Video games

Halo: Combat Evolved
Whenever Halo began development, it was the real time strategy game that would have been freed in Apple and Windows PCs. Even so, when you took its several years of development, it changed into the third person shooter, Bungie was then bought by Microsoft, and Halo was converted to existence developed for the Xbox game console. In the period of a development stages the game was eventually converted to a first person shooter and released in November 15, 2001. It was afterwards ported to two Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X computers. An early attempt to port a game to the Sony Playstation was abandoned after a console proved unable to trend lines a so-demanding bet on engine.

A story deals using a risky venture of the protagonist, referred to in the game exclusively when "Master Chief", on a ring-circular globe, the nominal Halo. Stranded using a rest of the crew of the Pillar of Autumn,including the extremely AI Cortana, he fights for survival against The Covenant while attempting to uncover a ring-worlds secrets, which include the sinister Flood.

Halo CE
Halo Custom Edition is an upgrade to the PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved by Gearbox Software. It features extra multiplayer content & a ability to play in user-created maps.

Halo 2
Halo 2 was released only for the Xbox in November 9, 2004; generating the $125 milliin dollar amusement record on its premiere day. A sequel features newly stake mechanics like dual wielding, recently vehicles & weapons, better AI, a ability to board vehicles, other balanced gameplay, & multiplayer via Xbox Live. It has an advanced graphics engine which makes it one of a better searching games on the Xbox, using normal mapping and bloom effects. Too sustaining Bungie.nett integration, rankings & trailing of each on a internet match stand pushed the envelope of low console gambling farther. There are no ports to more platforms own been announced thus far.

Inside Halo Two, Master Primary battles a Covenant olympian games & late continues a fight in another Halo: Delta Halo. Meanwhile, a Covenant slides into Civil War and a shamed Elite commander called a Arbiter is introduced to the series as a second playable character. a Halo universe expands itself sustaining occident & characters, too a deeper look into the involution of Covenant culture and infighting. Although it has already garnered several awards, a few fans of the original Halo imagine that Halo Two's humanizing of the Covenant & introduction of the playable Arbiter toned down the Covenant threat. More squawk just about a sequel include a crippling of the notable Halo One shooting iron & the addition of the energy blade, a weapon which, although several fans wanted added to Halo Two, is at present thought of when "cheap" referable a fact that these are one of a virtually all mighty weapons (in case non the virtually all right) inside each games. A cliffhanger ending of Halo Two suggests that a second sequel is in the works.

Future Video Game Releases
Halo 3
Sources in Microsoft & Bungie use from each one mass produced opposing claims on whether Halo Three is around development; Bungie, Halo's parent company, has said that it use at times processed there are no plans on a game. Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, was quoted saying that Halo Three was inside development alongside Halo Two; even so, this quote was recognized as a slip of the tongue & was debunked months prior to Halo Two was freed.

Bill Gates later revealed in the Time Magazine interview that Halo 3 is freed in the "second wave" of Xbox 360 titles in 2006, when more or less a PlayStation 3's launch as conceivable to divert sales. "It's perfect," Gates said, "The day Sony launches [the new PlayStation], and they walk right into Halo 3."([http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1061433,00.html Time.com article, registration required]; [http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/05/15/news_6124592.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6124592 relevant quotes on Gamespot.com]). Bungie Programs has there is no comment on the matter & denies that a second Halo game is inside progress. Microsoft senior vice president Robbie Bach also recently [http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/225346_msftnotebook23.html stepped out] to say: "We haven't announced anything on what Bungie is doing or where we're going with the future of the 'Halo' franchise," ... "With all respect to Bill, I don't run Bungie's studio, and neither does he. We'll work with the Bungie guys and let people know" [when they have something to announce]."

The cliffhanger ending of Halo 2, in addition to the success of the Halo franchise, makes a sequel extremely likely. It is speculated that Halo will become a trilogy and Bungie will be done with Halo, leaving authors and Hollywood to take the future.

Rumors about Halo 3 have already started, although their accuracy is highly disputed.

As Bungie has denied to be making the game, these rumors can only be taken at face value, which means that they are most likely untrue, since a few would require Bungie to completely change the game engines used from the first two games. Bungie would most likely take the "In case it international relations and security network't broke, don't fix it" approach, as they did with Halo 2. In addition, as they might have worked on Halo 3 during the creation of Halo 2, as the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, has said, it is doubtful that any radical changes have taken place.

However, Bungie is known among the Halo fan community for being quite secretive regarding the development of their games. Bungie has recently been making regular references to "My next game" in their website's weekly news updates. While they haven't officially stated what that next game is, most players believe that it is definitely Halo 3, and that Bungie is just being coy about the project, in their typical Bungie humor. Furthermore, it should be noted that in the past Bungie has fed misinformation to the public in order preserve secrecy and surprise factor. For example, in September 2003 Bungie Studio Manager Pete Parsons was asked, "What about a rumor that there is an additional playable character [in Halo 2]?" He answered, "Untrue, it's Master Chief all the way." ([http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/botranslation.092403.html article on halo.bungie.org]) However, Halo 2 does in fact feature two separate playable characters, Master Chief and the Arbiter.

An alternative possibility is that, following the precedent of Myth III and to a lesser extent, Marathon Infinity, either an outside agency or a contractor to Bungie is developing the content of Halo 3 and using the existing engine (or at most porting the engine to the Xbox 360). This view would reconcile Bungie's statement that they are not developing it and Microsoft's statement that the game will be released (without stating who is releasing it). Wideload Games has been suggested by fans as a potential such outside developer, reasoning that the third Marathon game was developed by a company which was, like Wideload, founded by former Bungie employees.

Movie
According to an early February 2005 report by The New York Times Company, Microsoft had sent Alex Garland, author of The Beach and the screenplay for horror movie 28 Days Later to Hollywood and tasked him with bringing the Halo story to the silver screen. [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002171529_halomovie05.html]

On August 23, 2005, Bungie announced that development of the Halo movie is officially underway. In the past Bungie had been against a movie and had the final say in such matters. Microsoft has since confirmed that Alex Garland has written a script for a Halo movie, and had courted various studios with regards to producing the movie, until reaching a deal with Universal Studios and Twentieth Century Fox, for the ten million dollar script. The total development costs will be halved between the two studios. Microsoft had described various requirements for any studio to meet, for example a minimum budget and Bungie's level of creative control over the project. [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/10/business/media/10halo.html?oref=login] The Halo community was delighted to learn on October 4 2005 that the acclaimed director Peter Jackson would be on board, along with his partner Fran Walsh, as Executive Producer for the Halo movie. This, coupled with the associated introduction of the SFX house Weta Digital as the CGI team for the film, has greatly increased the profile and anticipation for the movie both inside and outside the videogame community. [http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=biggorilla&p=4955829]

Peter Jackson will also be Executive Producer of the Halo movie.

See further Halo (film).

Possible influences
Some fans believe Halo and Halo 2 were influenced by a number of other games and pop culture references. These include StarCraft, the Alien and Predator movies, the Marathon series and Larry Niven's Known Space universe. No comment has been made about these possible influences by the developer.

Marathon
A number of weapons and plot devices seem to borrow from ideas seen in the Marathon series (see List of weapons in the Halo universe). These include the concept of MJOLNIR "cyborgs," the supersoldier main character, the weapons, and even some of the alien creatures. The Elites from Halo are somewhat similar (in their role, not their appearance) to Marathon's Pfhor. Hunters appear in both games filling the same roles. The Hunters from Halo, though much larger, also clearly share design elements with the Hunters from Marathon. A type of alien that was modeled for Halo 2 but later cut is nearly identical to the Drinniol from Marathon. Also, both games use uniform color to differentiate between different ranks of aliens (and crew members), with higher ranks being stronger and harder to kill.

StarCraft

Similarities have been noted between the species of Halo and StarCraft. Specifically, the Forerunners with the Xel'Naga (ancient, possibly extinct races with advanced techology that perished in a conflict with the Flood and the Zerg, respectively), the Flood with the Zerg (parasitic; can bond with other species; a threat to all other life), the Covenant with the Protoss (extremely religious societies, splintered by conflicts over alleged heretics), and the humans with the Terrans (same species). Master Chief and Cortana are compared to Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan, and the Covenant Arbiter to Tassadar (both are generals brought into disgrace and labeled heretic who then act to save their own people by making common cause with humans).

Movies
Some movie parallels in the games have been pointed out by various people. For instance, the Active Camouflage power-up is very similar to the type of camouflage used by the alien Predator in the Predator movie series. The shape of the Elites' heads is similar in shape to the creatures in the Alien movie series and have mouth parts similar to the Predators." a Flood Spores too part the similar purpose by having the Face Huggers in the Alien film series (impregnating its unsuspecting hosts by using the parasitical organism). Likewise, there are many similarities between a marines of Halo & people of Aliens. A appearance of a armor is corresponding (potentially to the reciprocal presence of helmet cameras for all the soldiers), & the compound marines' dropship resembles the Pelican. Besides Halo's Sergeant Johnson is very strongly according to Aliens's Sergeant Apone - each may be enthusiastic, melanise, cigar-smoking squad leaders. Each characters potentially utilise a line "They're not paying us by the hour, marines!"

Known space
Ringworld is a megastructure 95 milliin miles in radius that resembles a Halo installations, albeit on an staggeringly big shell. This idethe has been copied many days around science fictiaround, although usually on a big shell than in Halo. Around each Halo & Known Space, humans acquire spaceflight in their have & late encounter the superior & hostile alien civilization.

Literature
Halo seems to become inspired by the total of science fiction books, especially that of Ender's Game. A Sodomite, which pop up within Halo Two resemble directly a "Buggers" from either Ender's game. There are many more information & links, like a Spartan program, which closely mirrors a extremely soldier program from either a novel. From either reading Ender's Game, a single would notice a embarrassment of more little similarities, from either the fleets, down to the alien metal money.

Common culture
Halo utilizes the total of most common plot hardware, although typically it is does'nt immediately apparent. The independent character has couple lines & is accompanied by the technically skillful crony. People shopping for worthful objects instead release something evil. The independent character is economised by individual world health organization in the future betrays him. The simply way to kill an enemy is to blow higher the world (or even Halo, in that pack).

Other
Master Chief
Master Chief occurs as limited human being known as John, AKA John-117. He was taken from either his residence globe Eridanus II as a tyke & brought higher in the armed forces's Spartan II program on the planet Email (following around his more designation, Spartan-117) to become the extremely soldier. the Spartan II program likewise processed him look prefer a bionic woman (notwithstanding he is man & is mortal within appearance underneath his combat armor).

The Haunted Apiary
The Haunted Apiary (aka "I Love Bees") is an alternate reality game which acted as a teaser to the release of Halo 2, and purportedly unraveled a entire story of the period between after Halo ceases & Halo Two begins. A places in which a game is placed is [http://www.ilovebees.com ilovebees.com], which is however explorable, however the timer has been set on the front of the site which numbers down to the period further than Five hundred years later. A date is when you took a season 2552, a season where a homo number 1 incurred Halo. Two Bungie & Microsoft disacknowledge that a places is their creation, although a developers insist that a corporations helped advertise a places. A Address was found after it was briefly flashed in an official Halo Two trailer.

It has since been revealed that [http://www.4orty2wo.com/ 4orty2wo Entertainment] was behind a creation of this particular ARG, funded by Microsoft, & endorsed by Bungie. Nevertheless, Joe Staten of Bungie states that We Love Bees is 'does'nt' Halo story canon.

Halo Machinima
Red vs Blue, a production of Rooster Teeth, occurs as machinima series based on a Halo universe. Most of the footage of the series is taken from either Halo & Halo Two gameplay. Red vs Blue chronicles a Civil War that supposedly ensues between differing man factions in the period between them Bungie games, specifically the story of the men & a woman (Tex) posted at each armies' outposts at Blood Gulch, a dried creek bed in the middle of nowhere. Non Halo canon, a series is largely comical in nature and can be observed at [http://www.redvsblue.com RedvsBlue.com]. More machinima own been created, ranging from either a such as minded Fire Team Charlie to the sharply contrasting The Codex, a extra good series.

Time Magazine
Recently, a creators of Halo were employed eventually's C virtually all influential numbers of the preceding season. This is due to the understanding that Halo manages to appeal to two casual & hardcore gamers, & broke sales records, making play additional mainstream amusement.

Dead or Alive
The female Spartan, Spartan-458, is placed to pop up within Dead or Alive 4. This is the symptom of the collaborative effort to produce the playable character for the fighting game, with Bungie treating a plot line & Tecmo's Team Ninjthe developing a fighting style & a fitting ocular project[http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=doaversushalo&p=4949519].