# Halo Halo is a first-person shooter franchise about a super soldier and an AI battling an alien alliance called the Covenant, launched by Bungie with Halo: Combat Evolved on November 15, 2001[3]. The series helped establish the original Xbox as a mainstream platform[2] and spawned machinimas, novels, and a viral 2019 pizza-flood from fans celebrating the PC re-release[3]. ## Origin Bungie Inc. released Halo: Combat Evolved on November 15, 2001, alongside the launch of the original Xbox console[3]. The first game introduced Master Chief and the ring-shaped artificial world called Halo that gives the series its name[3]. Combat Evolved was later credited with rescuing the fledgling Xbox platform, which had struggled to line up must-have exclusives against Sony's PlayStation 2[2]. - **Platform:** Xbox (Bungie) / PC (viral 2019 pizza moment) - **Creator:** Bungie Inc. - **Date:** 2001 ## Overview The Halo games put players in the boots of Master Chief, a super soldier in green armor[2] who works alongside an AI named Cortana to defeat the Covenant, an alien alliance bent on wiping out humanity[3]. Levels mix vehicle sections, ring-shaped alien worlds, and squad combat, and later entries let players swap between Master Chief and an alien Elite known as the Arbiter[3]. One 2012 retrospective called Combat Evolved Microsoft's Killer App for saving the Xbox platform from an early flop[2]. The franchise pushed past games into a wider media catalog with tie-in novels, anime episodes, action figures, and a canceled Peter Jackson film project[2]. Halo also spawned one of the largest fan-machinima scenes on the web, with creators reusing the multiplayer engine as a filmmaking tool[3]. Fan channels, dedicated wikis, subreddits, and Tumblr blogs kept feeding new content from 2001 onward[3]. ## How It Spread The series moved fast through the 2000s. Halo 2 landed on November 9, 2004, letting players control both Master Chief and the Arbiter[3]. Halo 3 arrived September 25, 2007, adding new vehicles, weapons, and a map editor[3]. Bungie kept the pipeline full with the real-time strategy spinoff Halo Wars in February 2009, the squad-based Halo 3: ODST in September 2009, and the prequel Halo: Reach in September 2010[3]. Bungie officially handed the franchise to Microsoft's internal studio 343 Industries on March 31, 2012[3]. 343's first main entry, Halo 4, was announced at Microsoft's E3 press conference on June 6, 2011 and released worldwide on November 6, 2012 as the eighth Halo game overall[1]. Halo 5: Guardians was confirmed in a blog post by 343 general manager Bonnie Ross in May 2014, with a Fall 2015 launch window and a rebuilt engine targeting 60 frames per second on Xbox One[4]. Halo: The Master Chief Collection bundled the mainline entries in an HD package for Xbox One on November 11, 2014, scoring 85 out of 100 on Metacritic[5]. On March 12, 2019, 343 announced the collection would come to PC through the Microsoft Store and Steam, a first for several of the games included[3]. The announcement kicked off the pizza incident: Redditor thewombinthesky had promised on March 5, 2019 to send a pizza to any 343 employee if the port was announced within a month, and after the announcement fans mailed so many pizzas to the office that community director Brian Ske7ch Jarrad publicly asked people to stop ordering[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Halo? A first-person shooter franchise launched by Bungie in 2001 about a super soldier fighting the alien Covenant[3]. ### Where did Halo come from? Bungie Inc. released Halo: Combat Evolved as an Xbox launch title on November 15, 2001[3]. ### What does Halo mean? The series name refers to the ring-shaped artificial worlds called Halo that appear across the games[3]. ### How do you use Halo? Play the games on Xbox or, since March 2019, on PC via the Microsoft Store and Steam[3]. ### Is Halo still popular? The franchise is still active under 343 Industries, with mainline releases and the Master Chief Collection expanded to PC in 2019[3]. ### Who makes Halo? Bungie built the first five games before handing the franchise to Microsoft's 343 Industries on March 31, 2012[3]. ### Who is Master Chief? Master Chief is a super soldier in green armor[2] introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved and voiced across the mainline series[1]. ### What was the pizza incident? Fans mailed pizzas to 343 Industries after MCC was announced for PC in March 2019, forcing community lead Brian Ske7ch Jarrad to publicly ask them to stop[3]. ### What is Red vs. Blue? A long-running Rooster Teeth machinima made inside Halo's multiplayer, with a plot separate from the mainline games[3]. ### What was Halo: Nightfall? A digital series directed by Ridley Scott to set up Agent Locke before Halo 5: Guardians[3]. ### When did Halo 5 come out? Halo 5: Guardians was announced in May 2014 and released for Xbox One in Fall 2015 with a new engine targeting 60 frames per second[4]. ## References 1. [https://www.ign.com/wikis/halo-4]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120603001334/http://ataddict.com/2012/05/how-brightly-coloured-aliens-made-the-xbox-successful/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/halo]() 4. [https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/16/halo-5-guardians-announced]() 5. [https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-one/halo-the-master-chief-collection]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/halo Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library