Category Archives: Game Logs

Halo Fest 2020 – Forward Unto Dawn

The Story So Far: As the Forerunner dreadnought, the Anodyne Spirit, enters Earth’s atmosphere, Master Chief makes a hasty escape, relying only on his armor and a piece of the ship’s heat shielding for protection. Rescued by UNSC and separatist Sangheili Elites troops, the Master Chief is then sent to help clear Covenant air defenses deployed to protect the Prophet of Truth as he attempts to activate a Forerunner artifact excavated near New Mombasa. While successful, the UNSC isn’t able to prevent Truth from activating the artifact, which creates a massive slipspace portal. As Truth and the remaining Covenant fleet jump through the portal, a Flood infested UNSC ship crash-lands nearby, though Elite forces move quickly to contain the Flood threat. Following a message left by Cortana hinting that a way to stop the Flood exists on the other side of the portal, the Elite fleet, accompanied by a small UNSC force and 343 Guilty Spark, travels through it, leading them to a massive Forerunner Halo control and construction installation called the Ark. Master Chief, along with the Arbiter and a squad of UNSC marines, head to the surface to stop Truth from remotely activating the remaining Halo rings. High Charity, now fully controlled by the Flood, jumps in and the Flood begin their own assault on the Ark. The Covenant succeed in activating the rings prompting the Gravemind to offer Master Chief and the Arbiter a truce. With the Flood’s assistance, the pair fight their way through the Prophet of Truth’s remaining forces, killing him and halting the activation. With the threat of the Halos being activated out of the way, the Flood immediately turn on their new allies. Devising a plan to wipe out the remaining Flood by activating the still under construction Halo Installation 04 replacement ring, Master Chief heads to the Flood infested High Charity to recover Cortana. Despite 343 Guilty Spark attempting to stop them, Cortana is able to activate the incomplete ring and the Master Chief, Cortana, and the Arbiter make a last minute escape aboard the now abandoned UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn. The activation of the incomplete ring causes it to self-destruct, destroying the Ark and the Flood along with it as planned. An unintended side effect of the destruction, the slipspace portal ruptures just as the Forward Unto Dawn is traveling through it, ripping the ship in half, and stranding the Master Chief and Cortana in unknown space. While the Arbiter makes it through the portal, the Master Chief is presumed dead.

Now, before we jump into Halo 4, it’s worth a brief mention that the Halo: CE Anniversary was released in 2011. These days it’s usually thought of as a foundational piece of the Master Chief Collection, but it was a standalone Xbox 360 release first. I’ve already talked a bit about the Anniversary edition when talking about Halo: CE, which has continued to be improved in the MCC even since that post, but there was, no surprise, another live action trailer around its release. No real story here, it simply depicts a UNSC Commander giving a speech at some sort of a remembrance ceremony. Not bad, but entirely skippable.

“Our protagonist, a very young Thomas Lasky.”

Moving on to 2012, no, this isn’t about Halo 4, but Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. I didn’t necessarily plan on giving Forward Unto Dawn its own post, but between its plot setup and its release date, I suppose it makes the most sense to talk about it separately first. Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn is really the culmination of these sorts of live action promotional shorts, at least up to this point. Another marketing effort itself, Forward Unto Dawn was released as five 15 minute web shorts and then compiled into a single movie for a DVD release, which makes it the closest thing we had to a Halo movie by 2012. I watched it around the time I played through Halo 4 and was pleasantly surprised that it actually surpassed my (admittedly, rather low) expectations. In fact, in my brief original post about Halo 4 I joked that I probably enjoyed Forward Unto Dawn more than Halo 4’s campaign. I’m curious about how that statement holds up.

So it’s not Halo 4 proper, but what is Forward Unto Dawn about? Well, for the first time in this series I think I’m going to go ahead and recap its plot in the same post as I just recapped the previous game’s. The reason for that is, despite being set immediately following the events of Halo 3 described above (and also depicted in the Origins sections of Halo: Legends) the movie is essentially one big flashback. That means it mostly takes place out of chronological order from the main series and the parts that don’t are more setup for Halo 4 rather than plot spoilers. As usual, while I’m fairly vague in these plot summaries they absolutely do still contain spoilers, so skip the next two paragraphs if you want to avoid them.

“The freshmen of Hastati squad bonding over some light illegal espionage.”

The Story: Commander Lasky, executive officer of the UNSC Infinity, reviews a distress signal sent by the AI Cortana aboard the UNSC frigate Forward Unto Dawn. This triggers a flashback to his time as a cadet at the Corbulo Academy of Military Science on Circinius IV some 30 years earlier. The son of a high ranking officer and brother of another graduate of CAMS who became an elite ODST trooper, Lasky was under a lot of pressure to perform. With ailing health due to cryosleep sickness and grief over the loss of his brother, Lasky began developing a reckless disregard for orders, causing his squad to underperform in combat exercises and leading to him to clashing with his classmates. With the help of one of his professors, Lasky has a breakthrough just before the last combat exercise of the term and leads his squad to a major victory. His sickness worsening, Lasky is given the option of being medically discharged from the academy. As he contemplates his future, a campus-wide alarm sounds and he and his classmates gather at the academy’s space elevator to evacuate. As ODST drop pods land all around them, Covenant corvettes appear overhead and destroy the elevator. Fleeing in terror from this unknown threat, Lasky and his classmates seek refuge as Covenant attackers viciously cut down anyone they see. Unsuccessfully attempting to breach an armory, the cadets are forced to hide from an Elite Zealot stalking them. Just as the Elite is about to find them it’s struck down by an SPARTAN-II. As unknown to them as the Covenant aliens, the cadets cautiously follow the Spartan, who introduces himself as Master Chief before helping to arm them and leading them to an evacuation site. Clashing with more Covenant forces along the way, the few shell-shocked surviving cadets, including Lasky, eventually board a Pelican with Master Chief and the other Spartans of his squad. Back on the Infinity, the ship and its escorts prepare to jump to the origin of Cortana’s signal. Meanwhile, Cortana considers waking Master Chief from cryosleep as the wreckage of the Forward Unto Dawn is pulled off course.

My favorite aspect of the story is that Lasky’s flashback takes place before the existence of the Covenant and even the Spartan program were declassified, and Forward Unto Dawn does an excellent job at conveying that. Seeing the cadets’ wonder at Sullivan’s footage depicting these huge, armor clad soldiers, the panic as they realize the ODST dropping at the school is a really bad sign, their confusion and shock as Covenant ships appear overhead, how terrifying the Covenant Elites hunting them down are, and their awe over Master Chief’s size, strength, and professionalism: it’s all great and helps ground some of the more fantastical elements of Halo that have been somewhat taken for granted in the games. Not only that, but the sheer badassery of Master Chief in contrast to what we’d seen from these young cadets up to this point (further contrasted with how slow the first 2/3s of the movie is) is a great moment of fan service that I loved almost as much during this viewing as I did the first time around.

“Master Chief firing his AR one-handed for extra cool points.”

For a web series, Forward Unto Dawn is surprisingly solid on the production front. The actors are all at least adequate, the direction is, I suppose, fine, and the score, peppered with the excellent tracks from Halo 4 as well as callbacks to earlier games, is good. Besides the fact that most of the action takes place in some very dark environments being a bit of a cheat, CGI is used fairly subtly, and the costumes, props, and practical effects look pretty good (with that old Weta Workshop Warthog making yet another appearance!) It absolutely is not, however, the big budget Halo movie that no doubt both Microsoft and Hollywood executives have been hoping will have major crossover appeal at the box office for years on end now. I believe that by this time any serious efforts tied to the Peter Jackson produced effort had died off, although it seems that the idea was never completely abandoned. After what seems like an eternity, its current incarnation, a gritty Showtime series (now bound for Paramount+) just got a teaser trailer this week.

In conclusion, Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn might not do an awful lot to fill any story gaps as we go into Halo 4, but it did at least help build the excitement for its launch. More importantly, it still stands up as a solid entry in the expanded media of the franchise, even if it is a bit of a side story. I’d easily recommend it to Halo fans, but this sadly isn’t the one that is going to win over masses of non-gamers.

“Capt. Del Rio: ‘Red means bad, right?'”

While we’re here, the CG Halo 4 teaser trailer “Awakening” from 2011 shows Cortana waking Chief up and him scrambling to survey the situation, only to find his chunk of the Forward Unto Dawn being pulled towards a massive constructed object that resembles the Forerunner Shield World we encountered in Halo Wars. More notably, the live-action Halo 4 trailer “The Commissioning” released later in 2012 shows the commencement ceremony for the UNSC Infinity’s new mission as Captain Del Rio gives a speech. As the trailer continues, we see the Infinity sometime later being scanned by a mysterious orange light, then erupting in chaos as systems malfunction and crewmembers strain from the pressure as the ship is pulled to the very same object. Pretty cool trailer, and I think I’d chalk this one up as essential as well. More about what is actually going on here when we get to Halo 4 itself, of course!

Halo Fest 2020 – Reach

Even more than with Halo 3: ODST, I was hyped-up for the release of Halo: Reach. By this time we knew that Reach was going to be Bungie’s last Halo game and between previews and Bungie’s own PR, it sounded like they had every intention of sending the series off with a bang. While I was a bit disappointed that early rumors of Reach being a more squad tactics oriented game were never realized, the game we ended up with was still my favorite entry in the series up to that point (at least, when I’m not nostalgically giving that credit to Halo: CE.) As with ODST, I only really played through Reach’s campaign once, just after its release, and I was looking forward to playing through it again. I wasn’t disappointed.

“Everyone to the cave for a team meeting!”

Despite my praise, Halo: Reach ended up being controversial to much of the hardcore fanbase for various reasons, from its lore departures from most people’s introduction to Halo fiction, The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, to a plethora of mechanical adjustments that, while seemingly small on the surface, drastically changed the landscape of multiplayer – from overpowered and gimmicky armor abilities such as armor lock, jetpacks, and sprint, to reticle bloom and the overreliance on Forge-built maps, just to mention the highlights. Even today Reach is blamed for killing the Halo competitive scene, beginning a downward spiral as Halo headed into the 343 Industries years. Thankfully, being relatively casual multiplayer players, me and my friends didn’t have too many complaints on this front. The game felt a little different, sure, but each iteration does, and hey, fucking jetpacks!

Halo: Reach was added as part of the Master Chief Collection almost 10 years after its original release, and of course, that’s how I played it on my Xbox Series X for this playthrough. Like MCC’s Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, Reach didn’t receive a remaster as much as a straight port with requisite improvements to its resolution, textures, and framerate. That’s okay, as Reach was certainly a major technical leap from Halo 3 if not one of the Xbox 360’s best looking games, period. It’s just an amazingly beautiful game all around, and it still holds up rather well today thanks to the abundance of care and polish Bungie put into it. Save for some occasionally stiff looking character animations and some odd looking facial and hair texture and lightning issues, it even manages to look fairly modern.

“MY gravity hammer!”

Iterative technical improvements aren’t anything new for the series, of course, but one major departure from the rest of the Halo games is the story. While still conjuring the typical themes of heroism against overwhelming odds, sacrifice, like, real loss of life sacrifice, is a huge theme in Reach. As such, the game has a much darker, more mature story than any other Halo game. Characters die, the heroes of the story aren’t conventionally victorious, and as such, Reach is utterly lost to the Covenant. Hopefully none of that was too spoilery. In fact, since this is a side story taking place out of chronological order from the main series anyway, I’ll recap the plot now. While I’m fairly vague in these plot summaries they absolutely do still contain spoilers, so skip the next two paragraphs if you want to avoid them.

The Story: NOBLE Team, a SPARTAN special operations fireteam assigned to the colony world Reach, is dispatched to investigate a blackout at a major communication hub. NOBLE quickly discovers a Covenant advanced team in the area, triggering a planet-wide emergency declaration. A short time later NOBLE participates in a reconnaissance mission that leads to the discovery of a large invasion force gathering on the planet’s surface. In response, the UNSC launches a massive preemptive strike, taking down a number of Covenant teleportation spires and anti-air batteries before progress comes to a devastating halt when the Covenant supercarrier Long Night of Solace appears. Lacking sufficient weapons to take down the supercarrier, NOBLE is dispatched on a mission to commandeer the slipspace drive from a UNSC frigate, infiltrate a Covenant corvette, and then detonate the drive close enough to the supercarrier to cripple it. Manually detonating the drive, NOBLE-5 successfully destroys the ship, though sacrificing himself in the effort. Victory is extremely short lived as an enormous Covenant fleet jumps into orbit only a short time later. NOBLE team is assigned to assist evacuation efforts in the city of New Alexandria during which NOBLE-2 is killed in action and the city is completely annihilated. With a full withdrawal now underway, NOBLE is dispatched to ONI Sword Base on a demolition mission. Fighting their way into the base, the team is led into a secret research facility built around a large underground Forerunner ruin where they meet Dr. Halsey, the head scientist behind the Spartan program. Halsey tasks the team with carrying new information that she believes will be vital to the war effort safely off world. NOBLE-3 accompanies Halsey while the remainder of the team head to the shipyard where the UNSC cruiser Pillar of Autumn is waiting to depart. NOBLE-1 sacrifices himself clearing the way for NOBLE-4 and NOBLE-6, who manage to clear the shipyard, repelling multiple waves of Covenant attackers before NOBLE-4 is killed. NOBLE-6 delivers the package to Captain Keyes but elects to stay behind to man an anti-air battery, helping the Pillar of Autumn to escape. NOBLE-6 is eventually overcome while the Pillar of Autumn jumps to safety where it is revealed that Dr. Halsey’s information is contained in the AI Cortana and that the Pillar of Autumn has just jumped to Halo Installation 04.

“There are so many beautifully framed cutscenes but this one was especially poignant.”

The focus on Master Chief as the hero of the series has mythologized the idea that Spartans are practically demi-gods so actually seeing them dying left and right in a Bungie developed Halo game was, hopefully, a bit of a wake up call, even if most of them being SPARTAN-IIIs provides something of an out for diehard fanboys. The events of Reach also send home how overwhelmed humanity was by the Covenant. They had the technical and numerical superiority and a fanatical cause driving them, and humanity was being systematically wiped out. Finally, I love how the end of the game brings the series full circle, with the last moments of the campaign being precisely where Halo: Combat Evolved starts. Knowing that NOBLE’s sacrifice directly led to and enabled the events of the main trilogy made it all the more effective, putting a positive spin on an otherwise somber story. It also managed to conjure up some unexpected but powerful nostalgic emotion in me, even the second time through.

Appropriately, Bungie seemed to go back to the original game for a lot of inspiration. Based on original designs, the Covenant species feel more alien and more menacing. Even those adorable little grunts are less overtly silly and are all-around tougher than they’ve ever been before. In fact, playing through Reach on “Heroic” felt a lot more like the difficulty of Halo: CE or even Halo 2 than Halo 3 or ODST. While I don’t remember being utterly stuck at any point, I definitely feel like I had a lot more back to back deaths this time around. Part of that was due to Reach’s reliance on Firefight arena style map sections where you’d need to defeat wave after wave of enemies before moving on. I know ODST is the game with the reputation for overusing this mechanic, but I honestly felt it more with Reach.

“Kat and I taking our new Revenant out for a spin.”

There were plenty of departures too. The aforementioned “armor abilities” were probably the biggest single change to the Halo formula. Replacing Halo 3’s equipment system, armor abilities allow the player to activate a single on-demand power, most governed by a recharging energy pool. These abilities are all over the place, from classics like active camouflage and the bubble shield, to seemingly simple ones like the ability to sprint or dodge roll. The biggest two additions are the jetpack, which is a little controversial but I’m personally a fan of hopping around all over the place like an idiot, and armor lock. Armor lock essentially makes the player totally invulnerable while on, while an EMP pulse charges and is unleashed once the lock is over. The player’s health and shields will also recharge as normal during the lock. In the campaign this could be useful for preventing big damage or doing an emergency recharge (although the enemy AI tends to simply stop and wait around for the armor lock to end, with feels a little stupid) but in multiplayer the ability to be invulnerable on-demand combined with the situationally usefulness of the EMP pulse altered the flow of fights in a way that many people thought was devastatingly overpowered.

Halo Reach only includes one new enemy, the barely noteworthy Skirmishers which come in several varieties, although all of the classic Covenant enemies have been re-tuned and come in several varieties themselves. Weapons wise, we have a lovely new battle rifle stand-in called the designated marksman rifle (DMR) and its Covenant equivalent, the needler rifle. There’s also a new grenade launcher and its rough match, the Covenant concussion rifle. There’s a few other new items, like Covenant focus rifle, plasma repeater, and plasma launcher, but as usual, nearly every weapon in the game has been adjusted. Reach’s additions to the vehicle inventory are even more conservative, with the new Covenant Revenant which is something like a mix between a Wraith and a Ghost, a fun new UNSC aircraft similar to the Hornet called the Falcon, and the new UNSC Sabre and Covenant Seraph fighters.

“Now do a barrel roll!”

Those new fighters are specific to what is probably the biggest new feature of the game, the space sections of the mission “Long Night of Solace”. In these sections you pilot the new Sabre fighter in what feels a little like the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron games or the more freeform Star Fox levels. While I thought those sections were an interesting addition to the already good amount of gameplay variety available in Halo campaigns, some people absolutely hated it. As a personal anecdote, every time Reach comes up in conversation with my brother, he always complains about this particular mission, claiming to have been stuck on this part of the campaign since 2010. Ha! The new Falcon also gets some dedicated time in “New Alexandria”. Beyond these sections, Reach features the typical selection of levels from on-foot corridor-running CQB sections, more open on-foot areas, sections reliant on running Warthogs and Scorpion tanks, and of course, most missions mix up all of these. There’s a lot of variety in the environmental aesthetics of these sections too. It all feels appropriately very Halo and about the only thing Halo: Reach is missing is another “Warthog Run” section.

There’s a lot more I could go into about Reach: the weird AI-centered sidestory found on the datapad pickups in the campaign, the numerous changes to multiplayer including an overhauled progression system and the new epic Invasion mode, bringing back Firefight for more co-op shenanigans, greatly expanded Forge and Theater modes, etc. It’s overall one a hell of a package, and a wonderful way for Bungie to wave goodbye to the series. Most importantly, the love Bungie put into it is obvious, and while it might not have the staying power as the mainline Master Chief installments of the series, it’s story was at least uniquely impactful.

“Kat is having a bad day.”

As with my last few entries, I’ll end by touching a bit on the awesome live action promotional content developed around Halo: Reach. There’s “Birth of a Spartan” which is a short that shows Carter-A259 being transformed from a young trainee into a SPARTAN-III and “Remember Reach” which depicts numerous citizens of Reach as they go about their normal lives, oblivious to the impending Covenant invasion. Neat but not essential. “Deliver Hope” on the other hand is absolutely essential! This live-action trailer shows NOBLE team in a battle to defend the colony Fumirole as they attempt to get a fusion bomb onto a Covenant battlecruiser to destroy it. Go watch it if you haven’t seen it!

I got so many amazing screenshots this time around, it really was quite an effort to not just replace all of this rambling with a huge image galley and drop the mic!

Halo Fest 2020 – Legends

It’s around this time that Halo really started to feel like a franchise. Sure, the games were huge, and we had all the usual swag that comes along with that: action figures, t-shirts, posters, etc. We’d also had a fair number of novels and comic books to further flesh out the Halo universe. There were even confirmed whispers of a Neill Blomkamp directed big Hollywood movie that Peter Jackson was to be heavily involved with producing circulating for a while. In terms of video games though, 2009 wasn’t only the year that gave us Halo Wars, but also the first spin-off game by Bungie themselves, Halo 3: ODST.

This was also the year that 343 Industries started releasing work related to its future takeover of the franchise (with Bungie set to leave after it fulfilled its contractual obligations with its next major title, Halo Reach.) Co-developed with long-time Halo contributors Certain Affinity, Halo Waypoint was (and despite changing a lot over the years, still is) the official community hub for the Halo franchise as a whole. While it wouldn’t immediately have all of the features we associate with it these days, like stat tracking and file sharing, it did launch with the now tradition of hosting some exclusive Halo content. In this case, some parts of the next 343 Industries project, Halo Legends, were dribbled out leading up to its home video release.

“Cal-141, always keeping an eye out…”

Halo Legends is a feature length anime anthology movie. The choice for this to be legitimate Japanese animation (produced by some very notable studios and directors) is definitely a little odd as Halo always felt very “western” to me, and, in aggregate, the Xbox has always done rather terribly in Japan. Perhaps Halo Legends was an attempt to win a few more Japanese fans, or maybe it was just aimed at the neckbeardiest of Halo fans who’d see their favorite video game franchise combined with anime as the absolute pinnacle of media. Personally, while I rarely watch any of it these days, I was a huge anime fan in the 90s, so the marriage of Halo and anime carried some appeal, even if I was already starting to tire of it by that point.

As an anthology, I think we need to look a little closer at each of the individual parts. I’ll try to make this quick and avoid any direct spoilers:

Origins I: Taking place after the events of Halo 3, Cortana tells a nice high-level summation of the background of the universe, focusing particularly on the Forerunners and the Flood. The animation of this part is some of the weakest in the entire anthology, which isn’t an amazing first impression, but as a Halo fan I really like how concisely the lore is presented here, especially considering that up until this point the Forerunners were always presented in the most enigmatic way possible. In comparison, this is practically an infodump. It was early into this episode that the music caught my attention, with some awesome use of familiar pieces from the series here and throughout the rest of Legends.

“The Duel can definitely be visually striking.”

Origins II: Cortana continues her narration, although her descent into rampancy is starting to show as she gets just a little ranty about humankind’s obsession with war as she describes it settling offworld and the colonial uprising, and its struggle against the Covenant and the Flood from the first three Halo games. Despite being by the same studio, suddenly the animation in this part is totally kicked up a notch into some beautiful old school anime goodness. In fact, I love the presentation of this entire part. That said, in a 180 from the first part, it’s the way the story is told that didn’t do as much for me, and I can’t be the only one who was caught off guard by the description of the UNSC and the Covenant making peace in order to defeat the Flood. Whaaaa…?

The Duel: The Duel tells the story of Fal, a Arbiter who rejects the Great Journey and is branded a heretic, culminating in a duel with a rival high ranking Elite. The animation style in this one is bizarre and, while not always easy to watch, is intriguing from an artistic point of view. My main beef with this part is how the Sangheili are straight-up depicted as feudal Japanese. While I’m sure it’s absolutely intentional, it’s so heavy handed that I can’t help but roll my eyes, with the portrayal of Fal’s wife being particularly cringy. As if that weren’t odd enough, the plot feels like it’s ripped straight from a classic samurai movie. Even still, the action is cool and I like the whole angle of the Prophets, dicks that they are, changing the Arbiter from a position of honor to a mark of shame just to spite the Sangheili.

“I’d definitely watch more of Spartan-1337’s antics.”

Homecoming: Spartan Daisy-023 has flashbacks to her time in the SPARTAN-II program while helping to evacuate UNSC forces from Harvest. The animation here is a bit more modern anime style; some great backgrounds while the rest is so-so. I’m not a fan of Daisy’s anime trope filled portrayal and the action scenes feel just a little generic, owing in large part to the animation, though I did find the theme of the trauma Daisy and her fellow Spartan trainees endured and its lingering connections to the present to be fairly compelling. Overall, it had potential, but ended up being kind of mediocre in execution.

Odd One Out: The only officially non-canon part of Legends, Odd One Out tells the story of Spartan-1337 getting stranded on a planet where he meets a handful of super powered children and is constantly harassed by dinosaurs, all before having to fight against The Covenant’s new secret super weapon, a giant ape creature (presumably some kind of super Brute) named Pluton. Man, this is some ridiculous anime bullshit… but wait! It’s intentionally ridiculous anime bullshit… and I love it! This episode is obviously a parody done for a bit of fun, and as such, can’t really be held to the same standards as the rest of Legends. Besides, how can you not love the braggadocious yet semi-incompetent Spartan-1337? Well, I guess some people don’t because this episode widely despised by fans who seem to be triggered by its very existence. Whatever. As a side note, I love the depiction of the use of Bubble Shields in this part.

“The Prototype: who doesn’t love some mecha action?!”

Prototype: A UNSC marine sergeant steals a heavily armed prototype armored suit to buy his men time to evacuate. This one feels very old school anime to me, from the animation and dark tone to all of the sweet mech suit action. The mech suit itself might seem a little silly, but if you think about what’s already established in lore (such as the Colossus from Halo Wars or even the Spartan’s Mjolnir power armor) and some of the things added in later games (most notably the Mantis) then I suppose it fits fine. This part is fun! Really, just an excuse to show a ton of Covenant getting mowed down. Certainly one of the most enjoyable parts of Legends, especially if you ignore the sloppy “Ghost” redemption part of the plot and focus on the action.

The Babysitter: A Spartan is attached to a group of ODST for a mission to covertly drop on a planet and assassinate a visiting Covenant Prophet. This is probably my favorite part of the bunch. Sure, I have some nitpicks, like the slow plodding movement of the Spartan when not gracefully backflipping around, and the usual anime tropes (the whiny-ass ODST O’Brien, who acts more like an angsty teenager than a professional soldier, even one with an out of check ego and a chip on his shoulder, is especially annoying) but overall, the animation and overall direction was quite good, the action was cool, the story was simple but effective, and I enjoyed its grittier elements and all of the little details. I also like that, unlike Daisy-023 in Homecoming, Cal-141 is a total brick shithouse of a badass Spartan. Oh, and yes, that is supposed to be the same Dutch from Halo 3: ODST!

“Master Chief and Kelly-087 running and gunning.”

The Package: A squad of SPARTAN-IIs is dispatched on a special mission to infiltrate a Covenant ship and retrieve “the package”. Where to start with this one? First of all, the animation style of this episode is total 2000s CGI. It’s stiff in places but, I have to say, all in all has aged pretty decently, owing largely to some extra attention to detail and polish given to it. It’s fine. The story, however, feels a bit like bad fan fiction. First, while some of the other parts included cameos from Master Chief, this is the first one to feature him. Add in that some of the action here is way over the top: Darting around space in their silly “booster frames”, rockets snaking all over the place Macross style, successfully infiltrating multiple Covenant ships, backflipping around while dual wielding SMGs, etc. A squad of 5 Spartans is nothing to sneeze at, I grant you, but taking on an entire fleet? It’s a total power fantasy, although I will at least grant them that it wasn’t done without sustaining a cost which, speaking of power fantasies, is one of the main reasons I’ve seen online that other Halo fans bash this part. Come on guys, Spartans aren’t supposed to be invincible! Oh, and Dr. Halsey’s depiction is eye rolling too. That said, while this part isn’t my favorite, it’s plenty of fun if you don’t think about it too hard.

There were no doubt some good parts and amazing moments in Halo Legends. Overall though, Legends doesn’t quite impress me as a single, cohesive package. I get the impression that a lot of fans and critics alike felt the same way. It wasn’t some massive flop, but it also isn’t widely considered an essential piece of the franchise either. I think it being such an overt “anthology” with relatively little connecting each part outside of the general theme of “Halo” has a lot to do with that. That is, the topic of which parts are best and worst and why is incredibly divisive across the fanbase. Some people hate anything that deviates from the headcanon they’ve assembled while others nitpick specific scenes and portrayals, just as I’ve done here. Regardless of how it ultimately sits with you, I have little doubt that it’s worth watching if you’re a Halo fan who hasn’t seen it, and sadly, I get the impression that a lot of the younger Halo fans around these days have never even heard of Halo Legends.

For completion’s sake I also wanted to quickly mentioned “Apt. 117” which was a comedic animated series released on Waypoint later on in 2010 and cancelled after only one episode. It has nothing to do with the Halo canon but is instead about a Halo obsessed gamer and his perpetually annoyed roommate. Bizarre!