Following the original Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 massively expanded the universe of Bungie’s sci-fi series with a cinematic flair unparalleled by any of its contemporaries. Alongside its usual action slant, Halo 2 became a grand space opera that massively expanded on the original’s lore going as far as to show us the internals of The Covenant.
Halo 3, while a great game in its own right, is significantly less dense in terms of storytelling. For over a decade-and-a-half, many have seen this as a pivot due to fan backlash at the time. While it’s true that vocal fans complained about the iconic Master Chief splitting his screen time with Keith David’s Arbiter, the reality is actually a little simpler.
Speaking to FRVR in a recent interview, Halo 3 campaign design lead Robert Stokes explained that there was a push inside Bungie to return to the “mystery” of the original Combat Evolved. Compared to Halo 2, the original game—which has just been remade with Halo Studios’ Campaign Evolved—doesn’t push to explain too much, and Halo 3 certainly follows in its footsteps.
“Before we even entered pre-production on Halo 3 in earnest, we had a series of post-mortem meetings with the entire team,” Stokes told us. “From these meetings we extracted what we liked about Halo 1 and Halo 2, and what we didn’t. And one of the criticisms was that we removed a lot of the mystery from the Covenant in Halo 2.”
Alongside spending half of the game as The Arbiter, Stokes explained that the cutscenes with the Prophets took away some of the mystery that was felt during Combat Evolved. “We’re in many cinematics with the Prophets, who don’t come across as all that alien when they’re speaking English and displaying personalities and motivations common to any earthbound villain,” he said.
Stokes explained that Bungie “wanted to refocus the narrative through the lens of the Master Chief”, funnelling some of the original game’s mystery back into its finale. “Regaining some of the mystery was a large motivation for Halo 3, in fact,” he told us. “We wanted to go somewhere mysterious and new. We wanted to try making the motives of our enemies more inscrutable. We even wanted you to wonder if Cortana was still on your side.”
That led to the issue of The Arbiter. Within Halo 3, Master Chief and The Arbiter, despite both being chattier than expected in Halo 2, barely speak. Throughout the entire game, Master Chief only says a single word to Keith David’s Arbiter, less than he says to the Sangheili warrior during their single shared cutscene in the second game. While they don’t communicate much, they are canonically fighting together throughout the entirety of the third game, even diving into a Flood-infested High Charity to save Cortana, an AI that The Arbiter has never even met.
“We didn’t want to retcon or otherwise ignore the Arbiter,” the developer said. “The guy has Keith David for a voice, for crying out loud! Too cool to throw him away entirely. And so as part of focusing the game on the Chief, we decided that there shouldn’t be a Chief clone running around when in co-op. Enter the Arbiter.”
Stokes added that this was made a little more confusing due to Halo 3’s addition of four-player co-op during the game’s campaign. As they had already made the decision not to include a clone of Master Chief for multiplayer, they instead added two unique Elite characters: N’tho ‘Sraom and Usze ‘Taham. “I would joke that they were the Arbiter’s cousin and his sister’s boyfriend,” Stokes said.
Whether or not Halo 3 actually succeeds in its quest to re-inject mystery into the Halo universe is up for interpenetration. For some, myself included, the genie can’t be stuffed back into the bottle, especially after it spent so much time adorning you with riches just years prior.
As the newly-branded Halo Studios seemingly works to remake the entire Halo trilogy, Halo 3 included, there is a chance that a new take on the finale could see some of Halo 2’s energy injected into the finale. However, as the third game is the most beloved game in the series, it seems unlikely that the remake will change too much when it finally releases.
