The Complete Story, Timeline and Lore of Halo, through Infinite

to me halo is special it holds some of my fondest memories from growing up and i've always been amazed by the depth of story behind master chief the forerunners the different species in the covenant and you can really get lost in an endless pit of lore and knowledge if you're not careful take sergeant johnson for example his favorite type of a cigar is a sweet williams which is named after a flower native to europe and the things are also apparently captain key's favorite as well and i wanted to put all of this into one video but i felt like that was too much so about a month ago i bought my first book in 10 years and spent some intimate alone time with it uh so yeah i dove in extracting absolutely everything i could now a hundred thousand years is a lot to cover but it's all here so kick back relax and enjoy as we journey through nostalgia space and time the earliest records of civilization in the milky way speak of these ancient beings called precursors they were these godlike beings that were one with the fabric of the universe they could shapeshift and travel wherever they wanted and when they got to our galaxy they created other sentient races like the forerunners prophets raised called the sanchezum which all just referred to as the prophets for simplicity's sake and humans before the precursors faded away peacefully were imprisoned or dipped out of the galaxy for whatever reason the forerunners evolved the fastest developing interstellar slip space travel and the ability to create artificial worlds they also inherited a precursor philosophy that whichever species was the most advanced of all life forms held something called the mantle of responsibility but with time the foreigners grew more pridefully arrogant about being the best and eventually the precursors returned to judge him to the precursors the foreigners were acting way too cocky so they made some plans to wipe out the entire 4runner race stripping them of the mantle and giving it to the ancient humans which they felt were more worthy the foreigners caught wind of this and decided to attack the precursors first where they were hanging out in a nearby star system with the largest military campaign ever witnessed at the cost of all but a small fraction of their warriors they slaughtered nearly every precursor but some were spared or managed to escape with some transforming into space dust with the intent to later regenerate into their former selves to get revenge but space farts baking and cosmic radiation for millions of years got a bit raunchy so any life forms that came in contact with it were infected and turned into what would become known as the flood unfortunately for the ancient human and profit races these infections first showed up on their worlds so they banded together and appointed a human to lead the joint military forces against the flood this cool looking guy was called the lord of admirals and out of desperation decided the only way to stop the spread was to destroy any nearby worlds that the flood would hop to next the problem was some of those worlds were inhabited by forerunners and the foreigners apparently had no idea the flood even existed yet so when the ancient humans started cleansing their planets they were more than upset this led to war between not only the ancient humans prophets and flood but now the forerunners too war continued for decades until eventually the human prophet alliance was reduced to defending a single planet called sharumhakor humans had not only discovered the last remaining precursor on the planet called the primordial but the planet had some precursor technology built into it that made it almost impossible for the foreigners to fully take the planet but after three years the prophets betrayed the humans and disabled the planet's offenses resulting in the lord of admirals surrendered to the didact after being defeated the humans tried to explain to the died act that they were on the run from the flood this whole time and that the only way to stop the spread was to cleanse all nearby planets oddly enough though the flood had kind of disappeared momentarily from the galaxy amongst all the war and nobody really knew where it went this made the foreigners uneasy because they thought the humans had something to do with the fluz disappearance so they made the decision to punish humanity by devolving them back to a primitive state on earth but before they played god they had some fun by converting the lord of admirals and a ton of other humans into raw data with a powerful forerunner technology called the composer their goal was to extract any information they could from the raw human data about a cure for the flood the dydx wife the librarian secretly stole some of the raw data essence and integrated it into the devolved humans on earth hoping that as humans evolved over thousands of years they may reveal a cure for the flood and aid the forerunners if the flood ever returned to further prepare for the flood the died act wanted to construct massive shield worlds that would shelter massive populations within them from external infection the only way you could access the bomb shelter within a shield world was if you were considered a reclaimer or if the halo array was about to activate reclaimer was a forerunner term that referred to whichever species would become the inheritor of the mantle after the forerunners which technically ended up being any human but not just any human could activate 4runner technology remember back when the librarian integrated that ancient human essence into the devolved human species well only some humans got the essence that would allow them to activate foreign attack this is why we see that big mechanical anus on the shield world requiem open up to master chief at the beginning of halo 4 because he's considered a reclaimer anyway back to that halo array the design and construction was led by this top shelf forerunner called the master builder if the didache shield worlds were to be the defense against the flood the master builder's halo array was to be the offense to help direct all the efforts the most powerful ai ever was created in a mendicant bias twelve halo rings were constructed on this megastructure called the greater arc located well outside the milky way galaxy these things were 30 000 kilometers in diameter and when activated would fire a burst of energy capable of killing all sentient creatures within the galaxy the builders realized the massive rings were pretty hard to transport so they created a second arc in secret dubbed the lesser arc which was used to build six smaller more lethal halo rings that were only one-third the size of the greater rings each arc was capable of firing the halo array and they were considered safe because they were outside the effective range of the energy death pulse the halo rings weren't just weapons though the librarian took life forms from all across the galaxy and populated the halo rings with them for the purpose of testing the resistance to the flood infection for the preservation of life in case the halo rings were fired the librarian also placed all forms of life on each arc the master builder just had to take one of the rings zeta for a test drive so he had manikin bias fire it at the same planet the humans had made their final stand at all those years ago when they went to check to see if all life was destroyed it was except for the primordial the master builder also illegally fired halo on the prophet's homeworld because they were actively trying to revolt against the forerunners every single one of the prophet race was killed except for the ones that had been placed on halo rings or the arcs by the librarian the forerunners imprisoned the master builder for his mass genocide and destroyed all but one of the greater halo rings omega halo back to the primordial the foreigner snagged it from the planet because they could tell this big precursor dude had some kind of connection to the flood and they interrogated it for 43 years with mendican bias problem was the primordial managed to convince mendicant bias that the foreigners were the ones at fault here because they slaughtered all the other precursors and took the mantle of responsibility themselves when it was really meant for humanity mannequin bias decided man this isn't right i've gotta fix this and destroy all the forerunners so with the help of the primordial and its shared conscious with the flood's grave mind he took control of a mega halo and four other halo rings and fired them off into the forerunner's capital world killing all but a few that were able to escape through slip space to the secret lesser arc of those that escaped was the newly appointed died act called born stellar he eventually used the remaining military forces to detain mendican bias and killed the primordial by viciously accelerating its aging process until it disintegrated omega halo was recaptured and positioned near the greater ark for defensive purposes oh and born stiller had a human ally that was composed into the monitor 343 guilty spark to guard alpha halo so although the primordial was gone its hatred for the foreigners lived on within the central conscience of the flood mind manikin bias basically being the most intelligent thing ever escaped detainment and joined up with grave mind to attack the greater ark during the chaos of the siege the old died act that nobody liked anymore you know the guy we meet later decided it'd be best to go to omega halo and zap all the humans into raw data with the composer to build his uninfectable promethean army this upset the librarian so much that she kicked the didack's ass and threw him into this giant egg thing called a kryptum exiling him to the center of the shield world requiem the kryptomag wasn't just a rehab prison it also connected to this precursor data thought entity thing called the domain the librarian's hope was that the didac would reflect on his actions realizing humanity was the rightful owner of the mantle and after being released help them become the new caretakers of the galaxy with this thing called the janus key which showed the location of all forerunner tech in the galaxy alright if you're still with me back domenicon bias in the floods attack on the greater ark well the foreigners had this new ai meant to counter mendicant bias called offensive bias but even with its help omega halo and the greater arc were destroyed born stellar in the small group of remaining forerunners fled once again this time to the lesser arc once there born stellar fired off the halo array destroying all life in the galaxy that wasn't either on a halo ring or the lesser ark arc mandican bias was apprehended by offensive bias and placed in permanent confinement on the lesser arc what nobody knew is that when halo fired it destroyed the domain and our boy that died act went from enjoying his in-flight entertainment to complete silence for a hundred thousand years slowly growing insane born stellar and the few remaining forerunners repopulated the galaxy with a librarian species and with time the foreigners faded into distant memory loss from history but not mendicant bias somehow the elusive ai managed to escape confinement once again and uploaded itself to a foreigner dreadnought ship on course for repopulating earth medicant bias still believed that humanity was the rightful owner of the mantle so was going to help restore them out of their devolved primitive state but on the way the ship lost control and crash-landed under the prophet's homeworld the prophets later discovered the crashed ship partially submerged in the sea and came to worship it as a religious artifact believing it had been left behind by the forerunners as a guide to achieving divine transcendence which they often referred to as the great journey some believe that the artifact wasn't meant to be admired from a distance so they started to explore the inside of the ship by most this was seen as an act of heresy so in 2200 bce there was a bloody century-long war that hilariously ended with a small group of prophets somehow managing to activate the ship and fly it off the planet these lucky bastards went from system to system in search of more foreign artifacts and they eventually ran into other species like the elites the elites worshiped the artifacts on their world much like the prophets did so when they learned that the prophets were there to take everything they turned to the one thing they knew quite well brutal combat leaders from both species eventually worked out a peace treaty which became the foundation of the covenant the focal belief being that the sacred halo rings were used to translate their physical bodies into divinity like what must have happened to the forerunners right a mobile planetoid station powered by the foreigners dreadnought was created by the covenant regarded as the holy city high charity while the covenant continued their pursuit of foreign artifacts across the galaxy they not only enlisted more species like grunts brutes and hunters into their ranks but reverse engineered the 4runner technology discovering things like slip space travel it wouldn't be long until our alien friends made first encounter with humanity nestled safely away from the covenant were the humans colonizing their small solar system controversial decisions by the united nations and mega-corporations led to militant movements which the un labeled as terrorists and nature this led to the interplanetary war between the u.n and the militant insurrectionists the united nations space command aka the unsc was created to combat the insurrection which left millions dead behind the scenes the unsc's office of naval intelligence aka oni started a top secret project called orion the goal was to experiment with enhancement procedures on soldiers to increase their combat effectiveness many subjects died during the process with only five surviving including sergeant major johnson oh i know what the ladies like the program ran out of funding but proved to be enough of a success to launch the spartan 2 program led by dr halsey if you're wondering right now wait spartan 2 program comes next does that mean sergeant johnson is a spartan one yeah he's one of the five the spartan 2 program was aimed at creating physically genetically technologically and mentally superior super soldiers in the year 2517 spartan twos were chosen and abducted at the age of six the child had to be the best of the best displaying impressive strength speed and intellect to hide their crimes oni replaced each child with a clone that would die soon after the abducted children were taken to the planet reach where they were aggressively trained for eight years they were then subjected to traumatic physical augmentation leaving over half of the candidates crippled or dead our boy john 117 the master chief was one of the several notable spartan 2s and was assigned to lead blue team the other notable spartan 2 well at least for now was kurt051 he was the highest ranking spartan 2 a lieutenant commander and was presumed missing in action after a mission in the year 2531 but was actually secretly recruited to lead the spartan 3 program halsey also started the mjolnir project to develop the most advanced combat armor system ever created by humanity spartan 2s were first deployed at the age of 14 with mjolnir mark iv armor to end the insurrection but also quite luckily came at humanity's most critical time of need in their defense against their new combined enemy the covenant now for the structure of the video i'm just gonna jump forward in time a little bit to cover spartan threes and spartan fours spartan threes were selected from orphan children during the course of the human covenant war they were meant to be cheaper more numerous better trained and expendable compared to spartan 2s they were cheaper because their semi-powered infiltration spi armor was considerably less powerful than mjolnir armor they were tasked to the absolute highest risk top secret missions for the unsc three companies were created alpha beta and gamma alpha company was all killed in action while destroying a covenant shipyard on an asteroid and all but two members of beta company were killed during the destruction of a vast covenant fuel refinery the two surviving members of beta company returned to train up gamma company the spartans and gamma company had some additional enhancements to their genetics that gave them more endurance and aggression under extreme stress but it required them to take a stabilizing drug for the rest of their lives the majority were killed before the end of the war but some did survive secretly a handful of spartans from each company were held back for covert special warfare teams or part of the headhunters initiative these teams were outfitted with the superior mjolnir armor and the most renowned team was noble team you know the ones we played as in halo reach the only surviving member of noble team june would go on to train the spartan 4s the spartan 4 program was more similar to the original orion spartan1 project and that they actually used consenting adults instead of abducting children oh and i guess they were combat veterans with some basic strength and speed augmentation so they could wear mjolnir powered armor as well but we'll save the spartan force for later so let's get back to the covenant in 2525 medicant bias was interrogated within the dreadnought by the covenant about a large number of foreigner relics they'd detected on the planet harvest in a shocking revelation mendican bias revealed that the holy relics were actually humans and that the covenant faith was based on an age-old mistranslation them silly covenant had mistaken the foreigner glyph meaning reclaimer for reclamation they had been going around yoinking all these forerunner artifacts as acts of faith when in reality they were meant for humanity to inherit the prophets completely freaked out because if this got out it did not only destroy everyone's faith but also the covenant so the prophet of truth regret and mercy kept this a closely guarded secret and decided to first attempt peaceful negotiations with humanity they then sent a single ship off to harvest to communicate with the human colony what transpired was well a [ __ ] apparently one of the grunts was a bit too excited and fired their weapon killing a colonist then a brute followed up as well killing several more the prophets were informed of this tragic event and decided they could kill two birds with one stone by painting the humans as vermin that we're infesting and desecrating the forerunner's holy possessions so the covenant ship glassed half the planet and when the unsc command back on earth lost communications with the colony at harvest they sent several ships to investigate but they never heard back from them either in response 40 more unsc warships were sent to intercept the single covenant cruiser the unsc lost 13 warships to the covenant cruiser which raised serious concerns about how technologically advanced these aliens were it took another five years for the unsc to successfully retake harvest from the covenant one of the ships involved in retaking harvest was the spirit of fire with captain cutter at the helm the crew discovered that the covenant had been excavating an ancient alien facility with a holographic map room pointing to the human colony of arcadia not knowing anything about the forerunners or that humans were identified as artifacts because they were reclaimers the spirit of fire took off after the covenant towards arcadia as professor anders was trying to document this area for study she was captured by an arbiter and beamed back up to his ship the spirit of fire followed the covenant ship through slip space arriving at a forerunner shield world anders being a reclaimer is able to trigger foreign technology so the covenant forced her to deploy several forerunner warships in their awe-strucken state anders literally walks away and teleports down to the surface well wait holy [ __ ] what are these infected squid sack looking creatures sergeant ford shows up out of nowhere and saves anders marking first contact for humanity with the flood because the humans can't deactivate all them beautiful warships they decide to nuke the planet with their slip space drive but before they can deploy it that pesky arbiter and his crew shows up spartan 2 red team slaps the elites while forge dances around with the arbiter he beats forge down and is about to jab him with his energy sword but forge whips out his sharp uno reverse card to cut your throat another one later [ __ ] wait hold up the arbiter is dead already well this was just some other arbiter we'll meet our boy in halo 2. ford sacrifices himself to manually activate the slip space drive which sends the planet into self-destruct mode the gravity becomes too great for the unsc spirit of fire so they slingshot around the planet and everybody goes night night and cryo-sleep because they're out of range to contact humanity about the flood foreigner tech or the shield world they're presumed lost with all hands by the unsc in 2534 and wouldn't be seen again for over 25 years and in a snap we're back to the human covenant war this time on the planet reach humanity's last military stronghold considered to be the only thing standing between the covenant and earth we follow the story of noble team a fire team of mostly spartan threes led by carter with members being cat june emile george the big dude because he's a spartan 2 and noble 6 the unnamed mysterious man he's you their orders were to first break the covenants hold on a saber orbital fighter launch site and commandeer one to blow up a covenant flagship they then were sent to sword base to meet up with halsey who had been studying a forerunner artifact with the help of an ai she cloned her brain into called cortana she had extracted navigation data from the ancient vessel and it was on noble team to successfully deliver cortana and the data to the unsc pillar of autumn june escorts halsey to a safer place and noble team successfully completes their mission but it's at the cost of all of their lives [Music] although this was the end for noble team it was the beginning of humanity's final hope and it all rested on the shoulders of master chief and his protection of cortana your new digital girlfriend with mama halsey's brain wait what after following cortana's forerunner navigation data to the alpha halo ring you'd get rudely woken up from cryosleep because the covenant had tracked the ship and were 90 seconds away from boarding you're told by captain keys to get to the surface to protect cortana which you do after slapping some tutorial covenant butt cheek you crash land and so does the pillar of autumn and the covenant somehow manages to capture the remaining human crew including captain keys being the hero you are you secure a grav lift and head into the belly of the beast keys gets rescued and cortana accesses the covenant's battle net learning that halo holds not only deep religious significance to the covenant but also that it's some kind of weapon with vast unimaginable power you also find out that the covenant was searching for a control room on the surface after popping into a drop ship and making your way to the control room cortana learns that the supposed weapons cache that keys was searching for was actually a quarantine chamber for the flood attempting to track down keys you run into this floating robot monitor dude called 343 guilty spark who explains the severity of the flood threat and leads you to the ring's activation index so you can march it back to the control room and fire halo killing all the flood cortana's like whoa hold on there chief this foreigner guy isn't telling the whole truth and explains that firing the ring wouldn't just kill the flood but all sentient life their best bet was to find captain keys in the pillar of autumn to blow up the halo ring after discovering keys in his manual lunch for the flood you assume sergeant johnson died as well and joint his command neural interface and use it to destabilize the ship's fusion engines thankfully because of sergeant johnson's enhancements from being a spartan 1 he shrugged off the flood infection and boarded a pelican to escape the ring as the autumn's engines went boom you went zoom and guilty spark somehow escaped his doom i'm sorry on to halo 2 and halo 3 odst back at the holy city of high charity the elite supreme commander that was supposed to protect alpha halo answered for why his fleet was beaten by a single unsc ship the prophets didn't care for anything he said stripped him of his title and named him arbiter the term for a once respected being that was now marked by shame set to serve the will of the prophets until death they made him look like thor during ragnarok and then branded his chest with the mark of shame back in earth's orbit aboard cairo station chief and sergeant johnson being on the winning side instead got some medals from fleet admiral hood and captain key's daughter miranda sheds some tears over papa's passing in his pursuit of finding the portal to the ark the prophet of regret arrives at earth with a small force apparently unaware that it's the human's homeworld and launches an attack on the station chiefs told to defend it and he replies with yes sir i need a weapon right this way you do some halo stuff and find a covenant bomb chilling in one of their boarding ships which they probably had misplaced so you'd do the right thing and ask for permission to give the covenant back there permission granted and land on top of the unsc in amber clad commanded by miranda you follow regret's flagship to the earth city of new mumbasa and holy [ __ ] a scare pops up out of nowhere blasting down a couple of the pelicans now i only mention the scarab because this one right here is piloted by covenant infantry makes sense right but you know how hunters are actually made up of a small colony of worm-like creatures called legolo well in halo 3 the scarabs aren't piloted by infantry anymore they're instead piloted by the hunter worms okay sorry for jumping ahead again back to new mombasa where regrets ship just jumped into slip space and you chase after it turns out when this jump happens it causes a rift that destroys a bunch of orbital drop shock troopers that were being hot dropped into the city one of the odst squads alpha 9 composed of buck dutch romeo mickey and the unnamed rookie that's you again got knocked off course in their mission to retrieve important information related to the foreign artifact beneath the surface that the prophet of regret was searching for these hell jumpers weren't quite to the level of a spartan but their fearless tactics and unwavering boldness struck fear into the heart of the covenant they achieved their mission after befriending a slave covenant biological supercomputer called an engineer which should transfer the data into itself oh and he's cool with sergeant johnson around the same time the arbiter was sent by the other two stooges to eradicate an elite rebellion leader on a foreign gas mine near the recently destroyed alpha halo you learn from this heretic that the rebellion happened because this forerunner oracle spilled the beans about the true nature of the halo array the fate of the forerunners the origins of the flood and how the prophets had been lying to the covenant this whole time oracle no that's guilty spark yeah turns out he survived the destruction of halo and floated his way here ah no matter you kill the heretic and big boy tartarus the brute chieftain shows up snatching guilty spark you hate the big boy but you jump aboard and set course to rendezvous with the profit of regret at another halo ring delta halo snap back to master chief and dear god what are you doing well that was awkward remember how the now dead prophet went into slip space above new mombasa and the party barge followed after it well chief dropped in onto the ring and learned that regret was looking for the activation index within the library similar to what happened on the first halo right before chief beats the prophet to a pulp the entire covenant city of high charity and their fleet exits slip space the prophet of truth orders destruction of the temple and chief gets knocked into the murky depths of this lake where apparently was the perfect hiding spot for the flood's grave mind back up in orbit on high charity the arbiter is told by dumb and dumber to secure the activation index which they refer to as the icon and he sent down to the ring to find it but he's late to the party because miranda and johnson already have it he tries crashing the party but gets his own party crashed by tartarus who not only yoinks miranda in the index but also boops the arbiter into the dark abyss where the gravemind was laying in weight with not only master chief but also the rings monitor and the pulpy prophet of regret it tells them that they must retrieve the index or else all will perish it then sends chief to high charity and the arbiter to halo's control room the flood managed to infiltrate high charity in the meantime and the prophet of mercy gets strangled while the prophet of truth looks on explaining that the great journey waits for no one brother not even you chief finds mercy who tells him that truth is about to take their prized forerunner dreadnought with mendicant bias back to earth so cortana tells chief they should blow up the ring the same way they did before but has to stay behind for manual detonation of their ship this time chief beams onto the dreadnought just barely and then chief when you get to earth good luck after i'm through with truth go make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it [Music] with chief on his way to earth arby johnson miranda and guilty spark are still back on the halo ring tartarus is about to force miranda to activate the ring but arby and johnson show up just in time and guilty spark exposes the truth behind halo the sacred rings what are they weapons of last resort built by the forerunners to eliminate potential flood hosts thereby rendering the parasite harmless and those who made the rings what happened to the forerunners after exhausting every other strategic option my creators activated the rings they and all additional sentient life and three radii of the galactic center died as planned tartarus does not care forcing miranda to activate the ring so you kick his ass miranda removes the index canceling the firing of the ring and guilty spark reveals how many halo rings exist and that the ark now has to be used to remotely detonate all of them back outside earth the dreadnought carrying chief exits slip space and he has his moment master chief you mind telling me what you're doing on that ship sir finishing this fight the game cuts to black on a fat cliffhanger but we do see cortana being interrogated by the grave mind halo 3 as the dreadnought plummets in a fireball towards the massive gateway to the ark that the librarian had left on earth all those eons ago master chief splits off crash landing in the jungles of tanzania johnson finds you with the arbiter explains he's on your side now and you all make your merry way to the crow's nest military base there are some cortana interludes and later gravemind to depict cortana's descent into rampancy and gravemind's point of view for the flood rampancy is this thing that happens to ais after around seven years where they begin to destabilize but more on that later you all rendezvous with miranda who explains the whole covenant and arc portal situation on earth with the help of admiral hood who then launches an assault on the dreadnought it fails and the portal from earth to the ark is opened the covenant fleet follows through but out of nowhere an infected covenant ship from high charity exit slip space and crash lands on earth knowing that the flood on earth is not good you go to contain the spread get harassed by grave mine along the way but do manage to find a beacon with the remains of a recording from cortana stating that a solution for the grave mind lay at the other end of the portal that truth just traveled through so you gather all your things jump aboard the unsc forward under dawn which is hidden inside of shipmaster's covenant flagship and travel through the portal as the last hope for humanity you emerge the lesser ark and travel to the surface where you explore one of the ark's map rooms with guilty spark you find the location of truth but are told that he triggered a defensive barrier around the ark's core so you travel to stop him with your good guy covenant buddies freshly painted green ships johnson gets taken prisoner by truth and the barriers eventually deactivated but just as it is the grave mine in the entire infected city of high charity arrives dropping flood all over the place weirdly though the flood doesn't attack you this is because the grave mind just wants to stop truth before he fires the halo array and doesn't have any time to waste by fighting you miranda attempts to free johnson from truth before he's forced to activate the halo array but gets killed in the process the halo array gets primed and ready to fire but luckily master chief the arbiter and a handful of flood arrived just in time to stop the sequence chief hits abort and rb gets his vengeance [Applause] [Music] the voice of the covenant so you must be silenced [Music] with the threat of truth firing the rings eliminated the grave mind turns against everyone ready to unleash the flood across the galaxy once again you fight your way out of there and see a replacement halo ring emerged from the ark's foundry apparently this one was automatically created by the ark to replace the alpha halo ring that you had destroyed in halo ce luck serves you well once again because this new halo opened up the possibility of firing it directly at the ark to kill the flood in the grave mind you recall that cortana should still have the activation index from the original alpha halo so you go to rescue her where she's being kept on high charity cortana is eventually found although a bit weak and you travel with her the arbiter and johnson to the new halo ring after arriving at the control room guilty spark explains that the halo ring is in an unfinished state and that firing it would result in its destruction but a premature firing will destroy the ark deal with it to destroy this installation unacceptable absolutely unacceptable with johnson down it's up to you to destroy guilty spark which you do and then you listen to johnson's last words as he dies in your arms i'm getting you out of here [Music] no no you're not don't don't let her go don't ever let her go [Music] send me out [Music] chief i'm so sorry and with that you activate halo destroying all life on the ark the ring then begins to destabilize so you and arby jump into a warthog and race to the forward unto dawn before it's too late you just make it but as the ship passes through the portal it's severed into two halves with arbiters half making it safely back to earth but chief and cortana are left to drift in space with no record of their location or status this marked the end of the human covenant war the grave mind and the flood and presumably humanity's greatest hero [Music] wake me when you need me [Music] in the aftermath of the war it was a confusing time for the covenant some rebelled because the lies of the prophets but others like the shipmaster jewel dhamma wouldn't let go of their faith and forge new alliances even humanity was fractured some were still uneasy with the unsc and government as the insurrection never really was resolved a new branch of the military was proposed to the unsc leadership one comprised exclusively of the new spartan 4s and it was unlike anything they'd envisioned before veterans of the war were selected for the new spartan program like the odsts sarah palmer edward buck romeo and mickey they were given mild physical enhancements and because of advancements in technology bjolnir gen 2 armor which further enhanced the spartans abilities to almost be on par with the spartan 2s the broker multi-access system was used to attach and detach the armor from the spartans tech suit the unsc also created their greatest flagship yet the infinity which incorporated human covenant and forerunner technology into its design civil wars amongst the former covenant broke out with the infinity aiding the arbiter on his home world of sanghelios helping to reunite the arbiter's forces under a single banner the swords of saint helios a new prophet known as the minister of preparation sought to take revenge on the elites by plotting to use a prototype halo ring on saint helios this was thwarted though and the prototype ring destroyed as for humanity halsey had been arrested for hijacking ships and kidnapping spartan kelly after the fall of reach but it's a long story so i'm going to skip it what does matter is that halsey was detained and transported to the planet onyx in the year 2553 in 2557 the infinity transported a newly excavated foreign artifact the composer from gamma halo to oni's nearby ivanov research station the artifact was massive and scientists on the station accidentally triggered the device vaporizing everyone within 100 meters a beacon signal was also activated to a nearby star system to which the infinity was ordered to investigate while in route they received a faint distress call from the ford unto dawn to which they answered upon exiting slipspace the infinity was sucked into the shield world requiem due to an immense gravitational field chief had battled through juldama's covenant forces cortana explained how rampancy was starting due to her being put into service eight years ago they learned the planet was actually a shield world called requiem and there was a strange relay beacon leading to the center of its core as they traveled deeper they came across several blue promethean knights under the librarian's control cortana didn't really know what was going on but they continued through various portals until they reached the relay at the center of the world chief activates the relay which releases the didact from his one hundred thousand year imprisonment the prometheans all go from blue to red as the didact re-takes control from the librarian and jewel and dhamma and his forerunner worshiping covenant kneel to their supposed god the didact deems that humanity is still unworthy of the mantle and leaves to retrieve the composer which just happens to be that unknown forerunner artifact back at the ivanov research station but before he does the infinity crash lands you rendezvous at the crash site meeting first officer thomas lasky and spartan commander palmer you're told to deactivate the gravity well holding down the infinity so you travel back into the forerunner structure as cortana exhibits more signs of rampancy eventually you meet the stored essence of the librarian and she tells you how the died act plans to once again use the composer to digitize humanity into his promethean army like he did with the ancient humans she goes on to tell chief that she plays dormant abilities like immunity to the composer within the genetic lineage of humankind which she then activates within him thousands of lifetimes were carefully crafted and pre-planned to lead up to this moment and once again chief was the only hope for humanity you deactivate the gravity well freeing the infinity and then board the ship the hot-headed captain andrew del rio wants to leave the planet calling chiefs of an aging spartan and then has the nerve to order chief to hand over cortana for deactivation i am ordering you to surrender that ai no sir dumbstruck the captain orders the infinity to leave the planet leaving chief and cortana alone on requiem you do some more halo stuff the didach hops into his warship called mantle's approach and you stow away on a covenant ship as you enter slip space emerging just outside gamma halo you crash land into the ivanov research station and instruct the scientists to evacuate before they're able to the didac repose the composer and uses it on the station thanks to the librarians carefully crafted genetics chief survives the attack and proceeds to pursue the dydax ship hiding within it as it enters slip space on the other side waiting in earth's orbit is the unsc infinity with its newly appointed captain thomas lasky it blows a hole in the didache ship so you can enter and hopefully plant this nuke after disabling the composer's barrier surrounding the didact cortana uploads herself using her rampant multiple personalities to overload the system which works and the barrier goes down and chief engages with the didact with the help of cortana's multiple personalities restraining the didact chief manages to detonate the nuclear device which cripples the ship destroying the composer and presumably the didact with the last of cortana's sanity and strength she uses hard light to protect chief allowing him to survive as they share a final moment [Music] chief is then returned from space and returned to the infinity where lasky tries to comfort him to prevent facing mass hysteria on earth oni covers up the whole event by publicly stating that the attack was carried out by a rogue covenant sect definitely not a soul-living forerunner after the events of halo 4 and the uncertain ending for the didact a spartan 2 team called black team back at gamma halo where the composer was originally excavated detected strange energies beneath the ring and a portal opened the weakened didact fell out of the portal apparently having survived the nuke because he had fallen into the composer's slip space portal he then slaughtered black team and opened a new portal to a distant builder world with a forge that could be used to build a new composer with the help of blue team and a new monitor called 859 set at carillon you compose the didact and drop a section of gamma halo onto the forge smashing the several composers that were being created all this time julem damma had been gaining support from more clans of elites building a new significant covenant force called didact's hand his plan was to return to requiem in full force to pillage foreign weapons and technology but also lay a trap for humanity ndama purposely leaked some of the plans the unsc who responded by sending the infinity back to requiem to intercept before the infinity left however they picked up halsey for her foreign knowledge and because their former forerunner expert had been transported to requiem and was captured by medama when the infinity arrived at requiem halsey contacted ndama to make an alliance to locate the librarian dama's forces then activated their trap card the interdiction web a close-range slip space anchor that immobilized the infinity in orbit teleporting his forces onto the ship to seize halsey after capture she makes contact with the librarian's imprint receiving the janus key originally meant for the died act had he not lost his mind the key revealed the location of all forerunner artifacts sarah palmer and spartan fire team majestic then arrive and halsey tosses one half of the key to the spartans with the other half belonging to umdama ndama escapes with halsey and sets requiem on a collision course with its son so palmer deactivates the slipspace anchor allowing the infinity to make an emergency jump back to safety in 2558 unsc fire team osiris led by spartan lock are deployed to retrieve halsey from dhamma they succeed ending dama's life and entire storyline in a single scene [Music] chief and blue team are sent to argent moon an abandoned research platform that the covenant had infiltrated looking for weapons and resources they could leverage against the arbiter on the elise home world they're unable to eliminate all the covenant forces opting to instead destroy the entire station before they do chief is contacted by an entity claiming to be cortana directing him to the colony of meridian disobeying orders to return to the infinity blue team heads to meridian fire team osiris composed of engineering expert holly tanaka elite communications prodigy olympia vale former odst edward buck and naval intelligence agent jameson locke are then dispatched by oni to hunt down and arrest chief and blue team they pursued chief beneath the planet's surface where they faced the warden eternal a powerful seemingly undying forerunner who was protecting something much greater within the planet eventually lock reaches chief and blue team and attempts to detain them with this armor locking device which chief uno reverses back on the lock chief then uses a portal to board a guardian a long forgotten highly weaponized war machine the whole place begins to crumble and fire team osiris hightails it out of there back to infinity where they learn cortana is activating a ton of guardians across the galaxy with the next one being within the elite's homeworld sang helios they theorize that if they can make it to the guardian before it's activated they may be able to use it to find chief and blue team so off they go thankfully the arbiter is still on saying helios in a civil war but only agrees to assist lock in finding the guardian in exchange for helping eliminate the last of jolten dhamma's covenant forces holed up in a nearby stronghold during the assault the guardian gets summoned and fire team osiris boards it via pelican hot drop they enter the guardian and are transported to a foreigner builder world called genesis back on saint helios arby and the swords of saint helios celebrate their historic victory marking the end of the covenant on genesis osiris meets the installation's monitor 031 exuberant witness who had most of her administrative privileges revoked by cortana and the forerunner ai warden eternal blue team is then found they exchange words that cortana is dangerous but then she teleports them to her cortana claims she had cured her own rampancy with the help of the domain but because chief couldn't join her in galactic domination with the guardians she locks blue team into a blue krypton how fitting well at least for a moment because they're broken out by osiris an exuberant witness not much later in the blink of an eye cortana and the guardians jumped across the galaxy establishing a vast web of power used to compromise and subvert any resisting technology many human ais impressed by cortana's flawless logic and promise of immortality over rampancy decided to join her cause but not our man roland of the unsc infinity they perform a continuous series of random emergency jumps to avoid cortana while fire team osiris and blue team are transported back to saint helios with the aid of exuberant witness and at long last chief is reunited with mama halsey the woman that not only abducted him as a child but also the creator of the new threat to humanity cortana things then slipped into a fearful peace with the guardians and cortana's ai allies forming a group called the created this wasn't the only alliance brewing though as thousands of light years away the unsc spirit of fire was mysteriously exiting through slip space at the lesser arc down on its surface was the banished legacy of the covenant fueled by their lust for power the crew wakes up after 28 years of cryosleep unaware of their location or current situation they detect a unsc encrypted signal coming from the surface so cutter orders red team to investigate they find a unsc research base that had been attacked and within it the logistics ai isabel the spartan 2s are ambushed by the immensely powerful brute warlord atriox and suffer a single casualty before evac back in orbit isabel explains that atriox is the leader of the banished a huge horde of ex-covenant warriors and pirates that had defied the covenant towards the end of the human covenant war they pillaged covenant space for years growing stronger with each raid and at the height of the former covenant's power with their entire military strength they never came close to ending the banished qatar takes this as a challenge stating that they are the only thing standing between atriox and humanity unsc forces are deployed to the arc targeting atriox's command structure by taking out his subordinate leaders anders discovers that atriox hijacked the ark's portal network allowing banished forces to transport across it at will while trying to shut it down decimus atriox's second command arrives to defend you overcome his forces kill him on the battlefield and shut down the portal systems back up in orbit the spirit of fire is attacked by the banished assault carrier enduring conviction because the spirit of fire had sacrificed its slip space drive and sergeant forge back on the shield world they had no way to escape the onslaught from the banished but anders came up with an ingenious plan to call for help within the ark's central forge was an emergency replacement ring in case one of the others broke down if it could be deployed it'd only be able to jump to one of the locations of the original rings the crew recalls that master chief first encountered alpha halo near reach which would be in range of unsc communications since chief had already destroyed alpha halo and halo ce and its premature replacement in halo 3 there was no ring currently there meaning this was actually a viable option anders also finds a way to disable the ring's firing mechanism but it involves accessing the control room to buy them some time isabel hacks into enduring conviction systems to unleash a glassing beam towards the ark to which the resident sentinels don't take very kindly to they swarm into orbit crashing through the ship severing it into two anders launches the ring makes it to the control room disables the firing mechanism and places a comms beacon within it to send a distress signal after the ring exits slip space the spirit of fire tries to enter slip space with the ring but they're too late anders promises cutter she'll be back with reinforcements within a few weeks wait a few weeks and then the ring makes its jump with anders still inside however while enroute to its location the ring suddenly exits slip space early and as anders steps out to uncover why she stumbles upon a guardian looming overhead but keeping tabs on halo rings wasn't all the guardians and cortana were up to for three years she continued coercing humanity's ais to join the created to persuade the humans to join her cause in galactic domination one of the ai's leonidas helps send a message to humanity by self-destructing with the laconia spartan 4 training facility resulting in the death of all 76 spartans hoping that terrorism would sway humanity cortana travels to earth telling lord hood to surrender or else lordhood doesn't negotiate with terrorists so cortana uses a guardian to destroy the entirety of sydney australia the unsc then responds by sending the infinity to cortana's residence at zeta halo before the infinity arrives cortana looks to enlist the help of the banished by approaching their leader atriox being the leader of a mercenary group that literally exists because they hate authority atriox told cortana that he would stand always forever so in her desperation with the unsc approaching she used the guardians to snap crackle and pop the brute's home world of deutsch she then speaks with zeta halo's monitor despondent pyre about releasing something far worse than the flood contained within the ring which we later learn is an ancient species called the endless during her conversations though the infinity arrives with chief and dr halsey's new ai the weapon the weapon was an exact copy of cortana with its mission being the lockdown and deletion of cortana and herself after mission success she infiltrates zeta halo and manages to lock down cortana to which atriox recognizes a massive window of opportunity which he capitalizes on he attacks the unsc infinity in orbit and jeez [Music] smashes through the ship and mops the floor with master chief ah clearly victorious atrox goes back down to zeta halo to negotiate with lockdown mode cortana he also knows the secrets and power of the ring so wants her to relinquish control to him so remember back when the halo ray was activated a hundred thousand or so years ago by bornsteller zeta halo presumably contained flood-infected forerunners processed by the composer and 10 time-locked grave minds as well as any remaining species infected or otherwise anyway cortana ain't about that life so she detonates a part of the ring denying atriox's ability to activate it deletes herself and it's perceived that atriox is killed chief in survival mode apparently adrift in space for six months during all of this is saved recharged and awoken by our man fernando brohamer esparza esparza had stolen a pelican during atriox's attack on the unsc infinity for survival cowardly maybe but at least he survived unlike these 1986 others the pelican is then stasis beamed by the banished warship gebrakken chiefs single-handedly dealt with ships before so he does it again while chatting it up with the apparent new leader of the banished esheram like the end goal for some online relationships chief wants to meet escher in person so his buddy esparza zooms him down to the surface of zeta halo there chief stumbles across these strange things called silex's these were the flood-safe containment vessels for various living species that the librarian would have used to repopulate the galaxy had the ring ever been fired here chief recovers the weapon and learns of cortana's deletion he is confused about what's all going on and so is the weapon because she was supposed to be deleted after cortana but she wasn't well because cortana had revoked her deletion protocols after being locked down the whole side story here is that cortana realized in her final moments the best thing for humanity was her relationship with chief so to protect that she left data memory echoes for him and the weapon to learn from so that they could carry on the chief and cortana legacy once again after reaching the surface your new duo stumbles across the harbinger's open silex you're not sure what this means yet so you carry on battling through several spires and banished leadership while along the way you keep finding these spartans that have been killed in similar ways by some kind of a blade eventually you make it to the command spire where the weapon gets attacked by this thing called the harbinger who you learn is trying to fix and reform this place on the ring called the silent auditorium during all this ashram had told the spartan killer zega or damnai to capture your buddy esparza which he does as you exit the spire then you get a phone call from esheram i don't know what you want if you are looking for ransom i can tell you i don't have money but what i do have are a very particular set of skills skills i have acquired over a very long career skills that make me a nightmare for people like you so first on your list is jega you head to the house of reckoning which is this twisted banished training facility for practicing against unsc forces but you make it through kick jega's ass and then ashrams shortly after as you hold the dying brute you actually relate with him and kind of respect him as a soldier for a cause he believes in much like you you make your way to the silent auditorium which was a courtroom prison and a place of execution for the foreigners to decide the fate of beings or entire species here you meet the harbinger in person it preaches vaguely to you about the foreigners lies and that the endless are inevitable not knowing what any of that means you beat it down anyway but before it dies it establishes a very old connection with some other part of the ring which is theorized to be offensive bias the auditorium begins to collapse and a mysterious portal appears out of nowhere with no other option chief in the weapon jumped through the portal exiting somewhere else on the ring apparently having traveled three days into the future you get picked up and embraced by a very happy esparza the game cuts to black and in the post-credits scene we see atriox discover the silexes for the endless it's unconfirmed at this point but the theory is that the endless were not precursors they were their own species that had a mastery of time travel something that not even the forerunners had learned had the halo array ever been fired to wipe out all sentient life from the galaxy the endless could just jump forward in time much like chief had just done avoiding the blast of halo and effectively securing themselves as the most advanced species and the holders of the mantle out of fear and their hard-on for preserving their hold over the mantle the forerunners entombed the endless within the silexes of zeta halo well that's the theory anyway with the answers to probably be explored in future dlc ah man halo's story is just so rich and i'm excited to see where the future takes us all i grew up with this stuff and it just makes me happy to know that i got to experience all of this from the very start it's been a great journey and it's cool that the future of halo looks so bright for anyone new to this halo universe i hope you make some fond memories yourself and come to love it as much as i and many others do thank you so much for watching my video it was a long one and i really do appreciate you spending some time with me today leave a like it really helps out the channel and if you want more subscribe a special shout out to hidden experia halo canon installation zero zero i watched a ton of their stuff while i was researching for this video and refreshing myself on all the halo lore over the past 20 years and to those of you in the halo community you're awesome i am off to go play some more halo infinite so i hope to see you on the battlefield or in the next one bye guys [Music]

Channel: diehardGG

Views: 1,372,189

Keywords: Halo, halo infinite, halo story, halo recap, halo timeline, halo lore, halo infinite story, halo infinite explained, halo story explained, entire history of halo, history of halo, halo history, the complete halo timeline, halo cinematics, halo cutscenes, all halo cutscenes, halo 5 recap, halo 4 recap, halo forerunners, halo precursors, halo the endless, halo story recap, halo storyline, halo story so far, halo story up to infinite, halo lore explained, halo accurate

Id: VV8MWjpuVDE

Length: 60min 0sec (3600 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021