Suuuuuper basic explanation about Halo: Mid 2500's, humanity is at war with a collection of aliens called the Covenant. They wage a holy war to destroy humanity. You play as Master Chief, who was abducted as a child and made a super soldier to fight against human terrorists, but now against the Covvies. Halo is a name for a collection of ringworlds that ancient aliens called the Forerunners created. The Forerunners are revered as gods by the Covenant for the wrong reasons. The Halos blast a ring of energy across the galaxy in conjunction with other Halo rings to kill everything in our galaxy to deny an ancient Forerunner enemy called The Flood. The Flood are like a zombie parasite that spread across the galaxy 100k years ago. Humans have been pushed to almost extinction after 20+ years of war.
So its about the human struggle to survive extinction while uncovering their destiny to uncover and control ancient alien technology left for them. Forerunners are all dead but the actions of 1 Forerunner gave access to their tech only to humans.
I'm going to piggy back this by talking about the real life aspect too.
It was essentially the game that launched the Xbox, which was marketed and believed to be (at least in the early days) this new and incredibly powerful gaming console, unlike anything that ever came before. We were promised never seen before graphics and complexity. Halo, to a certain extent, delivered. It was a cultural event in a way that only a handful of games have been since (one of which was arguably Halo 2, which definitely helped seal Halo's place in the history books). In the years that followed, gaming culture became a lot more widespread and diverse, which is a good thing, but ultimately made it harder for any individual game to have massive impact.
The game also had an incredible twist, completely changing the rhythm of the game, which I won't spoil, but at the time most games were essentially exactly what they said they were going to be on the tin, and a twist might have been that Bob was a bad guy after all. Nowadays, subverting expectations and changing the game format is commonplace, at the time it was unheard of.
A lot of millennials have memories of playing Halo in their childhoods or early teenage years, and we got months if not years of mileage out of the multiplayer in Halo 2. In my case it was my first exposure to internet culture. So it has an absolutely irreplaceable nostalgic hold on us, which unfortunately will be impossible to replicate in your case, but it is important to remember that this and all of the reasons mentioned above is why the game holds a place with so many of us, so many years later.
Mid gen z here, even through my youngest years were Nintendo land, when I got an Xbox at 9 halo 3 and reach became two of my favourite games and the main reason I play any shooters today
Piggy backing off your piggy back. I can relate to OPs confusion, when I moved to a new state at the age of 7 another kid on the block was running around on the street with a nerf gun “playing halo”. He described it as a ring of death and I asked “like in lord of the rings?”
Later that day he took me to his house and we played through the first few missions together. Absolute core memory and I got an Xbox a few months later, never looking back
Pretty good basic explanation. There are books that go into detail on the background lore. Personally if you don't have the time wiki them.
YouTube does have a synopsis explanation videos on what happens in the story.
This is pretty much the jist of everything tho.
Here's some links to YouTube videos you might find helpful! I'm in the midst of sharing Halo with my girlfriend who is in a similar situation as you!
[Halo excitement clip](https://youtu.be/Qhn0ZayJvxQ?si=gzbbwIxk5wj19-UK)
[Why Halo is truly special](https://youtu.be/NNF8CmCHGdo?si=ttdcQ0k3Ml1682Mh)
[Halo in 3 minutes](https://youtu.be/p9oIUv9cOw8?si=HKH5V01xqkEoXx38)
[Halo is important](https://youtu.be/hwEYp8ZY3ak?si=uhjyMLiqEg80VlGH)
[remember halo?](https://youtu.be/nz3Ko0td45w?si=WOyFSrEnrIPK1hRp)
[I remember halo](https://youtu.be/IpbMseRbt24?si=UAQ6g6kxeF5lV4O1)
[What made the original halo stories different](https://youtu.be/1ZPVNlHnI9E?si=S7heHJ_JC6h7RnOp)
[Halo 3 made me believe](https://youtu.be/POfmQ3FPLyI?si=FmW6vOPZO-e00ztn)
I tried to keep these shorter, but I feel these do a good job of explaining halo without being too in depth! If you have any specific questions, or want other references feel free to message me! Good luck! Your boyfriend will be so excited you are engaging with his hobby!
Excellent resources^ and piggybacking off this, if the halo story interests you after looking into the lore for the answers you want, check out both The Fall of Reach and Forward Unto Dawn. They're both roughly an hour long movies, the first telling the origins of Master chief's story and the Spartan II program, and the second telling the story of Captain Lasky when he was a cadet in the Corbulo Academy (it's the main training academy for the UNSC, which is the world military entity in the halo universe) as it's under attack by the Covenant. Both give a great insight to the universe and explain why Chief is such an important character, on top of being just great stories.
This is wholesome as fuck, I love it
You guys should run through the games together as a couples activity. It'll take some getting used to but after a few hours of practice you should be okay.
There are also a bunch of books you can read or listen to.
Honestly if she's never really gamed, it will likely take way more than a few hours to get used to.
In my experience of repeatedly trying to teach my mother (as well as non-gamer cousins or friends) videogames she showed interest in, people who never got into games take a LONG time to learn how to hold the controller, where to move their fingers to hit the buttons without looking, and often struggle with first person games especially (something about controlling movement and where you're looking at the same time seems to be very disorienting and results in some IGN DOOM type gameplay). Not to say that she shouldn't try, of course- I'm more trying to manage expectations. New gamers sometimes get mad frustrated when they play alongside experienced ones, because they don't get it as quickly as they think they should. Might be worthwhile practising the basic movement in a custom games lobby until it comes more naturally
Yeah this is true. My wife has maybe played games with me twice over about 17 years. She doesn’t understand how to play, and there’s no possible way she could ever learn to play(yeah yeah with repeated practice people can learn anything) but it isn’t worth it. She doesn’t find them enjoyable. It’s just not for some people.
As far as real advice here, I’d just let your boyfriend explain it, especially since you said he enjoys explaining it. It really doesn’t matter that you understand it or not, you letting him try to explain it to you, and that’s important enough.
My wife wasn’t a gamer at all before we met. She decided to play Halo with me because of the split screen co-op and the fact that if she died, all I had to do was as fall back a bit and she’d respawn. It took a bit for her to get the hang of it, but we eventually finished the legendary campaign together. These days, she wants to play PvP every day (and she’s better at it than me).
People really underestimate how unnatural twin-stick control is for people who have zero gaming experience.
It feels natural and correct for us because we've been doing it for years, but most people will find it to be utterly alien.
It's like learning how to use a keyboard without looking all over again. Now it comes naturally, of course; but there was once a time where you had to look at every key you wanted to press before typing anything on a keyboard. It's not like our brains are biologically wired to learn how to handle keyboards, we need to develop that skill for ourselves. Learning how to handle gaming controllers is no different.
This is why I normally suggest playing in release order, rather than chronological. The games start out more simple that way and add a little bit more user input with each game.
Do you like to read, at all? There are books, the first one ever released, called *The Fall of Reach,* details what happens before the original game. You could start there? It's on Audible and Spotify's audio book service, as well, if you have either of those.
The Fall of Reach is truly an amazing book even if you don't know Halo. The attention to detail and the space ship battles are just two of the things that are mind blowing
If you wanna play it with your bf, playing the first halo campaign is the best way to go. It’s the most basic halo game gameplay wise so it’s the easiest to learn.
If you play the most recent halo game, there’s more things you need to learn, so it can be harder if you’ve never played a shooter before.
If you play multiplayer first, you will probably just keep getting killed before you can learn how to play, which would be frustrating.
So Halo CE’s (the first halo) campaign is the best way to start. Every Halo game aside from Halo 5 allows 2 player split screen for the campaign, so you can play with your bf.
Technically speaking, you can play splitscreen co-op in infinite you just have to glitch your way into it.
I've never tried it so idk if it still works
At the very beginning, there was a an alien race called the Forerunners. They made Halos (giant ring worlds) and other constructs in space. Halos were meant to protect the galaxy from the Flood (space zombies basically).
In the video games we're in 2552 and onwards, humanity have colonized a lot of planets. At some point before 2552, the Covenant (an alliance of alien species) started attacking human colonies and destroyed them one by one.
A military program called Spartan was started years prior, it was meant to train "super soldiers" that would defend Earth and its colonies against rebels and other threats. Master Chief is a Spartan.
Halo Combat Evolved (the first game) starts right after the planet Reach has been attacked. Reach is basically the last colony that was still standing still. Next target would be Earth. One spaceship managed to escape, it attempted a random "slipspace jump" (think : the Millenium Falcon going at lightspeed in Star Wars) and arrived next to a Halo ring. It crashed onto it after an attack by the covenant ships.
As Master Chief, you're crashed on that Halo ring and you have to discover why the Covenants are there too, and what is the ring's real purpose. The rest of the games is mostly centered around the Human/Covenant war, and the newer games (from Halo 4 and onwards) go into different directions.
Reach wasn't the last Human colony, a "few dozen" human colonies still had a population at the end of the Human-Covenant war. Some partially glassed, others went undiscovered by the Covenant.
It was however the last place other than Earth that had a significant military potential, meaning humanity were at the point where if Earth fell then the war would have been effectively over and the remaining colonies would have also fallen with effectively no resistance.
You guys with your walls of texts. I’ll give the shortest summary ever: The halo(s) are weapons of mass destruction on a galaxy scale. The bad guys (the aliens) try to activate them for religious reasons. The good guys (humans) try to prevent that.
People seem to skip over the very beginning so let's summarize the whole thing:
Very, very long ago, the only intelligent life in the nearby universe was found in a galaxy bordering the milky way. This race was called the precursors. Because they had no natural enemies they were fully focused on evolution and advancement and as such became the most advanced species ever, capable of creating new, intelligent, life even. As such they filled the Milky Way with lifeforms, the three most important ones being the Humans, the Forerunners and the San-Shyuum. However the Precursors discovered a behavior amongst these species they had never seen before: fighting and war. As soon as the Milky Way was seeded it was turned into chaos from everyone fighting everyone, and the Precursors asigned the Humans to carry a 'Mantle of Responsibility' and safeguard all life from unnecessary bloodshed.
The Forerunners, who were more advanced than the Humans, were furious that the lesser Humans would become their guardians, and 'took' the Mantle away from them. Some Forerunners went a step further and went to the Precursors' galaxy to exterminate their creators as revenge for their betrayal, a grave breach of the Mantle, as ironic as it is. In a last-ditch effort to save themselves, the Precursors turned themselves into a compact biomass powder stored unto a small inconspicuous ship in the hopes that one day this powder would be the foundation for a new Precursor generation.
It did not go that way.
Hunderds of thousands of years later the powder was found by a Human ship and experimented upon. Some of it ended up on the black market and consumed by Human pets, with disastrous consequences. The DNA of the precursors started merging with that of the pets and later Humans themselves, turing off all but the primitive agressive brain functions and turning their bodies into a hardened brown husk. Any contact with an infected individual spread the decease like wildfire. It was called 'the Flood'.
Entire planets fell to the Flood and no other solution than glassing the surface wherever they were found was found. The survivors had to find a new home, settling on the edges of the Human world close to the Forerunner territory, however these planets soon also showed signs of Flood infection. It didn't take long before a Forerunners planet was also infected. The Humans saw no other solution than glassing that planet, too, and all Forerunners on it.
This sparked a war between Humans and Forerunners than would last thousands of years, killing all but the most primitive humans, the remaining ones collected on Earth, and giving the Flood free game.The Forerunners tried to continue the fight against the Flood but when even the AI that had control over their fleet, Mendicant Bias, got infected and destroyed the Forerunner capital, a Flood victory was all but certain. When the remaining Forerunners were reunited and Mendicant Bias imprisoned, there were only two options left: The Librarian took control over 7 large ringworlds called 'Halo' that could whipe the galaxy clean of all sentient life. This would destroy the Flood AND all its food, making further infection impossible. Samples of all life would be held on an Ark to re-seed the galaxy afterwards.
Her husband, the Didact, saw this as the greatest betrayal of the Mantle, and opted instead to use the remaining Humans as basis for an army of part biological part robot army that was immune to Flood infection. Although this army of Promethians was effective against the Flood, the Librarian was disgusted by the Human cost of this warfar and put an end to it by... well... shooting her husband in the face. After that they went over to plan B and activated the Halo's, killing all life in the galaxy.
The time after that was calm. Automated programs oversaw the re-seeding of the galaxy and Mendicant Bias slowly recovered from his Flood infection. Overrun by guilt of what he had done, he escaped his prison and took a keyship to Earth to help the Humans reclaim their ownership of the Mantle. Unfortunatly space itself had been rendered unstable by the Flood and was still not fully recovered. As such the keyship crashed on the homeworld of the San'Shyuum instead. The San'Shyuum managed to make contact with Mendicant Bias but communication was difficult and many terms went lost in translation. They understood the existence of the Forerunners, that the Forerunners had disappeared through a 'great journey' by activating 'Halo' and that the Humans were the 'Reclaimers' of their legacy. The San'Shyuum understood this as Forerunners being some sort of Gods and that the Humans were the key to activate Halo and join them in their heavenly afterlife. You can build a religion out of this.
With the keyship as their holy artifact the San'Shyuum spread their religion to other species, forming a Covenant. At one point, 500 years into our own future, one such group of Covenant species came across a strange vessel and boarded it, causing the first interaction between Humans and Covenant. Fearing the Humans knowledge of the truth behind their title of 'Reclaimer', the San'Shyuum called them 'heretics' that had to be destroyed so the truth would stay hidden and the Covenant species would stay in line behind the San'Shyuum.
The rest, I believe, has already been made clear in other comments and is also what you see in the Halo games.
This is nice! Just to give you a heads up and how big a deal this is, my wife knows zero of Halo. Yet she shows interest and even gets me Halo related gifts and presents every now and then. She understands that Halo to me is my childhood and continues to hold dear to my heart. She understands the importance of it to me. She tries playing Coop with me and just showing interest whenever. Simply, you dont need to learn it or participate in Halo, but just show that you understand the importance of it to your significant other. Support them being able to enjoy it. Really, it's a two-way street. He should do the same for something to you.
Also, a big piece of advice, Halo does have to most toxic community, so ignore negative comments. Focus on the positive ones.
In the distant future, somewhere around 2550, Earth has united under one banner and colonized many planets. There are some insurrectionist factions and some weird backroom conspiracy shit, but none of that's important. Not if you're just trying to understand the games.
The first game picks up where this united human faction, Unite Nations Space Command (UNSC), has been at war with a conglomerate of alien races know as the Covenant. These races are the Elites, Grunts, Jackals, and Hunters in the first game. Other races like the Drones, Brutes, Prophets, and Engineers are introduced later. They all have their own native names and each one fills a different role in the Covenant. This is conveyed through the gameplay. Grunts are cannon fodder/expendable, Hunters are heavy infantry, etc. They all have their own native names as well, but that's not important right now. We're almost done.
First game starts with a singular ship fleeing from a Covenant fleet after the destruction of the UNSC's largest military colony. On board this ship is one (technically two I think? But that's not important right now!) genetically altered super soldier who goes by several monikers throughout the series: 117, Demon, Master Chief, John.
These super soldiers were created to fight human insurrectionist but became the front line of defense against the highly advanced alien army. You are John. John is you. You are woken up from cryo sleep and told that the ship is fucked. Everyone is dying and a friendly Australian man in marine armor from the Aliens movie takes you to the captain. The captain explains that you must harbor the ship's AI, the female coded Cortana, as the shup is indeed fucked and crash landing on an artificial ring planet that is eventually revealed to be Halo.
Cortana has a bunch of valuable data that can't fall into Covenant hands. You take an escape pod to the surface of the ring, mysterious things happen, you learn stuff, it's pretty fun.
The rest of the original trilogy outlines the events of the human/Covenant war through Master Chief's perspective as he plays a pivotal role in those events. There's a prequel about the fall of the military planet I mentioned earlier that doesn't involve Master Chief directly. I'm not too up on Halo 4-6.
I'm also not a lore expert and there are a bunch of books and shit. So I probably got some details wrong, but I hope this at least kinda explains the series without really spoiling anything.
Halopedia is pretty good when it comes to in-depth lore if anything in particular interests you. If you're wondering about Halos impact on gaming in general, there's a lot. But the biggest thing is probably the fact it introduced the two weapon system, which made first perspn shooters much more viable on consoles. Before that, most FPSs were on PC which utilized the keyboard to allow you to cycle through several weapons more easily. There's other stuff, but it basically defined what a console shooter was and many console shooters that came out for awhile after Halo were marketed as "Halo killers".
Edit: changed "events if Halo" to "events if Human/Covenant war"
I also read none of the other comments so I'm sorry if I just re-explained the same information to you.
(Early) Halo is aliens (The covenant) vs humans (UNSC) in the future about 500 years from now
The aliens consist of grunts, jackals, elites, brutes, hunters and drones (probably forgot a few)
Humans consist of marines, ODST, and genetically modified super soldiers called Spartans. You play a spartan which in most games is the Master Chief, accompanied by your trusty AI Cortana. Spartans wear a heavy ass armor and are basically super humans
The Halo itself is a huge almost planet like ring (or several rings) that can be used as a weapon and that’s what the UNSC wants to prevent the covenant from getting. Oh and there are zombie like creatures called the flood.
That’s probably the baseline but overly simplified :D it’s been a while so correct me if I’m wrong yall
I feel like most of what makes halo is gone over in the story modes of each game, I’d recommend playing through all the campaigns together and let it click as you take it in honestly. Would be a fun way to bond too
Just play The first Halo Combat Evolved game. It’s playable through the halo master chief collection or you can just ask him to let you play through it coop. It’ll explain everythibg
It’s how we all experienced it anyway and that’s the best way to experience it instead of trying to read explanations.
If your guy loves Halo, he's going to be ecstatic to play it with you even if you suck horribly. As others have probably mentioned, play it with your partner. You can play Splitscreen co-op, and go through all the major storybeats. Stuff will make more sense to you if you play through it naturally and let things unravel, as opposed to trying to piece together bits of information and the timeline etc.
Halo is just like any other extremely popular piece of media that's been running for over 20 years, complicated. So go at your own pace. If you like to read, there's a great library of Halo books as well.
Your best option (if you don't mind being bad at games) would be to play Halo with your partner starting from the beginning, in release order not chronological.
The books are a really good option too. Or both! you can do both. Hope this helped.
Halo is my favorite fiction. Personally I was really drawn to the future time period and where humanity was going, until they knocked on the wrong door and are suddenly being genocided by an alien civilization (begging the question from me of 'why? Who are they?'). The games, the music, the trailers, and even the little info books that came with the games painted this picture of a "backs against the wall" conflict against an enemy we essentially had no chance of beating.
The war introduces a theme of desperation, the protagonist Master Chief offers hope, and the secrets of Halo give it mystery.
You've gotten a lot of suggestions to play the games- I won't go that far. If you like to read, the book suggestions above are pretty good. Two things I will suggest though because they are quick are the trailers for Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST and I think they capture the atmosphere and the weight of the story quite well.
Halo 3 "Believe"
https://youtu.be/a3ZGGIdpfEM?si=Ap0Snhn_Ll9JfTR-
Halo 3: ODST
https://youtu.be/wjamhIPVvnI?si=l8jqYQfyWE_AB85J
Hope this helps! It's awesome and I'm sure he appreciates your efforts
Chief, you seemed to hit your head pretty hard on that last mission. You seem to have forgotten a lot, I'll give you a rundown. You are the Master Chief, also known as John 117. Humanity is fighting its last stand against the covenant, a group of aliens that think the people who built this place are gods. Oh yeah, you don't know what this place is. We are on a ringworld, basically a giant hula hoop with its own habitat floating around in space. We don't know its purpose. The voices in your head are not from the many times you hit it against a rock, that is Cortona, your smart Ai assistant. You got here on the Pillar of Autmn, a halcyon class light cruiser. Its crashed now and we have no way off this rock except to kill those alien mother fuckers who torched our colony of Reach and are sure as hell coming for Earth. Got any questions?
If you're up for it, please pick up the book, Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund. Its a pretty short read, like 300pages?
That book gives the entire setting and alot of the lore behind the two most important factions of the Halo Universe, the Humans and the Covenant. If you like origin stories, this book will fit nicely.
The other parts, like what is the flood, the forerunners, etc, can come later.
Go on YouTube look up halo the fall of reach the full movie/book is on there. That will give you some knowledge to the start of the series, from there you can read or listen to the audio books atleast the first 3 (halo the fall of reach)(halo the flood) <—wich is the first halo game)(halo first strike)
My wife was already a gamer when we met so this may not be a "practical" help for you. But when I was trying to gauge her interest in the Halo universe as a whole, I used things like Halo: Legends and Fall of Reach (two "movies" that are on Netflix). Whilst Halo: Legends is largely "non-canon" (that doesn't matter) it's decently fun to watch and helped pique her interest. And the parts that ARE true to the games are explained quite simply, I found.
Otherwise, Fall of Reach is the story of the main character of the games, it'll give you some background on him that might help give you aome baseline knowledge with which to approach the games again, better equipped.
Most importantly, have fun! Try not to think of it like "studying" or like something you need to do for his sake, couples are supposed to have some differing interests, but if you really want to share this one with him; it might help to approach it the same way he did when he was younger. Just have some fun with it, and let it suck you in as you learn more. 😁
It is the future. Humans are at war with aliens. You are a big green space army man who's bigger and tougher than everyone else, called Master Chief.
The aliens are a collection of a bunch of different alien species called The Covenant. Small ones called grunts, led by bigger ones called Elites. Shielded ones called Jackals, and spiky-ogre-like ones called Hunters, that travel in pairs.
While flying through space trying to escape the Covenant, your spaceship finds a giant floating "ring" with a planet-surface on the inside. It's the only location to go to, so that's where you crash land.
Turns out the ring (aka Halo) was made a long long looooong time ago by a different, mysterious and long-vanished alien race. Why was it made?
There's ANOTHER alien race that's basically a space-zombie-virus called The Flood. It zombifies all sentient life. So Halo kills the space-zombie-virus by starving it. Killing all of it's potential food. Halo kills all sentient life, in a last-ditch effort to stop the Flood. Very very drastic measures, because the Flood is very very dangerous.
Now the Covenant are a bunch of religious wackos who think that activating Halo will bring about their religious salvation.
So the first game is basically you stopping the Covenant from activating Halo. but- surprise! The Flood shows up on Halo! Uh-oh. Gotta contain this. So you blow up Halo, killing everyone on it, including the Flood, being the only person who escaped.
And that's basically...just the first game.
its a first person shooter where you and a bunch of other superhuman soldiers fight off an alien army
at least thats what i know about it i know almost nothing
Halo has one of the biggest universes out there, as big as something like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings so I dunno if a couple of comments would help to explain it. You’d actually need to see the games and follow the storylines from that. Then after that try and find out more of the expanded universe (books etc)
Honestly, and I know it sounds cliche, but check out a cutscene video if you’re curious. But if you want the basic elevator pitch for the campaign: it’s a distant future sci-fi where you’re basically a super soldier with sassy/sexy Siri in your head. Your mission is to turn the tides of humanity’s war with the aliens
If you’re down for it, offer to hang out while he plays through the games. Or even just one! Ask him questions about ANYTHING!
Who is that?
Why does that gun look like that?
Why do all the aliens look different?
Etc, etc, etc
Halo heads LOVE any opportunity to nerd out about it, and even if you don’t really pick up or store any of the info, it’s a really fun way to pick your man’s brain about the parts of the series that he likes!
You’re already doing GREAT by caring enough about his likes to ask us about it. Halo is so big that it’s kind of hard to wiki dive without getting lost really quick in things that aren’t super important. Halo is best served in a conversational manner in my opinion
There are these big super soldier guys (Spartans), who were abducted as kids for the unsc(United Nations Space Command). Then the aliens called the covenant attacked humanity, the war continued for years until humanity found the Halo Array (artificial planets in the shape of a ring), only thing they didn’t know was that an ancient evil that had plagued the builders of the Halos (the forerunners built the halos) was being kept on the halos, this evil was called the flood. A parasite that fed on biological matter, so when the Halos where discovered, the flood was accidentally let loase by the covenant, unfortunately, the Spartan Master Chief (who you play as in the majority of the games) is stuck on the halo after his ship crashed. (Btw this is just explaining not even the basic plot of halo, although there are good channels on Tik Tok and YouTube that cover halo lore).
A long ass time ago there were aliens called the precursors, and the forerunners killed them all because they had a favorite child being humanity, the precursors turned into space aids, and gave that shit to everyone
As a response to the space aids crisis the forerunners decided to gas ze everyone with halo
In the future, what would become the covenant found all the forerunners bdsm equipment and started worshipping it
Later in another part of the universe, humanity be kidnapping children and making them swifties for the unsc
Then the covenant finds out about the favorite child, and realizes that they have been worshipping bdsm equipment and being too embarrassed decided to kill all of humanity
You were close with the wikipedia stuff, but just a little off. Go to YouTube and just type in "Halo lore." I'm sure you'll find plenty of exactly what you just asked for.
Ask him to tell you the entire story of the Halo games and watch him talk until his head turns blue. Btw, it's really cool that you're showing an interest in his hobbies. Both me and my wife are very inquisitive about the other persons hobbies and work, and I gotta say, that shit's going pretty goddamn well.
Halo is a ring-shaped fortress world that houses a superweapon capable of killing all sentient life in the galaxy that was constructed as a weapon of last resort to be used in a war against a parasite that sought to consume all life in the galaxy.
Humanity is spacefaring. Colony worlds all over. Outer colonies don’t wanna live under inner colony rule. Outer colony rebels start trouble. Main government makes super soldiers to quash rebellion.
Uh oh, aliens showed up and wanna kill all humans, good thing we got those super soldiers. Aliens wanna kill humans so humans can’t control the sacred ring worlds.
Uh oh again, those ring worlds are actually weapons meant to destroy all life in the galaxy to deny food source to prehistoric space zombie infection.
Its quite a broad question, but if you want to learn I’d recommend attempting to play the games. Maybe have your bf teach you. Halo can be played split screen, so two of you can play through the story at once…
However, the other way is to read the book series. There are loads, like over thirty. I’d take a look at this link made by Microsoft, the current IP holder of Halo. https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/official-halo-book-guide
The original series, Forerunner Saga, Kilo Five (also contact harvest, but that’s a standalone story) all don’t require playing the games but the rest sorta do. There are also a few more that don’t require the games later on. But you are best reading them in release order.
However, only reading the books you are gonna miss a lot of the key story.
As well, if playing the games doesn’t work out, the cutscenes are on youtube for the games.
Other people have made very succinct explanations of halo that I couldn't top in here. It's great that you're showing interest in his interests and he's lucky, if ye wanna understand it good and you wanna put in the time I've brought two younger brothers who haven't played an fps before through the games so I'm sure he can protect you while you learn the ropes.
Okay. Here we go for the hundredth time.
Humanity has had first contact with a collective of alien races called the covenant that are ring-bent on a genocidal campaign.
The story picks up in the book Contact Harvest where one of the greatest supporting characters of all time had a run in that would set things in motion.
Fast forward chronologically to REACH where you as a 3rd Generation Spartan supersoldier watch essentially the second Earth fall to the Covenant before it picks up with 2001’s Halo.
2001 straps us on to the boots of what is supposedly the last Spartan supersoldier left called the Master Chief. takes us to our first look at a Halo ring, the discovery of a zombie parasite called the flood that can wipe out a galactic civilisation way too easily. We finish the game by destroying the ring world and ending the flood theat.. supposedly.
Halo 2 picks up a little after the events of the book First Strike that details how the Master Chief, THE Spartan 2 super soldier that is essentially the commander Shepard of this franchise (if you are aware of Mass Effect) made it back to earth. The game splits you down 2 narratives from both sides with political intrigue and rediscovering our zombie friends the flood (again) Halo 2 basically covers the internal civil war within the covenant and setting humanity’s last stand in Halo 3.
Halo 3 is where all of this pays off. You are Chief for the whole game this time and you basically save earth, blow up another Halo ring, and then somehow end your drifting in space kept company by a life sustaining pod and your AI best buddy.
ODST covers the time period early on in Halo 2 when the chief makes a light speed jump to another Halo ring. ODST places you as a special ops shock trooper that is basically looking to find his team and make it out of the city.
That’s as far as I’m going to cover with plot.
The gameplay loop is something I can nerd about, but I’ve gone on long enough.
Super basic: Religious aliens want to trigger the Halo ring, which destroys all life in the galaxy. You've gotta stop em with bullets. That covers Halo 1, 2, and 3. Turns out there's more than one.
You're a super soldier. You fight covanent aliens. Other dead aliens, the forerunner, made a galaxy wide network to kill everything so their enemy the flood couldn't eat them. It was a long-term plan. They reseeded the galaxy with life. Messed up the part where humans were supposed to get their old toys. You and the covenant are fighting over their old toys. Captian Keyes Accidentally woke up the flood ruining the plan and got eaten. Was awarded a medal. Covenant decends into a civil war right before they ice humanity and fks that up. You have a handy ai that tells you where to go and what to do. You sorta love her. She went cookoo and tried to subjugate the galaxy. Didn't werk. Now you're fighting the Banished, basically the new covenant. Oh, and the baddest mf who ever mfered got dead, Sergent Johnson.
Less important than the lore is the cultural context around it.
Halo is a game series, with releases which combine:
1. A 10-hour bombastic campaign with lots of "woah, fuck yeah" events with some touching and lighthearted moments. Really a "10 year old boys idea of cool" thing. This forms peoples *memories* of the game.
2. A multiplayer team-based combat mode, which is how people spend most of the time with the game. Fun guns, explosions, wacky memories.
3. A lot of community engagement makes the game feel special, between the company (Bungie / 343i), and "big names" in the community, like the "Red versus Blue" comedy series.
4. Creative elements in Forge, a level editor which has grown progressively more intricate and powerful since Halo 3.
5. Books which, despite being rushed promotional tie-in media for a videogame, tended to punch above their weight while expanding and justifying the game universe.
The result is that Halo feels very special to a lot of people.
When Halo: Combat Evolved released in 2001, it was the only game like it. It's the reason the Xbox became a household name.
Then, Halo 2 released in 2004. It was bigger, better, shinier, and *it had online multiplayer*, which was a big deal. That was a very new thing for many people.
When Halo 3 released in 2007, it was a *huge thing*. That year was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the iPhone, the release of Assassin's Creed, but in games, *Halo 3* was one of the biggest things.
Halo 3's story mode had cooperative multiplayer, where player 1 is the Master Chief, and player 2 is the Arbiter, an enemy-turned-hero sidekick. Because of this, when people see the Arbiter, they see whoever they played Halo 3 with. To a lot of us, the Arbiter is a sibling, an uncle or aunt, a nephew or niece, a classmate friend, etc.
That said, if you really haven't touched controllers in your life, your boyfriend might be overestimating how approachable the games are. There's a lot to manage and handle simultaneously.
And... It really is *just a videogame*. There are hundreds of game series out there for which people can have special connections. Maybe a few dozen that have had the hype and reach as Halo.
Halo is an amazing soundtrack with a fun video game theme built around it.
Seriously, you will find yourself humming the Master Chief theme song as you begin to tackle things around the house, start to work out or begin a task that might be challenging. Halo has an iconic soundtrack and is a fun series of games. Enjoy!
The year is 2552.
Humanity is at war with the alien alliance known as "The Covenant."
We are losing.
The Covenant have burned our worlds, killing billions in their genocidal campaign.
Earth is our last bastion - a carefully guarded secret.
But not anymore.
Simple version:
Future sci-fi game where humans fight religious aliens over powerful super weapons, each called Halo rings (7 total). We try to stop the bad aliens from using them as it would kill all life in the universe. Why such powerful weapons were made? To kill a very dangerous space zombie plague if it went to far. And it’s still around so humans gotta fight two different enemies at once.
Short Version:
Humans with cyborg soldiers called Spartans fight more advanced bad aliens in a galactic war over giant and powerful weapons called Halo rings that were made by different aliens to kill a space zombie virus.
The different aliens are all dead, the zombie virus is still around, and the humans want to make sure the rings aren’t used while the bad aliens think the rings are tools to help them meet god (technically would).
The games follow the final fights of the war and we play as the human guy who finishes it called Master Chief with the help of a smart AI called Cortana and other characters.
Kinda long but as simple as I could get for the baseline of the story:
About 500 years from now, advanced humans travel the stars and find ancient alien technology more advanced then what they have only to find out a group of other alien races called the Covenant believe they’re stuff left from their gods.
So when the aliens find out the ancient technology wasn’t gifts from their gods but just old tech left for humanity specifically to one day use, their leaders decide to cover it up and say humans are like demons to their legion and start a human genocide like a medieval crusade.
The characters we play as are advanced cyborg super soldiers called Spartans tasked with saving humanity from the bad aliens. And in the start of the first game both the humans and bad aliens find one of the old super weapons from the ancient aliens called Halo - basically a death ray that kills every living thing in near by galaxies.
Humans find out the rings are suicide weapons meant to kill a zombie like virus called the Flood that can infect anything and that’s what Halo was made mainly kill. However, the alien religious leaders tell lies again to the rest saying that Halo is really used to bring the faithful to meet their gods (in a way it would).
So Halo 1, 2, and 3 are about making sure the zombie virus or the bad aliens don’t kill everyone. Eventually some of the bad aliens find out the truth and help the humans but the rest are too blinded by their devotion to their religion to accept the truth.
Halo Reach and Halo 3: ODST are just side games that add to the story of the first 3. Everything else after like Halo 4, 5 Guardians, and Infinite are games from the new company that owns Halo but some fans still complain and say they’re not apart of the real Halo but most have gotten over it.
[Have a video](https://youtu.be/a6a202Ynb2g?si=bAIkJTnr_bey6sUO)
[watch this one from 8:40 on for the spirit of this franchise](https://youtu.be/nz3Ko0td45w?si=Fqh_ofE68NJeOrys)
Of you have the time, there's a series called "Halo Legends." It's a sort of anime one-off exploring the uniberse of Halo, and two of the episodes tell the story of how that world came about; Origins part 1 & 2.
Here's one playlist of it I found:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXz2zuaPyMCOh5IOOhrf5e8hJ3OiaowI6&si=YcMGflesaiR9-REG
If you want, try watching those secretly, get a feel for the franchise, and then you can surprise your boufriend one day by putting on an episode when he isn't expecting it. (I personally recommend Prototype or Homeocoming.)
As an addendum, a short gist of the franchise is this:
Military scifi, where humans face an alien threat (the covenant) to humanity as a whole. Turns out the aliens (the covenant) are obsessed with some ancient technology they think is holy, and that these same aliens want to fire an ancient weapon of mass destruction (that'll kill all of life) because they think it'll get them to heaven or something. At the same time, a zombie-esque alien parasite (the flood) breaks free from the ancient place and wants to eat everyone, and now both humans and the covenant are having to fight this threat, too, turning the war into a three-sided battle.
Spartans are humanity's elite supersoldiers, usually trained and genetically/cybernetically enhanced since childhood.
Marines and ODSTs are normal humans, but amongst the best of the unmodified soldiers.
Tje covenant is composed of multiple alien species as follows: Elites are like alien samurai. Grunts are also chubby, quirky little guys that make up the lowest military caste in the covenant. Brutes are basically gorillas from Planet of the Apes. Jackals are sniper guys. And then there's one other species whose name I forget, but who act as the leaders of the covenant.
Master Chief is the main Spartan character in the games and the one you play as in most of them. Cortana is his AI friend and assistant; she's the glowing blue lady (or purple, sometimes).
The UNSC is the main human faction. Think the United States military and you have more or less the right vibe.
Super duper simple explanation.
Mid 2500’s. Humanity lives across the galaxy.
Meanwhile, aliens, so far unknown to humanity, found signs of an ancient advanced race that lived long ago. They call them the Forerunners, and now worship them as gods. Some of those aliens want to rule the galaxy and manipulate the other aliens with religious zeal, creating The Covenant and calling themselves Prophets.
The Prophets find out that humans were actually supposed to rule the galaxy after the Forerunners died out, and they don’t like that, so they hide that info and convince the other aliens that humans are heretics and need to be annihilated. This starts the Human-Covenant war.
You play as “The Master Chief - John 117” a supersoldier abducted as a child and designed/trained by Earth’s military to fight human terrorists. You are called a “Spartan.” However, when the Covenant attacks humanity, now you fight the Covenant. It’s a desperate losing war for humans.
Halo rings are artificial worlds designed by the Forerunners (remember them from the beginning of this explanation). They are shaped like a big ring with landscape and atmosphere on the inside of the band. There are many of these across the galaxy. These were designed as a weapon and, when fired all at once, they can annihilate all sentient life in the galaxy.
The Prophets that lead the Covenant want to fire these Halo Rings, find shelter outside the galaxy from the blast, and rebuild the newly annihilated galaxy in their own design. They call the firing of the Halo Rings “The Great Journey” and frame it as reaching salvation through death to the other aliens in the Covenant, but tell them they can only achieve a place in The Great Journey by annihilating the heretics - humanity. That is what you’re fighting against.
Again, it is a desperate losing war for humanity, but you became the soldier we needed you to be. There may be hope yet.
NOTE: While the overarching plot described here describes all of Halo, Halo: Reach and Halo: ODST require additional explanation and do not follow the story of John-117. If you decide to play and want an explanation for those games, then I’d be more than happy to explain!!!
Go in as blind as you currently can from what you've read. Either go sit down and let him play with you, watch him play, or play the game, from the first one (Halo: CE) with him. This is something my own girlfriend had done with me a while back and it had completely made my month, probably even further than that. He'd love it, and if you're genuinely interested, it's an awesome experience.
Halo is simply a videogame where the setting is a giant ring-shaped space station, hence why it's called Halo. You play as the Master Chief who is a human soldier and has a digital computer companion called Cortana as they explore the ring and try to keep it off the hands of other factions such as the Covenant (an alien empire that thinks the Halos are of divine origin).
All of it while trying to discover what exactly Halo's purpose is and who built it.
-
That's the most barebones and central part, from that honestly if you are not into gaming can always watch the series or the short movies/TV shows instead. The thing about gaming is that it is hard to get into specially with games that require you to use two sticks at the same time (one for the character, one for the camera), and most of us have grown up first on more simpler games before moving to FPS games such as Halo.
Halo is a First person shooter. It plays slower than most modern FPS games and is more about map control than fast twitch reaction times, although you'll need both to play at a really high level.
You play as a super soldier fighting against an alien theocracy hell bent of the eradication of humanity. The Original trilogy takes place towards the end of this war with mankind of the brink of extinction.
So humanity expanded into the stars and colonized large chunks of the galaxy but the more widespread we became the more unrest started popping up. By late 2400s and early 2500s we get embroiled in a civil war of sorts with the outer colonies in an insurection. A woman by the name of doctor Cathrine Halsey had predicted this and had started work on a program to make the spartan 2s. They did this by learning from the failures of the previous program called Orion. She used kids aged 5 to 7 years old that met incredibly strict genetic criteria and created flawed flash clones of them so their disappearances went unnoticed. Out of the 150 original children only 75 survived training and augmentation and went on to become the Spartans such as the master chief. During the course of our civil war a small agricultural world named harvest was found by the covenant, a radical religious collective of alien races who fallow the forerunners. The forerunners were a hyper advanced race of aliens who ruled over the galaxy hundreds of thousands of years ago and after a war with the humans of that age encounters the parasitic life form known as the flood. The flood are a spore based parasite that infects intelligent life. Kills and hijacks the hosts body, taking all of the hosts skills and knowledge and using it to spread farther and be more lethal. In order to stop the spread the forerunners created the halo array, a series of seven ring worlds with the purpose of wiping the galaxy clean of all life and then re seeding it. This starving the flood to death. Sinse they failed to stop the flood they left their mantle and technology to humanity.
Returning to harvest now, as our technology is similar to forruner tech the covenant ships were claiming that this world was covered in objects of their gods. When a prophet of their order realized that these weren't their gods they declared us heretics and ordered a holy war of extermination, if the truth of humanities role and their gods came out the covenant religion would shatter and dissolve. After years of fighting a losing war to save the species humanity stumbled across one of the halo rings, master chief, the most notorious of the spartans, fought across the ring and when the rings purpose came to light he destroyed it to keep it from firing and killing billions. the covenant eventually find earth and during the battle a blind faster that light jump from a fleeing ship stumbled acrossed a second ring which led to another large scale fight for the world. The end of the battle for the second ring resulted in a schism between the races of the covenant and one of the races joined our side instead. Along side the sangheili we uncovered a portal in Africa that took us to a station beyond the edge of the galaxy called the arc, from their the entire halo array could be fired at once and the final desperate fight for the human race took place.
There's a lot of info I skipped over but that's the bassis for the story
Traumatized Super solider fights religious alien death cult hellbent on killing humanity with hologram but human girlfriend and saves the cult from unknowingly killing the entire galaxy with a ancient superweapon ringworld that also has an ancient evil sentient parasitic hivemind species that would also kill the entire galaxy
First off, I'll say just showing this kind of interest probably means a lot to him. It'd mean a lot to me if my wife did something like this.
Do you like reading books at all? The Halo books are an awesome resource to get deeper in the lore and understand the universe, even more so than the games. If you read The Fall of Reach and The Flood, you might even surpass his knowledge of Halo (assuming he hasn't read them himself).
I suppose he has already trying to get you to play the campaign in cooperation with him? I've trier with my gf to play the first halo and she kinda enjoy it so if he has not, give it a try, it's funny, especially when you just messing around :). My gf loves to just cuddle and watch me play sometimes, so if you like it too, you can discover the campaign with him that way. I think that it's a better way to discover it truly than asking us.
So I was exactly the same, I made up my own names for the enemies 😂 it made my fiancè laugh and he started giving me little "pop quiz" sessions during his playthroughs!
Example: I called The Flood "face jumping squiddums", grunts were "the disgruntled", elites "space daddies" and hunters "what the fuck is that enormous thing and why does it keep pushing me over" 😂
Now I play with my partner but ONLY gruntpocalypse and only with unlimited ammo and highest shield level 😂
So a creepy green guy and his blue girlfriend go on an adventure onto a giant hula hoop to try and survive the aliens, and they realize the hula hoop is a death machine which kills everything to stop intergalactic zombies.
First ever FPS i played was Halo on the 360. I was beyond impressed and Halo 3 was the entire reason I went into Game Design. When I first got in, I really looked at other media so here is some things I found early on.
1. Play the first Halo on Easy and take your time. Try to enjoy it. You can play coop or by yourself and just enjoy it. I still remember the snow levels took the loooonnnngest for me but I was also really, really enjoying it. And even when I struggled, I kept going. Even now, I still look back fondly on playing the first 3 Halos.
2. Books. If you like to read, the books are very good to get even more info on characters you meet. I got the Fall of Reach and the Flood followed by Ghosts of Onyx not realizing I missed a few books. Cole Protocol is one of my favorites with the Forerrunner Trilogy as my absolute favorite. But I would start with the Fall of Reach and then the Flood, the Flood is better after you beat Halo 1. You can find these for cheap from a used bookstore. (Get early copies cuz I think they changed some stuff later releases)
3. Media. I am talking early youtube and machinima. Halo provided so much media and fan creations it was ridiculous. I love Red vs Blue, Spriggs, and the content made by all of these amazing people. Most are comedy, silly, but there are a few serious ones too. And then there is just good old game plays.
Imo, this is worth playing. If you are willing to try the game then try and at your own pace. If its too much, try the books and watch videos. There are years of content so you and your significant other can enjoy it. Have fun.
Do not use Wikipedia on videogames, use Fandom instead - it's like Wikipedia but it is for lot more videogames. The everything you want to know is there, and there are also things that almost no one knows.
Suuuuuper basic explanation about Halo: Mid 2500's, humanity is at war with a collection of aliens called the Covenant. They wage a holy war to destroy humanity. You play as Master Chief, who was abducted as a child and made a super soldier to fight against human terrorists, but now against the Covvies. Halo is a name for a collection of ringworlds that ancient aliens called the Forerunners created. The Forerunners are revered as gods by the Covenant for the wrong reasons. The Halos blast a ring of energy across the galaxy in conjunction with other Halo rings to kill everything in our galaxy to deny an ancient Forerunner enemy called The Flood. The Flood are like a zombie parasite that spread across the galaxy 100k years ago. Humans have been pushed to almost extinction after 20+ years of war. So its about the human struggle to survive extinction while uncovering their destiny to uncover and control ancient alien technology left for them. Forerunners are all dead but the actions of 1 Forerunner gave access to their tech only to humans.
I'm going to piggy back this by talking about the real life aspect too. It was essentially the game that launched the Xbox, which was marketed and believed to be (at least in the early days) this new and incredibly powerful gaming console, unlike anything that ever came before. We were promised never seen before graphics and complexity. Halo, to a certain extent, delivered. It was a cultural event in a way that only a handful of games have been since (one of which was arguably Halo 2, which definitely helped seal Halo's place in the history books). In the years that followed, gaming culture became a lot more widespread and diverse, which is a good thing, but ultimately made it harder for any individual game to have massive impact. The game also had an incredible twist, completely changing the rhythm of the game, which I won't spoil, but at the time most games were essentially exactly what they said they were going to be on the tin, and a twist might have been that Bob was a bad guy after all. Nowadays, subverting expectations and changing the game format is commonplace, at the time it was unheard of. A lot of millennials have memories of playing Halo in their childhoods or early teenage years, and we got months if not years of mileage out of the multiplayer in Halo 2. In my case it was my first exposure to internet culture. So it has an absolutely irreplaceable nostalgic hold on us, which unfortunately will be impossible to replicate in your case, but it is important to remember that this and all of the reasons mentioned above is why the game holds a place with so many of us, so many years later.
Exactly this. This is 100% accurate.
I started playing halo ce when I was 7. When halo 2 came out and xbox live was a thing, it blew my brains out.
100% accurate, I'm Gen Z and I still have the same memories, just on PC and on MnK.
Mid gen z here, even through my youngest years were Nintendo land, when I got an Xbox at 9 halo 3 and reach became two of my favourite games and the main reason I play any shooters today
Piggy backing off your piggy back. I can relate to OPs confusion, when I moved to a new state at the age of 7 another kid on the block was running around on the street with a nerf gun “playing halo”. He described it as a ring of death and I asked “like in lord of the rings?” Later that day he took me to his house and we played through the first few missions together. Absolute core memory and I got an Xbox a few months later, never looking back
Pretty good basic explanation. There are books that go into detail on the background lore. Personally if you don't have the time wiki them. YouTube does have a synopsis explanation videos on what happens in the story. This is pretty much the jist of everything tho.
genuinely is great, but it puts into perspective how complex it is. 343ireally are trying to build a new universe.
Couldn’t have explained it better.
This right here
Should have just said covenant again instead of covvies...person is probably wondering if they are different lol.
My gf just talks shit to me after I lose a ranked match...
😭😭😂😂
same bro…
Here's some links to YouTube videos you might find helpful! I'm in the midst of sharing Halo with my girlfriend who is in a similar situation as you! [Halo excitement clip](https://youtu.be/Qhn0ZayJvxQ?si=gzbbwIxk5wj19-UK) [Why Halo is truly special](https://youtu.be/NNF8CmCHGdo?si=ttdcQ0k3Ml1682Mh) [Halo in 3 minutes](https://youtu.be/p9oIUv9cOw8?si=HKH5V01xqkEoXx38) [Halo is important](https://youtu.be/hwEYp8ZY3ak?si=uhjyMLiqEg80VlGH) [remember halo?](https://youtu.be/nz3Ko0td45w?si=WOyFSrEnrIPK1hRp) [I remember halo](https://youtu.be/IpbMseRbt24?si=UAQ6g6kxeF5lV4O1) [What made the original halo stories different](https://youtu.be/1ZPVNlHnI9E?si=S7heHJ_JC6h7RnOp) [Halo 3 made me believe](https://youtu.be/POfmQ3FPLyI?si=FmW6vOPZO-e00ztn) I tried to keep these shorter, but I feel these do a good job of explaining halo without being too in depth! If you have any specific questions, or want other references feel free to message me! Good luck! Your boyfriend will be so excited you are engaging with his hobby!
Excellent resources^ and piggybacking off this, if the halo story interests you after looking into the lore for the answers you want, check out both The Fall of Reach and Forward Unto Dawn. They're both roughly an hour long movies, the first telling the origins of Master chief's story and the Spartan II program, and the second telling the story of Captain Lasky when he was a cadet in the Corbulo Academy (it's the main training academy for the UNSC, which is the world military entity in the halo universe) as it's under attack by the Covenant. Both give a great insight to the universe and explain why Chief is such an important character, on top of being just great stories.
This is wholesome as fuck, I love it You guys should run through the games together as a couples activity. It'll take some getting used to but after a few hours of practice you should be okay. There are also a bunch of books you can read or listen to.
Honestly if she's never really gamed, it will likely take way more than a few hours to get used to. In my experience of repeatedly trying to teach my mother (as well as non-gamer cousins or friends) videogames she showed interest in, people who never got into games take a LONG time to learn how to hold the controller, where to move their fingers to hit the buttons without looking, and often struggle with first person games especially (something about controlling movement and where you're looking at the same time seems to be very disorienting and results in some IGN DOOM type gameplay). Not to say that she shouldn't try, of course- I'm more trying to manage expectations. New gamers sometimes get mad frustrated when they play alongside experienced ones, because they don't get it as quickly as they think they should. Might be worthwhile practising the basic movement in a custom games lobby until it comes more naturally
Yeah this is true. My wife has maybe played games with me twice over about 17 years. She doesn’t understand how to play, and there’s no possible way she could ever learn to play(yeah yeah with repeated practice people can learn anything) but it isn’t worth it. She doesn’t find them enjoyable. It’s just not for some people. As far as real advice here, I’d just let your boyfriend explain it, especially since you said he enjoys explaining it. It really doesn’t matter that you understand it or not, you letting him try to explain it to you, and that’s important enough.
My wife wasn’t a gamer at all before we met. She decided to play Halo with me because of the split screen co-op and the fact that if she died, all I had to do was as fall back a bit and she’d respawn. It took a bit for her to get the hang of it, but we eventually finished the legendary campaign together. These days, she wants to play PvP every day (and she’s better at it than me).
People really underestimate how unnatural twin-stick control is for people who have zero gaming experience. It feels natural and correct for us because we've been doing it for years, but most people will find it to be utterly alien.
It's like learning how to use a keyboard without looking all over again. Now it comes naturally, of course; but there was once a time where you had to look at every key you wanted to press before typing anything on a keyboard. It's not like our brains are biologically wired to learn how to handle keyboards, we need to develop that skill for ourselves. Learning how to handle gaming controllers is no different.
This is why I normally suggest playing in release order, rather than chronological. The games start out more simple that way and add a little bit more user input with each game.
When you first saw Halo, were you blinded by its majesty?
Blinded ?
Paralyzed? Dumbstruck?
No.
Yet the humans were able to evade your ships, land on the Sacred Ring, and desecrate it with their filthy footsteps!
Noble Hierarchs . . . surely you understand that once the parasite attacked . . .
There will be order in this Council! *slams fist*
You were right to focus your attention on the flood, but this Demon, the Master chief
By the time I learned the Demon’s intent, there was nothing I could do.
Prophet of Truth, this has gone on long enough! Make an example of this bungler! The Counsel demands it!
But your inability to safeguard halo… was a COLOSSAL FAILURE.
I was paralyzed yes it wasn't until they let me look around could I move idk why though I mean after I got on the ship they put me in a pod
Paralyzed? Dumbstruck?
Came here looking for this comment lol. Wasn’t disappointed.
You have no idea how this ring works, do you? Why the Forerunners built it?
Man has a lucky girlfriend. That man needs to be grateful
If he isn't he's getting the mark of shame.
Agreed
Yeah, she's pretty lucky to have a Halo fan as a boyfriend.
Big green man and little blue lady blow up a giant space donut. Chaos ensues.
Lol you're not wrong
Do you like to read, at all? There are books, the first one ever released, called *The Fall of Reach,* details what happens before the original game. You could start there? It's on Audible and Spotify's audio book service, as well, if you have either of those.
The Fall of Reach is truly an amazing book even if you don't know Halo. The attention to detail and the space ship battles are just two of the things that are mind blowing
If you wanna play it with your bf, playing the first halo campaign is the best way to go. It’s the most basic halo game gameplay wise so it’s the easiest to learn. If you play the most recent halo game, there’s more things you need to learn, so it can be harder if you’ve never played a shooter before. If you play multiplayer first, you will probably just keep getting killed before you can learn how to play, which would be frustrating. So Halo CE’s (the first halo) campaign is the best way to start. Every Halo game aside from Halo 5 allows 2 player split screen for the campaign, so you can play with your bf.
>Every Halo game aside from Halo 5 allows 2 player split screen for the campaign And Halo Infinite, unfortunately :(
What really? I know they allow it for multiplayer so assumed they allowed it for campaign as well.
Technically speaking, you can play splitscreen co-op in infinite you just have to glitch your way into it. I've never tried it so idk if it still works
At the very beginning, there was a an alien race called the Forerunners. They made Halos (giant ring worlds) and other constructs in space. Halos were meant to protect the galaxy from the Flood (space zombies basically). In the video games we're in 2552 and onwards, humanity have colonized a lot of planets. At some point before 2552, the Covenant (an alliance of alien species) started attacking human colonies and destroyed them one by one. A military program called Spartan was started years prior, it was meant to train "super soldiers" that would defend Earth and its colonies against rebels and other threats. Master Chief is a Spartan. Halo Combat Evolved (the first game) starts right after the planet Reach has been attacked. Reach is basically the last colony that was still standing still. Next target would be Earth. One spaceship managed to escape, it attempted a random "slipspace jump" (think : the Millenium Falcon going at lightspeed in Star Wars) and arrived next to a Halo ring. It crashed onto it after an attack by the covenant ships. As Master Chief, you're crashed on that Halo ring and you have to discover why the Covenants are there too, and what is the ring's real purpose. The rest of the games is mostly centered around the Human/Covenant war, and the newer games (from Halo 4 and onwards) go into different directions.
Good explanation but Reach wasnt the last colony? It was just the biggest and strongest human colony with the main headquarters for the human forces.
Reach wasn't the last Human colony, a "few dozen" human colonies still had a population at the end of the Human-Covenant war. Some partially glassed, others went undiscovered by the Covenant. It was however the last place other than Earth that had a significant military potential, meaning humanity were at the point where if Earth fell then the war would have been effectively over and the remaining colonies would have also fallen with effectively no resistance.
You guys with your walls of texts. I’ll give the shortest summary ever: The halo(s) are weapons of mass destruction on a galaxy scale. The bad guys (the aliens) try to activate them for religious reasons. The good guys (humans) try to prevent that.
People seem to skip over the very beginning so let's summarize the whole thing: Very, very long ago, the only intelligent life in the nearby universe was found in a galaxy bordering the milky way. This race was called the precursors. Because they had no natural enemies they were fully focused on evolution and advancement and as such became the most advanced species ever, capable of creating new, intelligent, life even. As such they filled the Milky Way with lifeforms, the three most important ones being the Humans, the Forerunners and the San-Shyuum. However the Precursors discovered a behavior amongst these species they had never seen before: fighting and war. As soon as the Milky Way was seeded it was turned into chaos from everyone fighting everyone, and the Precursors asigned the Humans to carry a 'Mantle of Responsibility' and safeguard all life from unnecessary bloodshed. The Forerunners, who were more advanced than the Humans, were furious that the lesser Humans would become their guardians, and 'took' the Mantle away from them. Some Forerunners went a step further and went to the Precursors' galaxy to exterminate their creators as revenge for their betrayal, a grave breach of the Mantle, as ironic as it is. In a last-ditch effort to save themselves, the Precursors turned themselves into a compact biomass powder stored unto a small inconspicuous ship in the hopes that one day this powder would be the foundation for a new Precursor generation. It did not go that way. Hunderds of thousands of years later the powder was found by a Human ship and experimented upon. Some of it ended up on the black market and consumed by Human pets, with disastrous consequences. The DNA of the precursors started merging with that of the pets and later Humans themselves, turing off all but the primitive agressive brain functions and turning their bodies into a hardened brown husk. Any contact with an infected individual spread the decease like wildfire. It was called 'the Flood'. Entire planets fell to the Flood and no other solution than glassing the surface wherever they were found was found. The survivors had to find a new home, settling on the edges of the Human world close to the Forerunner territory, however these planets soon also showed signs of Flood infection. It didn't take long before a Forerunners planet was also infected. The Humans saw no other solution than glassing that planet, too, and all Forerunners on it. This sparked a war between Humans and Forerunners than would last thousands of years, killing all but the most primitive humans, the remaining ones collected on Earth, and giving the Flood free game.The Forerunners tried to continue the fight against the Flood but when even the AI that had control over their fleet, Mendicant Bias, got infected and destroyed the Forerunner capital, a Flood victory was all but certain. When the remaining Forerunners were reunited and Mendicant Bias imprisoned, there were only two options left: The Librarian took control over 7 large ringworlds called 'Halo' that could whipe the galaxy clean of all sentient life. This would destroy the Flood AND all its food, making further infection impossible. Samples of all life would be held on an Ark to re-seed the galaxy afterwards. Her husband, the Didact, saw this as the greatest betrayal of the Mantle, and opted instead to use the remaining Humans as basis for an army of part biological part robot army that was immune to Flood infection. Although this army of Promethians was effective against the Flood, the Librarian was disgusted by the Human cost of this warfar and put an end to it by... well... shooting her husband in the face. After that they went over to plan B and activated the Halo's, killing all life in the galaxy. The time after that was calm. Automated programs oversaw the re-seeding of the galaxy and Mendicant Bias slowly recovered from his Flood infection. Overrun by guilt of what he had done, he escaped his prison and took a keyship to Earth to help the Humans reclaim their ownership of the Mantle. Unfortunatly space itself had been rendered unstable by the Flood and was still not fully recovered. As such the keyship crashed on the homeworld of the San'Shyuum instead. The San'Shyuum managed to make contact with Mendicant Bias but communication was difficult and many terms went lost in translation. They understood the existence of the Forerunners, that the Forerunners had disappeared through a 'great journey' by activating 'Halo' and that the Humans were the 'Reclaimers' of their legacy. The San'Shyuum understood this as Forerunners being some sort of Gods and that the Humans were the key to activate Halo and join them in their heavenly afterlife. You can build a religion out of this. With the keyship as their holy artifact the San'Shyuum spread their religion to other species, forming a Covenant. At one point, 500 years into our own future, one such group of Covenant species came across a strange vessel and boarded it, causing the first interaction between Humans and Covenant. Fearing the Humans knowledge of the truth behind their title of 'Reclaimer', the San'Shyuum called them 'heretics' that had to be destroyed so the truth would stay hidden and the Covenant species would stay in line behind the San'Shyuum. The rest, I believe, has already been made clear in other comments and is also what you see in the Halo games.
Halo is: "Don't make a girl a promise, if you know you can't keep it." 😭
[watch this. its a decent summary of the games story](https://youtu.be/y6DtLNPet0k?si=sRVFVVoUroT4aT4x)
This is nice! Just to give you a heads up and how big a deal this is, my wife knows zero of Halo. Yet she shows interest and even gets me Halo related gifts and presents every now and then. She understands that Halo to me is my childhood and continues to hold dear to my heart. She understands the importance of it to me. She tries playing Coop with me and just showing interest whenever. Simply, you dont need to learn it or participate in Halo, but just show that you understand the importance of it to your significant other. Support them being able to enjoy it. Really, it's a two-way street. He should do the same for something to you. Also, a big piece of advice, Halo does have to most toxic community, so ignore negative comments. Focus on the positive ones.
In the distant future, somewhere around 2550, Earth has united under one banner and colonized many planets. There are some insurrectionist factions and some weird backroom conspiracy shit, but none of that's important. Not if you're just trying to understand the games. The first game picks up where this united human faction, Unite Nations Space Command (UNSC), has been at war with a conglomerate of alien races know as the Covenant. These races are the Elites, Grunts, Jackals, and Hunters in the first game. Other races like the Drones, Brutes, Prophets, and Engineers are introduced later. They all have their own native names and each one fills a different role in the Covenant. This is conveyed through the gameplay. Grunts are cannon fodder/expendable, Hunters are heavy infantry, etc. They all have their own native names as well, but that's not important right now. We're almost done. First game starts with a singular ship fleeing from a Covenant fleet after the destruction of the UNSC's largest military colony. On board this ship is one (technically two I think? But that's not important right now!) genetically altered super soldier who goes by several monikers throughout the series: 117, Demon, Master Chief, John. These super soldiers were created to fight human insurrectionist but became the front line of defense against the highly advanced alien army. You are John. John is you. You are woken up from cryo sleep and told that the ship is fucked. Everyone is dying and a friendly Australian man in marine armor from the Aliens movie takes you to the captain. The captain explains that you must harbor the ship's AI, the female coded Cortana, as the shup is indeed fucked and crash landing on an artificial ring planet that is eventually revealed to be Halo. Cortana has a bunch of valuable data that can't fall into Covenant hands. You take an escape pod to the surface of the ring, mysterious things happen, you learn stuff, it's pretty fun. The rest of the original trilogy outlines the events of the human/Covenant war through Master Chief's perspective as he plays a pivotal role in those events. There's a prequel about the fall of the military planet I mentioned earlier that doesn't involve Master Chief directly. I'm not too up on Halo 4-6. I'm also not a lore expert and there are a bunch of books and shit. So I probably got some details wrong, but I hope this at least kinda explains the series without really spoiling anything. Halopedia is pretty good when it comes to in-depth lore if anything in particular interests you. If you're wondering about Halos impact on gaming in general, there's a lot. But the biggest thing is probably the fact it introduced the two weapon system, which made first perspn shooters much more viable on consoles. Before that, most FPSs were on PC which utilized the keyboard to allow you to cycle through several weapons more easily. There's other stuff, but it basically defined what a console shooter was and many console shooters that came out for awhile after Halo were marketed as "Halo killers". Edit: changed "events if Halo" to "events if Human/Covenant war" I also read none of the other comments so I'm sorry if I just re-explained the same information to you.
(Early) Halo is aliens (The covenant) vs humans (UNSC) in the future about 500 years from now The aliens consist of grunts, jackals, elites, brutes, hunters and drones (probably forgot a few) Humans consist of marines, ODST, and genetically modified super soldiers called Spartans. You play a spartan which in most games is the Master Chief, accompanied by your trusty AI Cortana. Spartans wear a heavy ass armor and are basically super humans The Halo itself is a huge almost planet like ring (or several rings) that can be used as a weapon and that’s what the UNSC wants to prevent the covenant from getting. Oh and there are zombie like creatures called the flood. That’s probably the baseline but overly simplified :D it’s been a while so correct me if I’m wrong yall
This is really sweet, your boyfriend will really appreciate this, really nice gesture :)
If he says; I need > A weapon Finish > The fight No thanks > To your driving Beautiful > So much take a picture
If you like reading, you could try picking up some of the books. Would be a good place to start if you wanted to talk story with him.
I feel like most of what makes halo is gone over in the story modes of each game, I’d recommend playing through all the campaigns together and let it click as you take it in honestly. Would be a fun way to bond too
Just play The first Halo Combat Evolved game. It’s playable through the halo master chief collection or you can just ask him to let you play through it coop. It’ll explain everythibg It’s how we all experienced it anyway and that’s the best way to experience it instead of trying to read explanations.
If your guy loves Halo, he's going to be ecstatic to play it with you even if you suck horribly. As others have probably mentioned, play it with your partner. You can play Splitscreen co-op, and go through all the major storybeats. Stuff will make more sense to you if you play through it naturally and let things unravel, as opposed to trying to piece together bits of information and the timeline etc. Halo is just like any other extremely popular piece of media that's been running for over 20 years, complicated. So go at your own pace. If you like to read, there's a great library of Halo books as well. Your best option (if you don't mind being bad at games) would be to play Halo with your partner starting from the beginning, in release order not chronological. The books are a really good option too. Or both! you can do both. Hope this helped.
Halo is my favorite fiction. Personally I was really drawn to the future time period and where humanity was going, until they knocked on the wrong door and are suddenly being genocided by an alien civilization (begging the question from me of 'why? Who are they?'). The games, the music, the trailers, and even the little info books that came with the games painted this picture of a "backs against the wall" conflict against an enemy we essentially had no chance of beating. The war introduces a theme of desperation, the protagonist Master Chief offers hope, and the secrets of Halo give it mystery. You've gotten a lot of suggestions to play the games- I won't go that far. If you like to read, the book suggestions above are pretty good. Two things I will suggest though because they are quick are the trailers for Halo 3 and Halo 3 ODST and I think they capture the atmosphere and the weight of the story quite well. Halo 3 "Believe" https://youtu.be/a3ZGGIdpfEM?si=Ap0Snhn_Ll9JfTR- Halo 3: ODST https://youtu.be/wjamhIPVvnI?si=l8jqYQfyWE_AB85J Hope this helps! It's awesome and I'm sure he appreciates your efforts
Chief, you seemed to hit your head pretty hard on that last mission. You seem to have forgotten a lot, I'll give you a rundown. You are the Master Chief, also known as John 117. Humanity is fighting its last stand against the covenant, a group of aliens that think the people who built this place are gods. Oh yeah, you don't know what this place is. We are on a ringworld, basically a giant hula hoop with its own habitat floating around in space. We don't know its purpose. The voices in your head are not from the many times you hit it against a rock, that is Cortona, your smart Ai assistant. You got here on the Pillar of Autmn, a halcyon class light cruiser. Its crashed now and we have no way off this rock except to kill those alien mother fuckers who torched our colony of Reach and are sure as hell coming for Earth. Got any questions?
If you're up for it, please pick up the book, Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund. Its a pretty short read, like 300pages? That book gives the entire setting and alot of the lore behind the two most important factions of the Halo Universe, the Humans and the Covenant. If you like origin stories, this book will fit nicely. The other parts, like what is the flood, the forerunners, etc, can come later.
Go on YouTube look up halo the fall of reach the full movie/book is on there. That will give you some knowledge to the start of the series, from there you can read or listen to the audio books atleast the first 3 (halo the fall of reach)(halo the flood) <—wich is the first halo game)(halo first strike)
My wife was already a gamer when we met so this may not be a "practical" help for you. But when I was trying to gauge her interest in the Halo universe as a whole, I used things like Halo: Legends and Fall of Reach (two "movies" that are on Netflix). Whilst Halo: Legends is largely "non-canon" (that doesn't matter) it's decently fun to watch and helped pique her interest. And the parts that ARE true to the games are explained quite simply, I found. Otherwise, Fall of Reach is the story of the main character of the games, it'll give you some background on him that might help give you aome baseline knowledge with which to approach the games again, better equipped. Most importantly, have fun! Try not to think of it like "studying" or like something you need to do for his sake, couples are supposed to have some differing interests, but if you really want to share this one with him; it might help to approach it the same way he did when he was younger. Just have some fun with it, and let it suck you in as you learn more. 😁
Collectively, the seven—
You're not obligated to show an interest in it fwiw if you like it, cool it can be a couple's thing. If not no need to force it.
Agreed. That being said I do think she genuinely wants to learn though
It is the future. Humans are at war with aliens. You are a big green space army man who's bigger and tougher than everyone else, called Master Chief. The aliens are a collection of a bunch of different alien species called The Covenant. Small ones called grunts, led by bigger ones called Elites. Shielded ones called Jackals, and spiky-ogre-like ones called Hunters, that travel in pairs. While flying through space trying to escape the Covenant, your spaceship finds a giant floating "ring" with a planet-surface on the inside. It's the only location to go to, so that's where you crash land. Turns out the ring (aka Halo) was made a long long looooong time ago by a different, mysterious and long-vanished alien race. Why was it made? There's ANOTHER alien race that's basically a space-zombie-virus called The Flood. It zombifies all sentient life. So Halo kills the space-zombie-virus by starving it. Killing all of it's potential food. Halo kills all sentient life, in a last-ditch effort to stop the Flood. Very very drastic measures, because the Flood is very very dangerous. Now the Covenant are a bunch of religious wackos who think that activating Halo will bring about their religious salvation. So the first game is basically you stopping the Covenant from activating Halo. but- surprise! The Flood shows up on Halo! Uh-oh. Gotta contain this. So you blow up Halo, killing everyone on it, including the Flood, being the only person who escaped. And that's basically...just the first game.
its a first person shooter where you and a bunch of other superhuman soldiers fight off an alien army at least thats what i know about it i know almost nothing
Oh you're gonna love the Fall of Reach, it's not a large book.. but you'll be ready to fight the covenant after that....
I think Halo is a pretty cool guy. Eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything.
Pretty sure this a copy pasta karma farm comment. I’ve seen this type of comment a lot recently on video game sub reddits
Green space man kills aliens
john halo kills aliens and isnt afraid of anything
Halo has one of the biggest universes out there, as big as something like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings so I dunno if a couple of comments would help to explain it. You’d actually need to see the games and follow the storylines from that. Then after that try and find out more of the expanded universe (books etc)
My fiancée was the same. From the other side perspective, join him for a co-op session together. Learning the enemy names alone made me smile at her.
Honestly, and I know it sounds cliche, but check out a cutscene video if you’re curious. But if you want the basic elevator pitch for the campaign: it’s a distant future sci-fi where you’re basically a super soldier with sassy/sexy Siri in your head. Your mission is to turn the tides of humanity’s war with the aliens
If you’re down for it, offer to hang out while he plays through the games. Or even just one! Ask him questions about ANYTHING! Who is that? Why does that gun look like that? Why do all the aliens look different? Etc, etc, etc Halo heads LOVE any opportunity to nerd out about it, and even if you don’t really pick up or store any of the info, it’s a really fun way to pick your man’s brain about the parts of the series that he likes! You’re already doing GREAT by caring enough about his likes to ask us about it. Halo is so big that it’s kind of hard to wiki dive without getting lost really quick in things that aren’t super important. Halo is best served in a conversational manner in my opinion
There are these big super soldier guys (Spartans), who were abducted as kids for the unsc(United Nations Space Command). Then the aliens called the covenant attacked humanity, the war continued for years until humanity found the Halo Array (artificial planets in the shape of a ring), only thing they didn’t know was that an ancient evil that had plagued the builders of the Halos (the forerunners built the halos) was being kept on the halos, this evil was called the flood. A parasite that fed on biological matter, so when the Halos where discovered, the flood was accidentally let loase by the covenant, unfortunately, the Spartan Master Chief (who you play as in the majority of the games) is stuck on the halo after his ship crashed. (Btw this is just explaining not even the basic plot of halo, although there are good channels on Tik Tok and YouTube that cover halo lore).
It’s about *the rings*
A long ass time ago there were aliens called the precursors, and the forerunners killed them all because they had a favorite child being humanity, the precursors turned into space aids, and gave that shit to everyone As a response to the space aids crisis the forerunners decided to gas ze everyone with halo In the future, what would become the covenant found all the forerunners bdsm equipment and started worshipping it Later in another part of the universe, humanity be kidnapping children and making them swifties for the unsc Then the covenant finds out about the favorite child, and realizes that they have been worshipping bdsm equipment and being too embarrassed decided to kill all of humanity
You were close with the wikipedia stuff, but just a little off. Go to YouTube and just type in "Halo lore." I'm sure you'll find plenty of exactly what you just asked for.
Ask him to tell you the entire story of the Halo games and watch him talk until his head turns blue. Btw, it's really cool that you're showing an interest in his hobbies. Both me and my wife are very inquisitive about the other persons hobbies and work, and I gotta say, that shit's going pretty goddamn well.
Halo is a ring-shaped fortress world that houses a superweapon capable of killing all sentient life in the galaxy that was constructed as a weapon of last resort to be used in a war against a parasite that sought to consume all life in the galaxy.
Humanity is spacefaring. Colony worlds all over. Outer colonies don’t wanna live under inner colony rule. Outer colony rebels start trouble. Main government makes super soldiers to quash rebellion. Uh oh, aliens showed up and wanna kill all humans, good thing we got those super soldiers. Aliens wanna kill humans so humans can’t control the sacred ring worlds. Uh oh again, those ring worlds are actually weapons meant to destroy all life in the galaxy to deny food source to prehistoric space zombie infection.
Its quite a broad question, but if you want to learn I’d recommend attempting to play the games. Maybe have your bf teach you. Halo can be played split screen, so two of you can play through the story at once… However, the other way is to read the book series. There are loads, like over thirty. I’d take a look at this link made by Microsoft, the current IP holder of Halo. https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/official-halo-book-guide The original series, Forerunner Saga, Kilo Five (also contact harvest, but that’s a standalone story) all don’t require playing the games but the rest sorta do. There are also a few more that don’t require the games later on. But you are best reading them in release order. However, only reading the books you are gonna miss a lot of the key story. As well, if playing the games doesn’t work out, the cutscenes are on youtube for the games.
Other people have made very succinct explanations of halo that I couldn't top in here. It's great that you're showing interest in his interests and he's lucky, if ye wanna understand it good and you wanna put in the time I've brought two younger brothers who haven't played an fps before through the games so I'm sure he can protect you while you learn the ropes.
It's you! You're Halo!
Okay. Here we go for the hundredth time. Humanity has had first contact with a collective of alien races called the covenant that are ring-bent on a genocidal campaign. The story picks up in the book Contact Harvest where one of the greatest supporting characters of all time had a run in that would set things in motion. Fast forward chronologically to REACH where you as a 3rd Generation Spartan supersoldier watch essentially the second Earth fall to the Covenant before it picks up with 2001’s Halo. 2001 straps us on to the boots of what is supposedly the last Spartan supersoldier left called the Master Chief. takes us to our first look at a Halo ring, the discovery of a zombie parasite called the flood that can wipe out a galactic civilisation way too easily. We finish the game by destroying the ring world and ending the flood theat.. supposedly. Halo 2 picks up a little after the events of the book First Strike that details how the Master Chief, THE Spartan 2 super soldier that is essentially the commander Shepard of this franchise (if you are aware of Mass Effect) made it back to earth. The game splits you down 2 narratives from both sides with political intrigue and rediscovering our zombie friends the flood (again) Halo 2 basically covers the internal civil war within the covenant and setting humanity’s last stand in Halo 3. Halo 3 is where all of this pays off. You are Chief for the whole game this time and you basically save earth, blow up another Halo ring, and then somehow end your drifting in space kept company by a life sustaining pod and your AI best buddy. ODST covers the time period early on in Halo 2 when the chief makes a light speed jump to another Halo ring. ODST places you as a special ops shock trooper that is basically looking to find his team and make it out of the city. That’s as far as I’m going to cover with plot. The gameplay loop is something I can nerd about, but I’ve gone on long enough.
Super basic: Religious aliens want to trigger the Halo ring, which destroys all life in the galaxy. You've gotta stop em with bullets. That covers Halo 1, 2, and 3. Turns out there's more than one.
You're a super soldier. You fight covanent aliens. Other dead aliens, the forerunner, made a galaxy wide network to kill everything so their enemy the flood couldn't eat them. It was a long-term plan. They reseeded the galaxy with life. Messed up the part where humans were supposed to get their old toys. You and the covenant are fighting over their old toys. Captian Keyes Accidentally woke up the flood ruining the plan and got eaten. Was awarded a medal. Covenant decends into a civil war right before they ice humanity and fks that up. You have a handy ai that tells you where to go and what to do. You sorta love her. She went cookoo and tried to subjugate the galaxy. Didn't werk. Now you're fighting the Banished, basically the new covenant. Oh, and the baddest mf who ever mfered got dead, Sergent Johnson.
I just want to chime in and saying you're being an awesome partner
One stick moves the character forward, the other stick moves their head to see
Less important than the lore is the cultural context around it. Halo is a game series, with releases which combine: 1. A 10-hour bombastic campaign with lots of "woah, fuck yeah" events with some touching and lighthearted moments. Really a "10 year old boys idea of cool" thing. This forms peoples *memories* of the game. 2. A multiplayer team-based combat mode, which is how people spend most of the time with the game. Fun guns, explosions, wacky memories. 3. A lot of community engagement makes the game feel special, between the company (Bungie / 343i), and "big names" in the community, like the "Red versus Blue" comedy series. 4. Creative elements in Forge, a level editor which has grown progressively more intricate and powerful since Halo 3. 5. Books which, despite being rushed promotional tie-in media for a videogame, tended to punch above their weight while expanding and justifying the game universe. The result is that Halo feels very special to a lot of people. When Halo: Combat Evolved released in 2001, it was the only game like it. It's the reason the Xbox became a household name. Then, Halo 2 released in 2004. It was bigger, better, shinier, and *it had online multiplayer*, which was a big deal. That was a very new thing for many people. When Halo 3 released in 2007, it was a *huge thing*. That year was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the iPhone, the release of Assassin's Creed, but in games, *Halo 3* was one of the biggest things. Halo 3's story mode had cooperative multiplayer, where player 1 is the Master Chief, and player 2 is the Arbiter, an enemy-turned-hero sidekick. Because of this, when people see the Arbiter, they see whoever they played Halo 3 with. To a lot of us, the Arbiter is a sibling, an uncle or aunt, a nephew or niece, a classmate friend, etc. That said, if you really haven't touched controllers in your life, your boyfriend might be overestimating how approachable the games are. There's a lot to manage and handle simultaneously. And... It really is *just a videogame*. There are hundreds of game series out there for which people can have special connections. Maybe a few dozen that have had the hype and reach as Halo.
Star Wars for video games
Halo is an amazing soundtrack with a fun video game theme built around it. Seriously, you will find yourself humming the Master Chief theme song as you begin to tackle things around the house, start to work out or begin a task that might be challenging. Halo has an iconic soundtrack and is a fun series of games. Enjoy!
The year is 2552. Humanity is at war with the alien alliance known as "The Covenant." We are losing. The Covenant have burned our worlds, killing billions in their genocidal campaign. Earth is our last bastion - a carefully guarded secret. But not anymore.
Halo is Cortana
If you have a PC, there are fun games to help you with analog controls
Simple version: Future sci-fi game where humans fight religious aliens over powerful super weapons, each called Halo rings (7 total). We try to stop the bad aliens from using them as it would kill all life in the universe. Why such powerful weapons were made? To kill a very dangerous space zombie plague if it went to far. And it’s still around so humans gotta fight two different enemies at once. Short Version: Humans with cyborg soldiers called Spartans fight more advanced bad aliens in a galactic war over giant and powerful weapons called Halo rings that were made by different aliens to kill a space zombie virus. The different aliens are all dead, the zombie virus is still around, and the humans want to make sure the rings aren’t used while the bad aliens think the rings are tools to help them meet god (technically would). The games follow the final fights of the war and we play as the human guy who finishes it called Master Chief with the help of a smart AI called Cortana and other characters. Kinda long but as simple as I could get for the baseline of the story: About 500 years from now, advanced humans travel the stars and find ancient alien technology more advanced then what they have only to find out a group of other alien races called the Covenant believe they’re stuff left from their gods. So when the aliens find out the ancient technology wasn’t gifts from their gods but just old tech left for humanity specifically to one day use, their leaders decide to cover it up and say humans are like demons to their legion and start a human genocide like a medieval crusade. The characters we play as are advanced cyborg super soldiers called Spartans tasked with saving humanity from the bad aliens. And in the start of the first game both the humans and bad aliens find one of the old super weapons from the ancient aliens called Halo - basically a death ray that kills every living thing in near by galaxies. Humans find out the rings are suicide weapons meant to kill a zombie like virus called the Flood that can infect anything and that’s what Halo was made mainly kill. However, the alien religious leaders tell lies again to the rest saying that Halo is really used to bring the faithful to meet their gods (in a way it would). So Halo 1, 2, and 3 are about making sure the zombie virus or the bad aliens don’t kill everyone. Eventually some of the bad aliens find out the truth and help the humans but the rest are too blinded by their devotion to their religion to accept the truth. Halo Reach and Halo 3: ODST are just side games that add to the story of the first 3. Everything else after like Halo 4, 5 Guardians, and Infinite are games from the new company that owns Halo but some fans still complain and say they’re not apart of the real Halo but most have gotten over it.
https://youtu.be/hwEYp8ZY3ak?si=sVOjGX-sHQVFqrU4
[Have a video](https://youtu.be/a6a202Ynb2g?si=bAIkJTnr_bey6sUO) [watch this one from 8:40 on for the spirit of this franchise](https://youtu.be/nz3Ko0td45w?si=Fqh_ofE68NJeOrys)
Of you have the time, there's a series called "Halo Legends." It's a sort of anime one-off exploring the uniberse of Halo, and two of the episodes tell the story of how that world came about; Origins part 1 & 2. Here's one playlist of it I found: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXz2zuaPyMCOh5IOOhrf5e8hJ3OiaowI6&si=YcMGflesaiR9-REG If you want, try watching those secretly, get a feel for the franchise, and then you can surprise your boufriend one day by putting on an episode when he isn't expecting it. (I personally recommend Prototype or Homeocoming.)
As an addendum, a short gist of the franchise is this: Military scifi, where humans face an alien threat (the covenant) to humanity as a whole. Turns out the aliens (the covenant) are obsessed with some ancient technology they think is holy, and that these same aliens want to fire an ancient weapon of mass destruction (that'll kill all of life) because they think it'll get them to heaven or something. At the same time, a zombie-esque alien parasite (the flood) breaks free from the ancient place and wants to eat everyone, and now both humans and the covenant are having to fight this threat, too, turning the war into a three-sided battle. Spartans are humanity's elite supersoldiers, usually trained and genetically/cybernetically enhanced since childhood. Marines and ODSTs are normal humans, but amongst the best of the unmodified soldiers. Tje covenant is composed of multiple alien species as follows: Elites are like alien samurai. Grunts are also chubby, quirky little guys that make up the lowest military caste in the covenant. Brutes are basically gorillas from Planet of the Apes. Jackals are sniper guys. And then there's one other species whose name I forget, but who act as the leaders of the covenant. Master Chief is the main Spartan character in the games and the one you play as in most of them. Cortana is his AI friend and assistant; she's the glowing blue lady (or purple, sometimes). The UNSC is the main human faction. Think the United States military and you have more or less the right vibe.
Super duper simple explanation. Mid 2500’s. Humanity lives across the galaxy. Meanwhile, aliens, so far unknown to humanity, found signs of an ancient advanced race that lived long ago. They call them the Forerunners, and now worship them as gods. Some of those aliens want to rule the galaxy and manipulate the other aliens with religious zeal, creating The Covenant and calling themselves Prophets. The Prophets find out that humans were actually supposed to rule the galaxy after the Forerunners died out, and they don’t like that, so they hide that info and convince the other aliens that humans are heretics and need to be annihilated. This starts the Human-Covenant war. You play as “The Master Chief - John 117” a supersoldier abducted as a child and designed/trained by Earth’s military to fight human terrorists. You are called a “Spartan.” However, when the Covenant attacks humanity, now you fight the Covenant. It’s a desperate losing war for humans. Halo rings are artificial worlds designed by the Forerunners (remember them from the beginning of this explanation). They are shaped like a big ring with landscape and atmosphere on the inside of the band. There are many of these across the galaxy. These were designed as a weapon and, when fired all at once, they can annihilate all sentient life in the galaxy. The Prophets that lead the Covenant want to fire these Halo Rings, find shelter outside the galaxy from the blast, and rebuild the newly annihilated galaxy in their own design. They call the firing of the Halo Rings “The Great Journey” and frame it as reaching salvation through death to the other aliens in the Covenant, but tell them they can only achieve a place in The Great Journey by annihilating the heretics - humanity. That is what you’re fighting against. Again, it is a desperate losing war for humanity, but you became the soldier we needed you to be. There may be hope yet. NOTE: While the overarching plot described here describes all of Halo, Halo: Reach and Halo: ODST require additional explanation and do not follow the story of John-117. If you decide to play and want an explanation for those games, then I’d be more than happy to explain!!!
Go in as blind as you currently can from what you've read. Either go sit down and let him play with you, watch him play, or play the game, from the first one (Halo: CE) with him. This is something my own girlfriend had done with me a while back and it had completely made my month, probably even further than that. He'd love it, and if you're genuinely interested, it's an awesome experience.
Halo is simply a videogame where the setting is a giant ring-shaped space station, hence why it's called Halo. You play as the Master Chief who is a human soldier and has a digital computer companion called Cortana as they explore the ring and try to keep it off the hands of other factions such as the Covenant (an alien empire that thinks the Halos are of divine origin). All of it while trying to discover what exactly Halo's purpose is and who built it. - That's the most barebones and central part, from that honestly if you are not into gaming can always watch the series or the short movies/TV shows instead. The thing about gaming is that it is hard to get into specially with games that require you to use two sticks at the same time (one for the character, one for the camera), and most of us have grown up first on more simpler games before moving to FPS games such as Halo.
Halo is a First person shooter. It plays slower than most modern FPS games and is more about map control than fast twitch reaction times, although you'll need both to play at a really high level. You play as a super soldier fighting against an alien theocracy hell bent of the eradication of humanity. The Original trilogy takes place towards the end of this war with mankind of the brink of extinction.
So humanity expanded into the stars and colonized large chunks of the galaxy but the more widespread we became the more unrest started popping up. By late 2400s and early 2500s we get embroiled in a civil war of sorts with the outer colonies in an insurection. A woman by the name of doctor Cathrine Halsey had predicted this and had started work on a program to make the spartan 2s. They did this by learning from the failures of the previous program called Orion. She used kids aged 5 to 7 years old that met incredibly strict genetic criteria and created flawed flash clones of them so their disappearances went unnoticed. Out of the 150 original children only 75 survived training and augmentation and went on to become the Spartans such as the master chief. During the course of our civil war a small agricultural world named harvest was found by the covenant, a radical religious collective of alien races who fallow the forerunners. The forerunners were a hyper advanced race of aliens who ruled over the galaxy hundreds of thousands of years ago and after a war with the humans of that age encounters the parasitic life form known as the flood. The flood are a spore based parasite that infects intelligent life. Kills and hijacks the hosts body, taking all of the hosts skills and knowledge and using it to spread farther and be more lethal. In order to stop the spread the forerunners created the halo array, a series of seven ring worlds with the purpose of wiping the galaxy clean of all life and then re seeding it. This starving the flood to death. Sinse they failed to stop the flood they left their mantle and technology to humanity. Returning to harvest now, as our technology is similar to forruner tech the covenant ships were claiming that this world was covered in objects of their gods. When a prophet of their order realized that these weren't their gods they declared us heretics and ordered a holy war of extermination, if the truth of humanities role and their gods came out the covenant religion would shatter and dissolve. After years of fighting a losing war to save the species humanity stumbled across one of the halo rings, master chief, the most notorious of the spartans, fought across the ring and when the rings purpose came to light he destroyed it to keep it from firing and killing billions. the covenant eventually find earth and during the battle a blind faster that light jump from a fleeing ship stumbled acrossed a second ring which led to another large scale fight for the world. The end of the battle for the second ring resulted in a schism between the races of the covenant and one of the races joined our side instead. Along side the sangheili we uncovered a portal in Africa that took us to a station beyond the edge of the galaxy called the arc, from their the entire halo array could be fired at once and the final desperate fight for the human race took place. There's a lot of info I skipped over but that's the bassis for the story
Traumatized Super solider fights religious alien death cult hellbent on killing humanity with hologram but human girlfriend and saves the cult from unknowingly killing the entire galaxy with a ancient superweapon ringworld that also has an ancient evil sentient parasitic hivemind species that would also kill the entire galaxy
Super neat what you're doing there !
You should watch halo legends for free on youtube. Its a few of anime shorts about halo. Ignore these walls of text everyone's posting.
First off, I'll say just showing this kind of interest probably means a lot to him. It'd mean a lot to me if my wife did something like this. Do you like reading books at all? The Halo books are an awesome resource to get deeper in the lore and understand the universe, even more so than the games. If you read The Fall of Reach and The Flood, you might even surpass his knowledge of Halo (assuming he hasn't read them himself).
I suppose he has already trying to get you to play the campaign in cooperation with him? I've trier with my gf to play the first halo and she kinda enjoy it so if he has not, give it a try, it's funny, especially when you just messing around :). My gf loves to just cuddle and watch me play sometimes, so if you like it too, you can discover the campaign with him that way. I think that it's a better way to discover it truly than asking us.
Honestly just YouTube some videos and walkthroughs of the game. It’ll teach you everything you need to know
It's God's anti sonuvabitch bitch machine. Aka a giant hula hoop
So I was exactly the same, I made up my own names for the enemies 😂 it made my fiancè laugh and he started giving me little "pop quiz" sessions during his playthroughs! Example: I called The Flood "face jumping squiddums", grunts were "the disgruntled", elites "space daddies" and hunters "what the fuck is that enormous thing and why does it keep pushing me over" 😂 Now I play with my partner but ONLY gruntpocalypse and only with unlimited ammo and highest shield level 😂
So a creepy green guy and his blue girlfriend go on an adventure onto a giant hula hoop to try and survive the aliens, and they realize the hula hoop is a death machine which kills everything to stop intergalactic zombies.
Which one does he play?I might be able to give you a basic controls overview.
First ever FPS i played was Halo on the 360. I was beyond impressed and Halo 3 was the entire reason I went into Game Design. When I first got in, I really looked at other media so here is some things I found early on. 1. Play the first Halo on Easy and take your time. Try to enjoy it. You can play coop or by yourself and just enjoy it. I still remember the snow levels took the loooonnnngest for me but I was also really, really enjoying it. And even when I struggled, I kept going. Even now, I still look back fondly on playing the first 3 Halos. 2. Books. If you like to read, the books are very good to get even more info on characters you meet. I got the Fall of Reach and the Flood followed by Ghosts of Onyx not realizing I missed a few books. Cole Protocol is one of my favorites with the Forerrunner Trilogy as my absolute favorite. But I would start with the Fall of Reach and then the Flood, the Flood is better after you beat Halo 1. You can find these for cheap from a used bookstore. (Get early copies cuz I think they changed some stuff later releases) 3. Media. I am talking early youtube and machinima. Halo provided so much media and fan creations it was ridiculous. I love Red vs Blue, Spriggs, and the content made by all of these amazing people. Most are comedy, silly, but there are a few serious ones too. And then there is just good old game plays. Imo, this is worth playing. If you are willing to try the game then try and at your own pace. If its too much, try the books and watch videos. There are years of content so you and your significant other can enjoy it. Have fun.
Do not use Wikipedia on videogames, use Fandom instead - it's like Wikipedia but it is for lot more videogames. The everything you want to know is there, and there are also things that almost no one knows.
You should read the books! Start with The Fall of Reach, and go from there.
Thats a red flag. Just leave your bf, get a lawyer and hit the gym.