Chronological Halo, 18/52: Two Betrayals

Previously on Chronological Halo: 343 Guilty Spark, the Monitor of Installation 04, escorted the Master Chief through the Library in search of the Activation Index. With the Index in hand, the Master Chief can activate the Halo ring, but an army of Flood stood in his way.

Mission Title: Two Betrayals (Halo: Combat Evolved)
P.O.V. Character: Master Chief
Stage Number: 18/52

Summary
Now that we have the Activation Index in hand, Guilty Spark teleports us from the Library to the Control Room. When we arrive, he tells us something of significance, which also explains why he did not acquire the Index in the previous level by himself.

343 Guilty Spark: Unfortunately, my usefulness to this particular endeavor has come to an end. Protocol does not allow units of my classification to... perform a task as important as the reunification of the Index with the Core. That final step is reserved for you, Reclaimer.

He has called us 'Reclaimer' a few times to this point, which seems to be a title reserved for humans and Forerunner, but not the Covenant, who Guilty Spark calls intruders. Only Reclaimers can activate the Halo ring, but when we insert the Index, the lights flicker and go out. Something didn't work, and that's because Cortana, who is still inside the Core, has learned what activating Halo actually does. We protest, saying that we need to activate Halo in order to destroy the Flood, and Cortana has this to say.

Cortana: You have no idea how this ring works, do you? Why the Forerunners built it? Halo doesn't kill Flood, it kills their food. Humans, Covenant, whatever... we're all equally edible. The only way to stop the Flood is to starve them to death. And that's exactly what Halo is designed to do: wipe the galaxy clean of all sentient life. You don't believe me? Ask him!

Cortana is *not* amused that you almost wiped out all life in the galaxy. Women, am I right, fellas?

Guilty Spark confirms that this is the case, saying that the Halo ring has an effective range of 25,000 light years, but interestingly, more of the galaxy will be covered when 'the others' are activated. Our hunch was correct: this is not the only Halo ring in the galaxy. Cortana now has the Index, and although Guilty Spark could find another Reclaimer, he needs the Index. He is now our enemy, and sends Sentinels against us.

Cortana has a plan: if we can find the crash site of the Pillar of Autumn, we can detonate its fusion core to cause an explosion large enough to destabilize Halo, or destroy it completely. While she searches for the crash site, she wants us to hinder the ring's ability to fire by taking out three phase pulse generators in the nearby canyons. The generators amplify Halo's signal, and by destroying them the ring won't be able to fire deep into space.

We hijack a Banshee and use it to fly through the snowy canyons to the three phase pulse generators. By interrupting the beam inside each generator with our body, we are able to destroy the generator, but it brings down our shields and leaves us vulnerable to attack. Cortana locates the crash site of the Pillar of Autumn, but before we can go there we need to rescue Captain Keyes. Only he can override the failsafes in the Autumn that prevent the fusion core from overloading.

Commentary
Tons of story at the beginning of this mission! The explanation of how the Halo ring actually deals with the Flood is a fantastic old school science fiction gotcha, and gives us a third enemy type to deal with: Sentinel drones. They fly and fire lasers, but there's not much else to say about them.

The main problem with this level is that it's essentially 'Assault on the Control Room' in reverse, but now with Flood and Sentinels. This time we have access to Banshees, but that doesn't keep it from feeling like a retread, especially if you have trouble finding a working Banshee, as I sometimes have. It's very easy to get lost in all the snowy terrain of this area, especially since it all looks familiar from the last time we came through here, and the phase generator rooms are all high up out of reach. You know you need a Banshee, but it can take a long time to find one in working order if you're not careful with the earlier opportunities to snag one.

One thing I never noticed until this playthrough was Guilty Spark's mention of 'the others,' the other Halo rings in the galaxy that work together to combat the Flood. I think people generally felt like the addition of another Halo ring in Halo 2 was a cheap attempt at a sequel, but that's not the case. Bungie had already come up with the concept for multiple, linked Halo rings.

Rating
Redoing 'Assault on the Control Room' in reverse but with different enemies would earn this mission two Spartan helmets, but I'll bump it up to three for the excellent story developments concerning Guilty Spark and the Halo Array.

Three Spartan helmets out of five.

Chronological Halo, 17/52: The Library

Previously on Chronological Halo: Captain Keyes has been captured, but not before his squad discovered something the Covenant unwittingly released on Halo: a parasitic life form, the Flood. As the Master Chief tries to escape the Flood and return to his allies, he encounters an AI that calls itself 343 Guilty Spark.

Mission Title: The Library (Halo: Combat Evolved)
P.O.V. Character: Master Chief
Stage Number: 17/52

Summary
And so we come at last to the Library, the least popular level of Halo: Combat Evolved and of the entire stretch of Chronological Halo to this point. 343 Guilty Spark teleports us into a massive Forerunner structure, telling us that we need to find something inside: the Index. Once we get the Index, we'll be able to activate Installation 04, the Halo ring.

343 Guilty Spark: This installation was specifically built to study and contain the Flood. Their survival as a race was dependent upon it. I am grateful to see that some of them survived to reproduce!

Our new AI buddy floats ahead of us, guiding us through the long corridors and chambers of the structure. Every so often he disappears down a hole high up in a wall to fix something or to check on a system or to open one of the giant circular doors that block our passage, and while he does, we fight off waves of the Flood. There are no marines on this level, since Guilty Spark teleported us to the Library alone, but there are flying combat drones, called Sentinels, that help us deal with the Flood.

There's a new type of Flood form we haven't encountered before: the Carrier Form. This is a bulbous Flood form that can explode on its own or if it gets hit with weapons, throwing the tiny Flood spores everywhere. Combine these guys with all the usual Flood, wielding every sort of weapon, and that's a lot of enemies to run towards you while you wait for a door to open.

Carrier Forms like to get as close to you as they can before popping.

And once we get to the end of the floor and ride the elevator up to the next one, we get to do it again. And then another time. And then another time after that. The best thing about this is the area name that appears on one of these trips: 'But I Don't Want To Ride the Elevator!'

We finally reach the final elevator and take possession of the Index, but just as soon as we do Guilty Spark teleports it into a subspace pocket, explaining that our organic form is susceptible to infection and protocol dictates that he transport the Index. He then says he'll teleport all of us to the Control Room where we can use the Index to activate the Installation.

Commentary
I don't hate the Library the way everybody else seems to, but it's still clear that this level is simply too long and too samey, and you really miss the variation provided by fighting Covenant alongside marines. The 'fight off a horde of zombies while Guilty Spark opens a door' thing is pulled a couple times too often, though I do really like his running commentary. It's like escorting a tiny floating C3PO that can't seem to decide whether it wants to destroy the parasitic alien or congratulate it for being so effective; or maybe it wants to do both. The voice acting and writing for Guilty Spark is top notch, especially if you misbehave.

343 Guilty Spark: Please, stop being human.

He also seems to enjoy pointing out how ill-prepared we are to deal with the Flood.

343 Guilty Spark: Puzzling. You brought such ineffective weapons to combat the Flood, despite the containment protocols... [The Flood are] insidious and elegant. As long as any hosts remain, the Flood is virulent.

But the level just goes on and on, suffering from the same copy/paste feeling the Forerunner structures in 'Assault on the Control Room' had, but this time without the helpful arrows on the floor to tell us which way to go.


The Library: very purple, and very full of Flood

Rating
I don't hate the Library as much as most of the Internets do, but it's clear that this is the least of all the levels in Halo: Combat Evolved. It serves an important purpose, story-wise, but since most of it is sitting in front of locked doors dealing with waves of Flood, the gameplay is less than inspiring. One Spartan helmet for the gameplay, and another one for Guilty Spark.

Two Spartan helmets out of five.

How We Saved Elfhelm's Bane

Chronological Halo will return next week. It might seem like the delay is because the next level is 'The Library,' unloved and unappreciated by many, but in reality there's a much better reason to talk about something else today: Elfhelm's Bane has been saved!

That might not mean much to you. Even if you had an Apple II back in the day, there were a lot of high-profile games available from Infocom, Electronic Arts, Sierra, and SSI to spend your time and money on. But sometimes you'd stumble across a game that did things differently or better, and Elfhelm's Bane was one of those. It was a text adventure, but it had roleplaying elements: monsters and stats and weapons and armor and spells and character classes. Much of the action took place in the city of Elfhelm, where priests have begun to worship the evil Wormlord. It's up to you to destroy the Wormlord, but to do that you'll have to explore the city and fight monsters to earn money and improve your character.

In fact, the title screen doesn't say 'Elfhelm's Bane.' Instead, it says 'The Realm of Angbar, written by Elfstone.' At certain locations throughout Elfhelm you'd enter a room with an exit to another location, and if you tried to go there, you'd be prompted to enter the adventure disk for that other location: Fangwood, or the Crystal Realm, or Mountain-lord of Eriath. Other games that would plug into Elfhelm's Bane to create the complete Realm of Angbar!

I found out later those games were never made, which was pretty disappointing. But I love the idea of it.

Since 2000 or so, I'd try searching for Elfhelm's Bane on the wide Internets every few years, but to no avail: it seemed like every Apple II game ever made had been converted into .dsk images except for Elfhelm's Bane. Did no one remember this game?

I found out yesterday that somebody did! A blog started in January of 2010 professed to be an Elfhelm's Bane Shrine! Find it at http://elfhelmsbane.blogspot.com/.  And listen to this, by the author of the blog:

Overmind the Great: I actually had e-mail correspondence with [Mark Peterson, the author of Elfhelm's Bane]... (I think- it could have also been a fan who had direct contact with him; the e-mails were on my work e-mail, which I no longer have) a few years ago, and he managed to find the original discs and sent them to me in the mail. I believe he was shocked anyone remembered Elfhelm's Bane.'

You see where he mentions a fan having contact with Mark Peterson? That was me! Back in 2004 or so, I found his email address and asked him what ever happened to Elfhelm's Bane. He wrote back saying that every so often he'd get a message about it, but sadly most of his computer stuff had gotten packed away and thrown out over the years. He didn't have a copy of the game anymore, and since it had never ended up in a .dsk image, Elfhelm's Bane was going to be lost to obscurity.

So I made a copy of my disks, packaged them up, and sent them through the postal service to Mark. He wrote back when he received them, and said that he was going to contact one of the guys who had written to him about the game, who would probably be pretty excited to get a copy of it. That must have been Overmind the Great, whose Elfhelm's Bane Shrine now has the .dsk images for Elfhelm's Bane!

Seven years ago, I had hoped that by sending my disks to Mark Peterson I might help preserve Elfhelm's Bane from vanishing forever, but I didn't really think it was going to happen. But with a little luck, Mark's friendly assistance, and the go-getter attitude of Overmind the Great, I think we managed to save it. We saved Elfhelm!

Now we need somebody to make those other modules. Whaddaya say, Mark? :D

Chronological Halo, 16/52: 343 Guilty Spark

Previously on Chronological Halo: Foehammer dropped us off as close to Halo's control room as she could get us, and we proceeded to fight our way to it. Once there, Cortana accessed its data center and learned that the Covenant discovered something horrible buried inside the ring. Panicked, she sends us to stop Captain Keyes; the weapons cache he's looking for isn't what he thinks it is!

Mission Title: 343 Guilty Spark (Halo: Combat Evolved)
P.O.V. Character: Master Chief
Stage Number: 16/52

Summary
In her extreme panic at the end of the last mission, Cortana didn't tell us what to expect from the weapons cache Keyes went to find, just that it wasn't what he thought it was and we needed to stop him before he got there. You have to think the Master Chief might be better equipped to deal with whatever it is if she told us more information, but I suppose we'll know it when we see it. (We will).

We're dropped off at the site, a swampy marsh, and find a crashed UNSC Pelican transmitting a distress message that repeats over and over. The message is hard to make out through all the static, but it sounds like Captain Keyes has been captured by enemy forces and the remaining marines have taken shelter in a large structure in the swamp.

Inside the structure, we search for the lost marines but only find one, and he's clearly been driven out of his mind. He holds his pistol on us and shoots at us if we get to close, screaming things like 'Stay back, you're not turning me into one of those things!' and 'Find your own hiding place, the monsters are everywhere!'

Deeper inside the structure, we find a helmet belonging to a Private Wallace Jenkins, and activate its helmet cam. Its last recording is from Jenkins's point of view, and we watch as his squad lands in the swamp and begins to explore the Forerunner structure, finding a dead Elite with its insides 'scrambled,' teaming up with Captain Keyes, and eventually encountering a door the Covenant have gone to great pains to seal. The squad opens the door and, on the other side, encounters a mass of tiny new life forms, little bulbs that bounce through the air and explode into spores when shot. These are Flood Infection Forms. The recording ends as Jenkins is overwhelmed by the aliens, but the fate of the rest of his squad, and Captain Keyes, remains a mystery.

Our objective now is to escape the structure, dealing with both Flood Infection Forms and the infected versions of both humans and Covenant: Flood Combat Forms. After making it back to the surface, we're contacted by Foehammer; she says she lost our signal when we entered the structure, but if we make our way to a tower nearby in the swamp she can pick us up.

Instead, when we get to the tower a floating blue orb and a group of flying drones descend and begin destroying our enemies. And then the orb speaks.

343 Guilty Spark: Greetings. I am the Monitor of Installation 04. I am 343 Guilty Spark. Someone has released the Flood. My function is to prevent it from leaving this installation. But I require your assistance. Come this way.

A flash of golden light, and both of us disappear, leaving Foehammer shouting into the ether that she's lost our signal.

Commentary
This is a controversial level, since it's the first time we encounter the Flood. Up to this point we've been fighting Covenant. They run for cover, they throw grenades, they try to flank us, if you kill the Elite leading a group of Grunts the Grunts will try to run away, things like that. Hunters fire their plasma cannons at us from a distance, and if we get close they try and slam us, keeping the weak point on their back pointed away from us. Jackals hide behind their energy shields, only lowering them to fire at us. Grunts and Elites can drive vehicles, firing weapons and trying to run us over.

The Flood run toward us, firing weapons. There are a lot of them, but really that's what they do. We've essentially replaced one enemy that's very fun to fight with a new zombie enemy that's less interesting. This level showcases the Shotgun, as it's the most effective weapon for dealing with the Flood.

We do learn that the Monitor calls this place Installation 04, but at this point in Chronological Halo it's not clear if he's talking about the Halo ring or the Forerunner structure in the swamp. I'll clear it up now, though: Installation 04 is the Halo ring. The implication is that there are at least three others out there, and maybe more.

Rating
The Flood aren't as annoying in this level as they'll get, and the story developments here are intriguing. We spend most of the time in Forerunner structures again, and while there aren't any Hex Rooms, the rooms here are still very samey. This is a level that's made by its cutscenes; the story of Private Jenkins is done very well, and serve as a creepy introduction to the Flood.

Three Spartan helmets out of five.

Chronological Halo, 15/52: Assault on the Control Room

Previously on Chronological Halo: Master Chief and a team of marines stormed the beach of a small island thought to contain the Silent Cartographer, a map room that contained the location of Halo's control room. They dealt with Covenant forces on the island, secured the map room, and discovered a Pelican-accessible tunnel to use to reach the control room.

Mission Title: Assault on the Control Room (Halo: Combat Evolved)
P.O.V. Character: Master Chief
Stage Number: 15/52

Summary
This mission is a very long one, with some great wide-open battlefields, but it also demonstrates one of Halo: Combat Evolved 's main level design problems. I'll point it out when it rears its ugly mug, but for a heads-up just keep your eyes peeled for the phrase 'Hex Room.'

Foehammer drops us off inside a Forerunner structure that is as close to the control room as she can get. We fight through the structure and emerge onto a bridge out in the open, surrounded by falling snow. Cortana muses about the weather; is the weather control system malfunctioning, or did the Forerunners want the ring to have inclement weather? There are panels in the floor of the bridge made of glass, and in a nice touch, if we step on them they shatter. The Master Chief's power armor is heavy!

As we cross the bridge, a Pelican flies overhead carrying Fire Team Zulu. They land beneath the bridge, and Cortana tells them to stay put. We'll try and make our way down to them. At the end of the bridge is a Sword-wielding Elite that always manages to get me killed. Again and again. This playthrough is no different. There are some more Swordies later on that maintain the time-honored tradition of forcing me to reload my checkpoints.

Beyond the bridge is a hexagonal room. It probably doesn't have exactly six sides, but 'Hex Room' is an easier way to refer to rooms like this than Dodecahedral Room or Septagonal Room or whatnot. The center of the room may or may not be accessible from the entrance. Instead, there are corridors that trace the walls of the Hex Room, such that when you first arrive you can go either left or right. You follow the side wall until you reach a hallway in the outer wall; that leads you out of the Hex Room and further into the level. You can tell if you're going the right way by following the lit-up arrows on the floor, and you can tell if you're going to the exit by looking for the brightly illuminated hallway. A Hex Room can have walls blocking either the left or right corridor, and also the center of the room can be impassable or not. The exit passage can also change location, but it's always in the outer wall.

Note the white arrow on the floor, showing the way to go. Also, the illumination tells us it's the exit

So what is it about Hex Rooms that merits such a long discussion? Let's find out by keeping score. We've seen (ONE) already. Afterwards there's an elevator down to another Hex Room (TWO). On the other side is a massive outdoor arena where a Wraith and multiple Shade turrets fire on a flipped-over Warthog and a number of marines. Ghosts jet around this snowy landscape, and after commandeering one I remember one limitation of Halo: Combat Evolved that I'll be pleased to evolve past in the subsequent games: we can't boost the Ghosts. That makes them a little less useful, especially for trying to run down Covenant forces, which is a favorite hobby of the Master Chief's.

We don't mourn long, though, because there's a functional Scorpion tank not far ahead. We drive the tank through a tunnel to another open space, down a Forerunner tunnel (using a couple control panels to open large doors to let the tank through), across an underground bridge spanning a vast chasm, up a sloping tunnel, through another open space past a tower in the cliff wall, to a snowy spiralling path... and then the end of the road. There are bars we can't take the tank through, so we have to hoof it the rest of the way.

There's another open space that we need to cross to get to a door in the cliff face. On the other side is a Hex Room (THREE). An elevator goes up at the end, to another Hex Room (FOUR). There's an outdoor bridge past it, like the one at the start of the mission. We can see a second bridge running parallel to ours. At the end of our bridge is an Invisible Elite, so watch out for him. After dealing with him, we come into another Hex Room (FIVE), followed by another Hex Room (SIX).

We come out onto the parallel bridge, just as Hunters appear on the first bridge and fire at us. At the end of the bridge is another Hex Room (SEVEN), followed by a long passage with Invisible Sword-wielding Elites. These guys cause me no end of trouble, since I've been at one health for most of the level. I eventually get by them successfully, and it's... another Hex Room (EIGHT), though this one has Hunters in it. The exit from this one leads to a parking space with a couple Banshees in it.

If you're quick, you can jump into one of the Banshees before the Elites fly them away, and this time I manage it. If you aren't able to, you need to pass through more Forerunner structures (and I'd wager a couple more Hex Rooms, at least) to get to the ground level, at which point you can climb up the large Forerunner temple. Since we have a Banshee, we just fly up there. A couple garage doors later and we're inside Halo's control room.

Cortana accesses the database and marvels at the incredible amount of knowledge, but we just want to learn if Halo really is a weapon and how we can use it against the Covenant. Cortana starts to get puzzled, learning that the Forerunners built Halo as a 'fortress world,' and that the Covenant found something horrible buried inside the ring.

And then she freaks out. She tells us that we have to stop Captain Keyes... the weapons cache isn't a weapons cache at all! But she only speaks in vague hints and riddles and doesn't come right out and tell us anything, which is frustrating.

Commentary
This is a very, very long level, which makes Halo feel impressively big. We have to cover a lot of ground to get to the control room, but unfortunately this is where Halo begins to feel like Bungie may have gone a little overboard with the copy/paste function. Passing through eight (eight!) Hex Rooms which mostly look the same and differ only slightly in layout, sometimes one right after another, does not make for a feeling of excitement.

In a way it's puzzling, because other aspects of this mission are done so well: there are some pitched firefights in enormous locations here, and with a wide variety of vehicles (A Scorpion tank! Warthogs! Ghosts! A Banshee, if you're quick enough!). But by the end you're just sick of seeing the same Hex Room over and over again. And UNSC help you if you get turned around and lose track of which way you're supposed to be walking! You could walk through two Hex Rooms before you realize you've been going the wrong way.

That's why it's so important to realize that the floor arrows are pointing the way you need to go.

Rating
If this mission was just Hex Rooms one after the other, long and samey, it would only get one or two Spartan helmets. But it does have some of the best big battles in this stretch of Chronological Halo, as well as intriguing story developments at the end, so I think it deserves three. Barely.

Three Spartan helmets out of five.

Chronological Halo, 14/52: The Silent Cartographer

Previously on Chronological Halo: A daring rescue mission into the Truth and Reconciliation, the Covenant battlecruiser that landed on the ring world, reunited us with Captain Keyes. During his captivity, he learned that the Covenant call the ring world 'Halo,' and they believe it to be some sort of weapon with unimaginable power.

Mission Title: The Silent Cartographer (Halo: Combat Evolved)
P.O.V. Character: Master Chief
Stage Number: 14/52

Summary
The Covenant are looking for Halo's control room, and if the ring truly is a weapon, we need to be sure to find the control room before they do. Something called the Silent Cartographer, a map room located somewhere on a nearby island, holds the coordinates of the control room. Two Pelicans drop us and a group of marines off on the island, and we storm the beach.

Once we control the landing zone, Foehammer drops off a Warthog and we pile into it with a couple marines and begin our driving tour of the island. It's not that big and we can drive completely around it, noting a few significant locations:

1) A large building that Cortana's analysis reveals should contain the map room. However, once we get inside the facility, the Covenant manage to lock the door leading deeper inside.

2) A sloping path that leads into the island's interior.

3) A security substation, where we should be able to unlock the sealed door in the main facility. However, since it's built high up in the cliffs it's not accessible from the level of the beach. We need to follow the sloping path to reach the entrance.

We can save a small amount of time by going to the security substation before entering the main facility. If we do, the dialogue is slightly different, and we're disabling the Covenant's ability to lock the doors, rather than unlocking the door they locked. It's a small difference, but it's neat that Bungie accounted for it.

Once we get past the locked or lockable door in the main facility, it's down down down to the Silent Cartographer. Each of the levels we've seen so far in Chronological Halo are divided into smaller named sections, and occasionally they can be pretty funny. As we encounter a giant shaft leading deep into the ring, we start one such area.

Shafted!

As we make our way down to the map room, we hear voice communications from the surface: things are getting hectic up there as Covenant reinforcesa arrive. We activate the Silent Cartographer and Cortana uses it to determine the location of Halo's control room.

Cortana: Analyzing... Halo's control center is located there. That structure appears to be some sort of temple or shrine, if I've interpreted this correctly. Interesting. A shrine is an unlikely place to put such a significant installation.

The Halo theme kicks in and we fight our way back up up up to the surface, where we rejoin Foehammer and prepare to travel to the control room. Cortana activates a giant plate in the surface of the ring, which opens to reveal a tunnel. As Foehammer carefully negotiates the entrance and her Pelican descends into the darkness, we get one of the great Halo exchanges:

Foehammer: I hope your analysis is on-the-money, Cortana. This Pelican won't turn on a dime.
Cortana: Look on the bright side, Foehammer. The last thing the Covenant will expect is an aerial insertion... from underground.

The lady has a point!

Commentary
I didn't play Halo: Combat Evolved when it was released into the wild as a launch game for the original Xbox. I had been a Mac fan during my college years, and Bungie was the company making the Mac exclusives that really mattered: the Marathon series was a favorite, and its netplay saw a great deal of use on the college network, but Myth: The Fallen Lords was another standout, held back by the fact that only Krikor down the hall had a computer powerful enough to run it with the knobs turned all the way up; that just added to its mystique.

Bungie's acquisition by Microsoft and the subsequent change of the already-announced Halo from a Mac exclusive to an Xbox console game was a shattering event. I couldn't believe this was a real thing, and I couldn't believe that Apple was just going to let their preeminent games studio (as far as I was concerned) just slip away like that. And to make console games! And not just console games, but THIS console game, Halo, that was going to be the latest salvo in the war between Macs and PCs for the hearts and minds of gamers.

Well, Halo was being repositioned to fight a different war: the Console War. I was done with Bungie, for the moment. I had no plans to get an Xbox, and none of the launch titles (excepting Halo) had any appeal for me at the time. I read the glowing reviews of Halo: Combat Evolved, heard how it was a Must-Own game, heard that it was so good it was reason enough to buy an Xbox. It would be a long, long time before I would finally get to play Halo, and when I eventually did it would be the PC port.

A PC demo was released, containing a single level: 'The Silent Cartographer.' I bought the full game the next day. The level is just that good, a complete demonstration of the Halo experience: an exciting beach assault alongside marines, fantastic AI for both enemies and friendlies, vehicle driving sections in wide-open environments and corridor-shooting in underground facilities, with most of the weapons and all of the enemies (you care about) in a Halo game.

And when the rock-and-roll Halo theme kicks in as you prepare to escape from the underground? You know it's time to kick some ass!

Rating
I'm thinking about running another series on this blog of mine sometime in the future covering the Great Levels in videogames, past and present. 'The Silent Cartographer' belongs on that list. If you can only play a single level of the Halo series and want to know what it's all about, this is the level to play.

Five Spartan helmets out of five.

Chronological Halo, 13/52: The Truth and Reconciliation

Previously on Chronological Halo: After landing on the ring-world, we sought out other crash-sites and rescued marine survivors. By listening in on the Covenant battlenet, Cortana learned that Captain Keyes had been captured and brought to one of the battlecruisers she had disabled during the fighting: the Truth and Reconciliation.

Mission Title: The Truth and Reconciliation (Halo: Combat Evolved)
P.O.V. Character: Master Chief
Stage Number: 13/52

Summary
Foehammer drops us off with a group of marines near the plateau where the Truth and Reconciliation is docked. Under cover of night, we'll move up the cliffs until we reach the gravity well the Covenant is using to transport forces between the battlecruiser and the ring-world.

We're given a Sniper Rifle with more than the usual amount of ammunition and told to pick off as many Covenant troops as we can, especially the Shade turrets that are stationed on the way, and the marines will move up to engage when we're spotted. It's unclear exactly how long we can maintain stealth on this mission, but in my experience it's never very long. This time around I don't get a single shot off before being noticed, but that's okay: the Master Chief has the firepower to make subtlety unnecessary.

Captain Keyes is being held on the Truth and Reconciliation battlecruiser.

Once we reach the gravity well, we fight off Covenant defenses, including a pair of Hunters that take the well down from the battlecruiser. Afterwards, Foehammer drops off some more marine reinforcements to accompany us up to the battlecruiser. But when we get there, the room that connects with the gravity well is empty.

First Marine: What? There's no Covenant here? Maybe nobody's home.
Second Marine: Contacts! Lots of contacts!
Third Marine: No Covenant... you had to open your mouth!

After dealing with a stealthed sword-wielding Elite and his allies, we make our way through the corridors of the ship, following the signal from Captain Keyes's transponder. Eventually we come across the brig and free Keyes and some marines from their imprisonment. He reprimands us for taking on such a reckless adventure, but he's still glad to see us. He's learned some intriguing information:

Captain Keyes: While the Covenant had us locked up in here, I overheard the guards talking about this ring world. They call it... Halo.
Cortana: According to the data in their networks, the ring has some kind of deep religious significance. If I'm analyzing this correctly, they believe that Halo is some kind of weapon. One with vast, unimaginable power.

Now that we've rescued Captain Keyes, we need to get him off the Truth and Reconciliation. He grabs a Needler and we retrace our footsteps. Another sword-wielding Elite stands in our path (possibly the Shipmaster of the Battlecruiser, though he's not identified as such in-game), but if we keep him away from Keyes he shouldn't be too problematic.

Foehammer calls in and tells us that there's too much air traffic; she can't get close enough to lift us off the battlecruiser. Captain Keyes has an alternate solution: if we can get him to the hangar we passed on the way up, we can commandeer one of the dropships and Keyes will fly us out of here. The plan works as envisioned, and even the sudden appearance of Hunters as we're about to fly away can't stop us; Keyes smushes them against the walls with the front of the dropship, and he triumphantly flies us away from the Truth and Reconciliation.

Commentary
This level isn't quite as interesting when it's played in Chronological Halo, simply because we've already seen a night-time sniping level (3/52, 'Nightfall'), we've already seen Hunters (as early as 2/52: 'ONI: Sword Base'), and we've already seen the inside of a Covenant ship (5/52: 'Long Night of Solace'). Originally all of those firsts belonged to this mission; now they don't feel as original.

I've always loved the ship-names in the Halo series, and this level introduces us to a great one, the 'Truth and Reconciliation.' It's always made the Covenant an interesting and more alien foe, as their ship names seem to have an almost religious significance; that becomes even more clear during this mission, when Captain Keyes learns that they call the ring world 'Halo' and that it apparently bears some religious meaning for the Covenant.

Rating
This mission is one that suffers a little from its new location in Chronological Halo, simply because we've seen most of what made it unique already. The sniping section during the first half of the mission is still entertaining, but the corridors of the battlecruiser during the second half are samey and confusing. Once Captain Keyes is rescued, though, all the pieces are in place for the next mission, one of the very best in Halo: Combat Evolved and my personal favorite. But that's for next time.

Three Spartan helmets out of five.