Christmas, 2001. Leaving for winter break, a friend of mine couldn’t stop talking about a book that he had read “The Fall of Reach.” He was so excited as he spoke, I was sure that he wasn’t breathing. When he did stop to breathe, he said “Oh yeah, they also just made a game of the book!” A game? Based off a book? My 13-year-old brain couldn’t comprehend that. I wanted to check it out, but my heart sunk when he told me it was for X-Box, I only had an N64 and that was tough to get as my dad had recently been laid off, sometimes even McDonald’s was a luxury we could not afford. My friend smiled and handed me his copy of the book, “Here borrow this. I’ve already read it 5 or 6 times! See you when school starts up again!”
I had never been exposed to military-fiction before. In my household, science-fiction of all flavors were the staple, just not military-fiction. At first, I had a hard time with all the intricate details about the weapons and the biological upgrades and wasn’t sure it was for me. As we were leaving to go see “The Fellowship of the Ring,” my mom – a lifetime LOTR fan, and the biggest supporter of reading – reminded me to pick up that book that I had borrowed. When we drove home and she had the biggest smile from seeing something she had always imagined put to screen, I decided to give the book another go. And I loved it.
A few years went by where I didn’t necessarily think of the franchise. However, in 2003, my best-friend decided to host a LAN party for several games, StarCraft, Unreal Tournament, and Halo. I had some experience with UT already, so I thought I knew what I was getting in with Halo CTF, but that doesn’t quite hit the mark. I vividly remember how the Spartans were described in the book, and I wasn’t sure that a video game could live up to that. I quickly saw that the Spartans in the game were something else. Flipping tanks with their bare hands, melee powerful enough to kill each other, as well as towering above all the other character models – for the brief period we played campaign before returning to CTF. Sure, there are some things described in that first book – and the subsequent ones – that you haven’t been able to do in game, but man did it feel awesome. I’d go over to my friend’s every day, and we would play through the campaign together. Soon, my younger brother wanted to come after hearing about how awesome this game was and would always make sure we had a gunner in our Warthog – that being the main thing he liked to do, not because I was trying to pigeonhole him into “Luigi Syndrome.”
Another year went by, and while our family wasn’t exactly well-off, we were in a better financial position than we had been in a few years ago. We got a secondhand X-Box and a secondhand copy of Halo 2 (which was odd because the game had only been out one month, but I guess somebody didn’t like it). I played it all over Christmas break and I remember being so elated when Chief told Hood that he “was going to give the Covenant back their bomb,” and how angry I was when the game ended on a cliffhanger – thinking that maybe I had picked up an incomplete copy. But my confusion aside, I was also introduced to something entirely new, X-Box Live. My brother and I would play Halo all day after school as we tried to get better. Well, he mostly still wanted to just shoot people in the Warthog. There were other games, of course, namely Super Smash Brothers Melee and Soul Calibur 2, but Halo is the one that kept our attention the most, day after day, year after year. Later that school year, I was doing a presentation and the only way it was going to work was with a projector, so I got to borrow one from the school for a few days. My brother and I stayed up all night for several nights – much to our parents’ annoyance – projecting Halo on the side of the room in 20-foot glory. It was amazing.
When 2007 rolled around, I had started working and had saved up for an X-Box 360 for one reason. Halo 3. My brother and I still played everyday that we could, but that was getting hard now that I was in college and he took up motocross as a hobby. I’ve always enjoyed gaming, that has always been my favorite hobby. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would come to be diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, and something about Halo always resonated with me. I think you could say that there are themes about being powerful and overcoming overwhelming odds, or that there would be a brighter future ahead, but I think it is something simpler. Halo is just fun. I’ve always had a great time playing, I was at the midnight launch for both Reach and 4, and I even picked up a copy of MCC of X-Box One since I was planning on getting the One – but it ended up getting a permanent place on my bookshelf. I never had enough spare cash or spare time to get an X-Box One. In the years after it came out, I had moved 4 different times in 2 different states, and it wasn’t until 2017 that I was finally “settled.”
Over the years, I’ve grown with Halo, and sometimes apart from it. I’ve always enjoyed video games, but at the same time it easy to get lost in something that you love, especially with depression. Day by day, I got better at managing my depression so I wasn’t at the point where I would just get lost in a game all day, but I also wouldn’t go the other route and completely lock myself out of doing something fun. Like many of you, I had to find a time for school, a job, friends, and a life. It is all about balance. In 2017, I hadn’t turned on my 360 for the better part of 2 years, in favor of playing PC.
Late in 2018, I started dating someone who worked for The Ronald McDonald House, and I had an idea. My X-Box, and notably Halo, had given me a lot of entertainment over the years, I thought it might be time to say goodbye to the franchise. I donated my 360 and all my games (although I did keep the special edition Reach and 4 since I managed to have regular copies of both) to the house, hoping that someone would get as much enjoyment out of those as I had over the past decade plus.
I looked over the Noble Team statue guarding my bookcase and realized that even though I didn’t have the means to play the games anymore, that didn’t mean that I had to be done with the series. Despite loving “Fall of Reach,” I had never read any of the other books. I picked up a few of them and remembered why I had loved the series so much. Halo is just fun. Then Master Chief Collection for the PC was announced, and I couldn’t help but smile – and play. Halo has been one major constant in my life, and I’m glad to see that it will be with me in the long haul with Infinite coming out. Today – the 12th – is my 33rd birthday, and I spun up the first mission of CE as the clock struck midnight, smiling as I did.