Halo OST

Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori

Music / Epic

I think almost everyone has heard of Halo, so I’ll keep it short.

Halo is the video game series conceived and designed to launch the X-box into the big video game world – behind the X-Box, Microsoft.

Halo was not to be missed.
This game had to be a landmark.
It did.
It still is.

The launch of the beta version of Halo Infinite allows us to see very quickly how much this game was and still is a phenomenon.

Until you’ve played Halo, you probably think it’s still a big bully game about killing everyone.

Okay – that’s not entirely wrong. In fact, it’s often accurate.
But – it’s called an epic dimension.

It’s not killing for the sake of killing – the player – you – the fighting Spartan – find yourself embroiled in a mission where you don’t immediately understand the objective – except that everything goes wrong.

In front of you, the little humans, a whole alliance of different alien species : the Covenants.
In front of everyone, you and them, “things” – rings – that are huge living places – and things that you first identify as artificial intelligences that ended up being smart enough to become completely neurotic – from boredom and loneliness.

Still a little further on, the most terrible enemy that ever crossed a human imagination, the Flood.

He’s a nightmare enemy – and I don’t have to say more about him, you have to have met the Flood to understand the absolutely terrible dimension of Halo, which is not just a fighting game against bad guys or morons or both aliens.
Which is not just a warning about what artificial intelligence can become.

Halo doesn’t just take us through an epic story – but pushes into the classics of true tragedy, the old-fashioned beauty imagined by the old Greeks.

That, very briefly, is the story – and it’s a story that’s definitely worth experiencing as a player.

But Halo is not a tragedy – it’s a video game.
So, to the story, to the alien characters – & some of whom are quite entertaining – they had to add the music.

And the music in Halo… so the music in Halo, even if you haven’t played it, is amazing.
And when you do play, it’s terrible.

It adapts to your moments of play – it will be terrifying or uplifting – it will go up or down – it will make you understand that finally, unlike the beautiful scenery in which you feel good and calm, finally, nothing is going well – or more exactly; in 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 seconds, it’s all over and everything goes very very bad.

The music was composed by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori for Bungie – and frankly, how can you dream of Altair without having the great epic moments of their music on stage?

Because the ignorant can always bring back their opinions on the video game and its imbecility, the fact remains that Halo’s music leaves room for Gregorian chants (in Fable too, by the way), for opera scores, and for great instrumental orchestras :

So let’s let the ignorant ignore and especially let’s not forget that there are in our century immense composers with a huge and conquered public.

& the audience is happy to make their own the music they love and offer a variation of it – with a real work behind all this love for the game and its music :

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Featured Image : from Halo Infinite – Halo : by Bungie for X-box Games Studios.