Last time - Halo: Combat Evolved - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=142410

This time - “For a brick, he flew pretty good!”

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You’d think making a sequel to a hit game would be easy, but the development of the follow-up to Halo: Combat Evolved was notoriously troubled. Microsoft unrealistically pressured Bungie into having a sequel ready as a launch title for its Xbox Live online multiplayer platform in fall 2002, but even after securing another year the studio realized after a demo at the February 2003 E3 gaming conference that the campaign had to be redesigned a year and a half into production. The entire third act of the game, all-out warfare on Earth, was scrapped and pushed to a future entry in the franchise, or at least theoretically since per Marty O’Donnell “we had no plans to do another game after this.” Troubles aside, Halo 2 turned out to be a massive success both with sales of the game and use of the Xbox Live platform, to the point that the Bungie crew maxed out its profit cap on day one of sales and realized they had to negotiate better profit sharing terms with Microsoft on any future games.

For Marty and his pal Michael Salvatori, the game was an opportunity to both refine the sound they had unleashed in 2001 and add some new elements. Around half of the score feels like the concept being pushed farther - the guitars shredded harder, the synth-pop bloops got more varied, the suspense music became murkier, the digital chimes twinkled more, and so on. You also get a real sense of prog rock in the far reaches of the galaxy, particularly with the buffet of various guitar and bass grooves (“kicking ass in outer space,” to quote one of the game’s characters). But the new elements proved just as evocative. The storyline for the alien enemy from the first game evolved into a kind of fanatical army whose leaders thought the titular alien relics were a means to ascend to the great beyond, and a slow-moving, quasi-religious brass theme defined both the Covenant enemy and the Arbiter character you get to play as for around half the campaign. Regional colors for the early New Mombasa levels lent a sense of fun to the proceedings. A new melody for the Master Chief protagonist (The Last Spartan) was capably utilized throughout the game, including an early cutscene where you drift through space to throw a bomb at an enemy ship. And there’s a surprising amount of sadder, even rueful music that plays against the action at times.

O’Donnell and Nile Rodgers thought the popularity of the first game had created an opportunity to craft a hit record for their follow-up, and so the original volume of the Halo 2 soundtrack (now set to come out at the same time the game did in November 2004 as opposed to months later) was envisioned as a “music from and inspired by” record. Alt rock bands Breaking Benjamin, Hoobastank, and Incubus provided songs, with the latter’s contributions becoming a four-movement, 25-minute suite called The Odyssey. Album sales of over 100,000 copies (low for a hit pop record but a lot for a soundtrack) probably justified the decision at the time, but heard today they make the record sound horrendously dated and an awkward fit next to the 30 minutes of original score peppered in between the heavy metal tunes. Plus O’Donnell later realized the potential folly of this approach when he tried to put some of these songs in the game; Breaking Benjamin’s song absent its lyrics is looped into a late-stage battle sequence and part of the first movement of The Odyssey can be heard as you play Halo 2, and honestly neither is a seamless fit with the rest of the score in context.

O’Donnell and Salvatori would eventually get a second score-only volume of music released, though that would take until April 2006; O’Donnell cited “legal issues” holding up an album he’d had mixed and sequenced for more than a year, though it’s hard not to get the feeling that other stakeholders may have wanted to hold off on putting it out there to avoid clashing with sales of the first volume. In total there’s around an hour and forty minutes of score spread across the two releases. The same pros and cons that applied to the music of Halo: Combat Evolved hit here as well. The suspense music (now with shrill sounds and vocal manipulation) can be even more difficult to listen to than the 2001 score’s was, though that is admittedly understandable given how much of it accompanies passages of fighting and avoiding the game’s secondary enemy, the zombified forces of The Flood. Even with an actual orchestra recorded in places, the work can still feel a tad thin at times; these are works that are definitely sophisticated sonically, but not necessarily sophisticated compositionally in a symphonic sense, and it would arguably take until the subsequent entry in the franchise to produce a score that more traditionally-oriented score fans could enjoy.

The maturation of O’Donnell’s approach to later entries was commendable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many score fans rate them more highly as I do. At the same time, there’s a sense of wild abandon to the Halo 2 score that still makes it a unique entry in the franchise, and also an enduring and essential part of aughts scoring. If epic electric guitar solos are your thing, there was arguably no better example of that this decade. Kicking ass in outer space indeed.

Score in game context: ****½
Original score recording and songs on Volume 1: *** - https://open.spotify.com/album/29K85ghxBzcQHPNPX6QVld
Original score recording on Volume 2: ***½ - https://open.spotify.com/album/3rkOmkp3M2pc6jNALIKMvg
Overall rating: **** - https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3vNBE0XBDseGOaWVNqnKJk (my V1/V2 combo playlist)

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As with the first game, Microsoft saw fit to do a remaster of Halo 2 and re-record the music. Guitarist Steve Vai, whose solos had powered the game’s iconic Mjolnir Mix of the main theme, was the only returning contributor from the aughts. The four composers from the Halo: Combat Evolved re-score were joined by a fifth, and the Breaking Bad and Incubus tunes that made it into the first edition of the game were replaced by songs by progressive metal guitarist Misha Mansoor. Despite all the added power of the San Francisco Symphony and over 60 singers, the work suffers from two nagging flaws that render its album inessential relative to the original recording (at least on album). First, the mix has an “everything loud” feel to it, and the blunt force trauma mitigates some of the original work’s style. Second, the album producers bungled an opportunity to put the music in proper sequence. Today you can get a mostly chronological playlist together by sequencing the pieces from the score’s original two albums, but it’s not perfect as the first album has shorter score tracks while the second album largely played as lengthier suites aligned to each level. The anniversary re-recording could have solved that, but instead it plays like it's on shuffle, making Brian Tyler’s notoriously front-loaded album programs seem properly structured by comparison.

2014 anniversary re-recording on album: **½ - https://open.spotify.com/album/5GNMER3Fg9saA7sFIwIqUz

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Next time: “Shipmaster! They outnumber us 3-to-1!' 'Then it is an even fight.'