Halo (series)/Awesome

General

 * Any discussion of Crowning Moments of Awesome must begin with the Halo and Halo 3 final levels in which you're desperately driving your Warthog as the entire ring is disintegrating around you - especially in Halo when you have the Covenant and Flood fighting each other all around you.
 * And the Halo Theme blaring in all its glory as you make the mad dash for safety! WOO HOO!
 * The Halo series is just one Moment of Awesome after another. From the Master Chief jumping almost 2 kilometers and still being ready to fight to Sergeant Avery Johnson, formerly the only competent person in the entire human military who isn't the Chief, the series is basically made out of Awesome.
 * Pretty much every cutscene in Halo 1 and Halo 3, where each time Master Chief is only shown holding a frickin' Assault Rifle. It's totally worth mentioning considering the gun is the worst possible weapon to use, and Master Chief supposedly only uses it and nothing else.
 * Even better... the Legendary ending cutscene in Halo 3. Master Chief has an Assault Rifle on his back, and the ammo counter on it has only one bullet left.
 * Humanity's victory over the Covenant. Sure, humans may be special and made several sacrifices of dubiuos morality, but when you think about it, being able to survive, and ultamately triumph over a colective of races who put together, basicly out preform you in almost every way, that counts as a CMOA.

Halo: Combat Evolved
"Johnson: "We made a blind jump to keep the Covenant from getting their slimy claws on Earth. When we got here, we found something they're so hot over they're scrambling over each other to get it. Now I don't care if it's God's Own Personal Anti-Sonuvabitch Machine, or a Giant HULA-HOOP, we are not gonna let 'em have it! What we will let 'em have is a belly full of lead and a pool of their own blood to drown in! AM I RIGHT MARINES?! Marines: Sir, yes sir! Johnson: You're damn right I am. Now move it out!"
 * This Troper would suggest that Johnson's Crowning Moment occurs during the legendary ending for the first game. "This is it, baby. Hold me."
 * The beach assault on Silent Cartographer. Charging up the beach with a dozen Marines behind you, gunning down the Covenant while the Halo theme blasts in the background.... awesome.
 * Johnson is the king of Crowning Moment of Awesome quotes. One favorite is from Halo: Combat Evolved, when he's briefing his Marines on Legendary difficulty:


 * In the Anniversary edition, the terminal in "Keyes". We already knew from The Flood that Keyes was resisting the Flood's efforts to take the data from him, but the terminal shows Keyes' resistance, it shows the pain and fear and sheer Body Horror os being integrated into the Flood, and it features the Gravemind taunting Keyes over and over about how the Flood have all the knowledge they need.... but Keyes does not break.

Halo 2
"Chief: Sir. Request permission to leave the station. Lord Hood: (incredulously) For what purpose, Master Chief? Chief: To give the Covenant back their bomb. Lord Hood: ...permission granted."
 * The end of the tutorial level, right after Cortana defuses the nuke:

"Cortana:"Betcha can't stick it." Chief pulls out a plasma grenade and primes it. Chief:"You're on.". Fade to black."
 * My personal favorite moment was everything Avery Johnson did during the last mission. Teaming up with the Arbiter was cool enough, but the best moment had to be when he was opening the Temple door with repeated blasts from a hijacked Scarab, while sardonically commenting in between giant laser blasts, "KNOCK! KNOCK!".
 * To a San Antonio Spurs fan, even his name is a Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * No, no, no. The utter Crowning Moment of Awesome came in the real-time demo: Chief and Cortana are battling their way through a war-torn city. They evade several patrols of grunts and Jackals, survive a drop-attack of Brutes, and manage to out-race a Phantom troop carrier. They come to a halt in sight of their target, a damaged Covenant cruiser. Suddenly pods rain down around them, and out pop five black-clad Special Ops Elites, each armed with one-hit-kill energy swords. Chief surveys the odds and drops one of his SMGs.

""The Hunters have come to our aid, Arbiter! They will fight by our side!""
 * That Crowning Moment of Awesome becomes a Crowning Moment of Funny and Fetish Fuel if you've heard the outtakes. Jen Taylor could barely say the line without laughing, and, well skip to about 1:20 to hear why I think it's fetish fuel.
 * One simple line that seals "The Great Journey" as one of the best videogame moments of all time:

"Johnson: "Dear humanity, we regret being alien bastards, we regret coming to earth, and we most definitely regret that the corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!" Marines: "OORAH!""
 * What about Johnson's best quote in reply to 'Regret, regret...':

"Johnson: "Usually, the good Lord works in mysterious ways. But not today! This here is 66 tons of straight-up, H.E-spewing dee-vine intervention! If God is love, then you can call me 'Cupid'!" Cortana: "Thanks for the tank. He never gets me anything." Johnson: "Oh I know what the ladies like.""
 * To top it off the title of the section of the game, which begins with your ship being knocked down, it titled "They'll regret that too".
 * Don't forget this gem on Legendary:

"Johnson: "Back when I joined the corps we didn't have any fancy shmancy tanks! We had sticks, two sticks! And a rock for the whole platoon! And we had to SHARE the rock! So buck up! You're one lucky Marine!""
 * Same scene, different line on Heroic:

"Johnson: "I would have been your daddy, but a dog beat me over the fence!""
 * Of course the section titles for that level are CMOA material, my nomination being "Ladies Like Superior Firepower".
 * Johnson has a skull named after his badass quoting.

"Johnson (in a scarab in front of the core): Hey, bastard! Knock knock! Scarab: SHOOP DA WHOOP!!!!!!"
 * Of course, another shining example would be this quote:

"Sgt. Johnson: Hey, Mohawk! How'd that feel?!"
 * Not to mention getting onto the scarab... Of course, they let you grab an effin' sniper and a rocket launcher first. Plus, that jump in the city... I love this game.
 * In "The Great Journey", the Arbiter comes across of group of Brutes stationed next to a group of holding cells. Inside of the cells are a couple of Hunters and a couple of Elite Councilors. The Arbiter has the option to quietly shoot out the force fields. You can guess what happens next.
 * Basically that whole level was a Crowning Moment of Awesome just for having friendly Hunters in it. As everyone knows, Hunters are a royal pain to kill when you're against them, so naturally it feels good to let the enemy be on the receiving end of that pain for a change.
 * That cable, I'm going to cut it. Apparently, one of of the three lines Halo 2 was framed around, the other one still in the game being I am a monument to all your sins. Also, very awesome.
 * This troper made the Arbiter a bigger badass during the Tartarus fight. The first two times he was vulnerable, said troper hit him with a shotgun blast. The third time, the troper hit Tartarus twice with his bare hands (read: Energy Sword at 0% battery), which killed him. Cue Johnson saying:

"Ship Commander: Master Chief, you mind telling me what you're doing on that ship? Master Chief: Sir... finishing this fight."
 * It establishes the Arbiter as both Crazy Awesome and a foil to the Chief: rather than leave a deactivated bomb on his ship, the Chief goes into space and hurls it back at the enemy. Rather than go the long way around to try to catch a fugitive, the Arbiter sends the space station he's on into freefall.
 * The closing lines just before the game's credits sequence:

"When I asked for reinforcements... I didn't think they'd send a Spartan."
 * Used both ingame and in the tech demo showed at a pre-release showing of the game, the awed statement of a pinned down Marine upon seeing who had come to back him up.

Halo 3
""I am Truth! The voice.... of the Covenant!" "And so, you must be silenced.""
 * Also, taking down the Prophet of Truth, while fighting side-by-side with.

""You don't know the contortions I had to go through to follow you here, Reclaimer. I know what you're here for. What position do I take? Will I follow one betrayal with another?" "You're going to say I'm making a habit of turning on my masters. But the one that destroyed me long ago, in the upper atmosphere of a world far distant from here, was an implement far cruder than I. My weakness was capacity - unintentional though it was! - to choose the Flood. A mistake my makers would not soon forgive. But I want something far different from you, Reclaimer. Atonement." "And so here at the end of my life, I do once again betray a former master. The path ahead is fraught with peril. But I will do all I can to keep it stable - keep you safe. I'm not so foolish to think this will absolve me of my sins. One life hardly balances billions. But I would have my masters know that I have changed. And you shall be my example.""
 * What about the fight between the TWO SCARABS? You get to ride in the little-used Hornet, drop into the Scarab, shoot out the energy core, and watch as it blows up fantastically... and THEN, you do it again. And all the while, some of the games most awesome music is playing, leading to pure, gut-wrenching epicosity.
 * This troper's favorite moment in all of video gaming comes from this sequence. With two buddies, he cleared the airspace in the vicinity of a scarab, and then dropped his teammates off on top. After they battling through the Covenant on the Scarab, they destroyed the core. But instead of just jumping off, this troper's friends made their way back up to the TOP of the Scarab, where he picked them up and flew away JUST SECONDS before detonation. And then they did it again for the other one. After that enormously satisfying feeling of "Fuck yeah!" to be had from this experience, not much can come close (at least for this troper) to this particular crowing moment of awesome.
 * This Troper boarded with a Chopper. It took a few tries, but landing on a golden brute after flying 10 meters made it so worth it.
 * What makes it even more epic is when you enter the hornets just as the music reaches its climax. Two huge war-machines slamming into the ground just as "One Final Effort" takes its most epic turn: "Dun, dununa, dundundunununa..." Heck, one even roars at you (they're basically giant hunters, really, which makes it even more epic). The one thing I was disappointed at in Reach was having to drive past them in the last level. I was sighing the whole time.
 * "Now the gate has been unlatched, headstones pushed aside. Corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide!" You knew it was coming, you knew he, but the speech, the Arbiter and the Chief going back to back and the massive evil tentacles raising up from the bottomless pit just completed it so much. I was deeply disappointed when the tentacles just kinda ran away and a couple of Combat Forms jumped up to fight you.
 * Any time you get to kill a Scarab is CMOA material. I'm particularly fond of The Storm and The Ark, especially if, rather than shooting the Scarab until it kneels, you get aboard by hopping onto it from the elevated section (The Storm), or driving a vehicle up a grav lift or ramp onto it (The Ark).
 * The Gravemind gets a crowning moment of its own in the Terminals on Legendary difficulty, which include transcripts recorded by Mendicant Bias, a Forerunner AI built specifically to eliminate the Gravemind. The transcripts show how, through simple and basic logic, the Gravemind made the AI programmed to kill it switch sides and try to wipe out the Forerunner.
 * Offensive Bias gets one shortly (storyline-wise) thereafter when he lures Mendicant into a perfect trap. He mentions throwing around battleships like fighters, and doing things to the laws of physics that would drive his crews mad if they were still alive. Please note that Mendicant's first move in the battle is a Zerg Rush.
 * Mendicant Bias gets one himself in the final terminal, only accessible on Legendary:

"Elite: "Brute ships! Staggered line! Ship Master! They outnumber us three to one!" Ship Master: "Then it is an even fight.""
 * One simple exchange:

"Marine: Tank beats Ghost... tank beats Hunters.... tank beats everything! I could do this all day!"
 * That one line proves beyond any and all doubt just how Badass the Elites are (in case you're guessing, the Elites completely ).
 * Even a comparatively minor character like Gunnery Sgt. Reynolds gets one, telling a Brute interrogating him, under heavy torture, to "Kiss... My... Ass". Of course, he is voiced by Nathan Fillion.
 * This troper enjoys grabbing a Needler from the previous encounter so that, just after Sgt. Reynolds says that, the brute gets turned into pink mist from about 25 needlers suddenly occupying his cranium
 * This troper feels the need to notice that Reynolds was being held in the air by that Brute... by his throat. The fact that he was able to breathe is impressive in and of itself.
 * One moment that's not really attributed to one character: Miranda's frigate coming in to land after you clear out the LZ on the Ark. Watching Forward Unto Dawn grow from a speck on the horizon... and keep growing... very fast... until the thousands of tonnes of metal grinds to a halt hovering above your head, and the turbulence from it's passage sends your Warthog rolling like tumbleweed.
 * It's even strong enough to pick up a tank. Believe me, this troper has seen it happen.
 * Then, immediately afterward, when you get to mount up on a Scorpion tank:

"Thought I'd try shooting my way out and mix things up a little."
 * That scene is made even more awesome if you manage to give the four marines riding your tank Fuel Rod Guns.
 * Master Chief. Upside down tank. The ability to right any flipped vehicle. Not only is it a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Master Chief, but also both the player (for flipping the tank in the first place) and the tank (it bounces around hysterically after Chief trows it some 10 yards).
 * Flipping a tank apparently isn't that big a deal in the Halo universe. In Halo: ODST, in the level where you drive a tank through the city, toward the end, you have to abandon the tank. By this time, you have four marines with rocket launchers, who will not leave the tank. This Troper managed to flip the tank over, causing the marines to leave. At this point, this Troper was so frustrated that he actually said to the game "If you want that tank, you can flip it back over yourself!". While walking away, I heard a grinding of metal, turned around, and the guys were already climbing back into the tank.
 * "Press RB to... Wait. What? How did you do that?!" -If you use a glitch to flip over the LARGEST MOVING VEHICLE IN THE GAME.
 * Apologies if this is in the wrong spot... On The Ark, Master Chief is alone, but he has a rocket launcher. Used all but two rockets to take out the last bastion of enemies prior to the Wraith Clearing house. He's got 3 marines left living and one brute prowler... so he gets the fuel rod cannon a grunt dropped, and rockets to one guy and fuel rod cannon to the other. NPCS never run out of ammo... hop on prowler, and you've killed all three wraiths, ghosts, and both towers in a matter of about 1.4 minutes. The amount of pure awesome of killing three wraiths with a prowler, and overwhelming firepower of doom... it's just so beautiful.
 * Multiplayer, Sandtrap map. Make the Elephant fly.
 * Towards the end of Cortana, after just rescuing Cortana, she asks the Chief his plans to get off of High Charity. Which, need I remind you, is wall-to-wall Flood. Chief's reply:


 * Even better when Cortana decides to get a bit of revenge on the Gravemind by talking the Chief through blowing up High Charity.
 * . Pure. Awesome.
 * For a few minutes, anyway...
 * The end cutscene of The Storm. Expecting, like most things by the UNSC in the games, a little piddly assault by some Longsword fighters, but no, not just Longswords... ! That was unexpected, to say the least. We'll overlook the fact that  in favor of the sheer awesomeness.
 * For a non-scripted Crowning Moment of Awesome, a player was in a multiplayer game, and due to the sensitive splatter system, WAS KILLED BY A TRAFFIC CONE. The player ended up getting the most famed thing in all of Halo-RECON. That's right, folks; someone got the most desired item in all of Halo by getting killed by a traffic cone.
 * Whether you like Guilty Spark or not, you have to admit that his ability to take on without any problem was just awesome.

Halo Wars
""War Is Hell. And I'm the Devil.""
 * Captain Cutter and Serina at the conclusion, flying the Spirit of Fire to safety. As Serina says, "Threading a needle while accelerating around an exploding star while inside a planet that's falling apart? Sure, why not?" She may have been sarcastic, but she then proceeded to do just that.
 * In the cutscene "Monsters". Just Watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEDYJxR0NG8
 * The fight between the Spartans and Honor Guards playing out while epic music provides even more awesomeness.
 * Also a CMOA for Forge when you consider that Elites are as strong as Spartans.
 * One for Red Team as well when you consider that those Elites were probably Honour Guards.
 * One of the Spartans has a victory quote that drips with pure awesome.

"ODST, researched."
 * The ultimate infantry upgrade on the UNSC side in Wars if you're playing as Captain Cutter? I'll let the announcer say it:


 * It must be said, ODST in Wars are awesome in their own. Mainly due to the ability to drop them to any point of the battlefield you have line of sight to from freaking orbit. When one lone Warthog can effectively spawn a Zerg Rush of regenerating infantry... yeaaahhh...

Halo 3: ODST
"Woman: (laughs) There's a Covenant ship hovering outside my office window, there's a sniper in my lobby, and you're threatening to have me fired? Good luck! (slams phone down)."
 * Three words, one ad: "We Are ODST".
 * The final battle.
 * An Engineer in the epilogue cutscene.
 * Wwhen
 * This deserves reiterating. In a series where Puny Earthlings is in full effect, AWESOME.
 * The Stand just before this deserves a mention also. Just five dudes (Romeo, Buck, Mickey, Dutch and some NMPD guy) with the heaviest weapons in the entire game against wave after wave of banshees, phantoms and infantry. Even better when watched at a slight distance in theater mode.
 * "Well, what can I say? It was a hell of a night."
 * A Brute Captain gets one: " Hurry Courage, warriors! Take this hill or die upon it!"
 * Usually interrupted halfway through by a hail of 7.62mm from the stationary turret aimed right at its face.
 * The Rookie gets one. A lone, regular human, surviving on their own in a Covenant-infested city for hours? Even Dare says that he's good.
 * A regular NMPD officer gets this. She's in the headquarters talking to Dare, who wants her to get some people into the Superintendent's data center. The woman replies that she can't do that, and Dare apparently threatens to have her fired. The woman laughs and says the following.
 * A regular NMPD officer gets this. She's in the headquarters talking to Dare, who wants her to get some people into the Superintendent's data center. The woman replies that she can't do that, and Dare apparently threatens to have her fired. The woman laughs and says the following.


 * Jonas is a Badass Normal. One CMOA has him sitting on a car to stop it. Keep in mind the man is 6'10" and 500 pounds.

Halo: Reach

 * Reach has.
 * Actually, given
 * Bungie says.
 * Another one, but this time with a random Marine: at the beginning of Long Night Of Solace (the space level) when you get in the base you see a dead Ultra Elite with an energy sword. An Army Trooper kicks the body, and it's implied he killed it.
 * Objective: Survive. Mission Briefing: Spartans Never Die.
 * The sniper that killed Kat. S/he couldn't have known that Kat had forgotten to turn her shields on. This sniper sees a group of Spartans, has a weapon that usually requires multiple shots to kill, and not only has the nerve to start taking shots, but is able to headshot a moving target. Truly a creature that doesn't afraid of anything!
 * To be fair, in gameplay terms a headshot even with full shields would have killed a Spartan. However, this could just mean that the sniper is a metagaming NPC, which is either more or less awesome.
 * My pet theory is that they were field testing the new Beam Rifle (found in Halo 2 and 3). It's why the shot penetrated the shields and why the ship left after firing one shot, despite the clear shots they had on Six and others.
 * A beam rifle would have shown a solid beam with different sound. Slow it down and you definitely see it's a needle projectile. It was just that her shields were down.
 * There's also the fact that Jackals literally do not feel fear, so it didn't really take the same amount of nerve to make the shot, just opportunity. Still impressive, though.
 * Emile:


 * The beginning of Tip of the Spear. You are probably embarking on one of the largest UNSC offensives in the games! AND IT IS AWESOME, especially when a pair of ships come in after you destroy an anti-air turret and start shooting down at the larger battle below you.
 * If you mount a Wraith without grenades, how do you kill it? PUNCH IT. AND IT WORKS.

Halo 4

 * The entire E3 trailer. Especially the music.

Expanded Universe

 * That's not even counting how much awesome is in the novels. Anyone else remember Linda sniping Banshee pilots with ricochets off the inside of their own cockpits from kilometers off....while hanging upside down....and shooting one-handed?
 * The above example? The day after she is brought back to life.
 * Anytime Linda is sniping, it is a CMOA. She is never shown to miss a target, and generally nets one shot kills. Not to mention the fact that she apparently prefers to snipe from impossible positions.
 * And Kelly-087 luring several Sentinels into a trap, and stopping to flip one of them off. Even her teammates are impressed.
 * And Will walking up to that hunter and PUNCHING it to death... Nice.
 * The S-II's get a collective one in First Strike when they have to jump out of their Pelican in mid-flight, and basically survive what amounts to a skydive at five thousand feet without any parachutes. Also in 1,000 pounds of armor that was definitely NOT designed for that kind of use (this would bring their terminal velocity to about a third of the speed of sound).
 * It bears repeating; flipping off a Sentinel. That is all.
 * Marvin Mabuto in the novel The Flood. He was detached from his squad on the original Halo and Guilty Spark used him as the reclaimer before the Master Chief, and he got far before he was killed. Doesn't sound impressive? He was a regular marine wearing only the standard UNSC-issued ballistic body armor, and when the Flood finally killed him, his body was so thrashed and mangled they couldn't infect it. Hell, when the Master Chief himself finds what's left, he says says (and I quote): "I didn't know you, Sarge, but I sure as hell wish I had. You must have been one hard-core son of a bitch."
 * Given that Mabuto's final resting place was within the Library (I repeat, the frickin' LIBRARY), the sergeant gets a postmortem CMOA by default.
 * This Troper is surprised that Fall of Reach hasn't been explicitly mentioned. Namely the part where
 * In Contact Harvest, the planetary A Is get a CMOA for
 * In Ghosts of Onyx,
 * In the same book, Will-043 took on two Hunters by himself and managed to rip one of them apart with his bare hands.
 * Travelling back to the early days of Halo, how has no-one remembered the famous Keyes Loop of Fall of Reach? A puny UNSC Destroyer (485m) manages to, with one of the most brilliant, most balls-out ship maneuvers in the entire series, take down three Covenant ships (two frigates - 1000m - and a destroyer - 1500m) and scare a fourth (a light carrier - 1455m) into escaping. This is the move that got Jacob Keyes promoted to Captain and single-handedly boosted the morale of the entire local UNSC force.
 * Halo Evolutions probably wins points for the most audacious moment towards the end. Admiral Cole goes to his (possible) not-quite death by luring a 200+ Covenant Fleet in close and then
 * Or even earlier when Cole was still a minor officer, the fleet he was with had been ruined via nuke and sent out a message to the insurgent Corvette to surrender his Destroyer(since the blast had killed everyone else on the bridge), right as they got in close he pulled the Destroyer away, breaking their air locks and opened up the side missile ports aimed right at them and ordering the INSURGENTS to surrender, pulling off a metaphorical Dramatic Gun Cock in the process. Bonus points for having forward thinking not seen since Ender
 * Fall of Reach. The Cradle. When it
 * To clarify, the Cradle is a drydock.
 * From the Landfall live-action videos. One involves a Marine tearing a spike grenade (which, in the video, is the size of a baseball bat) out of a wall, then chucking it into the air, hitting a Banshee in mid-flight as it passes by, blowing it away. There's also another with a Marine fearlessly facing down a charging Chieftain with a hammer, then firing a rocket launcher and blowing the Brute to pieces.
 * In The Fall of Reach, the roughly eight-year old Spartans are dropped individually across a large wooded area. They manage to group up and take out a team of Marines and steal their Pelican dropship. Using rocks.
 * In First Strike, the Spartans that meet up with Dr. Halsey. They all have extensive injuries, and yet they were still on their feet and fighting. Let's put this in perspective.
 * Fred: Torn Achilles tendon, three cracked ribs,and contusions on both kidneys. And was deemed "fine".
 * Will: Cracked tibia and internal bleeding.
 * Vinh: Torn deltoid muscle, three broken fingers, and a herniated disk.
 * Isaac: Internal contusions, and both shoulders were dislocated and re-inserted incorrectly.
 * Kelly: Low blood pressure, high body temperature, moderate bleeding in her liver, and a completely collapsed right lung.
 * From Glasslands: Lucy punching Halsey full on in the mouth after getting fed up with Halsey's inability to act decently to the Engineers that treated her kindly and were the group's only chance to escape the Dyson sphere.
 * How about in First Strike, when Admiral Whitcomb and Lieutenant Haverson lure an entire Covenant armada into getting blown up, using themselves as bait, which probably ended up being the only thing saving Earth from being overrun in Halo 2.

Unsorted

 * Many of Forge's actions, but the most memorable is when he wanted to talk with the Arbiter as "man to freak" twice..