#New halo game series#

Cortana's survival through the Forerunner repository of knowledge known as the Domain leads her to break with the UNSC and assert a new hegemony over the galaxy, with artificial intelligence (the 'Created') in control. The Forerunner known as the Didact briefly returns to assert supremacy over humanity, though he is foiled by the Master Chief and Cortana, who is initially believed dead in the attempt. In the post-war era, the UNSC creates a new generation of Spartans, and tensions between the UNSC and colonist rebels resume. The Human-Covenant War ended, though new conflicts begin to emerge throughout the universe. The disgraced former Covenant Sangheili commander known as the Arbiter, along with the rest of his race, helped the humans destroy the Covenant and stop its leader, Truth, from activating the Halo Array via the Ark. The Covenant descended into civil war following the expulsion of the Sangheili species, with many grappling over the revelation that their religion was false. Master Chief and his artificial intelligence Cortana were instrumental in the destruction of a Halo ring to stop the Covenant and the threat of the Flood. The rediscovery of the Halo rings set the humans against the Covenant, who believef they were instruments of transcendence, not destruction. After the Covenant invaded Reach, the UNSC's last major stronghold besides Earth, Master Chief John-117 was left as one of the few remaining Spartans. Their superior technology and numbers proved decisive advantages though effective, the Spartans were too few in number to turn the tide of battle in humanity's favor. In the year 2525, human worlds come under attack by an theocratic alliance of alien races known as the Covenant, whose leadership declared humanity heretics and an affront to their gods-the Forerunners. The UNSC sponsored the SPARTAN-II Project to create an elite group of enhanced supersoldiers to suppress the rebellions covertly. Tensions between the government and colonies desiring independence sparked violent clashes. Nearly a hundred thousand years later in the 26th century, humanity-under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command, or UNSC-colonized many worlds thanks to the development of faster-than-light 'slipstream space' (i.e. Delaying as long as they could, the Forerunners activated the rings and disappeared. Exhausting all other strategies, the Forerunners conceived the Halo Array - ring-shaped megastructures and weapons of last resort that would destroy all sentient life in the galaxy to stop the Flood. The Forerunners fought the Flood, which spread through infestation of sentient life and had overrun much of the Milky Way Galaxy. However, instead of creating Precursors, the spore made a parasite known as the Flood.

Among the last of the Precursors, one let out a spore, hoping for it to spread and repopulate the Precursors. In retaliation, the Forerunners drove the Precursors into extinction. However, the Precursors wanted to remove such power from Forerunner hands and give it to the human race. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Mantle of Responsibility belonged to the Forerunners. Halo has since become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time, spanning multiple best-selling novels, graphic novels, comic books, short movies, animated movies and feature films, as well as other licensed products. The games had sold over 81 million copies worldwide, with more than $6 billion in franchise grosses. Fueled by the success of Halo: Combat Evolved and marketing, its sequels went on to record-breaking sales. This led to the term ' Halo killer' being used to describe console games that aspire, or are considered, to be better than Halo.

#New halo game series#

The games in the series are critically acclaimed, with the original considered the Xbox's ' killer app'. The latest main game, Halo Infinite, was released in 2021.

The series launched with the first-person shooter video game Halo: Combat Evolved and its tie-in novel, The Fall of Reach in 2001. The artifacts of a long-disappeared race, the Forerunners, play a key role the eponymous Halo Array are immense, habitable and ring-shaped superweapons that were created by the Forerunners to destroy the parasitic Flood, but which the alien Covenant mistake for religious artifacts of transcendence. Primarily taking place in the 26th century, the franchise centers on conflict between humanity and a variety of alien species. The franchise is currently managed and developed by 343 Industries, and owned and published by Xbox Game Studios. Halo is a military science fiction media franchise.