As Halo 3 came to a close, Master Chief ended his journey the same way it began in Halo: Combat Evolved. Before entering into a state of cryonic sleep, he told Cortana, “Wake me, when you need me”. This was Bungie studios last entry into the Halo series, and in the decade since the original trilogy came to a close, we’ve seen two main series games and a bunch of spin-offs.
I first played the Halo series as a child after Combat Evolved was released, and then later when Halo 2 was released in 2004, but no game from the series quite holds that special nostalgic place in my heart like Halo 3. On release day, I was in the seventh grade and standing in the schoolyard crowding around a friend who was reading an issue of Xbox Magazine. Later that year, I bought my Xbox 360 and Halo 3. It was the only game I owned for almost a year after I had bought it.
In the ten years since Halo 3’s release, we’ve seen eight Halo games and a few remastered versions from the original trilogy; however, I have yet to find a game that I put more hours into than Halo 3. Every Wednesday after school my friends and I would get pizza after school, and we would inevitably always end up at once person’s house playing custom games until we had to go home for dinner.
The Halo 3 campaign mode did little to add or change the simple combat system that made the series so popular with fans. In 2001 Halo CE brought the first-person shooter genre to consoles and added a well written and throughout storyline told through in-game dialogue and cutscenes. The narrative storytelling of the series was unique at the time and created a uniquely immersive environment similar to the PC game Half-Life.
Halo 3 offered a lot more for fans than just a narrative story that capped off the beloved trilogy. It also gave fans endless hours of creativity and gameplay in its forge and custom game modes. Players were able to create their own maps and game types to play on. I remember coming home from school each day in the eighth grade and working on new maps that my friends and I could play on when we would go to each other’s houses on Friday night. We would spend countless hours playing infection game types and other mini-games that our friends had created.
Some of my fondest memories playing the game were the hours my best friend and I logged playing team doubles. I met my best friend in the fourth grade and we bonded over my lack of skills in math and his lack of skill in English. I would go to his house after school and we would trade workbooks; I would do the spelling and grammar homework while he did the math. We couldn’t have been more different from each other, but Halo 3 would become a huge part of our friendship.
During high school, he would go to baseball, basketball, or soccer practice every day after school while I hung around the school with our other less athletic friends. Inevitably, I would get a text every night after dinner that simply read, “doubles?”. Our play styles matched our differing personalities as we look for matches in the game’s team doubles playlist on Xbox live. He would run around the map frantically killing our opponents, while I would methodically lay in the back with the sniper and try to strategize a plan that would almost never work in our favor. Although it didn’t work out most of the time, the games we still talk about almost 9 years later are the ones where we got blown out. By the time we were sophomores in high school, we had studied the maps and even started memorizing the call outs used by Halo 3 pros. It didn’t help us much against players who were more skilled than us, but it helped our game
The Halo franchise has connected us to each other for a decade. To this day, I get a text every night from my best friend asking to play doubles on Halo 5. Instead of texting me after soccer practice, the text comes after a full day of work as an accountant. In between studying for the CPA and in between my studying for the GRE, the two of us will take a break and get on Halo to talk about life. It’s been our way of catching up as life continues to become more complicated. It’s as if for that brief hour and a half, we’re back in high school without any responsibilities and worries.
The Halo series has been the one series that I’ve always come back to throughout my life. Halo 3 will forever hold the most memories for me as I think back on simpler days when reaching level 50 in team slayer was the most important goal I had to attain. As the burden of adulthood weighs down on me, Halo is my way to go back to the childhood innocence my best friend and I use to have. It’s a way for us to continue to keep in touch every night after spending an entire day at work. I hope we never stop playing Halo. Maybe one day, I’ll receive a text after putting my baby to sleep that will simply read, “Doubles tonight?”.
Quiet Company 