I haven’t posted one of these in a while, so I thought I start again with one of my favorites from the Halo franchise.
This plays right at the beginning of the game, with Master Chief’s AI doing the great voiceover, which if I recall correctly, was a new element for the Halo narratives. At this point in the story, in the ending events of Halo 2, Master Chief had inserted Cortana into the Covenant city of High Charity‘s systems to destroy it, and she afterward ended up talking to Gravemind afterward (who is probably one of the most repulsive-looking/moving creatures I’ve seen). So because she wasn’t in his head anymore, she instead was narrating at the player while addressing Master Chief. Was it like her personal diary entry? And emphasizing “luck” as a defining characteristic for a top-level military field leader was maybe a sly acknowledgement of the actual player, as the one who is feeding Master Chief all this luck. All definitely odd for a genre-defining military fps.
The opening scenes for Halo and Halo 2 weren’t nearly as playful as this one. It’s a weird thing to say, because Master Chief is basically a fireball crashing to Earth, and everyone thinks he’s dead. I suppose it’s a testament to the power of the music.
Listen below or load the mp3 of “Luck” in a new tab/window, or listen to “Luck” on YouTube.
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I recall watching most of the entire series on YouTube, played by professional gamers. To be honest, I never paid much attention to the scoring. Interesting.