My Favorite Classic Halo Media – Halo Week 2019 July 24, 2019

Welcome back to Halo Week 2019, where we are talking all things Halo. While working on a different article for this site, I stumbled on so much great independently produced Halo content I felt I had to feature some of it here.

In 2004, hype for Halo 2 was picking up and a month before the game was released, the now defunct Spike TV channel broadcasted a television show called The Ultimate Gamer. In it, a Halo fan got to live out the dreams of every Halo fan.

I remembered watching this show the night it first aired and for years I thought this show was a piece of media that would forever be lost. It turns out, it had survived and I’m so happy it is. Even though a lot of information in it out of date, it’s a great time capsule and makes me think back to how exciting the wait was for Halo 2.

While we’re on the subject of otherwise lost media there’s no bigger poster child for that (well, other than the BBC) than the now defunct G4TV. What started as a great television network for gaming was totally ruined after its corporate merger with TechTV. That having been said, Halo 2‘s release happened before all that, and in anticipation for that game’s much-anticipated release G4TV devoted an entire day of content to Halo on the day before of Halo 2‘s release. It was celebrated with bumpers like these:

Icons was by far my favorite series during G4’s heyday. It focused on the history of game development with episodes focused on either major game franchises, a major event, or the history of a studio. This episode of Icons, produced by G4, focused on the history of Bungie, the original creators of Halo.

Every Halo fan remembers where they were in 2007 when Halo 3 launched. The game promised players the chance to Finish the Fight that began so many years earlier, and preorders were through the roof. The guys over at PBC Productions (famous for creating iconic series such as Captain S and Little Miss Gamer) visited their local game store to document the biggest game release of its time!

Finally, most people cite the Halo 3: ODST TV commercial as an example of one of the best video game commercials of all time. While we don’t agree with the fact it is THE best, it certainly cracked our top ten of best commercials of all time. Here’s a behind the scenes look at what it took to make that commercial.

Hope you all enjoyed this trip down memory road. More Halo content, including more videos from Outpost Discovery, is on its way for Halo Week 2019!

Halo Week 2019 – A Look at Halo’s Live Action Prequel Short Films July 23, 2019

We’re kicking off the start of Halo Week 2019 with a Halo appetizer some of you may have missed out on the first time around. Since Halo 2, Microsoft’s sizable marketing division has created some incredibly unique methods to promote the launch of each new Halo game. We have profiled some of these methods in the past, but today we will focus on highlighting videos intended to be canonical live-action prequels to the games they were promoting.

There are a few rules to this list. First up is we will only highlight official videos that have been produced by Microsoft, so sadly we will not include any fan-films. Secondly, the Halo films like Halo 4: Forward Until Dawn, Halo: Legends, Halo: Fall of Reach, and Halo: Nightfall. Those films are currently available on disc or digital distribution at your local movie marketplace or through various video-on-demand services. We also aren’t including the Halo 3: ODST commercial as (even though it is phenomenal) it doesn’t tie directly into the events of the game’s story.

First up is Halo: Landfall, Directed by Neill Blomkamp. It was released in three parts with the first part released at E3 2007. Landfall tells the story of a squad of marines sent on a classified mission just before the events of Halo 3. Their objective is unknown to the viewer but over the course of the short we will learn their objective and how it ties into the events of the game. If you watch this and silently weep at how good it is or how well it matched up with your prediction of what a Halo movie should look like, it is probably due to the fact that if Microsoft had made a feature-length Halo film, it would have been made by this production team.

Next up is Deliver Hope, a live-action television commercial for Halo: Reach. Set before the events of Reach, this short details what happened to the SPARTAN who previously held the position of Noble 6, and why the Team was so hesitant to accept the player in that position at the start of the game. Its got great production values and despite its brief length, still tells a coherent, compelling story.

Finally, here’s Halo 4‘s E3 2012 trailer. This was originally shown at the Microsoft E3 2012 Press Event, but following that, it was broadcasted on television during (for some reason that eludes my logic) a basketball game. It details the launch of the UNSC Infinity, the most advanced spaceship in the fleet and teased this ship and its crew would play a big role in the game. Its not purely a live action short as it was followed up in its initial broadcast with gameplay footage, but the Infinity played such a big part in the final game it is great to see the ship’s beginnings.

Hope you are all enjoying Halo Week 2019, with more content (including original videos from Halo: Outpost Discovery) coming every day!