Halo is one of my favorite FPS and shooters, it was also my childhood, I grew up with Halo 1 and the classic Xbox as my first game console and after 3 decades of my life this franchise is in my top favorite games. For years and years I grew up believing that Combat Evolved was the best video game of the saga, until I met Reach, the game with the best narrative of the entire universe, “Halo”, one of the last creations of Bungie and prequel to the events of the first title. It wasn’t until 2012, that the fourth installment arrived and at that time I didn’t understand its magnitude, which was more like a love story.
Halo 4: A love story more realistic than imagined
As I already mentioned, Combat Evolved marked the beginning of everything and the childhood of millions, consolidating Xbox as a competitor among the big ones in a market where only Nintendo competed with its N64, Gamecube and its laptops and Sony with the PSONE and a few years later with the best-selling console in history: PlayStation 2. This is where the first installment of Halo captivated childhood and adolescence, attracting a huge market sector and culminating its work with the second installment which is, by the way, one of the best for the critics.
With the launch of Xbox 360 was also launched the closure of the main trilogy, which at the moment is one of the best rated, although it continues to be a title with incomplete mechanics and an open story, far surpassed by the second and the first installment and made by a Bungie who was working on another great project: Gears Of War. Reach is a spin-off of the franchise that narrates the events that took place on the homonymous Planet, a story of heroism and sacrifice of soldiers who give their lives to protect the inhabitants. On this occasion we take on the role of Noble 7, a lone wolf who gives his last breath in this huge story.
And we come to the last game of the Xbox 360 and first official game of 343 Studios: Halo 4, the best title by far of the entire franchise, but also the most underrated and misunderstood. Released in November 2012 almost to close the 360 generation and start the One, almost nobody paid attention to this title with an impressive and very easy gameplay, the most innovative mechanics up to that moment and the best graphics of the franchise, not only that, it was an almost direct continuation of the events of Halo 3 and the beginning of a new story, making this new story the most risky and the first official non-remake for a new studio.
343 Studios now Halo Studios were not afraid to take the risk and started with “The Reclaimer Saga” consisting of the fourth installment, Guardians and Infinite. Being this a before and after in the history of Xbox, which would go unnoticed by the year of release, although in the following years would be valued, interpreted and most likely located on the podiums of the saga.
The first thing to evaluate should definitely be its mechanics, because every Halo title has basically the same gameplay, although in the fourth installment is facilitated. In this installment, as in Reach and the third installment we get different skills, however, those we acquire in Halo 4 are more functional and help us to finish with the enemies more easily, as well as weapons, because, while some are retained, others are added to eliminate enemies that are more threatening, strong and skilled than the members of the Covenant, although the Elites and Hunters are more difficult to defeat.
The main threat, besides the Covenant that once again has turned against us, turns out to be an ancestral species with ultra-sophisticated technology: the Forerunners, but above all, time and a promise that we are obliged to keep at all costs. The video game begins when Cortana, with the best design to date, wakes up Master Chief because she has sensed that the ship where they were both stranded at the end of the third installment was invaded. John 117 goes to her call and while investigating the ship he discovers that the Covenant species are once again his enemy.
Other things absolutely in favor of Halo 4 is the character design and setting from the first minute. A desolate spaceship is our first level and the best designed Cortana is the target character we must rescue. However, the character design is not the only thing, every detail of the world is impressive and the silver colored structures are a luxury, combined with the designs of the enemies “Forerunners” that have spectacular details for their time between orange, silver, white, black and blue.
As we advance in the game, Cortana begins to suffer a loss of control and reveals that very soon her life cycle will come to an end, to which the Master Chief promises to take her to Dr. Halsey to repair her and return to be the Artificial Intelligence she has always known, to which Cortana responds:
“Do not make promises you can not keep”.
A desperate John begins a race against time, but also with a better organized Covenant and enemies never seen before in the franchise, the Forerunners, who will combine to cause the worst headaches to our duo with the final that they do not achieve their goal and, when they are closer to close the plans fall apart by time. The Master Chief gets a chance to pilot a ship that will take them to Dr. Halsey and thus finally save Cortana, although the condition is to perform one last mission.
While the pair perform this impressive mission that will lead them to finally save John’s AI, an accident causes them to culminate in another space with the final boss “The Didacta”, who is above all Forerunners and Covenant species and now comes to finish off the Master Chief and the human species. After failed and desperate attempts to kill the Didact and save Cortana, the Intelligence decides to come to her rescue, making a final sacrifice for the one who has been her companion in all her years of useful life and ending the life of the one who led all the alien species.
Almost with his last minutes of life, Cortana adopts a human form to be for the first and last time with John 117 in a digitalized plane, having one of the most emotional talks and tragic endings of this saga, and then say goodbye and die in the digital plane. Halo 4 is a video game with one of the shortest campaigns, but it is the first realistic love story that can be found in the saga, sacrificial love, where one person, in this case an AI for the other, besides being admirable, is true.
