Developer : Microsoft Game Studios
Release date : November 15, 2001
Synopsis :
Halo: Combat Evolved is a 2001 first-person shooter game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released as a launch game for Microsoft’s Xbox video game console on November 15, 2001. The game was ported to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 2003. It was later released as a downloadable Xbox Original for the Xbox 360. Halo is set in the twenty-sixth century, with the player assuming the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier. The Chief is accompanied by Cortana, an artificial intelligence. Players battle aliens as they attempt to uncover the secrets of the eponymous Halo, a ring-shaped artificial world.
Bungie began the development of what would eventually become Halo CE in 1997. Initially, the game was a real-time strategy game that morphed into a third-person shooter before becoming a first-person shooter. During development, Microsoft acquired Bungie and turned Halo into a launch game for its first video game console, the Xbox.
Halo was a critical and commercial success and is often praised as one of the greatest video games ever made. The game’s popularity led to labels such as “Halo clone” and “Halo killer”, applied to games either similar to or anticipated to be better than it. Its sequel, Halo 2, was released for the original Xbox in 2004, and the game spawned a multi-billion-dollar multimedia franchise that incorporates games, books, toys, and films. The game inspired and was used in the fan-created Red vs. Blue video series, which is credited as one of the first major successes of machinima (the technique of using real-time 3D engines, often from video games, to create animated films).
More than six million copies had been sold worldwide by November 2005. A remake of the game’s campaign, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, was released for Xbox 360 by 343 Industries on the 10th anniversary of the original game’s launch. Anniversary was re-released alongside the original competitive multiplayer as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection in 2014.
The game begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slip-space and its crew discovers a large ringworld structure of unknown origin. The Covenant pursues the Autumn and attacks. With the ship heavily damaged, the Autumn’s captain, Jacob Keyes, entrusts the ship’s artificial intelligence (AI) known as Cortana to Master Chief in order to prevent the Covenant from discovering the location of Earth. Keyes orders the crew to abandon the Autumn and pilots the ship to a crash-landing on the ringworld.
On the ring’s surface, Master Chief and Cortana rescue other survivors and help organize a counter-offensive. Learning that Keyes has been captured by the Covenant, Master Chief and a small contingent of soldiers rescue him from the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation. Keyes reveals that the Covenant call the ringworld “Halo” and that they believe it to be a weapon. Intent on stopping the Covenant from using Halo, Keyes searches for a potential weapons cache, while Master Chief and Cortana mount an assault on the ringworld’s control room. Cortana enters Halo’s computer systems and, after discovering something, sends Master Chief to find and stop Keyes from continuing his search.
Searching for the captain, Master Chief encounters a new enemy, the parasitic Flood. The release of the Flood prompts Halo’s caretaker, the AI 343 Guilty Spark, to enlist Master Chief’s help in activating Halo’s defenses. After Master Chief retrieves the ring’s activation index, 343 Guilty Spark transports him back to Halo’s control room. Cortana intervenes before Master Chief can activate the ring; she has discovered the purpose of the installation is to destroy all sentient life in the galaxy, starving the Flood of potential hosts. When Cortana refuses to surrender Halo’s activation index, 343 Guilty Spark attacks her and Master Chief.
To stop Halo’s activation, Master Chief and Cortana decide to destroy the installation. Needing Keyes’ neural implant to destroy the Autumn and Halo with it, Master Chief returns to Truth and Reconciliation, only to find that Keyes has been assimilated by the Flood. Retrieving the neural implant with the activation codes from the captain’s remains, Master Chief returns to the wreck of the Autumn, and manually destabilizes the ship’s reactors, narrowly escaping the ensuing detonation in one of the Autumn’s fighters, while the majority of the remaining Covenant, UNSC forces, and infected Flood are destroyed along with the Halo installation. Cortana justifies their sacrifices and believes their work to be finished, but the Master Chief states that they are only getting started. In a post-credits scene, 343 Guilty Spark is seen floating in space, having survived Halo’s destruction.
Source : Wikipedia
