Halo has always shone its brightest when faced with adversity – a trait that begins with the original Halo: Combat Evolved. In 2001, Microsoft – brand new to the gaming industry – was attempting to jump in and compete with Nintendo’s Gamecube and Sony’s Playstation 2, when both companies had seen incredible success with their previous consoles. Adding to Halo’s troubles, by the time this once-Apple-exclusive strategy game was released on Microsoft’s fledgling console as a first-person-shooter, it faced as much skepticism as it did hype. Those who were critical of Bungie’s new IP claimed it would look better on a computer, said it wouldn’t be able to stand toe-to-toe with the best that Sony and Nintendo had to offer, and moaned that Halo was “just another” shooter.
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In spite of these cynics, Halo: Combat Evolved persevered. It shattered all expectations of what first-person-shooters could be on consoles. It is impossible to forget that first moment of stepping out of the crashed escape pod in the second mission of Halo: Combat Evolved – that moment after battling through the tight corridors and narrow pathways of the Pillar of Autumn and then being dropped into a massive, open expanse of grass, hills, rocks, and rivers. That moment of realization, as Cortana quips about the ring-world’s many species of flora, that Bungie had lulled everyone into a false sense of familiarity. The Autumn’s metal walls and confined combat spaces were exactly what Halo’s skeptics would have led players to expect of the entire game – not in the sense that it made the game bad, but that it was not ground-breaking. This new world was exactly that, though – it was new, and, perhaps more importantly, it was mysterious. It encouraged players to explore, to break out of comfort zones, and to approach combat differently.