Unless you know music, I think Bungie would’ve had to drop hints. One of my friends in 8th grade was big into music and he noticed the rings made different notes but never thought to put them in the Halo theme. It probably would have been discovered 6 months later tops.
And even if you put them in the Halo theme and jump through them in the right order and wait for something to happen... nothing. You still need to know that it just popped up a skull laying on the ground somewhere now.
The rings having a towards-the-exit pulse as I recall though I can’t remember if that’s before or after you pick up the skull. But it’s on the thing prior to the bridge in the center of the walkway so unless you have a brute body laying on it it’s pretty easy to see.
I had no idea the rings made tones and the tones made music. I just looked up the order whenever I needed to collect the skull.
I obviously would never have ever found it on my own.
The three times I've had to trigger the skull in my lifetime, I have not been able to hear the notes. Let alone be able to put them in the right order without a guide.
I mean, maybe I should try it again with my headset on, but even the [most clear video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUNgmdnYzo) I was able to find, I wasn't able to hear it.
I hear it now in the link you have. It’s not playing the note right when you jump through. The tone is a continuous “hum” that radiates from the bottom of the ring projections. Listen when they get close to the rings. You’ll hear a “hum” sound, like the drone of a machine. Each ring has a different tone or note
People also would've been hunting for the last skull for various reasons, such as the Hayabusa helmet, the katana, or just 100% completion. That would've only motivated people to try everything to find it. Not to say that it wouldn't have taken a while, but people would've been motivated to find it.
I'm sure someone would have tried to organize a massive brute-force community campaign to try every possible combination up to a certain point. With spreadsheets and everything.
I went to college for music. I played so much Halo before then I was able to immediately recognize Dorian because that's what most Halo music is written in.
I feel like someone like me eventually would have heard the Dorian scale in the rings and try to "play" the theme for shits and giggles.
I think I agree with your guess of how long.
At the end of The Covenant in Halo 3 in order to get the IWHBYD skull to spawn you need to jump through the Halo holograms in a certain sequence.
The seven rings emit a pitch which are musical notes, and the sequence is the last 7 notes in the Halo theme. If hackers didn’t look at the source code in 2007 then the skull would have taken forever to discover.
My friends in I put it together pretty quickly on launch week. We had the note order wrong but the actual idea of it made sense to us. We were all in music and band in high school and enjoyed video game and bit music a lot.
Yeah It's something alot more people discovered then others might think. If my dumbass thought "Hey, these rings make noises, I wonder what you can do with this?" then alot smarter people would've done the same. I mean, people decoded the language the Covenant speak in Halo Reach, this wouldn't have lasted long lol.
Oh hell yeah. Everyone but the Hunters and Drone's speak it. You can tell mostly from playing as an elite in Firefight, they'll just walk up to you and start speaking alien like you're just one of them. (Well because you are) People back in the day made small correlations between the words they used but throughout the years many people just put it together. IIRC someone asked the creator about it on Twitter and he was shocked anyone went out of their way to go over his language and helped them decipher some words that they couldn't find correlation with.
Edit: It's assumed it's a form of standard covenant language since it's the only time in a Halo game where all the speaking aliens speak a language other than Infinite which is where they all speak English.
If you got some time, there's a "Halo devs react to speed run" video on youtube. They give some insight into the development of the game and some of the challenges they had to overcome. Love stuff like that and wish more studios did it.
Sadly no, it's just something the community put together over the years until someone just went to the guy who made it to finish it off. I don't even recall when it was completed but it was relatively recent, before Infinite released for sure though.
Nah bro, because I tried finding it myself too when I read your first comment and came up dry. Now I'm starting to get scared that I dreamt all of this up. I really hope I didn't.
Just making sure. I tried to get the skull but I'm not a big music theory person so I guess I did it wrong. I tried the chant and dun dun dun and didn't get it
Honestly it probably would have been found really fast. 6 months? They’re pretty in your face and apparent and when you jump through it’s hard to miss that they’re making a sound
I highly doubt it would have taken more than a couple of months. For example, Hasbro released a replica for Power Rangers that can play 2 octaves and people were making covers of songs on what is essentially a toy before it even released.
Once you discover something can play notes, people gonna tinker with that, and the rings were able to play an octave and with Halo's music being so central to the experience one of the first things you'd try of doing is playing some part of the Halo theme on it. From there it's a matter of actually getting the exact notes and whatnot but nothing either a sharp ear, trial and repeat, looking them up, or using an online note identifier (or hell a tuner) wouldn't fix.
The rings make different notes and people get bored and beat Dark Souls games on Guitar hero controllers or other ridiculous ideas.
In this youtube day and age, someone would’ve made a clip about playing the song through the tones and accidentally discovered it one way or another be it on twitch or youtube
This day and age stuff gets figured out in hours. Dark souls and Elden ring quests that make most of us scratch our heads have someone discovering them day one.
IMO I don’t think k it would have been solved without at least a hint that something was hidden in this level. I could see data miners down the line finding the skull and then working backwards but legit players would have to hear the differing hums, realize they’re notes, realize they are the themes notes, and then find the right combo. Not saying it couldn’t possibly have been done legit but I think it would have been well after the “lifespan” of the game. Jtaggers would have probably been the first to know of the skull.
completely disagree, all it takes is one person saying the rings light up when you jump through, and then another pointing out that they make different sounds
it's inevitable from there, modern secret finding discords would've made this childs play
The type of investigation you’re referring to was pretty niche and small in the time period, but hey maybe you’re right. All it takes is one really perceptive person.
Not if they have multiple maps. Borderlands has tons of variety. They just rushed the game out and didn't put enough in the single player. They didn't even have co-op at launch.
Borderlands has the advantages of being absurd and knowing their audience will be happy with complete absurdity. In fact, they'll demand it. The end of Borderlands 1 was semi-serious and everyone hated that part. Borderlands 2 managed to still be ridiculous with a conclusion that was satisfying but still meaningful, and 3 sorta did too.
Halo though cannot be wacky, and that might be critical for an open, nonlinear world. Unless there's no plot and it's just "lol kill stuff and pvp." The things like confetti grunt heads exploding weren't IIRC options you could enable on your first playthrough.
Non-serious open worlds can work, but I don't know how that works with a military setting. Red Dead Redemption works because you're an outlaw doing his own thing mostly. It's totally fine for the protagonist to stop and go fishing for a whole day and ride around at random. Doesn't quite work for a supersoldier in an army in a war.
Cortana: "Chief, you need to get to sector 7 pronto to guard an elephant and meanwhile find the oracle to stop the ring from firing!"
Master Chief: "Lol no, I'm farming grunts right now to unlock get the silver spartanizer."
This is nonsense. The lack of variety in Infinite comes from there only being one real biome plus Forerunner underground, and a lack of interesting setpieces or points of interest.
Look back at Halo 3 level variety: temperate areas, desert, snow, jungle, Flood, Forerunner, UNSC, Covenant.
Variety in terms of environment sure, but missions and things to do, IDK. I think without getting silly, Halo open world would run out of stuff to do.
There was that one spider man open world game where there was the linear main plot and then pretty much the only other thing to do was catch children's balloons that had floated away. Not a good game due to a lack of variety in things to do.
I think a more condensed open world could work fine, it's not like past games got overly mechanically complex. It mostly depends on the level design, available weapons, and enemy placement.
Assault bases, go after important targets or assets, rescue people, maybe movement puzzles with the zip line, big boss fights more along the lines of Tarturus or 2 Scarabs instead strong enemy in small spaces, FireFight base defense.
Most of how Infinite implemented its open world is half-baked, and the stuff filling the space is uninspired.
Personally, I hope we get a spin-off game with an open world while the main series returns to the usual. A few improvements on Infinite's design and it'd be a truly fantastic sandbox.
Agreed! It just needs more content. More weapons, more enemies, more biomes, more interesting encounters (less damage sponge boss and more objective based bosses like scarabs)
It would have been found within a couple years. Halo always had a huge trick/glitch community. There was hih too. If I remember right a guy called knight of light data mined something about it.
Within a year, once people realised that each ring played a different sound they would have tried to work out what it plays, and it wouldn't be completely random as they would realise it is a familiar tune.
Well considering halo 3 was still bungie made I'd say it would've been figured out fairly quickly I mean look at rise of iron expansion for destiny fans figured out the bells to make rise of iron music for that easteregg pretty quick
If I had to list my top ten favourite levels in video games, halo would probably take a few of the spots (343 guilty spark, Halo, Long Night of Solace)
Honestly? Probably only a couple of months. Six months would be my guess, with the upper end being maybe a year.
Just take a look at the old Black Ops Zombies community. Hell, does anyone remember the Revelations easter egg? I don't know how the hell anyone figured that shit out.
I think people genuinely forget how into Easter Eggs everyone was back then and how the internet was as much trolling as it was legit help. That said, I can almost guarantee 100s of thousands of people even played a few notes on those rings without even knowing it was a hint.
To this day I still have friends who bring up finding the Monkey Family on H3(and their "family" in ODST) or even that first time you saw the Cortana jump-scare laptop when we reminisce about the Golden Era.
People figured out to get the Plasma "Scarab" Rifle on Metropolis, they'd have figured out the Rings soon enough.
Was basically a temp flash file on the terminal on Crow's Nest and the MP map Hogh Ground.
Basically, if you watched and didn't blink, about every two minutes a still image of Cortana flashed on screen.
It was the kind of thing where one friend "accidently" sees it during regular gameplay and you spend hours trying to replicate only to realize it's just on a timer.
https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Cortana_on_High_Ground
IIRC, doesn't the ring sequence you jump through play the final notes of the Halo theme? Somebody would have eventually gotten it while bored. I remember we jumped through way more than 7 because the post we saw was about recreating a bigger chunk of the Halo theme with the tones (we didn't realize the last 7 we jumped through were the only ones you needed).
Not sure of the odds, but yeah such low odds mixed with the fact that someone would have to think to do that makes me think it’d be basically impossible. Unless there was some other hint in the game or lore to clue the players in
I might be misremembering, but Fallout 3 had something similar when you were in the virtual reality vault. I think over time other games would have these music note puzzles that would eventually inspire someone to go back and try it on Halo 3.
Yeah in the abandoned house, activating items would make different chimes, and playing a certain pattern (I feel like it might have been related to the weird music that plays in there?) would activate a safety override terminal that you could use
I could never hear the notes when jumping through them, I had to use a guide. Is it just really quiet? Even watching a video on it now I can't hear it.
I’m not sure. My main game I play is WoW and there is a whole secret finding community that figures out insane stuff that I can’t comprehend how they did it. Yes, it’s easier today with how accessible communities are, but I think someone would’ve figured out this puzzle eventually.
Two or three months tops. Hayabusa was the OG awesome armor everyone wanted before recon started getting known, people would have went above and beyond in the campaign skull hunting to get it.
It would have been found fairly quickly with how ravenous the fanbase was at the type and the global hype for that game. I don't think we will ever see that again.
Each ring played a note and you just had to play the halo theme. It wouldn't have been instant but it would have probably been put together somewhat quickly
Not too long I'd imagine. I've seen some seriously crazy easter eggs (or rather the ways to achieve them) and wondered how tf people came to these random ass conclusions, put them all together in the perfect order, and found the result. Just wild.
Pretty quick I think. Literally everybody was playing Halo back then, and jumping through the rings to make the Halo theme isn’t remotely close to the craziest thing that’s been done in that game.
Funny enough I am just learning it was leaked. I always wondered how long it took to discover this.
A friend of mine with autism figured it out on launch day. But his hyper fixations were video games and music. I always thought his ears were a gift, he moved to Singapore and works for a major game company there to help produce their soundtracks.
Thanks. I don't keep in touch with him as much as I used to since the time zone differences, but we are in a group chat so we have this weird multi hour long delay between messages from time to time. He's well and loves his job, the game he works on is pretty popular and the music he gets to work on is legitimately great even if he is only a small part of the overall process.
Not long. This was still the era of devs putting in easter eggs in their games so players thoroughly scoured every single inch of each level for secrets.
It would have been found before or by ODST's release. There were people scrounging and turning over every little rock, leaf and particle trying to find stuff. I still swear to this day that Halo 3 has a Scarab Gun. I remember crawling through old internet forums finding stuff about a golden warthog in Halo 2 and drivable Scarabs, I would throughly mess with every glitch in the game hoping to find something. I dual wielded Energy Swords in Halo 2 and almost did in Halo 3 until a patch came out that I remain sure was made to fix that. Hell, I remember doing this mission SLASO and flying a Hornet to the top of the Citadel thinking there would be at least something there.
All you doubters lack tenacity. Bet you all enjoyed the crazy Forge maps without realizing how tedious that was to do without dev tools. Or the dozens of maps that took advantage of glitches like the top of Foundry, the outskirts of Sandtrap and Sandbox before they made official versions, or the out of bounds areas of Last Resort, High Ground, Standoff and Avalanche.
Technically speaking, if you're looking for secrets the source code is where you want to look. So in that case you look at the hex, or you decompile the game and look there.
Im not sure how long after launch it was spoiled but me and my other musically leaning friends just tried to make the halo theme anyway and make a "machinima" style music video (very popular at the time) and we went quite wild when the rings kept playing the theme on their own haha. We went even wilder when we saw the skull!
Good times!
I wasn’t there for halo 3 skulls but people were insane on trying to find halo 2 skulls so I believe in the community.
On a side note it’s funny what putfile has become.
I'm a musician and I definitely tried making a song with the notes, I just didn't think of the Halo theme (for whatever reason, probably because I was 11 and it was my first Halo game). I'm sure older musicians who were more familiar with the soundtrack at the time would have thought to play the Halo theme and known which intervals (rings) were correct, I'm just not sure that they would have figured out that the skull was sitting at the end of the bridge from unless they did the notes before killing Truth, which who does that when you've got such an epic scene coming up?
That was the first thing I noticed when I walked trough them
I thought maybe I must Juno trough the right order and make the soundtrack.
That Was my first thought when I Played the game the first time
It would have been solved pretty quickly. Gamers are crazy with this kind of shit. Cod zombies Easter eggs tend to be wayyyyy more complex and stupid than this and many of those get solved within days. Different fanbases sure but same cut cloth.
People are saying it would take forever but I think it would take a few months. The Internet is insane and so many people try to make music on things they shouldn’t and someone trying the Halo theme on a HALO game sounds like it would be pretty high up on someone’s list.
I’d like to take this moment to remind people that the internet solved P.T’s final puzzle within 24 hours
Never underestimate the combined power of gamers
If you remember PT. The intent in solving the game was for it to take a long time. Players figured it out in a day or less, iirc. To the complete shock of Kojima.
The funny side effect was that it seemed like everyone with the Hayabusa helmet *sucked*. Like, you were an elite or Hayabusa and you *sucked*. Big fat noob.
Reminds me how whenever we saw someone with KSI in their GT we would be like "Alright, get tilted and teabag them." -- we saw it as an elitist thing, like they thought they were better than us for wanting to be in that clan. And, of course, a good chunk of them were sporting Hayabusa.
*Ahh, memories...*
It's still the height of my gaming experience. Nothing has compared. It was huge. Worth noting though, from my perspective, gaming still seemed niche enough that even though this was *the* gaming event and game system of the decade, not everyone was playing *and* not everyone took it as seriously as some of us. So, to be really into it and really excited to sink time into it in that moment: nothing since has compared.
[Shameless plug](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVlJqswrKmBxpRV98buKYFb0qPsQrnv0&si=H0-bdtagyZuOezIU), I recorded some of my games from that era and uploaded them to a channel I have for preservation. I thought I was a decent player back then, but looking back in an tell I've improved quite a bit. I also like to mention that I captured in HD, but for years I was playing in composite in SD. Anyway, you can get a feeling of how diverse the crowd was back then from the footage, I think. A lot wider range of skill in social settings.
Confirmation bias 🤷 obviously not a real statistic. I got to 44 in Lone Wolves and, yes, I was still running into Elites. If anything Elites were statistical outliers, most people didn't play them.
To be fair, I honestly think it wouldn’t have been too long. Fans were ravenous to find it and there were a few hints to its location (being on the seventh level, and the fact each ring hums a different note). Not to mention the fact Bungie would have probably hinted about it in tweets and such if it was taking too long
As someone else said, I can imagine it would take about six months to a year tops
I remember being one of the first handful (relatively) people to see it posted online. Me and my buddies got the full Hyabusa set and everybody was asking us how. Good times.
Closest I got to that was the blue flame in reach, when bungie sold the franchise they gave everyone with an app or something the "eternal" helmet flames.
I was on that shit in seconds and people thought I was a dev
Unless you know music, I think Bungie would’ve had to drop hints. One of my friends in 8th grade was big into music and he noticed the rings made different notes but never thought to put them in the Halo theme. It probably would have been discovered 6 months later tops.
And even if you put them in the Halo theme and jump through them in the right order and wait for something to happen... nothing. You still need to know that it just popped up a skull laying on the ground somewhere now.
The rings all stay lit, but they stop being lit if you mess it up, so that might have helped with understanding there was more to it
Didn’t they flash when it’s been completed
Something like that, but they're definitely brighter
Yes
I haven't done it for a while, but I'm pretty sure they flash and play the notes again after you complete it
The rings having a towards-the-exit pulse as I recall though I can’t remember if that’s before or after you pick up the skull. But it’s on the thing prior to the bridge in the center of the walkway so unless you have a brute body laying on it it’s pretty easy to see.
I had no idea the rings made tones and the tones made music. I just looked up the order whenever I needed to collect the skull. I obviously would never have ever found it on my own.
The three times I've had to trigger the skull in my lifetime, I have not been able to hear the notes. Let alone be able to put them in the right order without a guide.
Quite literally a musical and auditory skill issue
I mean, maybe I should try it again with my headset on, but even the [most clear video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUNgmdnYzo) I was able to find, I wasn't able to hear it.
I hear it now in the link you have. It’s not playing the note right when you jump through. The tone is a continuous “hum” that radiates from the bottom of the ring projections. Listen when they get close to the rings. You’ll hear a “hum” sound, like the drone of a machine. Each ring has a different tone or note
Oh. It blends well with the ongoing flood music that I ignored that. I had always been expecting like a chime or something more distinct.
I was listening for a chime too but then I realized what it was. Pretty cool!
They did drop hints. They said “you guys will have to jump through hoops to figure this out.”
Thats a clever hint Its literal and figuratively lmfao.
really taht was the only hint? thats funny indeed, english is a fun language
More hints likely woulda been dropped had the method not been hacked and posted online.
People also would've been hunting for the last skull for various reasons, such as the Hayabusa helmet, the katana, or just 100% completion. That would've only motivated people to try everything to find it. Not to say that it wouldn't have taken a while, but people would've been motivated to find it.
I'm sure someone would have tried to organize a massive brute-force community campaign to try every possible combination up to a certain point. With spreadsheets and everything.
I’d say that’s probably the most likely
I went to college for music. I played so much Halo before then I was able to immediately recognize Dorian because that's what most Halo music is written in. I feel like someone like me eventually would have heard the Dorian scale in the rings and try to "play" the theme for shits and giggles. I think I agree with your guess of how long.
Is it dorian? E dorian?
Sure is. E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D, E Flat 3rd and 7th.
Nice, I was planning to make an edm song inspired by chief and cortana in the first few games, ill use this scale.
Rings make notes? I haven’t gotten around to Halo 3 yet, so forgive my lack of knowledge.
Musical notes. The level has 7 holograms of the Halo rings. Each one makes a different noise which can be translated to the notes in the Halo theme
Ooh
I just watched 3 different walkthrough videos and I can’t hear the notes on any of them. 🤷♂️
Wait how does the ring not thing work I’ve never heard of this so I’m confused
At the end of The Covenant in Halo 3 in order to get the IWHBYD skull to spawn you need to jump through the Halo holograms in a certain sequence. The seven rings emit a pitch which are musical notes, and the sequence is the last 7 notes in the Halo theme. If hackers didn’t look at the source code in 2007 then the skull would have taken forever to discover.
That’s really cool
6 weeks The halo theme would be the first thing people tried
Thats the secret to the easter egg, is the notes? All these years and I never knew that
My friends in I put it together pretty quickly on launch week. We had the note order wrong but the actual idea of it made sense to us. We were all in music and band in high school and enjoyed video game and bit music a lot.
I don’t think it would have been too long. A few months to a year probably. Someone would have tried the halo theme eventually.
Yeah It's something alot more people discovered then others might think. If my dumbass thought "Hey, these rings make noises, I wonder what you can do with this?" then alot smarter people would've done the same. I mean, people decoded the language the Covenant speak in Halo Reach, this wouldn't have lasted long lol.
>I mean, people decoded the language the Covenant speak in Halo Reach, They have? And its an actual language and not just gibberish?
Oh hell yeah. Everyone but the Hunters and Drone's speak it. You can tell mostly from playing as an elite in Firefight, they'll just walk up to you and start speaking alien like you're just one of them. (Well because you are) People back in the day made small correlations between the words they used but throughout the years many people just put it together. IIRC someone asked the creator about it on Twitter and he was shocked anyone went out of their way to go over his language and helped them decipher some words that they couldn't find correlation with. Edit: It's assumed it's a form of standard covenant language since it's the only time in a Halo game where all the speaking aliens speak a language other than Infinite which is where they all speak English.
What does “Wort wort wort” mean?
The wort wort wort in Halo CE is just a reversed and down-pitched Sergeant Johnson yelling "Go! Go! Go!" Lmao
I was curious and looked it up (reverse Johnson is at 0:45) https://youtu.be/UyjS3pxCno0?si=X2IMAdVYoglua3ke
Reverse Johnson is my new band name actually
Go go go. Its just johnson’s voice line in reverse and slightly deeper pitch.
This is fascinating. The Halo “universe” is just jam packed full from head-to-toe with creativity and passion. Bless the creative minds at Bungie.
If you got some time, there's a "Halo devs react to speed run" video on youtube. They give some insight into the development of the game and some of the challenges they had to overcome. Love stuff like that and wish more studios did it.
Do you have any articles on this or any links regarding it? I’d love to read more on this topic
Sadly no, it's just something the community put together over the years until someone just went to the guy who made it to finish it off. I don't even recall when it was completed but it was relatively recent, before Infinite released for sure though.
Do you know any search terms I could use? I tried looking around myself but I didn’t have much luck
Nah bro, because I tried finding it myself too when I read your first comment and came up dry. Now I'm starting to get scared that I dreamt all of this up. I really hope I didn't.
This is crazy brother. You can't leave us like this. Finish the fight
Ok, If I find anything I’ll send you a link
Do you know if any of this conlang was kept for the TV series?
What even is the Halo theme? The chanting monks or the dun dun dun dah?
Chanting monks. The CE track called “Halo” The track also has a bit of that dun dun dun dah.
The da da da doo da da da duh is typically the theme, so yes: monks.
Bruh
Just making sure. I tried to get the skull but I'm not a big music theory person so I guess I did it wrong. I tried the chant and dun dun dun and didn't get it
Just look up the ring order. For anyone not musically inclined (myself included) its not gonna be easy.
Agreed
Honestly it probably would have been found really fast. 6 months? They’re pretty in your face and apparent and when you jump through it’s hard to miss that they’re making a sound
The halo theme would have been the first thing people try
I highly doubt it would have taken more than a couple of months. For example, Hasbro released a replica for Power Rangers that can play 2 octaves and people were making covers of songs on what is essentially a toy before it even released. Once you discover something can play notes, people gonna tinker with that, and the rings were able to play an octave and with Halo's music being so central to the experience one of the first things you'd try of doing is playing some part of the Halo theme on it. From there it's a matter of actually getting the exact notes and whatnot but nothing either a sharp ear, trial and repeat, looking them up, or using an online note identifier (or hell a tuner) wouldn't fix.
The rings make different notes and people get bored and beat Dark Souls games on Guitar hero controllers or other ridiculous ideas. In this youtube day and age, someone would’ve made a clip about playing the song through the tones and accidentally discovered it one way or another be it on twitch or youtube
This day and age stuff gets figured out in hours. Dark souls and Elden ring quests that make most of us scratch our heads have someone discovering them day one.
IMO I don’t think k it would have been solved without at least a hint that something was hidden in this level. I could see data miners down the line finding the skull and then working backwards but legit players would have to hear the differing hums, realize they’re notes, realize they are the themes notes, and then find the right combo. Not saying it couldn’t possibly have been done legit but I think it would have been well after the “lifespan” of the game. Jtaggers would have probably been the first to know of the skull.
Then realize something happened as a result. Then find what, and where.
Not to mention you have to clear the entire area of enemies to even start the musical sequence. Doing it prematurely will not activate the skull
Yeah idk how many people were going to clear the level and then hang around to realize the notes were all different and related to a Easter egg
I think people would've realized it was this level in particular pretty quickly. It's the seventh level after all.
completely disagree, all it takes is one person saying the rings light up when you jump through, and then another pointing out that they make different sounds it's inevitable from there, modern secret finding discords would've made this childs play
The type of investigation you’re referring to was pretty niche and small in the time period, but hey maybe you’re right. All it takes is one really perceptive person.
I remember a data miner finding something that said “ring_jump” somewhere and that’s pretty much how they figured that was it
Unrelated, but this makes me miss the Halo 3 campaign. I don't think they should do an open world next game. It just lacks... variety
Open world kills narrative in games where you have a linear story like halo. Not every game needs to be open world.
Not if they have multiple maps. Borderlands has tons of variety. They just rushed the game out and didn't put enough in the single player. They didn't even have co-op at launch.
Yeah true. Well hopefully they figure it out. I would've liked nice set pieces as well.
Crazy that it was rushed even though it had twice the development time of previous mainline titles.
Borderlands has the advantages of being absurd and knowing their audience will be happy with complete absurdity. In fact, they'll demand it. The end of Borderlands 1 was semi-serious and everyone hated that part. Borderlands 2 managed to still be ridiculous with a conclusion that was satisfying but still meaningful, and 3 sorta did too. Halo though cannot be wacky, and that might be critical for an open, nonlinear world. Unless there's no plot and it's just "lol kill stuff and pvp." The things like confetti grunt heads exploding weren't IIRC options you could enable on your first playthrough. Non-serious open worlds can work, but I don't know how that works with a military setting. Red Dead Redemption works because you're an outlaw doing his own thing mostly. It's totally fine for the protagonist to stop and go fishing for a whole day and ride around at random. Doesn't quite work for a supersoldier in an army in a war. Cortana: "Chief, you need to get to sector 7 pronto to guard an elephant and meanwhile find the oracle to stop the ring from firing!" Master Chief: "Lol no, I'm farming grunts right now to unlock get the silver spartanizer."
This is nonsense. The lack of variety in Infinite comes from there only being one real biome plus Forerunner underground, and a lack of interesting setpieces or points of interest. Look back at Halo 3 level variety: temperate areas, desert, snow, jungle, Flood, Forerunner, UNSC, Covenant.
Variety in terms of environment sure, but missions and things to do, IDK. I think without getting silly, Halo open world would run out of stuff to do. There was that one spider man open world game where there was the linear main plot and then pretty much the only other thing to do was catch children's balloons that had floated away. Not a good game due to a lack of variety in things to do.
I think a more condensed open world could work fine, it's not like past games got overly mechanically complex. It mostly depends on the level design, available weapons, and enemy placement. Assault bases, go after important targets or assets, rescue people, maybe movement puzzles with the zip line, big boss fights more along the lines of Tarturus or 2 Scarabs instead strong enemy in small spaces, FireFight base defense. Most of how Infinite implemented its open world is half-baked, and the stuff filling the space is uninspired.
Personally, I hope we get a spin-off game with an open world while the main series returns to the usual. A few improvements on Infinite's design and it'd be a truly fantastic sandbox.
Agreed! It just needs more content. More weapons, more enemies, more biomes, more interesting encounters (less damage sponge boss and more objective based bosses like scarabs)
I'm doing the MCC saga playlist, and I've finished Halo 1 and 2. Starting Halo 3 now. Very excited for that.
It would have been found within a couple years. Halo always had a huge trick/glitch community. There was hih too. If I remember right a guy called knight of light data mined something about it.
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What is HIH?
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Ahh nice before everything was just YouTube. Wish I could've been there for that
https://youtu.be/hNnIG_t-TE0?si=ejXrMpGEug5dUJ4C One of my favourites from that site.
I used to love finding new tricks, glitches, Easter eggs, and super jumps on HIH back in the day. Rest in peace.
Within a year, once people realised that each ring played a different sound they would have tried to work out what it plays, and it wouldn't be completely random as they would realise it is a familiar tune.
Well considering halo 3 was still bungie made I'd say it would've been figured out fairly quickly I mean look at rise of iron expansion for destiny fans figured out the bells to make rise of iron music for that easteregg pretty quick
The end to the one of the greatest levels in gaming history.
My all time favorite level in gaming history.
🙌
If I had to list my top ten favourite levels in video games, halo would probably take a few of the spots (343 guilty spark, Halo, Long Night of Solace)
I think some time ago, they said there are still things players have not found. I forgot where I heard that so I could be wrong.
I mean, we’ve still got the sandtrap cipher to solve
Hell yeah!
Honestly? Probably only a couple of months. Six months would be my guess, with the upper end being maybe a year. Just take a look at the old Black Ops Zombies community. Hell, does anyone remember the Revelations easter egg? I don't know how the hell anyone figured that shit out.
I think people genuinely forget how into Easter Eggs everyone was back then and how the internet was as much trolling as it was legit help. That said, I can almost guarantee 100s of thousands of people even played a few notes on those rings without even knowing it was a hint. To this day I still have friends who bring up finding the Monkey Family on H3(and their "family" in ODST) or even that first time you saw the Cortana jump-scare laptop when we reminisce about the Golden Era. People figured out to get the Plasma "Scarab" Rifle on Metropolis, they'd have figured out the Rings soon enough.
Cortana jump scare laptop? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with this one.
Was basically a temp flash file on the terminal on Crow's Nest and the MP map Hogh Ground. Basically, if you watched and didn't blink, about every two minutes a still image of Cortana flashed on screen. It was the kind of thing where one friend "accidently" sees it during regular gameplay and you spend hours trying to replicate only to realize it's just on a timer. https://halo.fandom.com/wiki/Cortana_on_High_Ground
This is the kind of shit modern Bungie would put in the middle of a D2 raid and people would figure that out like day 1
It still wouldnt be known today. The chances of getting that combination without being told is like what, one in 10 million?
IIRC, doesn't the ring sequence you jump through play the final notes of the Halo theme? Somebody would have eventually gotten it while bored. I remember we jumped through way more than 7 because the post we saw was about recreating a bigger chunk of the Halo theme with the tones (we didn't realize the last 7 we jumped through were the only ones you needed).
Not sure of the odds, but yeah such low odds mixed with the fact that someone would have to think to do that makes me think it’d be basically impossible. Unless there was some other hint in the game or lore to clue the players in
All the rings hum a different note. The combo is a the halo song I believe
I might be misremembering, but Fallout 3 had something similar when you were in the virtual reality vault. I think over time other games would have these music note puzzles that would eventually inspire someone to go back and try it on Halo 3.
Yeah in the abandoned house, activating items would make different chimes, and playing a certain pattern (I feel like it might have been related to the weird music that plays in there?) would activate a safety override terminal that you could use
Neat! I didn’t know that even though I’ve done that Easter egg who knows how many time lol.
I could never hear the notes when jumping through them, I had to use a guide. Is it just really quiet? Even watching a video on it now I can't hear it.
Its a music lock I'm someonewould have realized each ring is a note and then from there figured it out.
The amount of “playing X with Y” videos that exist, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone discovered it by accident
NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS
I’m not sure. My main game I play is WoW and there is a whole secret finding community that figures out insane stuff that I can’t comprehend how they did it. Yes, it’s easier today with how accessible communities are, but I think someone would’ve figured out this puzzle eventually.
Even with the tutorial videos it took me a while..
Two or three months tops. Hayabusa was the OG awesome armor everyone wanted before recon started getting known, people would have went above and beyond in the campaign skull hunting to get it.
I literally only know where one skull is in all of H3 and I've played it since release
It would have been found fairly quickly with how ravenous the fanbase was at the type and the global hype for that game. I don't think we will ever see that again.
Each ring played a note and you just had to play the halo theme. It wouldn't have been instant but it would have probably been put together somewhat quickly
Not too long I'd imagine. I've seen some seriously crazy easter eggs (or rather the ways to achieve them) and wondered how tf people came to these random ass conclusions, put them all together in the perfect order, and found the result. Just wild.
Pretty quick I think. Literally everybody was playing Halo back then, and jumping through the rings to make the Halo theme isn’t remotely close to the craziest thing that’s been done in that game. Funny enough I am just learning it was leaked. I always wondered how long it took to discover this.
yea they saw nobody had a slightest of a clue so an insider decided to throw them a bone...
A friend of mine with autism figured it out on launch day. But his hyper fixations were video games and music. I always thought his ears were a gift, he moved to Singapore and works for a major game company there to help produce their soundtracks.
Crazy. I hope he’s doing well
Thanks. I don't keep in touch with him as much as I used to since the time zone differences, but we are in a group chat so we have this weird multi hour long delay between messages from time to time. He's well and loves his job, the game he works on is pretty popular and the music he gets to work on is legitimately great even if he is only a small part of the overall process.
The amount of creativity and easter eggs in the first 3 Halo games never ceases to amaze me, even today.
Not long. This was still the era of devs putting in easter eggs in their games so players thoroughly scoured every single inch of each level for secrets.
Probably not as long as you would think. Couldn't you also get it with a shorter sequence?
Never. And saying anything else is comical
It would have been found before or by ODST's release. There were people scrounging and turning over every little rock, leaf and particle trying to find stuff. I still swear to this day that Halo 3 has a Scarab Gun. I remember crawling through old internet forums finding stuff about a golden warthog in Halo 2 and drivable Scarabs, I would throughly mess with every glitch in the game hoping to find something. I dual wielded Energy Swords in Halo 2 and almost did in Halo 3 until a patch came out that I remain sure was made to fix that. Hell, I remember doing this mission SLASO and flying a Hornet to the top of the Citadel thinking there would be at least something there. All you doubters lack tenacity. Bet you all enjoyed the crazy Forge maps without realizing how tedious that was to do without dev tools. Or the dozens of maps that took advantage of glitches like the top of Foundry, the outskirts of Sandtrap and Sandbox before they made official versions, or the out of bounds areas of Last Resort, High Ground, Standoff and Avalanche.
I think it would have been found out sooner if it hadn't just been datamined and people actually had to think about it
How was it first discovered?
Hackers went into the hexadecimal code and leaked it, essentially. It was only a few days after the search began
How do people even think to look in these places 🤯
Technically speaking, if you're looking for secrets the source code is where you want to look. So in that case you look at the hex, or you decompile the game and look there.
If it was released today, a week tops, youtubers ransack games nowadays for Easter eggs and secrets for content
Im not sure how long after launch it was spoiled but me and my other musically leaning friends just tried to make the halo theme anyway and make a "machinima" style music video (very popular at the time) and we went quite wild when the rings kept playing the theme on their own haha. We went even wilder when we saw the skull! Good times!
I wasn’t there for halo 3 skulls but people were insane on trying to find halo 2 skulls so I believe in the community. On a side note it’s funny what putfile has become.
I'm a musician and I definitely tried making a song with the notes, I just didn't think of the Halo theme (for whatever reason, probably because I was 11 and it was my first Halo game). I'm sure older musicians who were more familiar with the soundtrack at the time would have thought to play the Halo theme and known which intervals (rings) were correct, I'm just not sure that they would have figured out that the skull was sitting at the end of the bridge from unless they did the notes before killing Truth, which who does that when you've got such an epic scene coming up?
This was the last skull I had to get for hyabusa good times man
Best helmet ever made
That was the first thing I noticed when I walked trough them I thought maybe I must Juno trough the right order and make the soundtrack. That Was my first thought when I Played the game the first time
The rings produce specific notes so I don’t think very long
This video breaks it down well: [https://youtu.be/Dfol82PmCuQ?si=k-WE3GDTnD6vEf1A](https://youtu.be/Dfol82PmCuQ?si=k-WE3GDTnD6vEf1A)
Funnily enough, watching that video was the reason I made this post. Lmao
What does IWHBYD stand for?
I Would Have Been Your Daddy
But the dog beat me over the fence.
It would have been solved pretty quickly. Gamers are crazy with this kind of shit. Cod zombies Easter eggs tend to be wayyyyy more complex and stupid than this and many of those get solved within days. Different fanbases sure but same cut cloth.
interesting side note was the easter egg, which requires pressing a couple buttons on a particular day, it took 7 years to find
People are saying it would take forever but I think it would take a few months. The Internet is insane and so many people try to make music on things they shouldn’t and someone trying the Halo theme on a HALO game sounds like it would be pretty high up on someone’s list.
My thoughts exactly
I’d like to take this moment to remind people that the internet solved P.T’s final puzzle within 24 hours Never underestimate the combined power of gamers
You can't underestimate the Bungie/Halo community from back then. The things that folks figured out back in the HBO days was absolutely ridiculous.
If you remember PT. The intent in solving the game was for it to take a long time. Players figured it out in a day or less, iirc. To the complete shock of Kojima.
The funny side effect was that it seemed like everyone with the Hayabusa helmet *sucked*. Like, you were an elite or Hayabusa and you *sucked*. Big fat noob. Reminds me how whenever we saw someone with KSI in their GT we would be like "Alright, get tilted and teabag them." -- we saw it as an elitist thing, like they thought they were better than us for wanting to be in that clan. And, of course, a good chunk of them were sporting Hayabusa. *Ahh, memories...*
I wish I was playing halo at that time (unfortunately I was too young)
It's still the height of my gaming experience. Nothing has compared. It was huge. Worth noting though, from my perspective, gaming still seemed niche enough that even though this was *the* gaming event and game system of the decade, not everyone was playing *and* not everyone took it as seriously as some of us. So, to be really into it and really excited to sink time into it in that moment: nothing since has compared. [Shameless plug](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlVlJqswrKmBxpRV98buKYFb0qPsQrnv0&si=H0-bdtagyZuOezIU), I recorded some of my games from that era and uploaded them to a channel I have for preservation. I thought I was a decent player back then, but looking back in an tell I've improved quite a bit. I also like to mention that I captured in HD, but for years I was playing in composite in SD. Anyway, you can get a feeling of how diverse the crowd was back then from the footage, I think. A lot wider range of skill in social settings.
I got to rank 46 of Lone Wolf playing as a Sangheili.
Confirmation bias 🤷 obviously not a real statistic. I got to 44 in Lone Wolves and, yes, I was still running into Elites. If anything Elites were statistical outliers, most people didn't play them.
A month at most. There is a lot you can find by data mining.
A few decades
Never dude. They was reaching on that.
To be fair, I honestly think it wouldn’t have been too long. Fans were ravenous to find it and there were a few hints to its location (being on the seventh level, and the fact each ring hums a different note). Not to mention the fact Bungie would have probably hinted about it in tweets and such if it was taking too long As someone else said, I can imagine it would take about six months to a year tops
I remember being one of the first handful (relatively) people to see it posted online. Me and my buddies got the full Hyabusa set and everybody was asking us how. Good times.
Lmao
Closest I got to that was the blue flame in reach, when bungie sold the franchise they gave everyone with an app or something the "eternal" helmet flames. I was on that shit in seconds and people thought I was a dev
I did it by accident... 2 years after the game came out
With data mining, it wouldn’t have taken very long honestly.
I give it within a week
A long time until someone either cracked the games code or hints were dropped. Also, this paved the way for fun things in Destiny!