The Halo story so far Halo 5 Guardians is here, bringing the next stage in Master Chief's tale. But the Halo story is a little hard to follow. There are super soldiers, alien plant monsters, Prophets called "Regret" and a ship named "Pillar of Autumn." With characters rattling off story details as plasma blasts and Needler spikes whiz past your head, you probably came out of the Halo games not knowing what the heck was going on.We've got the solution right here, where we give you all the most important details of Master Chief's story so you won't be jumping into Halo 5: Guardians without knowing how and why the proverbial plasma grenade has hit the fan. In the beginning, there were the Forerunners The Forerunners were an ancient race of super-advanced aliens who built the titular halo, as well as several other important relics, and are worshiped by the Covenant. The halos (and yes, there are multiple - seven, in fact) were built as massive superweapons which would annihilate all life in the galaxy capable of sustaining a parasitic alien life-form known as the Flood. The idea was that with nothing to consume, the parasite would eventually starve into extinction. This was, however, a last-ditch effort that the Forerunner were hesitant to use.Although they battled valiantly against the Flood, the Forerunners were eventually overwhelmed. At the push of a button, they fired the rings in an attempt to starve the Flood and sacrificed themselves in the process. Not necessarily the best of solutions. The UNSC are the good guys In the Halo universe, humans like to explore space, so they developed the ability to travel faster than light, settle colonies across the galaxy, and create the United Nations Space Command (UNSC). With the advanced technology that comes with intergalactic space travel also comes better ways to fight wars, leading the military to create elite groups of super soldiers called Spartans, who become essential to humanity’s survival when the bad guys show up. The Covenant are the bad guys Several alien species, including the multi-mandibled Elites, brutish ... er, Brutes, and cowardly Grunts, come together in the fanatical worship of the Forerunners to create the Covenant. After encountering humans for the first time, Covenant leaders consider them heretics to their gods and declare a holy war on the human race. The alien invaders eventually drive off or kill all of the human colonists with little to no resistance until they arrive at one of humanity's last bastions of power (and birthplace of the Spartans), the planet Reach. The Flood try to eat everyone The Flood is the third side of conflict in the Halo series. They attack anyone and everyone, have really gross looking nests, and mutate whatever lifeform they get attached to. Victims become infected by the relatively small facehugger-like parasites that latch onto and infect the host, or by inhaling a high concentration of spores. Flood enemies are basically zombified versions of the alien species you find in the game, including humans, Brutes, and Elites. They come in various shapes and sizes, from the wall-crawling stalkers to hulking tanks and the monstrous Gravemind. The Spartans fight the Covenant, but fail Originally, the Spartan-II super solders were created to help fight human rebels in the UNSC colonies, but when the Covenant attacked they became the best weapon against the alien invaders. Eventually, the sheer numbers of the Covenant forces overpower the Spartans, leading the UNSC to create the lower class Spartan-III soldiers we see in Halo: Reach.One of the last surviving Spartan-II soldiers is John-117, otherwise known as Master Chief. He was hand chosen by Cortana to be her protector. Or, if you go by the first Halo game, the two first met on the Pillar of Autumn. Their history has been retconned a few times. Noble team saves Cortana and Reach gets glassed One of the last groups of elite special operations Spartans, called "Noble," is stationed on the planet Reach when it comes under attack by a full-scale Covenant invasion. It's up to Noble team to stave off the invasion, help with the planet-wide evacuation, and essentially ensure that the series' heroes, Master Chief and Cortana, make it off the planet alive as they make a desperate escape in the Pillar of Autumn. Naturally, this results in the deaths of Noble team. After the UNSC’s defeat, the Covenant bombards Reach, completely destroying anything that was left alive. It's kind of a bummer. Master Chief lands on the first Halo ring When the ship carrying Master Chief and Cortana drops out of slip-space, they crash land on a ring-like space station called Halo (well, technically it's Installation 04, but "Halo" is what our heroes call it). In order to discover what the space station is, they travel to Halo’s central control center so Cortana can jack into the computer R2-D2 style. While that is all happening, Covenant forces accidently unleash the Flood, leading Halo’s AI monitor 343 Guilty Spark to push Master Chief toward activating the ring.Just as Chief is about to activate the rings, however, Cortana realizes that would cause the destruction of all life in the galaxy. They decide to blow the engines on the Pillar of Autumn instead, which should cause enough damage to destroy the entire ring. So, Halo blows up, crisis is averted and Chief goes home a hero. The Covenant attack EarthShortly after the destruction of the first halo ring, a Covenant fleet invades the city of New Mombasa with one of the highest ranking Covenant officials, the High Prophet Regret, in command. The UNSC manages to hold their own against the attacking fleet and in an effort to escape, Regret makes a slip-space jump directly over the city with Master Chief and Cortana in tow.Meanwhile, the Elite commander who failed to protect the Halo ring from getting blown to smithereens by our hero is given the title of Arbiter by the other two High Prophets, Truth and Mercy. While it seems like an honor at first, the Prophets reveal to the Arbiter that they fully expect him to die on the missions they send him on. In spite of this, the Arbiter is loyal to the Covenant, until he learns the truth of the rings and he sides with the UNSC. Thankfully, he brings a large swath of fellow Elites with him. Chief finishes the fight After the fiasco with the second Halo ring, Master Chief ends up crash landing on Earth where another Covenant leader, the High Prophet of Truth, manages to open a portal to the Ark, the control center for the Halo array.The Chief and Arbiter manage to kill the Prophet of Truth with the help of the Flood Gravemind before Truth is able to set off the Halo rings. But, as villains are wont to do, the Gravemind betrays them when the deed is done.As they escape the Flood, the heroes discover that the Ark was building a halo ring to replace the one Chief destroyed in the original game. Chief retrieves Cortana, who suggests they prematurely activate the ring, which will destroy the new ring, the Ark and the Flood all with one stone. When they succeed, Master Chief, the Arbiter and Cortana escape in the UNSC ship Forward Unto Dawn, but it gets cut in half by an unstable jump to faster-than-light speed.The Arbiter crash lands on Earth and Cortana and Master Chief are left floating through unknown space. The Forerunners are back (kind of) Remember how the halo rings were apparently the cause of death for the entire Forerunner species? Turns out at least one of their kind survived, hidden and locked away on an artificial planet called Requiem. His name is Shadow-of-Sundered-Star, but you can just call him "The Didact." He's more than a little miffed at how the galaxy has turned out since his imprisonment eons ago, and still bears a mighty grudge against humanity in particular. When Chief and Cortana land on Requiem after floating through deep space, they're tricked into freeing him.The Didact sets his sights on humanity, eager to re-establish his species' place as superior to homo sapiens. He takes control of an army of Promethean Knights - Forerunners and humans who had their consciousnesses transposed into robot bodies thanks to an artifact called The Composer - and flies to Earth. Chief and Cortana confront The Didact, but not before he fires The Composer at Earth, killing millions of humans and turning them into Prometheans.The Didact is hard to kill - he seemingly falls to his death in Halo 4, but it's revealed later that he survived and has sought out additional Composers. A group of Spartans known as Blue Team, under the command of Master Chief, find and fight The Didact again, this time dropping both him and a chunk of another halo ring onto a planet. The Didact is shown being disintegrated. As far as we currently know, this marks the end of the last living Forerunner. Maybe. Humans and Covenant still don't like each other The war may be over, but several factions of humans and aliens are still going at each other, and violently. Covenant loyalists lead the attack on Master Chief in Halo 4, and work together with The Didact to exact vengeance on a species they still see as their mortal enemy. In Halo: Nightfall, an Elite releases a bio-weapon that kills any humans exposed to it. Humans aren't totally innocent, either. A xenophobic hate group calling itself Sapien Sunrise opposes any peace with Covenant races, and it uses terrorist tactics to intimidate anyone in its way. Cortana goes rampant In the Halo universe, humans have developed true artificial intelligences - computerized lifeforms with personalities capable of making instantaneous calculations that human minds would take far longer to solve. The only downside is that these AI's cognitive processes grow exponentially, and sooner or later they can't handle the information. They go haywire and burn out, having literally thought themselves to death. Unfortunately for our heroes, Cortana is way past due for this event, and her struggle to keep things together eventually culminates in her making the ultimate sacrifice. Chief meets new and old friends As Chief and Cortana explore Requiem, they meet with a psychic projection / digital ghost (the Halo universe can be pretty mumbo-jumbo at times) of another Forerunner, called The Librarian. This friendly alien tells Chief of The Didact's plans and explains his motives for hating humanity. Turns out, she saved humans from The Didact's wrath once before, and in doing so, planted seeds of genetic ascendance within them. She then unlocks Chief's potential, though what that means has yet to be seen. So far all we know is that it allowed him to survive an attack from The Composer, which should have disintegrated him.After the events of Halo 4, Chief is soon put to work again - this time with the surviving members of his old unit, Blue Team, at his side. Their missions are by and large classified, but one stands out as particularly important: the raid on Biko. At a diplomatic hearing between Elites and humans, the terrorist group Sapien Sunrise makes an attempt on an Earth ambassador's life. Chief and Blue Team attempt to stop this treasonous act, but are instead implicated in the killing. Humanity becomes unsure of whether Master Chief is a hero or an insane killing machine. Though this cover-up is later exposed by an investigating journalist, doubts linger. The Spartan program continues Though the Human-Covenant War has since come to an end, the UNSC continues to refine its Spartans. Spartan-IVs are the newest breed, making their debut in Halo 4. Unlike Spartan-IIs and Spartan-IIIs, which begin the process as children (not always with their consent), Spartan-IV candidates are all consenting adults. A Spartan-IV is not as physically able as a Spartan-II thanks to limitations of augmentation technology, but a new generation of armor helps balance the scales. Meet Spartan Locke The human military is made up of far more than standard marines and Spartans; there are also operatives who work in the shadows as part of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Jameson Locke is one such ONI agent, and his actions in the field of duty have earned him a high number of accolades and respect. He, like Master Chief, has even been responsible for the destruction of a halo ring - well, a chunk of one floating in space anyway. After rising through the ranks and joining the Spartan-IV program, Locke is given command of a Spartan fireteam, dubbed Osiris. And here we are That's everything you absolutely need to know to have any clue as to what is happening when you power on Halo 5: Guardians. But there's still lots more Halo lore out there. Do you have any special memories you hold close to your heart from the Halo series or want to show off how much you know about this intergalactic war drama? Be sure to speak up in the comments below!
