Game of the Year of 2002!
The Story Line:
Before HALO
The year is 2552. Planet Earth still exists, but overpopulation has forced many of her former residents to colonize other worlds. Faster-than-light travel is now a reality, and so are aliens. 32 years ago, humans met a group of alien races unified by their religious beliefs called the "Covenant". They saw the human race as an affront to their gods.
Now, the Covenant have declared a Holy War agaist Earth and its colonies.
But, there is one thing that the Covenant don't know; the location of earth. UNSC Admiral Preston Cole established the Cole Protocol: no vessel may lead the Covenant to Earth. When forced to withdraw, ships must avoid Earth-bound vectors-even if that means jumping without proper navigational calculations. And this is what happened to the ship "Pillar of Autumn". While their
colony was being attacked, it had to make a blind jump somewhere into deep space-away from earth, hoping that the Covenant ships would follow. Every single Covenant ship that was attacking followed the Pillar of Autumn. The Pillar of Autumn was currently on a secret military project, Spartan-II, to create cyborg super-soldiers . Soldiers that were skilled to use any weapon and any vehicle,
human and alien. Armored with a MJOLNIR battle suit, this warrior is made to defeat any enemy that gets in its way.
The plan: board a Covenant ship with the Spartan-II's and learn the location of the Covenant Home world. But, the Pillar of Autumn only has one Spartan-II, definately not enough to carry out a plan made for a whole army of Spartan-II's!
HALO
After making the jump, the captain of the Pillar of Autumn,Captain Keyes, realizes it has jumped near a strange "ring world". Cortana, the ship's artificial intelligance being, says that it is two advanced to be a Covenant creation. She would later find out that it is the work of a race that has been extinct for thousands of years-the "ForeRunner". Captain Keyes orders everyone to their battle stages because the Covenant are on their tales. Minutes later, the Covenant start to board the ship, and Captain Keyes orders everyone to abandon ship! He is going to try to land the Pillar of Autumn on the strange ring world. You play the role of the only Spartan-II left on the Autumn, John-117, and you are given the responsibility to hold Cortana and bring her off the ship safely, for if they capture her, the Covenant will know everything about Earth!
You grab the last life pod that is left, and land on HALO. After all the life pods have landed on HALO, the existing crew of the Pilar of Autumn organizes a "safe spot" on HALO. Your first mission is to find the crash sites of the life pods and order a drop ship to come pick the remaining marines up.
Cortana: "The enemy has captured Captain Keyes, and are holding him aboard one of their cruisers, the Truth and Reconciliation. The ship is currently holding position approximately three hundred meters above the other end of this plateau." After fighting through the Covenant deffences, you reach the ship. You have to take a gravity lift which takes u into the "belly of the beast". After you get into the ship, you have to battle agaist more Covenant deffences and reach the cell which holds Captain Keyes. After finding him, he tells you: "While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I overheard the guards talking about this ring world. They call it... "Halo.The Covenant kept saying, 'whoever controls Halo controls the fate of the universe.' . Captain Keyes steels one of the Covenant drop ships and brings everyone out.
Cortana:"The Covenant believe that what they call "The Silent Cartographer," is somewhere under this island. The Cartographer is a map room that will lead us to Halo's control center. The island has multiple structures and installations. One of them contains the map room. " You land on a island where the Covenant are waiting for you. Your marines have to attack the Covenant and hold down the island from any other Covenant reinforcements. You battle agaist the Covenant that are guarding the Silent Cartogopher, but the covenant lock the doors that lead to the Silent Cartogopher. You have to find the control room of the building you were in. You search the island until you find that room and go back to find the Silent Cartogopher. Cortana interprets the map, and you meet back with your marines and leave the island.
Foe Hammer,the drop ship pilot, looks at the coordinates and realizes that the coordinates are under ground! Cortana explains to her that HALO is honeycombed with deep tunnels with entrances from the surface. So Foe Hammer drives you deep into the ground. She drops you off outside of a entrance and you are attacked by covenant immediately. After batteling them off you go through the door and find more covenant...eager to kill you. After you slaughter them, you go through a hall and end up on a bridge. This bridge is also loaded with covenant. You go through more bridges, more rooms, a couple of elevators and end up on the ground. Now you will meet all the covenant's vehicles. The tank, the ghost, the dropship and the banshee. The ghost is a small hovering vehicle, and the banshee is basiclly a Covenant Plane. You have to destroy all the vehicles and get to hop into one of the banshees. You will follow the coordinates that lead you to the control room, meet some marines, and lose some marines. In the end, you finally reach the building that holds the control room. You stagger on and open the final door. There you see a panel...the control panel to HALO!
You: So... what sort of weapon is it?
CORTANA:
What are you talking about?
You:
Let's stay focused. Halo... how do we use it against the Covenant?
CORTANA:
This ring isn't a cudgel, you barbarian, it's something else... something much more important. The Covenant were right... this ring... it's Forerunner. Give me a second to access... yes, the Forerunner built this place, what they called a, "fortress world," in order to... no, that can't be. Oh, those Covenant fools...they must've know, there must have been signs!
You:
Slow down. You're losin' me.
CORTANA:
The Covenant found something, buried in this ring, something horrible, and now...they're afraid.
you:
Something buried? Where?
CORTANA:
The Captain, we've got to stop the Captain!
you:
Keyes? What do we-
CORTANA:
The weapons cache he's looking for, it's not really-we can't let him get inside!
you:
I don't understan-
CORTANA:
There's no time! Get out of here, find Keyes, stop him! Before it's too late!
Halo: Page 2
The Maw
Who exactly are the forerunner?
