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| Re: Halo - a look back over seven years *long* | |
| Posted By: De Laal | Date: 11/17/08 2:16 a.m. |
In Response To: Halo - a look back over seven years (Louis Wu) Hoo boy... My obsession with Halo began back in 1999 when Bungie released the original trailer at the Macworld Expo... And then fell away again when Halo's development seemed to drop away, and Bungie was purchased by Microsoft. One of my friends had received an xbox and Halo for his birthday shortly after both released, and I remember staying over at his place a couple of nights just so that we could run through the first five levels over and over again: he was creeped out by the Flood at the time. I didn't even know that there were five more levels in the game until several months afterward - and I didn't care (at the time). In the months before I managed to get an xbox for myself I would hang out with my friends as often as I could, usually for the appeal of playing Co-op with them. And then somebody introduced me to multiplayer - again, with the single-minded motif, I didn't really acknowledge it until I saw a couple of friends going head to head on Blood Gulch. I guess this was when I really knew that I was addicted. After acquiring a xbox for my own birthday, a day later I hosted a maxed-out LAN party, and I kept doing it, as often as I could come up with an excuse to convince my parents to let me have three, or five, or eight, or fifteen friends over. Somewhere in there I read The Fall of Reach (and eventually The Flood and First Strike), and I started writing speculative essays and sending 'em to the HBO story page. I don't really remember when I started visiting HBO regularly - I think it was fall of 2002 or early 2003. Halo 2 released after a year or two of "agonized waiting," spent playing Legendary, and building close friendships off of a common interest in Halo and the love of team gaming. I went to the midnight release at a local game store, played till eight or nine in the morning, slept, and finished the game. The only complaint I had regarding Halo 2 at the time was the lack of time that I had, personally, to play it - I shipped out for basic training two weeks later. I recall telling my recruiters this - they laughed, and shook their heads. I didn't expect them to understand; Halo was just THAT important. When I was discharged, several months later, disillusioned, very confused and in pain - both of my legs were broken - I used Halo and Halo 2 as the supports and escapes that they had always been - two things that hadn't changed. The years between then and college are something of a blur, but the one thing that really stands out were the amazing nights spent on XBL, playing Halo 2 with all sorts of people I didn't know, building friendships with XBL players in Japan, England, Germany, Canada, and all over the USA; not to mention the friends I knew personally and with whom I played many, many LAN games. I also seem to recall trying to synthesize a Grand-Unified-Theory of Halo's story, co-authored with my brother, and I believe, posted to the HBO forums in June of 2005. My freshman year of college was punctuated by weekly LAN games, played over the ultra-fast network that most schools probably have. Every Friday or Saturday night (and sometimes both) a small cadre of my friends and fellow gamers would get together and beat the crap out of each other for hours on end. Just as it had through high school and the limbo-years following, Halo worked as a common ground that knit a lot of close friendships together. The weekend LAN parties continued up through last year, the Halo 3 beta, and Halo 3's release. The group of players expanded, and we moved onto xbox live. And so, seven years later, six-and-half of which I've been playing, Halo still has amazing appeal and continues to work as a way to kick back, to bond with new people, and I've enjoyed every instant that I've been able to spend with it. Thank you, to HBO, Louis Wu/Claude Errera, and Bungie, for the feedback, daily news, and community of this immersive game... M. Happel
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