Yeah, so glassing is a process where the Covenant use powerful rays of heat that are so fucking hot, it turns everything to glass instantly. Whoa, that is some horrific, cool as fuck shit though. It's a devastating but effective way of eliminating a small flood outbreak. But also, glass it? Yeah. Oh, that's chilling. It really is, isn't it? In the lore of this several day battle called the Battle for Earth, the population of the planet went from around 10 billion people to 200 million.

55:08 Whoa, holy shit. That is fucking, that's everybody. And that change was a combo of deaths and evacuations. And after the battle, many returned to Earth. But still, I think it was something where around 5 billion people left. You, Arbiter, and the Monitor, joined up with the Marines and a small group of rebel Covenant forces to see if you can get Cortana back up and running. Cortana activates, but it's not actually her. It's just a message. She says that the Prophet is on his way to Earth with a bunch of flood. And you're like, yeah, we know.

55:51 She says that they know she's in the system, but she was able to find out information they don't have. The portal they went through? They don't realize there is a way to stop the flood on the other end. A way that does not involve firing off the seven Halo rings around the universe. But before she can say what that thing is, she short circuits and collapses. Saying that you need to hurry to the Ark if you're going to stop Prophet Truth from detonating the Halos. You agree to head through the still open portal, and the Marines say they'll stay behind and try and hold off the enemy from releasing any other flood. The leader of the Covenant rebels, he was in Halo 2 as Arbiter's buddy, he was missing half his mouth.

56:36 He says that the humans barely survived a miniscule outbreak of the flood. He was fully prepared to glass the entire planets, but Arbiter convinced him to only glass the impact site. The leader of the humans and the leader of the Covenant have some pissing match words at each other, which is all stopped by you saying that you believe Cortana is telling the truth, and want to go after whatever it is that will stop the flood. But you'll need the help of both the Covenant and the humans if you're going to pull it off. Yes, you'll be abandoning Earth and leaving it open to attack. But if this secret weapon doesn't exist, then the flood of one already anyway, and the Halos will be the only solution.

57:19 Earth's commander says this will either be your greatest or worst decision ever. There is no in-between. But he probably won't live long enough to find out which. And he wishes you luck as he goes back down to Earth to lead the few troops he has left while you go with the rebel forces through the portal to the Ark. This is so good. Oh, God. Upon arrival, you see that the Prophet's forces outnumber the rebels three to one. Fuck me. To which the Covenant leader says, so it'll be a fair fight. Oh, good for you, bitch. The Ark is unlike anything we've seen yet.

58:00 Flat Earth conspiracy theorists rejoice, as it's essentially a gigantic disk floating in space. You guys get this one round. Much like the Halos, it's so large that it has a whole ecosystem on its surface. The Brutes have anti-aircraft weaponry on the ground, so you take a small escape vessel down to the Ark so you can take out their guns. Once you clear the guns and create a landing zone, Commander Keyes flies her supply ship in and lands. You need to get into a building, but there's no opening. So she suggests blowing a hole in the wall using a handy dandy tank that she happens to have in her supply ship. I love her and everything she's ever done.

58:43 I brought a tank, boys. Let's fucking do this. Yeah, she's like, here you go. Get to work. Yeah, have fun. You hop in the tank with a bunch of soldiers and head out. One of the soldiers on your tank is really impressed with your moves too. You use the tank to blow up one of the Brutes vehicles, and he goes, tank beats ghost. I love his joy in this moment. Then you blow up one of their elite soldiers, and he goes, tank beats hunters. Is he sweet? He is. Oh, we love him. Finally, you destroy one of their drop ships, killing a dozen Brutes in the process, and he yells out, tank beats everything.

59:28 I love him. Tank beats everything, baby. Yeah, no, that guy is great. It's just a memorable line that I remembered since the very first time I played that game. A sweet angel NPC who's never done anything wrong in his life. It's probably one of the red versus blue guys. Yeah, that'd be a joy. You get your way inside the building, and the monitor was with you to help. He's taking you to a map that will show you where this secret weapon against the flood is located. You find the map, and it's a 3D model of the Ark. You ask where the weapon is, and the monitor explains that it's part of the Ark itself.

1:00:09 It's so large that this giant disk we're on is part of it. But its trigger is being barricaded by Prophet Truth with a force field. You need to take down the barricade if you want to have any chance of winning. So you head off to break some shit. Hell yeah. You hop in a flying transport vehicle, as the generators creating the barricade are pretty far away. There's always a goddamn generator. If you turn off the generators, it will take down the force field enough for you to get in. Since there are three generators, you split into three groups. You go for one, Arbiter goes for another, and Sergeant Johnson goes for the third. You shut yours down, and through a window, you can see Arbiter shut his down.

1:00:53 Commander Keyes asks Sergeant Johnson how he's doing with his, and he says his team is overwhelmed and needs backup. Aw. Then his comms go down. Oh, shit. Keyes tells you to join back up with Arbiter and go to help Johnson get the last generator shut down. You make it there and can't find Johnson anywhere. Oh, no. But you manage to shut it down and the barricade lowers. Then from the portal above, we see Prophet Truth's ship enter the atmosphere. And something I haven't mentioned about Prophet Truth's ship is that it's called High Charity. It's more than just a ship. It's more or less a movable megacity.

1:01:35 Oh, shit. I fully assume just kind of a general sedan-style spaceship. No, this has 7.7 billion Covenant living on the ship. It is essentially the Covenant's home. They haven't lived on their own planet in centuries. He's taking the entire population's mobile home with him everywhere he goes? Prophet Truth essentially hijacked it and welcomed the Brutes to take it over. Holy shit. Only, it looks different now than it did before. It's gained some people. It's a little thicker. It's actually been completely overtaken by the Flood. Oh no, there's one giant facehugger wrapped around the whole thing and then a bunch of little tiny facehuggers everywhere.

1:02:19 Yeah, Prophet Truth had apparently abandoned it at some point, leaving the 7.7 billion citizens to fend for themselves against the Flood. He left it out like an old sandwich and the ants got to it? Yep. Fuck, that's wild. And he doesn't give a shit, too. And it got moldy as fuck. The ship shoots out a bunch of escape pods and the Flood come pouring out of them. Of course. Almost like they were waiting for you to take those generators down the whole time. Crazy how it happens like that. You know he's a prophet, right? He might have some insight into what you're doing, Master Chief. The monitor says that the Ark is outside the radius of any of the Halos.

1:03:03 So if they activate them all, that's it. The Flood wins because there will be no other defense against them left in the universe. Since you punched through the force field, this puts Prophet Truth on high alert, and he tears ass for the control room of the Ark to activate the other Halos. You take the monitor and arbiter with you and head off to stop him. On your way, you get another Cortana flash. She says that in exchange for a moment of safety, she gave up the entire universe, the Flood. God damn it! By answering one question, the grave mind asked her.

1:03:43 She never says what that question or answer was, but I imagine it had to do with the force field coming down and the Flood showing up at that exact moment. Okay, I'm going to take it a step back. If you're ever being questioned, don't say shit until you get a lawyer. If you're pulled over, shut the fuck up. If you get put in cuffs, shut the fuck up. No face, no case. Do not speak unless you have legal representation. Yeah, even if you're being tortured by the Flood. Yeah, Cortana. As you're running through the facility, TVs are showing a live propaganda broadcast from Prophet Truth. He's saying that as he lights the rings of the Halos, all of the true believers will be saved.

1:04:25 He says this from the comfort of the Ark, which is outside the blast range, of course. He's also already given up the Covenant to the Flood on High Charity. I don't know who he thinks is left to save. Yeah. Behind him, you can see one of his soldiers holding Sergeant Johnson by the throat high off the ground. Commander Keyes asks how close you are to getting there, and you respond, not close enough, as you look up an elevator shaft that is so long, you can't see the top. Oh my god. We cut to where Prophet Truth is, and we get a cutscene of Sergeant Johnson talking mad trash to the guy holding him up by his throat, saying he ain't shit.

1:05:07 Hell yeah. The brute is about to snap his neck, but Prophet Truth stops him. He says that he unfortunately needs the Sergeant. You may need a reminder back to the first game, but only certain species can activate the Halos, and the Covenant are not on that list. Prophet Truth says that once the Halos are activated, anyone who knows that fact will be dead, and he'll get all the credit for doing it anyway. As he says this, we see an Earth Defense transport ship come flying straight at the window to this room from the outside. It crashes through the glass, taking out some of Prophet Truth's soldiers in the process and causing pure chaos in the room.

1:05:53 Commander Keyes jumps out of the transport, guns fucking blazing, and starts blasting the enemy forces. She is the baddest bitch! She's so fucking cool for that shit! Fuck yeah, Keyes! She is so fucking cool. But there's just too many for her to handle on her own, and Prophet Truth reminds her that he just needs one human to activate the rings. Keyes says, You're right. And she points her gun at Sergeant Johnson. He says, Do it. Me first, then you. Oh, that is chilling. This way, they won't have anyone that can activate them.

1:06:37 Ugh. She cocks her gun, but the shot of a Covenant weapon is heard, as a brute fills her body with projectile spikes, and she falls over dead. Fuck. She was the coolest bitch. Period. Period though, right? Fuck. Johnson screams out no as he's taken into brute custody once more. Prophet Truth has Johnson brought over to a control panel, and he forces his hand down on a button. A series of seven rings light up in front of them, and far down a tunnel, about 800 yards away at the distant other end of the room, you and the Arbiter finally make it to the top of the elevator shaft.

1:07:22 Two hulking flood creatures drop down in front of you, and you ready yourself to attack. But one of them begins to speak. It's the voice of the grave mind. It says not to attack, but to trust. This is it. The three of you need to team up against this motherfucker once and for all. The halos can still be stopped, but just like starting it, only certain species can deactivate it. Oh. The grave mind says the flood will now fight by your side to take down Prophet Truth. Wow! Everyone hates this motherfucker. Yeah, and they fucking do. Hell yeah.

1:08:02 Swarms of facehuggers and zombified soldiers descend on the room with you as you fight your way through hordes of faithfully deluded Covenant and brute soldiers toward Prophet Truth. Holy shit. When you make it to the control panel, Johnson is there holding Keys' lifeless body, sadly stroking her hair. Oh, I understand. I'm heartbroken too. He points to Prophet Truth, still standing over the control panel, and tells you to shut this shit down. Hell yeah. Arbiter goes straight to Prophet Truth and lifts him high up. Furious as all hell. The Prophet is old and weak, so he's no match for the Arbiter.

1:08:44 You walk over to the control panel and very nonchalantly shut it off. Just casually, boop. Yeah, you literally just go like, boop, and it's just like, oh. Oh, that feels a little anti-psychotic. It was a little bit. Can we pop into Arbiter mode just to hold this motherfucker up? I want to feel the vibration in the controller of me squeezing the last pit of air out of him. Oh, it gets even better. Oh? Prophet Truth says, You can't do this. He is the voice of the Covenant. Arbiter lifts him up by the back of his neck and says, And so you must be silenced. Oh, that's hard as fuck. As he drives his laser sword through Prophet Truth's back.

1:09:27 Fuck yeah! Arbiter gives out a victory cry as Johnson carries Commander Keyes' body onto the ship she crashed through the window. The reverence they have for her body is so wonderful to see highlighted. Like, this bitch fucking bodished 30 extra seconds, and we got this shit done. Girl, right? Like, she's the reason we made it. Mm-hmm. He powers it up, and you and Arbiter head over to hop on. Just before you do, tentacles burst through the ground around you. Fucking tentacles! And a deep, guttural laugh is heard. The voice of the Gravemind speaks out, thanking you for taking out the only weapon known to be able to destroy the Flood entirely.

1:10:13 It wraps its tentacles around the ship as it tries to take off. You and Arbiter try to grab onto the ship, but are knocked off as Johnson hits the afterburners and manages to fly off to safety. You land back inside the building and are quickly surrounded by the Flood. You stand back to back with the Arbiter as he says, looks like we traded one villain for another. I love that they spent most of two nearly never interacting. Yeah, no, they really don't. And now they are bad boys for life. Yeah, right? Fully ride together, die together. Fuck yeah. The two of you ready your weapons and attack the oncoming flood.

1:10:54 If this were Halo 2, this is where the game would turn off. That's the end. Yeah, this would be your cliffhanger to be like, wait for Halo fucking 4. No, not happening. Thank God. No, we're finishing this shit. Hell yeah. You fight your way through the facility, and as you do, you keep seeing Cortana show up on walls and down hallways, so you decide to follow. You come to an opening that shows the outside, and as you stand there, you can see a giant structure rising up from the ground. Looking at it, you and Arbiter realize it's a halo. Oh, no. It's a replacement for the one you destroyed in the first game.

1:11:34 Like the donut wheel they put in the back of your car? Yeah. The monitor flies in, happy as can be, because this means he has a mission again. I have a purpose. Arbiter asks what you want to do about this halo, and you say you want to set it off. Monitor is thrilled, because that's exactly what he was built to do anyway. He's like, I've been saying this, you guys. Yeah, and he takes off to prepare it to activate. Arbiter's like, what the fuck? You explained the Ark is so far outside the Milky Way. If a halo goes off here, it only destroys the Ark, along with the Flood that have come here seeking safety, including the Gravemind.

1:12:15 Arbiter's like, bet, let's do this. Knowing you're about to blow up a halo, the ground troops start evacuating the Ark. Johnson rounds up the humans, and Arbiter goes off to evacuate the Rebel Covenant troops. In the meantime, you want your virtual assistant back, and you take a small flying vehicle to the Flood-infested High Charity to see if you can manage to find Cortana and bring her back to safety before all of this vaporizes. As you kill your way through this metropolis of a spaceship, the Grave Mine keeps talking to you. It says that you can see what is done to High Charity. The Flood can overtake anything, organic or not, including AI.

1:13:00 It tells you that Cortana is now his. She's a part of the Flood. But we keep getting Cortana flashes as well, and she has some level of humanity left in her. But she's clearly breaking, crying and screaming out in pain. As you get closer, it becomes more and more clear that the Grave Mine might not be telling the whole truth about Cortana. He keeps demanding that you tell it what she's hiding, meaning she hasn't given it everything she knows yet. There's still a chance she hasn't been fully taken over by the Flood. Finally, you find where Cortana is being kept, and you free her.

1:13:42 She's weak, but eternally grateful that you came back and rescued her. Is there a digital facehugger on her? No, there's not. Is that a projection with just kind of a facehugger and arms sticking out of it? No, she just looks sick and tired. But honestly, as soon as you show up, she's kind of back to normal. She says that her circuits are all fucked, and she's not sure if she can be put back together. You tell her that you always keep your promises, and you'll get her back to safety and get her fixed up. She says she sure knows how to pick them, and you respond with, lucky me. Oh, no, but oh. It's just bringing the luck thing back around. I get the trope, but it's not well thought out.

1:14:23 It's a lot cuter if you don't know. You tell her that you figured out the secret weapon was the replacement halo. You ask her if she still has the key that you almost used to activate the first halo before you knew it would destroy everything. She says that she kept it, just in case. After all this time? Always. With Cortana back in your head and the key to the halo, you set about escaping High Charity. Unfortunately, with the ship being basically alive, the Gravemind knows your plan to activate the halo. He's like, I can fucking hear you. Yeah. High Charity sets its course for the portal so it can get out of there before the halo can activate.

1:15:06 You and Cortana decide it would be best to blow up High Charity before leaving. We should probably destroy this place. Yeah. And you set about overheating its reactor core as you do when you want to destroy a ship of this size. You begin a chain reaction of explosions and make your escape. As you are fighting, Cortana warns you that she is seeing Covenant forces up ahead on her radar. You turn the corner and find the Arbiter just slaughtering flood by the dozen. He's so fucking cool. Hell yeah, Arbiter. I love the Arbiter so much. Cortana's all, uh, what did I miss while I was gone? Oh, he's a badass now, babe. You guys are friends now? Oh, we are homies.

1:15:47 We are bad boys for life, baby girl. You jump on an escape ship with Arbiter, and take off from High Charity just as it explodes. As you are flying, you get word from both Johnson and the Covenant that all their troops have been safely evacuated. You tell them to go through the portal to safety, and you'll activate the Halo. Once you land on the Halo, you explain the plan. Halos take a while to power up in fire, so you're going to activate it, and then head straight for the portal. Like a bug bomb, you set it off and you run. Yeah, hopefully that'll be enough time. You don't have a choice otherwise. You and Arbiter head out on foot to the activation station.

1:16:31 Grave Mine managed to escape High Charity, and it sends flood forces onto the Halo to stop you. You fight your way to the front door of the station, and tell the monitor to open it. Cortana's like, wait, you're working with the fucking monitor now too? She's like, did you lose the plot at some point? You are friends with a lot of people that you shouldn't be friends with. Yeah, she's like, weird shit happened while I was out, right? Like, I'm not crazy. I didn't know you guys were cool. Are we cool with them now? And you're like, them? Those are my friends. These are my most trusted allies. Yeah, I would die for my brothers.

1:17:12 She's like, you tried to kill him yesterday. Johnson shows up and surprises you because he wasn't about to let you two have all the fun. And he helps you fight your way to the control room. Once there, you find the monitor prepping the Halo to fire. You pull Cortana out of your head and hand her to Johnson so he can plug her in and she can use the key to turn it on. Sweet. The monitor says, good news, everyone. The Halo is almost ready to fire. It should only take a couple more days before it's fully operational. Days? And Johnson says, we don't have a couple days. We're firing this bitch today. The monitor does some calculations and says that if we fire the Halo now, it will only destroy the Ark.

1:17:54 That's not what the Halo is designed to do. The Ark is supposed to be protected. Monitor was under the impression this replacement Halo was going to go back where it was originally. And then fire off. Oh, he missed part of the meeting. Yeah, he says that premature firing is unacceptable. Oh, no. Oh, no. The evil ghost computer is now evil. The monitor turns red, like all angry robots do. And fires a laser at Sergeant Johnson, who screams out in pure agony. Oh, shit. The monitor then turns and fires at you and Arbiter as well. Fucker. You now have to fight the monitor, which is very difficult because he's a tiny little ball.

1:18:38 Can't you just like throw water on him? It'd be nice if that was true. While you're fighting it, using the last of his dwindling strength, Sergeant Johnson uses a rocket launcher to help you take him out. That's so fucking cool. His last breath and he reaches for the rocket launcher. Damn, Keyes and Johnson were the baddest motherfuckers on any planet they've ever been to. Well, after the monitor explodes, you go to Johnson and tell him you'll get him out of here. He says, no, you won't. You're going to do what you came here to do, and you're going to send me out with a bang. Fuck yeah, Mance. Oh, damn. So fucking cool, right? He hands you the chip with Cortana in it, and you put her in the computer to activate the Halo.

1:19:22 The Halo begins to power up, and you and Arbiter take off to figure out your escape. Cortana says that Johnson had to get here somehow, and she manages to find the signal beacon from the ship he landed here. You head towards it, and as you exit the building you're in, you find the warthog Johnson drove from the ship to here. Now you have a minor choice here. You can drive the warthog, or operate the turret. Whatever you choose, Arbiter will do the opposite. And I can tell you from experience, this next section is best played in two player mode. As it is one of the most epic and action packed sequences in all of gaming.

1:20:03 Oh, I love that. I'll be perfectly honest here. I try to keep my personal opinion mostly to myself in this show, as I try to stick with the facts. And the fact is, I wasn't that impressed with Halo 3 while I was playing through it on my most recent playthrough. Really? Yeah, the 30 seconds of fun from the previous games was still present. And it was just another case of, get to this area, kill the bad guys, move on. Yeah, pretty by the numbers. Yeah, but then this outstanding conclusion comes along. And it makes the entire game worth playing. Really? It's such a satisfying ending. Since this Halo wasn't complete, setting it off destroys it.

1:20:47 It just kind of fucking collapses in on itself. It's like, fuck, we didn't do it right. Literally collapsing around you. It's like popping the donut wheel, yeah. You have to drive the Warthog across this collapsing and exploding Halo. All the while, you're running over flood creatures and blasting them with the turret during their own attempt at escaping. The floor is constantly giving out underneath you, and you have to make a few massive jumps across thousand foot drops. Damn, that's cool. You finally make it to Johnson's ship and have to floor it to make the jump into the open cargo bay door. Once you crash land inside, you put Cortana into the ship's computer, and she takes control, aiming it for the portal.

1:21:30 This causes the ship to bank hard, and the warthog you just crashed, as well as a tank that's also inside the cargo hold, start moving around and start sliding out the back. Arbiter manages to make his way all the way to the cockpit of the ship, which is huge, by the way. It's like 300 yards long. Holy shit. As this ship tilts more and more vertical, you begin to tumble backwards toward the open bay door. You punch your fist into the metal of the floor of the ship and create a handhold so you don't fall out. That's the coolest fucking thing I've ever heard. Fucking right. Is it the first one where you punch someone through the face to kill them, and now you're punching through the spaceship to hang on?

1:22:13 Master Chief is so fucking cool. Dead fucking ass. He is the perfect American. He really is. Yeah, and then you just barely avoid the tank flying by you out the door to the exploding Halo and Ark below. Tank beats Master Chief? Not today. Not today. Cortana is watching the explosion as you stand up, blocking her view and taking up the screen. You find a place to sit, and Cortana asks, what if we don't make it? You reassure her, simply saying, we'll make it. As everything behind your ship explodes, Cortana says, it's been an honor serving with you, John.

1:22:56 Revealing for the first time in the game series, Master Chief's name. His full name being simply John 117. Halo ignites, and the screen fades to white as you lean your head back and accept whatever fate is about to come your way. Could be death, could be home. Who knows? Can't really do anything about it one way or the other. We come back to a scene taking place on Earth. We're seeing a military funeral, featuring pictures of Commander Keyes, Sergeant Johnson, and other soldiers that were lost during this conflict. The officiant talks about their bravery and their sacrifice.

1:23:36 While we get a little flashback scene showing what happened, after the Halo ignited. Some Earth soldiers are watching the sky, and they see Johnson's ship come flying into view, completely engulfed in flames, and it crashes into the ocean. They next show them using blow torches to open the ship. An arbiter can be seen emerging from the wreckage. We cut back to the funeral, and see Arbiter is there as well, paying his respects. Is he in like military garb? He's in his military garb, yeah. Okay, he's not like shoved into a fucking marine suit out of respect or anything? No, nothing like that. The little hat? No. After the customary 21-gun salute, the funeral ends, and Arbiter approaches the memorial.

1:24:22 The officiant says to him that, he remembers how this all started, the covenant and what they did to the humans. He says he can't forgive the arbiter for it. But despite that, he thanks him for being with him through to the end. He can't believe Master Chief is really dead. The two shake hands, and Arbiter looks up at the sky and says, were it so easy? The camera rises higher and higher up into space. We're taken to one of the remaining covenant ships. Arbiter is there with his right hand man.

1:25:03 They talk about how they're finally going to get to see their home planet. Now that the prophets are dead and high charity is destroyed, they really don't have anywhere else to go. So Arbiter takes his place as the new head of the covenant, and leads them back home for the first time in ages. Back in the memorial, the camera pans over the pictures of the many dead soldiers from the battle at the Ark. And the screen fades to black as it settles on the number 117 carved into the memorial. And it remains black for a long time. Then we hear Cortana say, Chief? Chief?

1:25:43 Oh, thank goodness, I thought I'd lost you. A light comes on, and we see it's coming from your helmet. You're in a ship, and you're floating around in zero-g with broken equipment bobbing around you. You ask Cortana what happened. She says that as the halo went off, it destroyed itself in the arc below. But it also did something to the portal. The ship had just entered it, and the front half made it, but this back half did not. Oh, shit! An arbiter was out in the front cockpit, so he landed. Yeah. You didn't. It sent this back half somewhere else. Oh.

1:26:23 Not sure where, really. Oh, shit! So now you're on a dead ship, floating in space. But you won. You defeated the Flood, the Prophets, the Brutes, all of them. Cortana manages to bring back just enough power to turn on some of the computers. She says that she'll drop a homing beacon, but it could be years before anyone finds you. You climb into a cryo-sleep chamber for safety while you wait for rescue. Cortana says she'll miss you. Just before going to sleep, you look at her and say, Wake me when you need me.

1:27:04 Neither of you actually think rescue will ever come. That wake me when you need me was really you saying, Let me know when you're about to run out of power. I'll want to say goodbye. Cortana sadly nods her head as the screen fades to black. The end. And that was Halo 3. That was fucking great. That was fucking awesome. It feels the most cinematic out of this original trilogy. Fully, right? That's incredible. I love that ending. That is a beautiful fucking ending. Such a messy script creation. They fucking killed that. They did. Now, this was a lot of my work to go into this.

1:27:48 You're like, excuse the fuck me, I wrote this. Credits to you. Thank you. No, I have to say, there were plenty of times where I'm like going through this. I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? And I'd have to like look it up online just to double check. I'm like, is that what happened? Am I taking that correctly? Some of the times I was not. Is Monitor angry or happy right now? Stuff like that. But yeah, I did get it all figured out because this was, yeah, there's a lot of lore. Like I said, there's 29 fucking books in the Halo series. There's a lot of turncoats, right? There's a lot of allegiance changes and stuff. And there's also this whole battle for Earth. It becomes such a big moment in the Halo history that Halo 3 ODST, which is like a sequel to Halo 3 that's not Halo 4, but it's also kind of concurrent with Halo 3.

1:28:38 There's Halo Wars that talks about the actual war. So this whole era becomes very important to the history of Halo, which creates a lot of lore for this portion of the game, especially. Yeah, totally. And it's a political thriller. It is, yeah, fully a political thriller. It's dense, and that's wild. Holy shit, that was beautiful. It was. And thank you for coming along on that journey so much, Goombas. Like, really appreciate it. Also me, I've never picked up a Halo. No, you haven't. I'm wildly emotionally attached to Commander Keese. Right, she was so badass, wasn't she? I'm going to light a candle for her tonight. I think you should, honestly. Fuck yeah, women in STEM.

1:29:19 The M stands for military now, sorry. Where's the military and all that, but yeah. She's a Marine. Yeah, oh, she is such a badass. No, this game was great. It's really, like I said, I wasn't really enjoying the gameplay too much because it's just kind of repetitive, but then once you get to that fucking ending, oh, that ending is so fantastic. Yeah, that's so cinematic. I really enjoy that. That's so fucking fun. And it does feel like a nice closed loop of three games, you know, two feeling kind of weak being in the middle and being two-thirds of a game, but man, three is a killer third act, both in terms of two and in terms of the entire trilogy. And what's crazy to me is that, like I said, I've only played up to three, I haven't played anything afterwards.

1:30:03 From everything I understand, the flood's done after this. They're just like, we moved on, we fucking solved that shit. Yeah, I guess they are finished with the flood after that. That's cool. Maybe they show up a little bit later, but they are not really a conflict anymore. I love that also, the surround of it all. There's that Firefly episode where one guy ends up floating out in space. That's kind of what happens in Master Chief. A little bit, yeah. A lion? I guess I have a mighty roar. There is a lot of the Firefly surround of the world kind of Easter egged throughout, which is very fun. Yeah, you can really feel the influences, especially in some of those death scenes. Yeah, if I'm looking through that lens specifically, yeah, a badass death for the cause, very much of that world.

1:30:47 Yeah, definitely. Oh, that's a ride. Thank you for taking us through that. Oh, thank you so much for going on it with me, and if you enjoyed that, please make sure that you are liked and subscribed to our show. Leave us a review, that'd be cool. Leave us anything that'll let you leave on whatever website you use to listen to our show. And leave your shoes at the door when you check out theothercastlepodcast.com. That's the othercastlepodcast.com. Over there, you can check out our Patreon, where for just $2 a month, you can get early access to these episodes, as well as get our Patreon exclusive, The Other Castle Side Quests, which are monthly episodes that are a little bit different from the show that we do here. And if you are on the Patreon, I'm just gonna go ahead and apologize for singing at you last week.

1:31:31 I'm sure they loved hearing their names. I'm sure they fucking didn't. So, instead of that, I'm gonna be regular this week and say thank you so much to patrons who made the show possible, like these wonderful people. Amber, Berserk Panda, Andrew, Damien, That Chonky Boy, AJ, Paul, Omar, Aaron, Cerise. Yeah, sorry, by the way, Cerise, because we've pronounced you as Cyrus all this time. Tom fucked up. We got this corrected. So, Cerise, this one's for you. Unuseful, Molly, Krisha, Molly Mock, Jackie, Jacob, and Ellen. Thank you, all of you, so much. We really appreciate it. You make this show possible.

1:32:12 Yeah, and we will see you next week with another wonderful game. Patrons will get it on Tuesday. You'll get it on Wednesday. Don't forget to join us in the Discord, on Patreon, on Instagram. Join us on all the things. And don't forget to join the Marines. No? If you want to. You can be the Master Chief. That's true. Yeah, no, we are not sponsored by the Marines. So I'm not going to put my stamp on that. Would you want the Marines to sponsor? The Marines, first of all, would not want to sponsor us. They'd be like, whatever the fuck those two knuckleheads are doing, we do not want to encourage it. We want to encourage, I don't know, like doing pushups and shit, maybe making your community better. Whatever the fuck those two are doing, we do not endorse.

1:32:55 They definitely do not. Yeah. Well, anyways, goombas, this is Tom and Andrea reminding you, Tank beats everything! And don't skip the cutscenes.