The Halo series has become one of the most influential first-person shooters in video game history, known for innovative game mechanics and complex plots which prove that a fun action game can be just as epic and story-driven as a good roleplaying game. But when the first game of the franchise started development, it wasn’t envisioned as being the beginning of a series of games – or even as an FPS.
Though Halo is now almost synonymous with Microsoft, the first game in the series was first publically announced at Apple’s Macworld Conference & Expo in 1999. At the time the game’s developer, Bungie, was creating Halo as a real-time strategy game; it became a third-person action game by the time the first trailer for the game was released at E3 2000.
In June 2000, Microsoft acquired Bungie and announced that Halo would now be an exclusive game for its upcoming console, the Xbox. Halo was changed into an FPS and the planned online multiplayer aspect of it was scrapped because the Xbox’s online service, Xbox Live, wouldn’t be ready in time for the game’s release. The game, renamed Halo: Combat Evolved, launched on the same day as the Xbox: November 15, 2001.
Halo: Combat Evolved takes place in the 26th century, when humanity has colonized other planets. The player takes on the role of Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (or simply “Master Chief”), a “supersoldier” developed as part of the SPARTAN-II project on the human-colonized planet Reach. Master Chief is one of the few survivors of an attack on Reach by the Covenant, a group of advanced alien races dedicated to wiping out all of humanity for religious reasons. After his fleeing ship crashes on a mysterious ring-shaped structure the Covenant calls “Halo,” Master Chief – accompanied by a group of Marines and the AI construct Cortana – must battle against the Covenant, a parasitic alien race known as the Flood, and robotic drone Sentinels to save his ship’s captured captain, stop the Flood, and destroy the Halo.
Read the full version of this article in The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Video Games, available this fall!
