It spent its first decade pushing the first-person shooter game genre to new heights. It has not just games but also books, comic books, animated anthologies, fan-made web series, and even one television fiasco. It’s been a $5B+ media franchise over the past quarter-century, one that has made one of its original co-composers enough money that he has already largely self-financed one congressional run and is planning a second.
It is Halo.
It also may very well have some of the well-known video game music of all time, at least with regards to its Gregorian chant-styled main theme, a tune that has been covered repeatedly and sung in famous churches all over the world by random tourists. Based on how many folks describe it as one of the greatest scores of all time solely on the merits of that bit, you could argue that it is perhaps the most overrated score franchise of all time; indeed, even as a fan I wouldn’t give any one of them a full 5 stars out of 5. And yet it is perhaps an extremely underrated score franchise amongst score listeners. Sure, Michael Giacchino’s Medal of Honor works probably did a better job legitimizing video game music for fans of film scores at the turn of the century, but the Halo scores arguably did more to legitimize it for the broader public. There are aspects of these scores outside of that main theme that remain extremely entertaining and deserving of reevaluation, though that may ultimately depend on your appetite for prog rock and synth pop influences.
Like Star Wars under Disney, Halo is also a cautionary tale in how things can go wrong when the original makers step away even if the property is still raking in cash. You can look at the years where Bungie made the games and the years where Microsoft made the games and wonder if the latter studio really understood the saga when it took over, including the scores which it initially tried to radically overhaul before realizing it may have made a mistake and scrambled to partially address this a year before that game’s release (details of which we’ll get to in a few weeks). You can’t tell the story of this music without the corporate machinations that ran in parallel, so expect some of that information to get dropped in throughout this series.
These’ll run M-W-F for the next 5 weeks. I do genuinely wonder to what extent these scores can be enjoyed by folks who haven’t played the games (I fully admit a hefty dose of nostalgic appreciation for the early games as Halo 2 was a big part of high school for me), and I’ll be curious to hear reactions from both longtime fans as well as those unfamiliar with these scores.
The upcoming schedule:
Post 2 - “I would have been your daddy, but the dog beat me over the fence!”
Post 3 - “For a brick, he flew pretty good!”
Post 4 - “Shipmaster! They outnumber us 3-to-1!” “Then it is an even fight.”
Post 5 - “And for the record, I would have kicked your ass the first time if the lady hadn't stopped me!”
Post 6 - “You've heard the music, time to dance.”
Post 7 - “You bitch any louder and this place will be crawling with Covenant.”
Post 8 - “Our enemy was ruthless. Efficient. But they weren't nearly fast enough.”
Post 9 - “Arrest that man!”
Post 10 - “A lot less ammo will go to waste if you aim with the right stick while firing.'
Post 11 - “You ask, you buy.”
Post 12 - “We are just one ship… and an old one at that. But here we are.”
Post 13 - 'I'm worthless. You should leave me here with the rest of the garbage.'
Post 14 - “As a courtesy to John, I’m not gonna crush your skull.”
Post 15 - Rankings
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