Published August 23, 2007

It is the year 2552. Humanity has long been at war with the terrifying alien civilization that collectively calls itself The Covenant. This monstrous conglomerate of warlike species sees Humanity as a form of heresy against their religion—a religion based in the single-minded belief that a Great Journey awaits its faithful and that this Journey can be embarked upon by activating an array of vast, ring-like artifacts scattered throughout the Galaxy.

These vast, terraformed rings are called Halos and have been long-abandoned by their mysterious and long-vanished creators, The Forerunners.

You are humanity's last hope.

The war with the Covenant has reduced humanity to ragged tatters. A once-sprawling network of planets is now almost entirely destroyed. Human populations have been decimated and world after world reduced to lifeless rock.

Enter Master Chief
This conflict, terrible and destructive though it is, has been complicated and compounded by a series of cascading events. One of these artificial worlds, these Halos, was discovered and subsequently destroyed by human forces, led by Spartan 117—the Master Chief—the last fighting member of the legendary Spartan II military program and humanity's last, best hope.

A conflict at a second Halo installation became a galaxy-spanning conflagration, as civil war erupted within the Covenant, driven by revelations that the Covenant leadership, The Prophets, had been deliberately deceiving its populace for millennia.

Amazing environments combine with a compelling story.

In truth, these Halos would not take the Covenant on a Great Journey, but rather eradicate all sentient life in the Galaxy— created by the Forerunners as weapons of last resort against the most terrifying menace the Galaxy has ever known—and a menace the deluded Covenant has reawakened for the second time in a hundred thousand years. That creeping horror will engulf the Galaxy unless some way can be found to stop it once and for all.

The Flood
That horror is the Flood—a sentient, all-consuming parasite that makes monstrous puppets of those it kills and will not stop until every last thinking creature is absorbed into its ferociously intelligent plan.

The second Halo has been activated, putting all of the remaining installations in a dangerous state of emergency standby—they are primed to fire. Worse still, the Covenant has discovered the long-hidden location of Earth and crushed almost all human resistance, as it seeks vital clues to the nature of the Halo array—some of which may have been hidden under our very feet for untold millennia.

Use futuristic weapons and vehicles.

Even with our newfound allies, the Elites, and the leadership of their valiant and honorable leader, The Arbiter, we are still hopelessly outnumbered, as the Prophets set their wills against us—and forces greater than the Covenant, wheel malevolently into place.

As the Master Chief hurtles Earthward in a Forerunner spacecraft, he may be our last chance to stop the Covenant, the Flood and the ticking time bomb that is the Halo network, before every last soul in the Galaxy is destroyed. The stakes have never been higher. It's time to finish the fight.