They say you should never judge a book by
its cover, but if I see a game with an absolutely badass cover, I tend to end up loving it,
and Halo is absolutely no exception. If you judged Halo games by their cover art,
I think your expectations would be set pretty well. Over the years, Halo’s box arts have become
some of the most iconic imagery in all of gaming, renowned, I would argue, more than
just about any other franchise out there, and for good reason. There’s just something so striking about
them - they encapsulate the vibe and tone of their respective games perfectly while
still looking flashy to satisfy Microsoft’s marketing team. But what if I told you there’s one cover
art, arguably Halo’s most iconic, that has a whole tonne of secret lore behind it - dark,
clandestine lore that will change the way you look at it forever… Now, technically almost every Halo cover art
has rough lore behind it, typically stylising an event or location in its respective game. Halo CE’s is a stylisation seemingly of
the level Halo; Halo 3’s is a hyper-stylised shot of Chief
in Voi; ODST’s is Rookie roaming the rainy streets
of New Mombasa; Reach… well, Reach’s is more of a hero shot than
anything, same goes for Halo Wars 1 & 2’s; Halo 4’s is a stylised shot of Chief in
the wreckage of the dawn; Halo 5’s is an omega-stylised shot of Chief
and Locke’s face off; And Infinite’s is a stylised shot of Chief
exploring Zeta Halo. Not to point out the obvious. But you may have noticed I skipped the cover
art of the greatest game ever made, and there’s a reason for that. Halo 2’s cover art goes beyond stylisation
- it’s an actual in-universe photograph with a clandestine backstory, and to uncover
said backstory, we have to go back through the life and career of one Ben Giraud… Ben Giraud was a War Journalist in the 2500s,
however War Journalist as a term can be used… strenuously. He was technically freelance, but his primary
bankroller was none other than the Office of Naval Intelligence, so you can probably
see where this is going. Ben’s first major entry in the universe
was in the Graphic Novel, released by Bungie in 2006. The story Second Sunrise Over New Mombasa
told the story of how he escaped the Covenant’s invasion of Mombasa, armed with a significant
discovery, but it also revealed much of the work he’d done prior to and during Earth’s
invasion. Because of the nature of his employer, Ben
wasn't so much a Journalist as he was a propagandist. He controlled, edited and manipulated raw
feeds from remote news cameras across the galaxy to reproduce and reformat it into what
he regarded as a… ‘digestible’ format, suitable for public consumption. Ben and his fellow propagandists created the
news, spinning public attitude towards the productive and confident, and away from fear
and panic, and for doing so they well and truly secured the bag. To him, it seemed relatively harmless because
he was working on Earth and at the time the war was hundreds of light years away - it
never seemed as though it would reach Earth, until it did. Just like I never thought I’d hit 600,000
subscribers, until you saw how close I was to such a milestone and hit subscribe to help
me hit it! As the Covenant annihilated colonies closer
and closer to Earth, Ben’s job started getting harder - a positive picture was getting harder
and harder to paint, and yet ONI and the UNSC were putting more pressure on him to do so
because of how desperate things were getting. They started getting overbearing, breathing
down his neck, dictating what he could and couldn’t do, how to frame a picture or a
clip to fit their specific parameters - Ben considered himself an artist, and so this
got increasingly frustrating until it all came to a head when the Covenant reached Earth,
and the propaganda wore off. During the invasion, Ben managed to record
a groundbreaking discovery - an Elite saying ‘We need to clear this area before we can
secure access to the Ark.’ - The first mention of the Ark humanity had
experienced, and so he was hurried out of the city by the Marines, making it to the
docks where civilians were evacuating, but there wasn’t enough room on the ships, so
he gave a girl the recording and she made it out safe. This was Ben’s first run-in with actual
danger, and he got to experience first hand what happens when the reality of a situation
overpowers the propaganda. But Ben’s, ONI’s and likely the Halo universe’s most iconic piece
of propaganda was born from this very conflict. On that fateful day in New Mombasa, Ben took
this photograph, but this isn’t the original. It didn’t always look like this. This was the original that was taken that
day that was sent to ONI, and this is what they sent back - annotated with all the revisions
Ben had to make to the image so it could be used as propaganda. Even when the enemy had breached humanity’s
front door, ONI were still dedicated to controlling hysteria and panic, and upholding the positive,
victory-fuelled image of the war they’d conjured up - the image that was extremely
detached from reality. You can see in the ONI annotated picture how
much of a squeaky clean image of the war they were trying to paint, even in the most desperate
of times. Cropping out Regret’s Carrier and the dead
marine, reducing the amount of Banshees in the sky, de-emphasising explosions and even
cleaning up Chief’s armour. We don’t know for sure how much this image
was circulated in-universe, but given that ONI had spent God knows how long building
the Spartans up to be these mythical, invincible super soldiers who simply could not die, I
think it’s fair to say this photograph was the 26th century equivalent of Uncle Sam. So, Halo 2’s cover art is in fact one of
the greatest pieces of propaganda humanity has ever conjured up. I do wonder what the point of propaganda was
at this point in the war though. When it was happening on a TV screen hundreds
of light years away on the other side of the galaxy, I get it, you don’t want populations
at the heart of human space falling into mass-hysteria when they aren’t directly affected yet,
that’s just gonna lead to massive civil unrest that will eat up precious resources
of the UNSC… But when the Covenant are quite literally
invading Earth, you can’t hide the reality of it anymore. Any propaganda they put out is instantly nullified
when someone goes into their garden, looks up into the sky and sees a gigantic Covenant
Carrier floating above them. Now then, quick interlude, you may have already
seen these really cool wall arts in the background of my last few vids. Well, they’re courtesy of today’s sponsor,
displate! You’ll get 25% off orders with 1 Displate,
and 35% off orders with 2 or more! Cheers Displate, back to the ONI biz. But regardless of the questionable efficacy
of it late in the war, propaganda was one of ONI’s many clandestine specialties, and
it was all courtesy of a specific division within the office, ONI Section II. ONI Section II is the division of ONI responsible
for controlling external communication and public morale. During the Human-Covenant War, their main
priority was controlling the flow of information about the Covenant and the state of the war,
ensuring that general populations retained a positive outlook and never descended into
hysteria. However, I would argue that all this propaganda
was dangerous, even counteractive to a degree - the inner colonies, especially Earth, had
no idea how close the Covenant were until it was too late. Regardless, Ben Giraud’s work was a prime
example of Section II’s capabilities - doctoring footage, editing images and altering news
stories about wars, replacing ‘Blood and Retreat’ with ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Strategic
Withdrawal’, ensuring that if troopers were ever shown hurt it was made aware they were
being carried off on stretchers to safety and honours, having saved their platoon in
an act of raw, inspiring heroism. Section II actually operate quite similarly
to the Patriot AI in Metal Gear Solid 2, controlling the flow of information and creating context
around it to, as they believe, further humanity by preventing any social unrest that could
damage the war effort. Whenever I think of Section II, I can’t
help but see Campbell as their personification. And speaking of controlling the flow of information
and, ‘leaking whatever truths suit them’, Section II’s greatest leak pertains to the
Spartans. So, the Spartan II program and the Spartans
in general were, for obvious reasons, likely the most classified military project in known
and unknown history. However, desperate times called for desperate
measures. As the Covenant war worsened, rumour spread
throughout UNSC fleets about the existence of Spartans, propping them up as creatures
of myth and legend. This mythical status made them perfect beacons
of hope and morale, of which were rapidly fading, and so Section II decided to play
into that, disseminating more information to uphold their status before eventually going
entirely public with them. Why? ‘To boost morale. They’ll boost the legend of the Spartan. If the war goes as projected with the Covenant,
we will certainly need drastic measures to maintain confidence among the rank and file.’ - James Ackerson, Ghosts of Onyx. It didn’t even matter if the Spartans were
dead, all that mattered was that they were no longer a secret. Enter, ONI Directive 930. If you’re familiar with the term ‘Spartans
never die, they’re just missing in action’, then you’re familiar with Directive 930. It reads: ‘To maintain morale among the forces of
the UNSC, any Spartan casualties are to be listed as Missing In Action (MIA) or Wounded
In Action (WIA), but never Killed In Action (KIA).’ Directive 930 was devised after the Spartan
II program was made public information to continue to uphold their mythical status now
they had trillions of eyes on them. Because they were now a commonly known thing,
their deaths would become common information too, and what good are inhuman legends, leading
the charge against extinction, if they’re mortal… So, ONI simply stopped the Spartans from dying,
at least within the public consciousness. As long as the public and lower ranking troopers
were never aware that their heroes were mortal, they could still be used as a source of morale. However, there is no greater example of Section
II’s shady doings than what they ultimately did to Ben Giraud. Following his escape from Mombasa, Ben went
under the radar for a few years, no longer working for ONI, until 2558 when he re-entered
the fold. He got a rather surprise communique from the
Senior Communications Director within ONI Section II, Michael Sullivan. The Office were putting together a campaign
around the Master Chief, complete with full access to people from Chief’s past, exclusive
interviews and a tonne more, and given Ben’s prior experience working propaganda with Spartan
117, they thought he was the perfect journalist-turned-propagandist-for-profit for the job. They already had interviews with a bunch of
key people lined up and Ben didn’t need to do any camera or photowork for them this
time, just conduct interviews, put together the puff piece and then get paid a handsome
sum of 120,000 credits. He agreed, but only a few interviews in, things
started to get… weird. Supposed key figures from Chief’s childhood
who ONI had arranged interviews with weren’t who they said they were, their stories were
getting mixed up and inconsistencies started to form, and very quickly Ben started to realise
something else was going on here, there was more beneath the surface. So, he once again put on his journalist hat,
and while trying to avoid the watchful eye of ONI started asking questions he shouldn’t,
soon discovering that not only were almost all of the ‘sources’ ONI had provided
for the piece paid actors, but also, the truth behind Chief and the Spartans - what they
really were. See, when Section II went public with the
Spartans, it was entirely for propaganda and morale purposes, not for transparency, so
of course none of the finer details of the program - the litany of human rights violations
and crimes against humanity committed to further the program - were ever made known to anyone
outside of the highest of clearance at ONI… Until now… Ben Giraud was the only person outside of
ONI top brass who knew the sickening reality of what the Spartans were - abducted children
forced into lethal, highly experimental bio-chemical augmentations and military conscription; replaced
with flash clones unbeknownst to their parents, who would quickly die of mysterious illnesses. Armed with this newfound knowledge, Ben went
AWOL and started crafting the true story, not the story ONI wanted him to make, with
full intent to go public and reveal the truth of the Master Chief to humanity, and it was
going… worryingly well. He even booked a slot on the popular ECB News
channel on which he’d reveal the truth. However, live on air, the interviewer Charles
Kesler happened to have perfect refutes for just about every accusation Ben made against
ONI - their coverups, their lies, their crimes against humanity - all of it, turning what
should’ve been a slam dunk interview into a disaster. It turned out ONI were onto him the entire
time - this was their doing - they made Ben out to be nothing more than a nutjob conspiracy
theorist in front of millions, possibly even billions of viewers, discrediting all his
claims and ensuring the confidentiality of the Spartan Program remained intact. Shortly after the interview, Ben was arrested
by ONI and taken to their Midnight Facility, the most secretive and high security prison
in the galaxy. Half prison, half ONI blacksite, Midnight
Facility is where individuals of all species are sent to disappear. It houses high ranking ex-Covenant Prophets,
Elite terrorists, Spartan traitors, turncoats, defectors and many more highly dangerous individuals. Hidden within an asteroid, with enough firepower
to destroy an entire Covenant fleet, nobody gets in or out of Midnight alive without ONI’s
say so, and that’s where Ben Giraud will be kept for the rest of his days for leaking
the truth about the Spartans - in a brightly lit cube pumped full of sedative gas forever
more. So, that’s the secret lore behind Halo’s
most iconic cover art, and a tonne of other similar stuff as well. This was one of those videos that began as
an initial idea - to cover the unique backstory of Halo 2’s cover art - but then quickly
grew into a deep dive into something much deeper. It felt like a golden opportunity to cover
ONI propaganda, so I hope you enjoyed, even if it was Going Off On a Tangent: The Video! Tbf, they often end up being the most fun. So, with that said, I want to give a huge
thank you to all of my amazing Patrons for the continued support over there as per usual,
and thank you all so much for watching, I really appreciate it, and I’ll catch you
all, in the next one!
