Halo: Combat Evolved made the Flood into a true horror monster

A good power fantasy is something I treasure as much as any other person. And if you think I wasn’t fist-pumping the first time I saw Master Chief boogie-boarding an antimatter bomb through space and into a Covenant cruiser, you would be incorrect. Power fantasies can be a common sight. I remember the Halo moments that made it easy for me to feel vulnerable. When it turns into horror, the Halo series can be at its finest.

Think about the game that got it started. You can find it here. Halo: The Evolution of CombatChief, a stranger in an unfamiliar land, is not only searching for a way to the titular ring universe, but trying also to find out the exact nature of the ring realm. is. “343 Guilty Spark,” the sixth mission, leads the Chief to a derelict facility in the bowels of a remote swamp. After passing through hallways littered with mangled bodies — human and Covenant alike — Chief watches footage from a discarded helmet cam in which a squad of Marines is torn apart by a wave of tentacled, parasitic creatures. The footage ends, and Chief realizes he’s in the same room where the carnage unfolded. Chief hears something moving towards him. Thus, he meets the Flood: “the only enemy the Covenant fear.”

Halo’s Flood-centric chapters are not necessarily the most fun ones. For example, whittling down the Covenant squad’s hierarchy requires more strategy, and it encourages you to use all the weapons available in the game. My motion sensor becomes flooded with Flood signatures and my soundtrack turns into an orchestral screech. It doesn’t matter that I’m 7 feet tall, 1,000 pounds, and enveloped in an energy shield — in those moments, Combat Evolution It is terrifying.

None of this is to say that the Covenant can’t be scary as well. They’re an intergalactic conglomerate of religious zealots that either train for war from childhood, or enslave whole worlds to make them fight against their will. This violent crusade is threatening to end the human race and engulf all of creation. What’s more, a world-eating network of starving parasites just joined the fray. The ring also acts as a life-saving weapon. Six more are available.

The horrors and complexities of this situation provide a lot for the Halo series, but Master Chief is not often fazed. It’s his stoic demeanor that makes the surrounding anxiety palatable.

Image: Bungie/Microsoft Game Studios

Then there’s Halo 3: ODST, which isn’t about Master Chief. This was in part created to remove the Super Hero stories of Chief and Arbiter for a highly-trained, but much more vulnerable, spec operations squad. The Helljumpers’ increased fragility, coupled with the game’s nighttime setting in a city under siege, makes for more tense, deliberate pacing overall. It does tend to lean more into noir than horror. It’s a veritable hard-boiled detective story, complete with jazz, rain, and the lone gumshoe looking for answers.

Reach HaloOn the contrary, laced with horror-story trappings. Its first mission, “Winter Contingency,” paints the Covenant as a vicious, insidious force. They communicate in grunts and guttural barks. In pools of blood, they leave the bodies of mutilated interrogation witnesses. One group of Elite Zealots ambushes your in a mysterious relay station. After dragging a Marine corporal into the darkened room as a meat shield, his helpless screams are heard before they fade completely.

Throughout the entire campaign, this desperate tone is evident. ReachIt is an introduction to Combat EvolutionEntering its world and registering Accepting that all Spartan soldiers on the planet Reach will eventually die means accepting this fact. In a Zoom conference, Nicole Clark (my coworker) described the situation as follows: Reach Halo Is basically Rogue One, in that it’s about marching toward a foregone conclusion — in this case, the destruction of humanity’s greatest fortress — and clinging to hope regardless.

Image: Bungie/Xbox Game Studios

ReachThe game is packed with terrifying moments and challenging situations that are difficult to overcome. My favorite mission, “Exodus,” tasks you with evacuating civilians from the city of Alexandria, all while a battle group of Brutes combs through the alleyways and courtyards in search of survivors. In another sequence, from the side turret of a Falcon, you’re forced to watch as the city burns, UNSC forces get swallowed up, and civilian transports are shot out of the sky. This scene is not only sad, it is also very dark. It’s yet another reminder of the unknown horrors that lie in wait for humanity and anyone fighting to preserve it. The rest of the movie franchise is given an additional narrative dimension.

343 Industries, a developer, has mostly moved away from the overtly horror-themed elements of its entries. Halo: Reach. And while I’ve enjoyed much of my time with the studio’s sequels, they’re lacking that sense of terror that drew me to the series in 2001, the first time Chief turned on Jenkins’ helmet cam in that sinister swamp in a remote corner of a mysterious world. I’m all for the power fantasy of being a Spartan, and judging by my time with it thus far, Halo Infinite won’t be lacking in that regard. But still, I can’t help missing the days when Halo’s story had stakes that were driven by fear.