2 words: Spiritual Reboot. Most of you already know what this reboot is for and why it’s so important as Halo’s 20th anniversary game, but for those who don’t? Well it comes down to this: Halo has been a bit of a rocky bumpy game to follow (until Infinite). Releases have been spaced from 1 year apart, to 4 years apart. So for those gamers who are interested in playing the new Halo game, this is what you need to know before playing.
Plot/Story:
(previous Halo players can skip this part for obvious reasons)
Halo CE: The first game in the long line of Halo titles. Halo CE was revolutionary in the world of game development because of it’s incredible game mechanics.
But that’s only half of it: The story sold Master Chief
The year is 2552, the planet Reach had just been glassed/destroyed (has it’s own game). Only 1 UNSC (United Nations Space Command/Marines) ship had escaped destruction. It was named “The Pillar of Autumn”. The game begins as Pillar of Autumn exits slip-space and its crew discovers a large ringworld structure of unknown origin. The Covenant pursues the Autumn and attacks. With the ship heavily damaged, the Autumn’s captain, Jacob Keyes, entrusts the ship’s artificial intelligence (AI) known as Cortana to Master Chief in order to prevent the Covenant from discovering the location of Earth. Keyes orders the crew to abandon the Autumn and pilots the ship to a crash-landing on the ringworld.
On the ring’s surface, Master Chief and Cortana rescue other survivors and help organize a counter-offensive. Learning that Keyes has been captured by the Covenant, Master Chief and a small contingent of soldiers rescue him from the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation . Keyes reveals that the Covenant call the ringworld “Halo” and that they believe it to be a weapon. Intent on stopping the Covenant from using Halo, Keyes searches for a potential weapons cache, while Master Chief and Cortana mount an assault on the ringworld’s control room. Cortana enters Halo’s computer systems and, after discovering something, sends Master Chief to find and stop Keyes from continuing his search.
Searching for the captain, Master Chief encounters a new enemy, the parasitic Flood. The release of the Flood prompts Halo’s caretaker, the AI 343 Guilty Spark, to enlist Master Chief’s help in activating Halo’s defenses. After Master Chief retrieves the ring’s activation index, 343 Guilty Spark transports him back to Halo’s control room. Cortana intervenes before Master Chief can activate the ring; she has discovered the purpose of the installation is to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, starving the Flood of potential hosts. When Cortana refuses to surrender Halo’s activation index, 343 Guilty Spark attacks her and Master Chief.
To stop Halo’s activation, Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy the installation. Needing Keyes’ neural implant to destroy the Autumn and Halo with it, Master Chief returns to Truth and Reconciliation , only to find that Keyes has been assimilated by the Flood. Retrieving the neural implant with the activation codes from the captain’s remains, Master Chief returns to the Autumn , and manually destabilizes the ship’s reactors, narrowly escaping the ensuing detonation in one of the Autumn’s fighters, while the majority of the remaining Covenant, UNSC forces, and infected Flood are destroyed along with the Halo installation. Cortana justifies their sacrifices and believes their work to be finished, but the Master Chief states that they are only getting started. If the player has completed the game on Legendary difficulty, they will see 343 Guilty Spark has survived Halo’s destruction in a [post-credits scene].
Halo 2:
Setting:
Halo 2 takes place in the 26th century. Humans, under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command or UNSC, have developed faster-than-light slipspace travel and colonized numerous worlds. Human worlds come under attack by a collective of alien races known as the Covenant. Declaring humanity an affront to their gods, the Forerunners, the Covenant begin to obliterate the humans with their superior numbers and technology. After the human planet Reach is destroyed, a single ship, The Pillar of Autumn , follows protocol and initiates a random slipspace jump to lead the Covenant away from Earth. The crew discovers a Forerunner ringworld called Halo. Though the Covenant believe Halo’s activation will lead to divine salvation, the humans discover that the rings are actually weapons, built to contain a terrifying parasite called the Flood. The human supersoldier Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and his AI companion Cortana learn from Halo’s AI monitor, 343 Guilty Spark, that activation of the Halos will destroy all sentient life in the galaxy to prevent the Flood’s spread. Instead of activating the ring, Master Chief and Cortana detonate the Pillar of Autumn’s engines, destroying the installation and preventing the escape of the Flood. Master Chief and Cortana race back to Earth to warn of an impending invasion by Covenant forces.
plot:
Halo 2 opens with the trial of a Covenant Elite commander aboard the Covenant’s capital city-ship of High Charity . For his failure to stop Halo’s destruction, the Elite is stripped of his rank, branded a heretic, and tortured by Tartarus, the Chieftain of the Covenant Brutes. Spared execution, the Covenant leadership—the [High Prophets Truth, Regret, and Mercy—give the Elite the chance to become an Arbiter, a rank given to Elites in times of great crisis or turmoil. As the Arbiter, the Elite quells a rebellion and recovers 343 Guilty Spark. Meanwhile, the Prophet of Regret prepares an attack on Earth, having found its location from a Forerunner device.
On Earth, Fleet Admiral Hood commends the Master Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson for their actions at the first Halo with Commander Miranda Keyes accepting a medal on behalf of her deceased father. A Covenant fleet suddenly appears near Earth. In the ensuing battle, a single ship carrying the Prophet of Regret slips through Earth’s defenses and besieges the African city of New Mombasa. Master Chief assists in repelling the invasion. With his fleet destroyed, Regret makes a hasty slipspace jump, and Keyes, Johnson, Cortana, and the Master Chief follow aboard the UNSC ship In Amber Clad . The crew discovers another Halo installation; realizing the danger the ring presents, Keyes sends Master Chief to kill Regret while she and Johnson search for the Index, Halo’s activation key.
Responding to Regret’s distress call, High Charity and the Covenant fleet arrive at the Halo. After Master Chief kills Regret, the Covenant bombard his location; he falls into a lake, where he is dragged away by tentacles. Regret’s death triggers discord among the races of the Covenant, as the Prophets give the Brutes the Elites’ traditional role as their honor guard. The Arbiter subdues Johnson and Keyes and retrieves the Index. Tartarus appears and reveals that the Prophets have ordered the annihilation of the Elites, and sends the Arbiter falling down a deep chasm.
The Arbiter meets the Master Chief in the bowels of the Halo, brought together by a Flood creature called the Gravemind. The Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the Great Journey is a lie, and sends the two soldiers to different places to stop Halo’s activation. The Master Chief is teleported to High Charity as the Covenant falls into civil war. The Flood-infested *n Amber Clad crashes into the city, and Cortana realizes that the Gravemind used them as a distraction. As the parasite overruns the city, the Prophet of Mercy is consumed. As for Tartarus, the Prophet of Truth consigns him to Halo with Keyes, Johnson, and Guilty Spark to activate the ring. Master Chief follows Truth aboard a Forerunner ship leaving the city; Cortana remains behind to destroy High Charity and Halo if Tartarus succeeds in activating the ring.
On the surface of Halo, the Arbiter joins forces with Johnson and confronts Tartarus in Halo’s control room. When the Arbiter tries to convince Tartarus that the Prophets have betrayed them, Tartarus instead activates the ring, and a battle ensues. The Arbiter and Johnson kill Tartarus while Keyes removes the Index; the unexpected deactivation sets Halo and all the other rings on standby for remote activation from a place 343 Guilty Spark calls “the Ark.” Meanwhile, Truth’s ship arrives at Earth, and Master Chief informs Admiral Hood that he is “finishing this fight.”
In a post-credits scene, Gravemind assumes control of High Charity . Cortana agrees to answer the Flood intelligence’s questions.
Halo 3:
Plot:
Master Chief arrives on Earth in east Africa, where he is found by Johnson and the Arbiter. The Chief and company return to a UNSC outpost where Keyes and Lord Hood plan a final effort to stop the Covenant leader, the High Prophet of Truth, from activating a Forerunner artifact the Covenant have excavated. The Chief clears anti-air Covenant defenses so Hood can lead the last of Earth’s ships against the Prophet, but Truth activates the buried artifact, creating a slipspace portal which he and his followers enter. A Flood-infested ship crash-lands nearby; Elite forces arrive and vitrify the Flood-infected areas of Earth, stopping the threat. Following a message Cortana left aboard the Flood ship, the Chief, Arbiter, Elites, Johnson, Keyes and their troops follow Truth through the portal. Joining them is 343 Guilty Spark, who -Yoink!- the Chief as he has no function to fulfill after the destruction of his ringworld.
Traveling through the portal, the humans and Elites discover an immense artificial structure known as the Ark, far beyond the edges of the Milky Way galaxy. Here, Truth can remotely activate all the Halos. The Flood arrive aboard High Charity in full force, beginning to infest the installation. Truth captures Johnson, as he needs a human to use Forerunner technology. Keyes is killed attempting a rescue, and Johnson is forced to activate the rings. Gravemind forges a truce with the Chief and Arbiter to stop Truth and defeat the remainder of his army, rescuing Johnson and halting the installations’ activation. After the Arbiter kills Truth, Gravemind turns on the Chief and Arbiter.
The Chief, Arbiter and Guilty Spark discover that the Ark is constructing another Halo to replace the one that the Chief previously destroyed. The Chief decides to activate this Halo; the ringworld would eliminate the Flood infestation on the Ark while sparing the galaxy at large from destruction. To activate the ring, the Chief rescues Cortana, who has the Activation Index of the destroyed Halo, from High Charity and destroys the city. Arriving on the new Halo, Cortana warns that Gravemind is trying to rebuild itself on the ring. The Chief, Arbiter, and Johnson travel to Halo’s control room to activate the ring. Guilty Spark explains that because the ring is not yet complete, a premature activation will destroy it and the Ark. When Johnson ignores his warning, Guilty Spark fatally wounds him to protect “his” ring. Although the Chief destroys Guilty Spark, Johnson soon dies of his injuries. Chief activates the ring, and escapes the ring’s self-destruction on the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn . However, the force of Halo’s blast causes the slipspace portal to collapse, resulting in only the front half of Forward Unto Dawn , carrying the Arbiter, making it back to Earth.
A memorial service is held on Earth for the fallen heroes of the Human-Covenant war, during which the Arbiter and Lord Hood briefly exchange words regarding the fallen Master Chief. After the memorial service, the Arbiter and his Elite brethren depart for their home planet. Meanwhile, the rear half of the Forward Unto Dawn drifts in unknown space. Cortana drops a distress beacon, but acknowledges it may be many years before they are rescued. As the Master Chief enters cryonic sleep, Cortana confides to him that she will miss him, but he comforts her by telling her “wake me when you need me.” If the game is completed at the Legendary difficulty level, the scene continues to show the piece of Forward Unto Dawn drifting towards an unknown planet, setting up the events of Halo 4 .
Halo: Reach
setting:
Reach takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting; the year is 2552, shortly before the events of the video game Halo: Combat Evolved , . Humans, under the auspices of the [United Nations Space Command (UNSC), have been waging a long war against a collective of alien races known as the Covenant. By the events of Reach , almost all of humanity’s interstellar colonies have fallen. Reach itself is an Earth-like colony that serves as the UNSC’s main military hub. The colony is home to over 700 million civilians in addition to the military presence there.
The game follows the actions of “Noble Team”, a UNSC special operations unit composed of elite supersoldiers known as Spartans. Players assume the role of a new addition to the team identified by the call sign Noble Six. Noble Team’s leader is Carter-A259, a no-nonsense soldier. His second-in-command, Catherine-B320 (referred to by other team members as “Kat”), has a bionic arm; together, Carter and Kat are the only remaining original members of Noble Team. The other current members include heavy weapons specialist and surviving Spartan-II Jorge-052, assault specialist Emile-A239, and marksman Jun-A266.
plot:
Noble Six meets the rest of Noble Team, shortly before they are dispatched to investigate why a communications relay has gone offline. They discover Covenant forces have invaded Reach. The team is relocated to defend Sword Base, an Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) installation, from a Covenant assault. After repelling the attack, Noble Team meets Catherine Halsey, a scientist and the mastermind behind the Spartan program and their MJOLNIR powered armor. Halsey inquires about Noble’s engagement at the relay, suspecting the Covenant were attempting to retrieve highly classified ONI data from the site.
Jun and Noble Six discover an invasion force gathering on the planet. The UNSC launches an assault the next morning to repel the invasion. Noble Team assists the strike force, targeting key artillery stations and command posts. A cloaked Covenant supercarrier reveals itself; lacking a conventional weapon to destroy the carrier, Jorge and Six smuggle a slipspace engine onto a Covenant corvette en route to refuel at the carrier. With the detonator damaged, Jorge remains behind to detonate the engine, destroying the Covenant super carrier. Another Covenant fleet arrives at Reach soon afterwards.
Back on Reach, Noble Six assists with city defense and civilian evacuation at New Alexandria, and reunites with Noble Team. Kat is killed by a Covenant sniper. Recalled to Sword Base for a demolition mission, Noble Team is redirected underground by Halsey to an ancient alien artifact, which she believes is vital to winning the war against the Covenant. Noble Team is entrusted with transporting the artificial intelligence Cortana and the data on the artifact to the UNSC Pillar of Autumn , docked at a shipyard. Jun leaves the team to escort Halsey off Reach.
En route to the Pillar of Autumn’, Carter is critically wounded and sacrifices himself to allow Six and Emile to reach the shipyard. Emile uses a mass driver emplacement to defend the Autumn against aircraft while Six fights through Covenant ground forces to get Cortana to Autumn’s captain, Jacob Keyes. When Emile is slain by Elites, Six remains behind to operate the gun and ensures Autumn’s escape. Using the data from the alien artifact, Autumn discovers a Halo ringworld, leading to the events of Halo: Combat Evolved . In a post-credits scene, Six fights a last stand against overwhelming Covenant forces. Decades later, Six’s helmet remains on the grassy plains of a now-restored Reach. A narration by Halsey eulogizes Noble Team, who enabled humanity’s victory over the Covenant.
Halo 4:
Setting:
Halo 4 takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting in the year 2557, four years after the events of Halo 3 . Backstory details that hundreds of thousands of years before the modern era, humans were one of several interstellar civilizations. Following a war with the parasitic Flood, the humans came into conflict with the Forerunners, a powerful race that upheld a policy of benevolent shepherding of other races known as the Mantle of Responsibility. After centuries of war the Forerunners defeated the humans and stripped them of their technology and empire. The Forerunners soon fought the Flood themselves; after exhausting every other strategic option available to them, the Forerunners activated weapons of mass destruction known as the Halo Array. The Array’s firing killed all sentient life in the galaxy to deprive the Flood of their food. Life that the Forerunners cataloged was then reseeded throughout the galaxy.
In the 26th century, humanity came under attack by the Covenant, an alien collective of species that worship the Forerunners as gods. The human supersoldier Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and his artificial intelligence companion Cortana, were instrumental in stopping the Halos from being activated, sterilizing the Flood outbreak before they could menace the galaxy once again, and defeating the Covenant resulting in the end of the war. At the end of Halo 3 , Chief and Cortana were left stranded in unknown space aboard the remains of the vessel Forward Unto Dawn.
plot:
Forward Unto Dawn drifts towards an unknown Forerunner planet, later revealed to be the shield world Requiem. Cortana wakes Master Chief from cryonic sleep shortly before forces from a newly formed Covenant splinter faction board the vessel. The remnants of Forward Unto Dawn are caught in Requiem’s gravity well and pass through an opening to crash-land on its interior. As Chief and Cortana explore Requiem, fighting hostile forces from the new Covenant faction and mechanical warriors called “Promethean Knights”, Cortana malfunctions. She reveals that she is experiencing “rampancy”, a declining mental state faced by smart AIs past their usual seven-year life span. Chief promises to get Cortana to Earth, believing that Cortana’s creator, Doctor Catherine Halsey, can fix Cortana’s condition. Chief and Cortana pick up garbled transmissions from a human ship, UNSC Infinity , who have picked up the Dawn’s distress call. Cortana attempts to warn Infinity away from Requiem’s gravity well and directs the Chief to deactivate what she believes are communications jammers. Instead, the Chief unwittingly releases the Didact, an ancient Forerunner warrior, from imprisonment. The Didact, who deems Man unworthy of the Mantle of Responsibility, takes control of the Prometheans and the Covenant faction, then attacks Infinity after it is dragged into Requiem.
Chief makes contact with Infinity and helps repel the Didact’s attack. Chief and Cortana recommend attacking the Didact while he is vulnerable, but Infinity captain Del Rio orders them to destroy the gravity well so their ship can escape. In the process, Chief is contacted by a Forerunner known as the Librarian—the wife of the Didact, as well as ancient humanity’s protector. She explains that the Forerunners were divided on how best to combat the Flood. After failing to discover a way to immunize biological beings from the parasite, the Didact used a device called the Composer to convert the warriors under his command into Promethean Knights immune to infection. Requiring more soldiers, the Didact forcibly converted captured humans into Prometheans, before being stopped and imprisoned by the Librarian. The Librarian, who has guided humanity’s development, accelerates the Chief’s evolution to grant him immunity to the Composer.
After destroying the gravity well, Del Rio orders a retreat back to Earth, doubting the Chief and Cortana’s testimony. The Master Chief disobeys orders to stand down and relinquish the malfunctioning Cortana, and stays behind to oppose the Didact. Chief and Cortana attempt to sabotage the Didact’s ship before he leaves, but are unsuccessful. They follow the Didact to a Halo ring, Installation 03. The Composer has been moved from the ring onto the nearby Ivanoff Research Station, which the Covenant faction attacks. The Chief defends Ivanoff, but the Didact retrieves the Composer and uses it on the station, composing every individual save Chief.
Chief and Cortana use a fighter to follow the Didact’s ship to Earth. Aided by Infinity and the home fleet, the Chief boards the Didact’s ship with a nuclear warhead. Cortana inserts copies of herself into the Didact’s computer systems to overwhelm the Didact’s shield, but not before the Didact directs the Composer at Earth. With the help of Cortana, the Chief defeats the Didact, who falls into a portal underneath the Composer. The Master Chief activates the bomb but is saved by Cortana, who sacrifices herself. The Chief is found by a rescue team and is taken back to Infinity , where he mourns the loss of Cortana. In a post-credits cutscene, the Didact proclaims the Forerunners’ role as custodians of the galaxy having to bear the Mantle of Responsibility, and humanity as the greatest threat in the galaxy. Master Chief removes his armor aboard Infinity ; if the player completes the game on Legendary difficulty, the Chief’s heavily scarred face is briefly shown.
Halo 5: Guardians:
Setting:
Halo 5: Guardians takes place in the year 2558, and is set eight months after the events of Halo 4 . The game follows the Spartan fireteams Blue and Osiris. Blue Team is led by Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and is composed of the Spartan-II teammates he fought alongside in the timeframe before Halo: Combat Evolved, Petty Officer Second Class Linda-058, an elite sniper; Petty Officer Second Class Kelly-087, a scout known for her incredible speed and John’s closest friend; and Lieutenant Junior Grade Frederic-104, who is Blue Team’s highest-ranking officer and hand-to-hand combat specialist, but defers to Master Chief. The members of Blue Team are all Spartan-IIs, augmented super soldiers who were abducted and trained as children; they are among the last Spartan-IIs left alive. Fireteam Osiris comprises Spartan-IVs, a newer generation of Spartans who joined the program as adult members of the military. Fireteam Osiris is led by Jameson Locke, a former assassin and acquisitions agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and skilled tracker. The other members of Fireteam Osiris are: Holly Tanaka, a combat technician and engineer in the UNSC Army and a survivor of a Covenant attack on her world; Olympia Vale, a political liaison and signals intelligence agent with ONI who can speak many of the Covenant’s dialects, most notably Sangheili; and Edward Buck, a veteran former Orbital Drop Shock Trooper with over 180 combat missions of experience, who was a main character and leader of squad Alpha-Nine in Halo 3: ODST
Supporting characters include Infinity’s commanding officer, Captain Thomas Lasky; Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer, head of operations for all Spartan IV teams on board Infinity ; Roland, Infinity’s shipboard AI, and Dr. Catherine Halsey, a scientist who created the SPARTAN-II program. Other returning characters include the Arbiter Thel 'Vadam now leading the species as the Swords of Sanghelios against a Covenant remnant faction, led by Jul 'Mdama. Cortana, Master Chief’s former AI companion who was presumed dead after the events of Halo 4 , also returns.
Plot:
Fireteam Osiris is deployed to the planet of Kamchatka, occupied by Jul 'Mdama’s splinter Covenant faction, to retrieve the rogue Dr. Halsey and her intel amidst a battle between Covenant forces and the Prometheans. Halsey claims to have information on a series of devastating attacks on several human worlds. While the team is successful in retrieving Halsey and eliminating the Covenant faction’s leader Jul 'Mdama, Halsey informs them that a new threat is about to emerge.
Elsewhere, the Master Chief leads Blue Team on a mission to secure a derelict ONI research station known as Argent Moon. The arrival of Jul 'Mdama’s Covenant fleet forces Blue Team to scuttle the station instead. During the sabotage, the Chief receives a cryptic message from Cortana, directing him to the planet Meridian. John is ordered to return to Infinity upon destroying Argent Moon, but he and Blue Team disobey orders and set out after Cortana, forcing Captain Lasky to list the rogue Spartans as AWOL. This causes consternation aboard Infinity , as Halsey believes that Cortana’s survival through the use of Forerunner technology makes her unpredictable and untrustworthy.
Lasky tasks Fireteam Osiris with finding and capturing Blue Team. Osiris is deployed to Meridian to pursue Blue Team, where they find a human colony under attack by Promethean forces. During their pursuit, they encounter the Warden Eternal, a Promethean serving as Cortana’s enforcer. After temporarily defeating the Warden, Osiris catches up to Blue Team, ordering them to stand down and return to Infinity . Chief bests Locke in hand-to-hand combat and flees with the rest of Blue Team as they board a Guardian, one of several colossal Forerunner constructs built as enforcers of entire worlds. Osiris barely escape the colony’s collapse as the Guardian activates and disappears. The Guardian emerges on the Forerunner planet Genesis, where John and Cortana reunite. Cortana says her terminal rampancy was cured by the same Forerunner technology that saved her.
Osiris is deployed to the Sangheili homeworld of Sanghelios, where they plan to use a dormant Guardian that resides there to travel to Blue Team’s location. However, the planet is engulfed in civil war; the remaining forces of Jul 'Mdama’s Covenant have chosen to make their last stand there. To hurry their mission, Osiris joins forces with the Arbiter and help him strike a crucial blow at Jul’s Covenant. Osiris boards a Guardian with the help of Commander Palmer while the Arbiter finishes off the last troops of the Covenant faction.
On Genesis, Osiris encounters the planet’s caretaker, the artificial intelligence 031 Exuberant Witness, who allies with them to stop Cortana. Osiris catches up to Blue Team, who reveal Cortana is planning on using the Guardians to achieve galactic peace through forcible disarmament. Master Chief, aware of the massive devastation Cortana’s plan will cause, attempts to convince Cortana to stand down. She refuses and confines Blue Team in a Forerunner prison, to prevent them from interfering with her plan. Osiris manages to transfer control of Genesis back to Exuberant, who wrests the prison from Cortana as she leaves the planet via a Guardian.
Artificial intelligences across the galaxy begin swearing allegiance to Cortana and her plans. Cortana locates Infinity and prepares to disable it, but Lasky has the ship’s AI Roland, who is still loyal to Infinity , engage slipspace away from Earth and commit to random jumps until they can develop a way to combat Cortana. With Blue Team recovered, Osiris returns to Sanghelios to reunite the SPARTAN-IIs with an injured Commander Palmer, Thel 'Vadam, and Halsey. If the player completes the game on Legendary, an extra cutscene shows an unknown Halo installation powering up while Cortana hums, before cutting to black
And That’s That folks.
Hope you found this helpful. I did leave out Halo 3: ODST because it didn’t immediately pertain to Halo Saga. Halo Infinite is the spiritual reboot we needed because frankly, the last 2 Halo games weren’t really Halo as much as they were Call Of Duty Multiplayer and “poorly written story”
In the comments, rate the Halo games from Best-Worst. Recommend the best and most fun Halo games and guide new coming Halo gamers into the right place to fully enjoy the saga