Was Halo 3's Ending Foreshadowed In Its Launch Trailer?
Hey everyone,
Right now, I'm in the middle of preparing for what could be my last exams I ever have to take in school. I'm not going to fully explain what I mean by that yet, but it's exciting to think that I'll be satisfy the coursework requirement for my Master's here at MIT, so I can just focus on research full time next year.
I'll chat about that more after exams are over. This blog post in centered around one of my favorite video games ever, Halo 3.
I'm not sure if a lot of people know this, but I am a huge Halo fan. I've loved the series ever since I was in middle school. Funny thing is that I never owned an Xbox myself, so I would have to go over to my friend's house (thanks Jb!) to play after school or on the weekend when we hung out.
I have so many memories from this series. Halo definitely had a big impact in my childhood, and a little bit as to why I majored in Aerospace Engineering.
But that's another topic for another time. The reason why I bring Halo up, specifically Halo 3, is due to a wave of nostalgia washing over me these past couple of days. I was re-watching the Starry Night trailer for the game for the nth time, when I picked up on something in the dialogue.
Starry Night Trailer
Before I go any further, this is a spoiler alert. You have been warned!
Ok, so if you watch the video, you about halfway through, you hear chatter on Chief's communication lines. Other Marines are wondering where the Chief is. I want to present to you the interesting dialogue here:
Marine 1: "Any sign of the Chief?"
Marine 2: "Negative Sarge, I think we lost him."
Master Chief: "Not yet."
You're probably wondering: what's so important with the dialogue there? On its own, it's insignificant, until you reach the end of Halo 3.
Halo 3 Ending
In this video, skip to the 6:00 minute mark. I'm not going to dive deep into the lore here, but a quick summary of the video is that Chief, Cortana (his trusty AI sidekick), and alien ally The Arbiter, have completed the final mission and made it onto the ship (named Forward Unto Dawn), which was on a trajectory to take them home through a slipspace portal (think wormhole, a passage way between two far locations in space and time).
The only problem is that the ship is split in half as the portal collapses. The Arbiter makes it home back to Earth (he was in the front half of the ship), while Chief and Cortana are stranded out in the middle of space.
At roughly six minutes (6:08 in the video), Cortana says this about their current predicament:
Cortana: "I'll drop a beacon, but it'll be a while before anyone finds us."
Alright. This is where we into my main theory of this post. Based on these two sets of dialogue I've shown you, I think that Bungie (the original creators of the Halo series, but now has passed it on to 343 Industries), intentionally foreshadowed the ending of the original Halo trilogy in the Starry Night trailer. The way the characters speak make it seem more than just mere coincidence.
The key piece of evidence is Chief's one and only line in the Starry Night trailer in response to the Marines wondering about his whereabouts: "Not yet."
Only given the context of Starry Night, the response is a bit strange. Why wouldn't Chief just say "I'm still here" or "I never left"? The answer he gave hints at some point in the future, he would be lost to humanity.
And Halo 3's ending is exactly that. He and Cortana are in the middle of deep space on a non-functioning ship with no way to contact Earth.
They are lost and waiting to be found, like Cortana says.
It's a crazy theory, but I'm too invested in the series to think that this was just mere coincidence or an oversight in the story development.
If you watched the video when it first came out, Bungie directly hinted at how Halo 3, and the original trilogy as a whole, was going to end.
Master Chief lost in the middle of deep space, waiting to be found.
What do you think? Is this just mere coincidence, or was Bungie dangling the ending of Halo in front of us all this time?
Let me know your thoughts!
Thanks for reading. I can't wait to get back to regular blogging soon. I have so much to talk about, just wait! :)
Soda