Halo 2

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Halo 2
Studio	Bungie Studios
Publisher	Microsoft Game Studios
composer	Martin O'Donnell
Erstveröffent- lichung	November 9, 2004 November 11, 2004
platform	Xbox , Microsoft Windows , Xbox One
genre	Ego shooter
Game mode	Single player , multiplayer (1-16 players)
control	Keyboard , mouse , gamepad
system advantages preconditions	Windows Vista 2.4 GHz CPU 1 GB RAM 128 MB graphics card DirectX compatible sound card
medium	DVD-ROM
language	German
Age rating	USK PEGI
information	First person shooter with over 8.4 million units sold

Halo 2 is one of the Bungie Studios -developed first-person shooter - computer game . It was first released in 2004 by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox and in 2007 for PC . It is the sequel to Halo: Fight for the Future and acts like this in the game world of Halo .

Plot and course of the game

After the events in Halo: Fight for the Future and Halo: First Strike , the UNSC celebrates the SPARTAN-117 as a hero at the Cairo Space Defense Station in Earth orbit, and Miranda Keyes , the daughter of the Commander of the Pillar of Autumn , receives a Medal of Valor for hers Father Jacob Keyes . Meanwhile, in the headquarters of Allianz, the holy city of High Charity , the leader of their fleet is sentenced to death in a public show trial. He failed because he could not protect the sacred halo ring from destruction by SPARTAN-117, which the Alliance only mystically calls a demon .

However, during the festivities, Earth is under attack by the Alliance. The small number of enemy battleships, however, astonishes people, since according to Admiral Hood the fleet that destroyed the planet Reach was 50 times larger. The small task force is led by a fanatical leader of the Alliance, the Prophet of Regret . His ship lands in New Mombasa to look for ancestral facilities. After all the ships except his were destroyed, he radioed the Alliance for help. In addition to confused radio transmissions from the alliance, the artificial intelligence Cortana intercepts this call for help and determines that the alliance did not expect the planet to be inhabited at all in its search for artifacts . Due to the overwhelming power of the people trying to board his ship, the Prophet of Regret has to flee from the planet's surface with a daring hyperspace jump (slipspace), which largely destroys New Mombasa . However, the frigate "In Amber Clad" under the command of Miranda Keyes with SPARTAN-117 and Avery Johnson on board follows him unnoticed through hyperspace.

After the former leader of the Alliance fleet should actually have been hanged, the prophets decide again and they appoint him master . This is an ancient rank with special camouflage equipment and powers that only "fallen" elite warriors can receive and whose missions are mostly pure suicide actions. During his first mission he is supposed to silence some heretics who reject the "Great Journey" as the central belief of the Alliance. Just before the leader of the heretics is killed, the Illuminate of Facility 04 Halo-04 343 Guilty Spark , who is viewed as an oracle in the Alliance, turns out to give the heretics the true destination of the Halo rings said. After the heretic has been eliminated and the ruler speaks to the Illuminati, Tartarus appears, who is now the right hand of the prophets and leader of the brutes, and immediately seizes 343 to hand the oracle himself over to the prophets.

After Storm Bearer , the spaceship of the Prophet of Regret and the In Amber Clad emerged from hyperspace, they find another halo ring, which is known as the "Halo Delta". Miranda Keyes wants to react quickly. Your goal is still to kill the Prophet in order to deliver a heavy blow to the Alliance. She herself tries to reach the index for activating Halos before the Alliance. After SPARTAN-117 manages to kill the prophet in a temple, the city of High Charity appears in orbit of Halo and destroys the temple with the help of the Alliance ships. The Master Chief saves himself by jumping into the lake below, where he is embraced by the tentacles of the "Gravemind" and pulled down into the depths.

After the death of the Prophet of Regret , as suspected, an upheaval of the caste system in the Alliance takes place. The remaining two surviving prophets, Truth and Grace , exchange their guards, which have always consisted of the elite warriors since the "elites" joined the Alliance, for the Brutes. The master tries once more to regain the favor of the prophets with the help of the Special Operation Commander and the procurement of a sacred symbol, which is essential for the start of the Great Journey. To do this, they break through the quarantine zone contaminated by the flood and fight their way to the so-called library, which has already been infiltrated by humans. The last two survivors, Keyes and Johnson, manage to save the index but are surprised by the master. He is seriously injured but can incapacitate both of them. Tartarus suddenly appears, takes both people and the index and, according to the prophets' orders, pushes the master into a ravine.

When SPARTAN-117 and the master wake up again, they find themselves tied up with tentacles in the violence of the Gravemind , a huge flood form that forms their central intelligence. Likewise trapped is 2401 Penitent Tangent , the Illuminate of this fifth halo ring and the Flood-infected Prophet of Regret through whom the master learns the whole truth. The Gravemind tries to prevent the activation of the Halo ring and now sends its two captured warriors as allies to various points so that they can still avert the disaster. SPARTAN-117 is transported to High Charity , where the Prophet of Truth is giving a speech on the events and unrest of the Alliance and foretelling the start of the Great Journey by activating Halos. When SPARTAN-117 tried to attack him, he was able to flee. Meanwhile , exchanges of fire between the ships of the elites and the brutes are taking place all around High Charity , with the prophets no longer recognizing the elites as members of the alliance and having them replaced by the brutes. The fleet of prophets is currently on its way to earth and the prophet of truth gives Tartarus the index, Keyes and 343 Guilty Spark so that he can usher in the great journey. Meanwhile, the In Amber Clad moves to High Charity , which is now under the control of the Flood. It turns out the Master Chief was just a distraction for the Flood to reach and occupy the city. During the skirmishes with the Flood, the Prophet of Mercy is attacked by the Flood and left behind by the Prophet of Truth, who makes his way to Earth on the Blood Fathers Ship Dreadnought. SPARTAN-117 manages to get on the ship, but leaves Cortana at her own request beforehand. She stays in order to blow up the reactor of the In Amber Clad if necessary and thus destroy the space station and Halo if the master fails and Halo is detonated by Tartarus.

On Halo Delta, the master meets the Special Operations Commander again, who wants to help him reach the control room. After he can save Johnson from the Brutes, Johnson helps him with a Scarab (a giant robot) to access the control tower. When the lord reaches Tartarus, who tries to activate the ring with the help of Keyes, the 343 asked Guilty Spark what Halo's purpose is. He explains that the rings are intended as weapons to destroy all intelligent life in the galaxy. The master tries to clarify the erroneous belief of the prophets to Tartarus so that he does not activate the ring. However, Tartarus does not understand this and, blinded, wants to be saved with his brutes at the transition into divinity through the ring at the side of the prophets, but activates Halo anyway and tries to kill the master. However, Tartarus fails, and Keyes also manages to switch the ring off again. This and all other rings are put into stand-by mode due to the unexpected termination of the start sequence, which means that they can all be ignited at the same time, according to Spark from the ark .

Meanwhile, the SPARTAN-117 lands in orbit of the earth, where the humans try desperately to defend themselves against the overwhelming power of the Alliance. When asked by Admiral Hood what he was doing on this unknown ship, he replied that he will end the fight.

Development history

Like its predecessor, Halo 2 was developed by Bungie Studios and was released on November 9, 2004 in the USA and on November 11, 2004 worldwide, initially exclusively for the Xbox . Microsoft announced a PC version of Halo 2 in February 2006 . The release was in the US on May 8, 2007 and ten days later in Europe on May 18, 2007. Halo 2 on PC is not compatible with Xbox through Games for Windows Live. Halo 2 has officially only been released for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system - allegedly to take advantage of the new operating system's 64-bit engine. This was received with skepticism, as the game was developed on the basis of DirectX 9.0, which is also supported by the previous system Windows XP . In some cases, the press suspected a purely marketing-technical motivation for excluding XP as a supported operating system in order to get customers to switch to Windows Vista. In fact, just a few days after its release, hackers managed to launch the game on Windows XP and released an unofficial patch that removed this artificial limitation.

Offshoot

On July 7, 2005, the offshoot for the game was released with the title Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack , also called Halo 2 Expansion Pack on DVD and live on Xbox. There were nine different cards in the game that were only suitable for multiplayer games. There was also a video showing the period from the crash of Sgt. Pete Stacker and his squad to contact with Cortana. There was no campaign in the game.

continuation

The successor Halo 3 was released on September 26, 2007 in Europe, Asia and the USA, and a day earlier in New Zealand. Sales of 170 million US dollars were achieved within 24 hours, surpassing the predecessor Halo 2 .

reception

The PC version did not get as good ratings as the original Xbox version because the game was technically still at Xbox level.

Financial success

The game sold over 3.5 million times on the day of publication. In the first three months after that, Halo 2 sold over 6.5 million copies - that is, the Xbox version alone has sold better than its predecessor Halo: Fight for the Future on Xbox, PC and Mac in a much shorter time together. According to Vgchartz , the game had sold over 8.4 million times by January 2012, making it the best-selling Xbox game .

New edition

At the beginning of November 2014, a compilation of all published Halo titles was released as a complete box exclusively for Xbox One under the title Halo - The Master Chief Collection ; it also includes completely Halo 2 remastered . In addition, the game's soundtrack was completely reissued and partially recomposed; Steve Vai also completely re-recorded his guest appearances and renamed them in Halo Theme Gungnir Mix and Genesong . Misha Mansoor from Periphery also worked on Breaking the Convenant and Follow in Flight . The soundtrack was released in the United States under the title Halo 2 Anniversary Original Soundtrack ; but is also available as a download. In March 2019 it was announced that the Master Chief Collection would also be released for the PC on an unspecified date.

Soundtracks

• 2004: Halo 2 Volume One by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori , (guests: Incubus , Breaking Benjamin , Hoobastank , Steve Vai , Nataraj and Nile Rodgers , also producer)
• 2006: Halo 2 Volume Two by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori. The producer was Nile Rodgers.
• 2007: Halo 1 & 2 (3 CDs) (consists of: Halo - Original Soundtrack + Halo 2 Volume One + Halo 2 Volume Two ) by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori
• 2014: Halo 2 Anniversary Original Soundtrack by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori. Rearranged by Paul Lipson , Lennie Moore , Tom Salta , Brian Trifon and Brian Lee White .

literature

→ Main article : "Literature" in the article Halo (game series)

• Eric S. Trautmann: The Art of Halo: The Creation of a Virtual World . Panini Verlag , 2005, ISBN 3-8332-1260-8

Web links

• Halo 2 in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Official website for Halo 2 (German)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Spieletipps.de Halo Retrieved September 11, 2012
2. ↑ Tom Ivan: 'Vista-Only' Titles Cracked ( English ) next-gen.biz. June 26, 2007. Archived from the original on March 23, 2008. Retrieved November 16, 2013.
3. ↑ Jeremy Reimer: Vista-only game cracked to run on XP - Both cracking and software development groups have come up with ways to run ( English ) ars technica. June 26, 2007. Retrieved November 16, 2013.
4. ↑ Spieletipps.de Halo Retrieved September 11, 2012