Written by Steve Markey
Movies-n-More.com
Halo has had an interesting history in the video game world. The original Halo started on the first Xbox. Bungie, the team behind the Halo franchise, was trying to make a RTS (real time strategy) game. If you are not familiar with RTS, the original Warcraft series for the PC is a RTS, basically you have and army and you have to get resources to build your army and vehicles to crush the other army. Some where along the lines Bungie decided to go with a First Person Shooter instead and the legend of Master Chief was born.
At the time of the release of the first Halo there were not very many good FPS on the consoles, with the exception of Golden Eye on the Nintendo 64, most FPS stunk. Halo on the original Xbox, was a good FPS, with great graphics, game play and most important fun. It was a huge hit, and probably the game that saved the Xbox, because up until this point, Xbox was struggling to find an audience. Of course with such huge success, a sequel would soon follow, which built on the story and had better graphics and a extensive multi player component. With the great Xbox Live service and the Multi player of Halo 2 it was a perfect match.
Halo 3 did not make it to the original Xbox, that was held over for the Xbox 360, and at launch it broke tons of sales records. It was the next gen version of Halo, better graphics and even more multi player mayhem. By this point the Halo franchise was starting to expand, toys, animated movies, board games, you name it and it probably had a Master Chief version of it. Along with the huge success of the FPS Halo, Bungie also released the RTS, Halo Wars.
Halo ODST was the first release of a Halo FPS game without Master Chief in it, and the game also had a unique way of story telling, with a Pulp Fiction type time line in the game. The game was heavy on flash back sequences to help move the story along. The latest release coming this fall is Halo Reach, for the die hard fans this is like an origin story for Master Chief, and for the rest of us, just another reason to wear the Spartan armor and shoot our buddies!