Audio Included

The sounds of Halo are arguably just as infectious as the other sensory elements the series offers. When someone mentions the word Halo, in context of video games or otherwise, I do instantly envision Master Chief’s right hand gripping a pistol, Cortana, or even the swirling blue menus of matchmaking. I am, however, also quickly enveloped in the audio of the series: the panicked screams of a grunt, the commanding monotone of our beloved protagonist, and most importantly the grand film-like score. Halo’s music is burned in my mind as vividly and proudly as any other aspect of the game’s media, and that’s no small feat. The soundtrack is truly as much a part of the Halo experience as the Battle Rifle.

Much of my Halo days were spent in Halo 3, and to my friends’ dismay, I regard that as the perfect entry in Bungie’s flagship trilogy. I appreciate that Halo 2 revolutionized multiplayer and laid the framework for hundreds of knockoffs but it was Halo 3 that finally provided the epic, film-like experience that the music had always conjured dating back to the release of Combat Evolved. For me, it was payoff six years in the making, and in some ways it was a reaffirmation in video games for a then jaded 20 year old. The sense of wonderment I’d always known watching Star Wars as a child was showing itself again thanks to an Xbox and a controller--and a Sony stereo sound system that I probably shouldn’t have paid so much for.

As a child I remember burying myself in Tachyon: The Fringe, a space adventure game where you play a freelance pilot (voiced by Bruce Campbell) while participating in copious dog fights, exploration, and ship-upgrading. It was wholly awesome but that’s really all I remember about the game, save for it’s goofy MIDI orchestral soundtrack. What I do fondly recall is booting up Window’s Media Player before launching the game, pulling up Dave Matthew’s Band Everyday (set to repeat, no less) and letting it serve as the soundtrack to Tachyon. Now, in my mind the two works are inseparable. I can’t think of one without thinking of the other. For me, Halo’s soundtrack accomplishes the same thing for its corresponding game. One serves the other perfectly and required no interference on my end.

In Tachyon, Bruce Campbell’s often satirical take on voice acting provided just the right foreground for Dave Matthew’s absurd and brilliant pop. Halo, however is a much different animal. The game is, in a word, epic. The sprawling vista’s of Halo: Combat Evolved remain memorable and are noted as being revolutionary for their antithesis take on the first person shooter setting. Everything is grand about the game. Perhaps this is why the infamous celestial choir feels just right welcoming us in the Start Menu.

Halo, a word with celestial significance, seems to have very directly inspired the game’s music. If we look hundreds of years back into the history of written music, we’ll eventually hit an era known solely for a form of music called “Gregorian Chant”. Gregorian Chant is the product of the 14th Century Roman Catholic Church, a form of music designed to serve as part of what the church calls Mass, a ritual used to “dispense divine life to the church”. A Gregorian composition has no chordal accompaniment which meant the pieces have no harmony and were comprised of single, unison melodies. It’s this distinction that makes the Gregorian Chant memorable, different, and important on the timeline of written musical compositions. Halo’s most notable opening theme follows these same principles to great effect, commanding an infectious sense of weight both physical and spiritual. At the time, arguably, the experience was unparalleled.

As mentioned, Halo would go on to influence game design for years to come as developers mimicked the mechanics that made it comfortable to fire a weapon on a console. I however would submit the most influential bit of Halo is it’s macro-level production. Would Sony’s Uncharted series be what it is today without Halo paving the way for what it means to be a AAA franchise. Of course, with technological improvements, we would see technique changes over the years - much of the reason we’d never seen grand productions in gaming was due to hardware limitations. Halo however, took advantage of a new platform and the mystique that came with it. Bungie conquered the opportunity to capitalize on the very positive media coverage of Microsoft’s new machine. At the time, it didn’t only feel like an expected progression in hardware, but a new era in the still young industry.Halo, thanks to to all it’s components, music included, delivered on that feeling of “state-of-the-art” tech and did so gracefully.

It is fascinating, no matter your interest in the arts, when a work comes together so well. For instance, I have rather unintelligible taste in movies (mostly because I simply tend not to be emotionally captured by many of them) but I find it’s because I’m often turned off by cookie-cutter audio work. I imagine this isn’t a sentiment shared by the general population - not everyone is a tenured audio engineer obsessed with the minutia of composition, arranging, and recording. But the power of a work of art that is truly fleshed out is irresistible. Video games are multimedia experiences. The developers and publishers that forget that tend to get reminded when review scores come in. The folks that fully appreciate that reality tend to be the one’s rewarded come Holiday shopping season. I recall (critical and personal) reviews of Sunset Overdrive and how the soundtrack left many folk wishing Xbox still had the “supply your own soundtrack” feature their 2001 Model made famous. For some, this took away from the game’s experience which means that, say, the animators who did a bang-up job on their portion of the game, were punished thanks to an oversight in a different department.

On editorial review sites, like Shacknews, we preview, discuss, and review video games using primarily words and pictures. This is a technological limitation, of course, as there isn’t yet an unobtrusive (or necessarily legal) way to include a game’s soundtrack and sound effects alongside an editorial work. Perhaps, though, listening to Halo’s now infamous tribal drums would adequately whet our whistle while we read a preview of the upcoming Halo: Guardians. Music in gaming is under appreciated, not in the sense that people don’t pay attention to it, but in the sense that when a game is successful, credit is not always appropriately distributed to the aural portions of the work. The effects of good audio design, both musical and effects, are truly intangible. If you’re thinking about how well it works (in the moment) then it’s probably not working as well as you think. When you’re caught off guard, enveloped in the experience on your television or monitor, and captured in the game’s virtual reality you’re experiencing something unique, uncommon, and special. This is the triumph of Halo: a blockbuster franchise that truly defined the medium by investing equally in both visual and audio production.