Witness the Master Chief’s return to finish the fight between the Covenant, the Flood, and the entire Human race in this dramatic, pulse-pounding conclusion of the original Halo trilogy. With the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance, the Master Chief returns to uncover an ancient secret hidden beneath the sands of Africa, which could hold the key to humanity’s salvation or destruction – an object that could change the tide of the Human-Covenant conflict.
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Inside the Sandtrap multiplayer map's temple, where the giant Elephant vehicle is parked, sits a two-screen laptop that will occasionally flash up a fake Windows-style error screen, complete with the kind of garbled system text you'd expect from a crashed PC rather than a 26th-century UNSC terminal.
Halo 3's multiplayer wasn't just a launch-week phenomenon. By March 2009, more than one billion online matches had been played across the game, and it had gone on to sell over 14.5 million copies in total, making it one of the best-selling titles of its console generation.
Halo 3 introduced Forge, an in-game object editor that let players reshape multiplayer maps by moving, adding, or removing pieces of scenery and weapons. It was far more limited than a full PC map editor, but it laid the groundwork for the custom map culture that would define Halo's multiplayer community for years afterward.
Wander through Vinewood's 'Chinatown' district and you can find street performers dressed as identical copies of Halo's Master Chief, posing for tips just like the costumed performers found on real Hollywood Boulevard.
ODST started life as a scrappy little side project called Halo 3: Recon, something Bungie figured they'd knock out quickly to fill the gap before Halo: Reach. Then-CEO Harold Ryan basically told Joe Staten and Paul Bertone to build it fast using the existing Halo 3 engine, with zero extra engineering support. It grew arms and legs along the way and turned into a full retail release.
During the epilogue, right as Vergil lights up Sergeant Johnson's cigar, nudge the right stick to the left and the camera drifts off to the side. You'll catch Buck crouched next to what looks like an ape, grooming it and, well, eating something out of its fur before the screen cuts to black. Look closer and that creature is wearing the face of Halo art director Marcus Lehto, the same joke used for the cavemen back in Halo 3's Sierra 117.
In Uplift Reserve you'll find a Warthog with a medic trying to calm down a marine who's completely losing it. That's the same panicking soldier from the Floodgate level in Halo 3, so if his reaction feels oddly specific for a random NPC, it's because he's already had one very bad day before this one.
ODST didn't just ship with its own campaign and Firefight mode, it also included the entirety of Halo 3's multiplayer on a separate disc in the box. New copies even came with access codes for the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta, so buying ODST effectively bought you a foot in the door for Bungie's next game too.
The title of Arbiter wasn't always an honour. It was originally handed to Sangheili warriors as a way to atone for failing the Covenant, and the missions that came with it were basically expected to end in death. Thel 'Vadam only gets the rank in Halo 2 because he let humans destroy the first Halo ring, and for most of the game he's stripped of his own name entirely, only ever addressed as 'the Arbiter' as a mark of disgrace.
The Great Schism kicks off properly in Halo 2 once the Prophet of Truth turns the Brutes against the Elites, trying to have the Sangheili wiped out and replaced as the Covenant's honour guard. It's the event that effectively breaks the Covenant from the inside, and without the Elites switching sides to fight alongside the UNSC afterwards, humanity's odds in the war look a lot grimmer.
