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Gameplay
Halo 2 is a story-driven action-shooter game with a first-person perspective. The game features an expanded range of vehicles, as well as other gameplay changes compared to its predecessor. The original Halo featured separate health and shield bars. In Halo 2, the health bar is no longer visible; instead, the player's shield regenerates quickly when the player is not taking damage.
Certain weapons can be dual-wielded, which allows the player to trade accuracy and the ability to use grenades and melee for raw firepower. The player can carry two weapons at a time (or three if dual-wielding; one weapon remains holstered), with each weapon having advantages and disadvantages in different combat situations. For example, most Covenant weapons eschew disposable ammo clips for a contained battery, which cannot be replaced if depleted. However, these weapons can overheat if fired continuously for prolonged periods. Human weapons are less effective at penetrating shields and require reloading, but cannot overheat due to prolonged fire. The player can carry a total of eight grenades to dislodge and disrupt enemies. A new ability found in Halo 2 is the ability to board enemy vehicles that are near the player and traveling at low speeds. The player or AI latches onto the vehicle and forcibly ejects the other driver from the vehicle.
Campaign
The game's "Campaign" mode offers options for both single-player and cooperative multiplayer participation. In campaign mode, the player must complete a series of levels that encompass Halo 2's storyline. These levels alternate between the Master Chief and a Covenant Elite called the Arbiter, who occupy diametrically opposed roles in the story's conflict. Aside from variations in storyline, the Arbiter differs from Master Chief only in that his armor lacks a flashlight; instead, it is equipped with a short duration rechargeable form of active camouflage that disappears when the player attacks or takes damage.
There are four levels of difficulty in campaign mode: Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary. An increase in difficulty will result in an increase in the number, rank, health, damage, and accuracy of enemies; a reduction of duration and an increase in recharge time for the Arbiter's active camouflage; a decrease in the player's health and shields; and occasional changes in dialogue.
There is hidden content within the game, including easter eggs, messages, hidden objects, and weapons. The most well-known of the hidden content are the skulls hidden on every level. The skulls, which can be picked up like a weapon, are located in hard-to-reach places. Many are exclusive to the Legendary mode of difficulty. Once activated, each skull has a specific effect on gameplay. For example, the "Sputnik" skull found on the Quarantine Zone level alters the mass of objects in the game; thus resulting in explosions being able to launch these objects across larger distances. Skull effects can be combined to provide various new levels of difficulty and/or novelty.
Multiplayer
Unlike its predecessor, Halo 2 allows players to compete with each other via Xbox Live, in addition to support for split-screen and system link multiplayer. Halo 2's multiplayer mode offers changes from earlier online first-person shooters. Traditionally, one player sets his or her computer or console up as a game server or host, specifying the game type, map, and configuring other settings. The game software then uses a service such as GameSpy to advertise the game to the world at large; other players choose which game to join based upon criteria such as the map and game options each host is offering, as well as the ping times they are able to receive. In Halo 2, however, Xbox Live players do not choose to host public games, and they do not specify individual maps and options to search for. Instead, players select playlists that are geared to different styles of play. For fairness and balance reasons, certain gameplay aspects from the campaign mode are disabled or missing in multiplayer; for example, the Fuel Rod weapon is missing from vehicles and maps.
Technical lead designer, Chris Butcher, commented on the development of Halo 2's multiplayer in Edge, a British gaming magazine, in January 2007. Responding to a rash of subsequent news articles, Butcher clarified his position on Halo 2 multiplayer. He noted his original intent with the game, but he also reiterated disappointment. "For Halo 2 we had our sights set very high on networking," Butcher said. "We thought about the great LAN parties you can have with Halo 1 and decided to try to recreate that awesome experience of having all your buddies over to play, but using Xbox Live instead of having to lug consoles and televisions around. Going from having no Internet multiplayer to developing a completely new online model was a big challenge to tackle all at once, and as a result we had to leave a lot of things undone in order to meet the ship date commitment that we made to our fans."
Synopsis
Setting
Halo 2 takes place in a futuristic science fiction setting, where humans, under the auspices of the United Nations Space Command or UNSC, have developed faster-than-light slipspace travel and colonized numerous worlds. According to the game's backstory, the outer colony world of Harvest was decimated by a collective of alien races known as the Covenant in 2525. Declaring humanity an affront to their gods, the Forerunners, the Covenant begin to systemically obliterate the humans with their superior technology. After the human bastion at the planet Reach is destroyed, a single ship, The Pillar of Autumn, follows protocol and initiates a random slipspace jump to lead the Covenant away from Earth. The crew discovers a Forerunner ringworld called Halo. Leading a guerilla insurgency on the ring's surface, the humans discover that the rings are weapons of last resort built to contain a terrifying parasite called the Flood. The human super-soldier Master Chief and his AI companion Cortana learn from Halo's AI, 343 Guilty Spark, that activation of the Halos will prevent the spread of the Flood by destroying all sentient life the parasite subsists on in the galaxy. Instead, the Master Chief evades Spark and his robots and detonates the Pillar of Autumn's engines, destroying the ring and preventing the escape of the Flood. The Master Chief, Cortana, and a handful of survivors race back to Earth to warn of an impending invasion by Covenant forces.
Plot
Taking place shortly after the events of the novel Halo: First Strike, Halo 2 opens with the trial of an Elite commander aboard the Covenant's mobile city of High Charity. The Elite is stripped of his rank and branded a heretic for failing to stop the humans from destroying Halo. It is revealed that the Covenant's interest in Halo lies in the religious belief that the activation of the rings would bring about a "Great Journey", sweeping loyal Covenant to salvation. At the same time as the Elite Commander is tortured by Tartarus, the Chieftain of the Brutes, the Master Chief and Sergeant Avery Johnson are commended for their actions at Halo during a recognition ceremony aboard a coilgun platform orbiting Earth. Lord Hood awards the soldiers alongside Commander Miranda Keyes, who accepts a medal on behalf of her deceased father, Captain Jacob Keyes.
Shortly after the commencement of the ceremony, a Covenant fleet appears outside Earth's defensive perimeter. While the UNSC manages to repel most of the surprisingly small fleet, a single Covenant cruiser carrying an important member of the Covenant hierarchy, the High Prophet of Regret, flies through the orbital platforms to the city of New Mombasa, Kenya. The Master Chief clears the city of Covenant; with his fleet destroyed, Regret makes a hasty slipspace jump, and Keyes, Johnson, Cortana and the Master Chief follow aboard the ship In Amber Clad just as the slipspace rupture destroys much of the city. The crew exits slipspace to discover another Halo installation; realizing the danger the ring presents, the Master Chief is sent to kill Regret while Keyes and Johnson find Halo's key to activation, the Index.
Meanwhile, the disgraced Covenant commander is presented before the Prophet Hierarchs, who acknowledge that though the destruction of Halo was his fault, he is no heretic. The Prophets offer him the honored position of Arbiter so that he can continue to fight. On his first mission to kill a heretic, the Arbiter discovers 343 Guilty Spark, who the Covenant view as "oracles". Responding to Regret's distress call, High Charity and the Covenant fleet arrive at the new Halo, Installation 05, but not before Master Chief kills the Prophet. Bombarded from space, the Chief falls into a lake and is rescued by a mysterious tentacled creature.
The death of Regret sows seeds of discord among the races of the Covenant, as the Brutes are given the Elite's traditional job of protecting the Hierarchs. The Arbiter is sent to find Halo's Index and captures Johnson and Keyes before being confronted by Tartarus. The Brute reveals that the Prophets have ordered the annihilation of the Elites, and sends the Arbiter falling down a deep chasm. The Arbiter is saved by the tentacled creature and meets the Master Chief in the bowels of the installation. The creature, Gravemind, is the leader of the Flood on Installation 05. Gravemind reveals to the Arbiter that the Great Journey would destroy Flood, humans, and Covenant together. Gravemind sends the Arbiter and Master Chief to different places to stop Halo's activation. The Master Chief is teleported to High Charity, where a civil war has broken out among the Covenant; In Amber Clad crashes into the city, and Cortana realizes that Gravemind used them as a distraction to infest In Amber Clad and spread the Flood. As the parasite overruns the city, the Master Chief follows the Prophet of Truth aboard a Forerunner ship leaving the city; Cortana remains behind to destroy High Charity and Halo if Tartarus succeeds in activating the ring.
The Arbiter is sent to the surface of Halo, where he rallies his allies to assault the Brute's position. With the help of Johnson, he confronts Tartarus in Halo's control room. When the Arbiter tries to convince Tartarus that the Prophets have betrayed them both, Tartarus angrily activates the ring, and a battle ensues. The Arbiter and Johnson manage to kill Tartarus while Keyes removes the Index. Instead of shutting down the ring entirely, the unexpected shutdown of the ring triggers a system-wide failsafe, putting Installation 05 and all the other rings on standby for activation from a remote location, which Guilty Spark refers to as "the Ark". As Truth's ship arrives amidst a raging battle on Earth, Hood asks the Master Chief what he is doing aboard the ship. The Chief replies he is "finishing this fight". In a post-credits scene, Gravemind is seen arriving on High Charity, where Cortana agrees to answer the Flood intelligence's questions.