Halo (series)/YMMV

The following are Subjective Tropes related to Halo.

"Joystiq: The only feature Bungie forgot to list that was also included in the trailer? Like 50 million boners."
 * Alternate Character Interpretation: Given the Grey and Grey Morality of the Halo universe, this trope is prevalent in both heroes and villains. Characters in the universe that are the most prone to debate are John-117, Dr. Catherine Halsey, Thel 'Vadam, Colonel James Ackerson, and invoked on Admiral Preston Cole.
 * This only applies to Expanded Universe, not game canon. Dr. Halsey is the closest to Grey and Grey Morality within the games and even she is basically beyond reproach since the only thing that would make her actions questionable was the fact she never explained why she did things because it is All in The Manual.
 * The new Glasslands novel is basically half dedicated to pressing the view of Halsey being a psychopath on the reader; personal opinion varies heavily on if it succeeded, as the people who called Halsey out on her controversial projects willingly allowed, no, approved of them, helped bring them about, were ultimately saved by them, and did just as horrible things on their own. Heck, it even glossed over some established canon (namely, Cortana's creation and her reasons for cloning the children) in an attempt to make her more controversial.
 * Really, it's more Karen Traviss is at it again.
 * It pretty much depends entirely on how the reader viewed Halsey going in. If you think she was a good person, then yeah, you're probably going to see the novel like that. IF not, then it comes across as a pretty fair debate over whether or not she falls under Complete Monster or I Did What I Had to Do.
 * The Forerunners get this as well. Noble, caring beings who sacrificed themselves to save the galaxy and did their best to fix the Flood's damage? Or sociopathic, fantastic racists who are the root cause of the damage done by the Flood?
 * And the Fandom Rejoiced: The art for the Comic Book Adaptation was drawn by Tsutomu Nihei.
 * New intel from Bungie, in Halo: Reach, BLOOD GULCH IS BACK BABY! And as Red vs. Blue helped demonstrate in the announcement video, it's a LOT bigger now; you can even go OUTSIDE the canyon.
 * It would be more accurate to say that they built a massive, completely forgable map, and then put a Blood Gulch remake in what amounts to a very small corner of it.
 * Halo: Reach. Playable. Space. Combat.
 * Also, the sprint, jet pack, and evade abilities (asked for since Halo 2), Enhanced Forge (no more clunky building and a whole damn world to build that stuff in!), Customizable players in Campaign, Online Co-op, Matchmaking Firefight, Rewindable theater mode for campaign, etc.... They weren't kidding with the "Swan Song" final game for fans.
 * Reach has garnered an extremely high amount of anticipation, after trailers showcased things like custom loadouts, sprinting, and jetpacks. This must be especially gratifying to Bungie, who has been fielding complaints since Halo 2 that it and the subsequent games were just graphic updates of the first game.

"Q: "So, Forge 2.0 is pretty cool then, eh?" Chad (Bungie team guy): "I think he’s a pretty cool guy. He makes maps and doesn’t afraid of anything.""
 * Best Level Ever: In Halo 1, there is The Assault on the Control Room, where you finally get to rampage all over the covenant with vehicles. Halo 2 has The Gravemind (not the Thing made of corpses. Here' you get to rampage through what is effectively the covenant capital city gunning down everyone in your way in one long bloodbath while chasing down the resident Big Bad. Oh yeah, and partway through, some of the enemies start killing each other. Oh yeah, and there is so much Scenery Porn that you're either killing something or looking like a view straight out of a Final Fantasy CGI cutscene. Halo 3 has two; Tsavo Highway, which is going on a vehicle rampage against the covenant. The other one is a level called "The Covenant". At its climax, you get to rampage through enemy banshees and two giant enemy tank walkers! ODST has the Police Headquarters level which ends with an awesome last stand and an epic cutscene.
 * Halo 1's Silent Cartographer level begins with an assault on a Covenant-held beach, and once that's over it does a fantastic job of providing the illusion that you've got a whole island to explore however you like. The Silent Cartographer is such a highly-regarded mission that the Half-Life 2 mod Minerva Metastasis has been described as essentially a "love letter" to that one level. Also, the first game's Two Betrayals level climaxes in a Big Badass Battle Sequence featuring a three-way fight between the Chief, the Covenant (with two Wraith tanks at their disposal!), and the Flood.
 * Broken Base: Which one was best? Or better yet, go out and ask which Halo game was the worst or where they stopped being good.
 * Crazy Awesome:
 * Admiral Cole.
 * Pretty much a requirement for being an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper. As the saying goes, "It takes a special kind of Crazy to be a Helljumper".
 * How Thom-B293 died? Picking up the nuke Kat had been carrying, using his Jetpack to carry it aboard the overhead Covenent Battlecruiser, then lobbing it into the ship's vehicle hanger, before walking out of the hanger as the nuke goes off, blowing up the entire ship and him with it.
 * Complaining About Games You Haven't Played
 * Complete Monster:
 * Besides some of the Covenant and 343 Guilty Spark, the Halo 3: ODST audio-files have Police Commissioner Kinsler, who.
 * The Rookie finds graffiti throughout New Mombasa that more-or-less says Kinsler is a monster too.
 * Two more monsters:
 * Ripa 'Moramee's a heartless psychopath who treats other soldiers as cannon fodder and takes pride in hurting and maiming others (during his final battle with Forge he deliberately beats the shit out of him while mocking him). This is a guy even the Covenant considered to be unspeakably evil.
 * The Prophet of Truth, starts a war that kills countless innocents just to keep his power, and after coldly murdering   he forces Johnson to activate the Halos while MOCKING HIM AND CALLING HIS PEOPLE WEAK AT THE SAME TIME (referring to how   hesitated.)
 * Both monsters
 * Continuity Drift: Halo canon has been experiencing this, though it's up in the air if some of the retcons are justified or not.
 * This mainly applies to the books, which by official policy are only canon if they do not contradict the games, even if the book comes out first. The most major game retcons were surviving Halo: Combat Evolved, despite Cortana confirming everyone except Master Chief was dead at the end, which is justifiable given how important those two were through the rest of the game series.
 * Critical Backlash
 * Crosses the Line Twice: Shooting Grunts in the head? Cruel. Having the head explode with confetti popping out and children cheering? Hilarious.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: And how!
 * Hell, there isn't one piece of music in this series that doesn't fall into this!
 * The option to adjust the volume of the music separately from other audio is a technical accreditation requirement for Xbox and Xbox 360 games, much like achievements. Halo games have a special waiver for this requirement, because the music is just that good.
 * Demonic Spiders: Jackal Snipers, Drones, Stealth Elites, Ranger Elites, Flood Stalker and Ranged forms. And to top it off, Flood Combat Forms in part 2 and 3 on Legendary, maybe Heroic. As usual, they overwhelm you by swarming from above, but with fewer places to hide, and now they can melee while wielding a weapon; a direct melee hit from them is instantly fatal on these difficulties. Flood Infection forms in these games can resurrect ungibbed corpses, grotesquely transform live victims in real-time in part 3, and are instant death if they touch you with your shields down (unlike the first game where you had a chance to shake them off). And God help you if you randomly run into a Combat Form with a Sniper Rifle in 2, who will be just as accurate as a Jackal and will hide in the darkest spot of the room.
 * In Halo Wars multiplayer, Gauss Hogs are this, with Gunner/Grenadier Hogs only being Goddamned Bats.
 * Halo 3: ODST introduces two new types of Demonic Spiders: Engineers and Drone Majors. The Engineers have the annoying habit of flying high above the battlefield while broadcasting an overshield to their allies in the area. They can only be easily killed with Sniper or energy weapons. The Drone Major sports recharging energy shields AND rapid-fire Brute plasma rifles. Did we mention that Drones are already almost impossible to hit due to their small size and the way in which they erratically fly around the screen? Bungie, you are NOT NICE PEOPLE!!!
 * It's telling that Drones were pulled from Firefight in Reach - although half the reason they were cut was because of the addition of Skirmishers, super-powered Jackals who can move as fast and jump as high as Drones. Plus they can carry rifles and use plasma overcharges! Fun!
 * Ear Worm: Duh-da-daa, duh-da-daa, duh-da-daaaa, da-da-da-duh-duh-duh-duh....
 * Ensemble Darkhorse:
 * Vergil.
 * Emile-A239 gained a great deal of popularity shortly after his first appearance. The fact that he etched a skull into his visor probably had something to do with it.
 * Escapist Character: John-117 was ranked the eighth greatest video game character of all time by Electronic Gaming Monthly, simply because he doesn't talk much and you can't see his face, so you can easily pretend it's really you inside the armour doing all those badass things.
 * Epileptic Trees: (See: Halo)
 * Many of the people at the Halo Story Page are veterans at WMG, having previously been doing the same thing with the Marathon games.
 * Fan Dumb: When it comes to Flame Wars about Halo, this trope is present almost All The Time. The derision leveled towards any change and/or any lack of change is nearly endless. Even all the aspects the fans wanted Bungie to change (or keep) are being complaining about. For instance: When Halo 2 came out, fans screamed They Changed It, Now It Sucks. When Halo 3 came out, fans screamed It Is the Same Now It Sucks. When Halo: Reach, they chanted both and much more at the same time. It doesn't matter what Bungie does for this franchise, fans will still complain.
 * Fan Hater: Be prepared to take a lot of flames if you proclaim to be a Halo fan.
 * Fandom Rivalry: Don't ever mention the existence of Halo to most Half Life, Medal of Honor and/or Call of Duty fans unless you're saying "This is the worst game series of all time, I'd rather eat a cactus! 0/10". Amusingly there actually exist plenty of Halo fans who actually like any of the above titles better or even as much as they like Halo but they tend to keep their mouths shut from the Spanish Inquisition.
 * Franchise Zombie: It was going to end with the second game, but Microsoft made them stretch it out. There have been four new games since, again, mostly due to Microsoft.
 * Fridge Brilliance: Spartans don't die, they're only missing in action, that is how you respawn when you die! Also, the Gravemind's quotes in Halo 3? You know where he calls you the 'child of my enemy?' Originally we thought it was because humanity were the inheritors of the Forerunner legacy. However new information reveals that thousands of years ago humanity repelled the flood and found a way to destroy them without firing the halo rings. This gravemind has the memories of its predecessor.
 * Fridge Horror: You know the Focus Rifle, the Covenant Sniper equivalent in Reach? It nearly blinds you provided the beam's hitting you in the face, and makes that frightening beeping sound as it's being fired? Keep in mind this is the Covenant sniper. Jackals are still in the game. You can start crying now.
 * In Halo:Reach, we are introduced to Brutes in a level where we are escorting civilians out of a city. Brutes are known for eating humans they've killed. So yeah.
 * You know the Arbiter, that snarky 7-foot alien buddy of yours that kicks ass? He's the one who,
 * Funny Aneurysm Moment: "Get up--SO I CAN KILL YOU AGAIN!" is less funny once the Flood-zombies do continue getting up....
 * From a Marine passenger, after running over an enemy with a vehicle: "That'd better buff out!". Also, a lot of the stuff the Grunts say, if you listen closely.
 * Genius Bonus: Most of the UNSC rifles have a bullpup design, meaning the magazine is mounted behind the trigger and grip. This allows guns to be more accurate and powerful without making them significantly longer, possibly justifying their higher damage output than present-day guns.
 * Genre Turning Point: With Halo, shooters ditched Hyperspace Arsenals and took up regenerating health, among other things.
 * GIFT: Like all online video games, Halo's online portion has had issues with GIFT utilizing Griefers. Unfortunately due to it's popularity, the GIFT has been placed at the forefront, to the point that they are actually Mis Blamed for "creating" it (see the Mis Blamed example below for more)
 * Goddamned Bats: Yanme'e, aka Drones/Buggers. To the point where Reach's Firefight leaves them out. They're still in Campaign, though, and just as annoying as ever.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Plenty existed in Reach, but don't worry, they were fixed. Bungie has revealed these at different points:
 * A female Spartan model would turn male when their shields popped.
 * When rotating an Elite in the appearance section, the the legs wouldn't move with the rest of the body.
 * Continuously bumping into Kat would cause her to string together suggestive dialogue.
 * Comic-Con 2010 also revealed one: when using a Hologram in Oddball, the hologram could pick up the ball.
 * He's Just Hiding: The ONI official report pretty much makes it canon that  is still out there somewhere.
 * Hype Backlash: Quite a few people tend to hype the next upcoming Halo game to seemly unbelievable and unrealistic levels. Not surprisingly when the game comes out, they were let down.
 * To be fair, though, most of the games have lived up to expectations, with only the Fan Dumb feeling unhappy.
 * Hate Dumb: Perhaps an even bigger form of "dumb" surrounding the Halo Franchise is the massive amount of Hate Dumb, specifically because it often crosses over with the massive Fan Dumb of Half Life, System Shock and Call of Duty. Especially on The Escapist, thanks to Zero Punctuation (who has openly said he didn't really enjoy Halo, but said it was average) in which the series is frequently complained about ripping off stuff it actually popularized or was done on Marathon (Which was also done by Bungie), is criticized for its Fan Dumb (despite that they themselves are the same way), has extremely subjective opinions thrown at it, and stuff that's flat out contradicted by the games. (ie; the misconception that Master Chief is actually a Space Marine; playing the story mode of games can tell you otherwise.)
 * Ho Yay: If you stare at Buck long enough, he'll make some comments that suggest this, at least on your part.
 * Internet Backdraft: Whatever forums you visit, don't start a Halo thread. Even if you're neutral about the franchise, you'll still attract lovers, haters, and trolls.
 * It's Popular, Now It Sucks (Many of the people who utterly despise Halo and its fans are the same people who thought Marathon was Da Bomb back in the good ol' Apple Macintosh days.
 * Look around any Video Game Message board and see a thread about what the Worst/Most Overrated/etc. game is and count how many people say Halo. Yeah this trope is very much in effect.
 * It Was His Sled: It is quite impossible to hear about the series without hearing about the Flood, who were the major plot twist of the first game.
 * Lethal Joke Weapon: The Plasma Pistol and Needler, in a way. In a the hands of a grunt or a jackal (the most likely places to find them), they hardly do Scratch Damage except on the higher difficulties, but in the hands of a player the pistol alone has been the basis of several game-bending-if-not-breaking combos (such as the infamous Noob Combo of Plasma Pistol/Battle Rifle in Halo 2), and the Needler has the unique distinction of being the only Covenant weapon that is particularly effective against unshielded targets (at least until its ranged counterpart, the Needle Rifle, showed up in Halo Reach).
 * Magnificent Bastard:
 * The Prophet Of Truth, especially in the novels, where he considers strategic defeats as mere setbacks. Then Halo 3 happened...
 * The Gravemind.
 * Memetic Mutation: "I think Halo is a pretty cool guy. eh kills aleins and doesn't afraid of anything."
 * Bungie.net 7/23/10 update shows that the Bungie team is aware of this meme:

"343 Guilty Spark: UNACCEPTABLE! UNACCEPTABLE!"
 * Moral Event Horizon:
 * The Prophet of Truth crosses this after killing, if he wasn't already a Complete Monster, and
 * Arguably Truth's Moral Event Horizon came earlier when
 * The Gravemind crossed it when it tortured Cortana while aboard High Charity. When the Master Chief finally rescues her, Cortana says "You found me" with such pain in her voice that you can't help but both get a lump in your throat and swear that the Gravemind is going to pay for what it did.
 * Colonel James Ackerson's Spartan-III program, to some readers.
 * Mis Blamed: Halo's userbase has been misblamed for the creation of the "juvenile and unfriendly" gamer. Apparently people haven't heard of the theory of GIFT, which has been in existence long before Halo was even thought of. Halo just brought the issue to light if anything.
 * Narm Charm:
 * 343 Guilty Spark, and Bungie knows it. Even when he gets red-eyed pissed off, he's sort of cute.


 * Rtas 'Vadum', as a result of his epic hammyness.
 * Nightmare Fuel: The Flood.
 * The whole Covenant war could also qualify. As well as
 * Or
 * The transmissions from Cortana, especially on the titular mission, where she goes rampant for a bit before you rescue her.
 * The report listing the possible side-effects of the augmentation process is not pleasant.
 * The Forerunner Saga amps it up with the Flood: in Primordium,
 * Halo: Evolution's Stomping On the Heel of a Fuss will make you absolutely terrified of Brutes. What do they do when they capture a human-held civilian area? Slaughter every man, woman, and child in it, leave their corpses to rot in the sun as casually as lawn gnomes, and keep the survivors penned up in their own filth, waiting to be let loose so the Brutes can hunt them, or for some bored ones to come over and play tug-of-war with their limbs. Rip. Then, they have a backyard barbecue with the remains, sitting around the campfire talking, laughing, and gnawing on somebody's leg.
 * Player Punch: The deaths of many favorite characters, including
 * Porting Disaster: A strange variant with the original, in that it was mostly competently converted to the PC in and of itself and reasonably well-received, but delayed for so very, very long that by the time it came out, the competition was far ahead in every aspect, and it really stood out how very unremarkable and average it was compared to other PC First Person Shooters. Halo 2 fared much worse, in that even though its graphics were hopelessly outdated when it finally came out on the PC, it was released as a Windows Vista exclusive to convince people of the technological wonder of DirectX 10.
 * To add even more insult to injury, the game doesn't even actually use Direct X 10; it just runs a check as to whether you have it or not (unsurprising given that it was made for the first-gen Xbox, which used the equivalent of Direct X 8.1!). A simple hacker-made patch allows it to run normally in Windows XP.
 * originally, Halo: Combat Evolved was supposed to be a PC game first. That this led to a backlash when the Halo series ultimately became, as the main page says, 'one of the premiere franchises exclusive to the Xbox' is, perhaps, understandable, especially when it was made clear by porting disasters.
 * The Scrappy:
 * Let's face it, no one's really cared too much for the Drones. Sure, they might look kind of cool, but just about everyone hates fighting them. They're the only Covenant species not to have a main character in any of the books (or even any named ones), they didn't even show up in Halo Wars, and the fans rejoiced when Bungie announced they won't show up in Halo: Reach's Firefight mode.
 * It would be hard to find someone who likes 343 Guilty Spark. You can't tell us you all didn't enjoy
 * With Primordium out,
 * Scrappy Mechanic - Dual-wielding. Much was made of the new ability to use two guns at the same time in Halo 2... especially when players realized the Magnum ate through shields when paired up. As Bungie tries to give guns, grenades and melees equal standing in combat, they quickly responded: first by nerfing the Magnum in 2, then by making it so dual-wielded weapons did less damage in 3. ODST and Reach both only feature single-wield guns.
 * Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Upon its original release, Halo's combat was praised for its incorporation of three elements in particular: a two-weapon limit, rechargeable shields, and dedicated buttons for instantly-accessible grenade throws and melee attacks. Individually, all these features had been seen before Halo, but they were far from predominant, especially when combined together in a single game like that. Now, they are pretty standard genre conventions among both console and PC FPSs, so these days it's common to hear the Halo series criticized for being "generic" rather than praised for these contributions.
 * So Cool Its Awesome: The first three games were all scored in the nineties by Metacritic.
 * Tear Jerker:
 * , with the saddest music piece ever conceived by the soundtrack composers.
 * death is just as tragic.
 * From Evolutions:
 * From Contact Harvest, the epilogue.
 * From Contact Harvest, the epilogue.


 * Jorge's goodbye.
 * The Forerunners' doom, specially when you read the terminals and watch Origins. Even Gravemind seemed to pity them.
 * Some of them, anyway. Star-Crossed Lovers the Didact and Librarian, however...
 * That One Boss: The Halo series only has a few bosses, and generally they are pretty fun on Normal or Heroic, but on Legendary they all easily enter That One Boss territory (except )
 * The Prophet of Regret in Halo 2 rides around on a flying chair that makes him immune to all damage except melee attacks after you board his chair. His chair also has an instant death laser on it, the same one the Hunters use. As if that weren't enough, he's also guarded by a trio of Sangeili Honor Guards at all times, along with a bunch of grenade spamming Grunts. This alone wouldn't be so bad, but his mooks constantly respawn. You attack the Prophet, board his throne, punch him a few times and get kicked off the Prophet's chair after he teleports? BOOM! You just got hit with a One-Hit Kill energy sword by one of his Honor Guard. You dispatch a pair of Honor Guards with the Noob combo?. Turns out you spent too much time standing still, and a grenade just landed next you. You try to attack the Prophet only for him to teleport away? Well, turns out he teleported behind you. Instant death laser.
 * There's also the Heretic Leader in Halo 2. Equipped with a jetpack, near-instant-death dual Plasma Rifles, and holographic doppelgangers that can take almost as much damage as he can and do the same damage.
 * Tartarus in Halo 2 is also a bitch. He runs just as fast as you do and has a shield that makes him impervious to damage until you can take it down. This means most of the fight will consist of you running away while blindly firing plasma rifles until Johnson decides he wants to snipe him, at which point you have to get in and do as much damage as you can until he turns his shield back on. If you get caught on the scenery or pause for even a millisecond, he will One-Hit Kill you with his gravity hammer.
 * The Sangeili Field Marshall at the end of Halo: Reach also counts. By himself, he's tough, but manageable, with more health than an Elite Zealot and shields strong enough to withstand two charged plasma pistol shot. He'd be a pushover if it weren't for his squad of Elite Zealots. They distract you while he One-Hit Kill you with his Fuel Rod Gun. If you try to go directly for him, you'll get gunned down by the Zealots. And unlike pretty much every enemy in the game, melee with him is suicide since he will rip out an energy sword and One-Hit Kill you.
 * That One Level: The Library in Halo, High Charity in Halo 2, Cortana in Halo 3; levels where the Flood as the primary opponent seem to be the standard.
 * Regret. Regret. Regret. Tons of Sniper Jackals (and you thought Outskirts and Metropolis were bad), sometimes in cramped spaces, plus the sadistic gondola rides, designed to make you a sitting duck for Drones, Banshees, Rangers, and BFG-wielding Grunts. And That One Boss, the titular Prophet. You'll regret this, Bungie.
 * Too Cool to Live:
 * Villain Decay:
 * A minor example, but still counts: Spec Ops Grunts. In Halo CE, they are about as badass as the lowly grunts can get, frequently armed with Needlers and Fuel Rod Guns and with a cloaking device. In Halo 2, they're still pretty lethal for grunts, but decidedly rarer than before, and also finding one with a heavy weapon is less common. They really start to go downhill in Halo 3/ODST, where the Brutes evidently fuse their rank with the Grunt Ultras, resulting in a grunt that is rare (usually seen "leading" groups of other grunts), has no cloak, never carries anything bigger than a plasma pistol - and can still be killed very easily with a simple headshot. By Reach, they are pretty much just used like standard grunts, their only defining features being their dark colouration and their tendency to only appear alongside Elite Zealots.
 * Truth basically turned into the old Prophet, Mercy, in Halo 3. He went from a silver-tongued, smooth-talking Machiavellian schemer into a raving lunatic with no method to his madness. Justified in that Truth was slowly going insane after interrogating Guilty Spark and learning that Halo was a weapon.
 * The Woobie:
 * Cortana during the Gravemind's assault.
 * By the end of Contact Harvest, you will want to hug
 * By the end of Contact Harvest, you will want to hug