Patreon: / leadheadyt Discord: / discord Second Channel: / porkbrain Twitter: / leadheadyt The music in this video is from the Halo 3: ODST OST by Marty O'Donnel
Sorry it took so long to get a new vid up guys. December had a lot of stuff going on that I'd rather not get into publicly. Nothing bad though! Much love ♥️
Then i saw him, a behemoth of humanoid appearence, clad in a high tech armor, its looks were akind to that of a shock trooper. But so diferrente so...alien in comparasion, i didnt felt a gram of humanity in the user of that armor, the movements, the markmanship, the shocking agility and strength with wich he crushed humanity"s foes I saw him performing some kind of ritual, maybe a form of respecting his enemys without forgetting the things that they had done, flexing his knees, his rearguard barely touching the body of the slain beast, getting up and doing it again, in mere seconds he did it thirty times and make sure of his kill by slamming a rifle English isnt my first language but i tried XD
when hell comes your way, things like rank and experience start being muddy, and less important. in the chaos of it of all, you have stories of those that survived through guile, wit, and and reflexes. And some stories of luck, happenstance, and timing. Through the chaos of it all, the impossible becomes possible. Just like ODST's are going up against brutes - canonically known for their bulletproof skin, and skulls hard enough to take multiple bullets - civilians going up against ODST's isn't too far fetched. After all, a ODST is no super human, they're just very well trained.
Well Virgil did warn us (the Rookie) about "hitch hikers may be escaped convicts" meaning the cop was gonna turn on us, it's pretty obvious but I thought it was a nice detail
To add to the religious layers. The music in the live action trailer for Halo ODST is a old poem in my people's language (Welsh). It's mainly about defying death and 'jumping feet first' into 'Annwn' 'Annwn' is my people's pre-christian equivalent of Heaven or Hell, depending on who you ask. Great video, I didn't recognise the religious references until now.
There is no such thing as "pre-christian." Christianity is the fulfilled Melchizedek Priesthood which is the first and only priesthood of humanity all prime religion is sourced from template wise. Christianity is the only True religion, The 12 Tribes of Israel including the church of Jesus Christ is Israel the Family of God. Jesus Christ is the 2nd Adam having the authority and dominion of the first man. YHVH Shang-Di Persia Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda is Jesus Christ the voice of God in the flesh.
@@keegans.969 I don't know man, I think that's something for the national library of Wales, not me. It's in Aberystwyth if you live in the UK. Ga' ti darllen gymraeg?
"The reason they make him into a Jesus allegory is clever because Master Chief is that badass" has to be one of the most unintentionally funny things I've heard.
I remember getting an Xbox and *almost* all the halo games for Christmas and playing the hell out of them and having a blast. But I noticed that there was one that I didn’t have, ODST. So I asked my grandma for it for Christmas and after going to her house for breakfast I went back home and before I put the disc in the Xbox I thought “hmm should probably turn off the lights.” And something kinda beautiful happened. I played what would become my favorite game and would lead me to become a musician and love that too. ODST is the most out there game in the series, and it’s great.
I’ve been replaying it lately on the Series X since it runs at a higher frame rate, but I did something similar when the game was first out years ago on my 360, ODST is a timeless gem for sure!
What he means there is that the runes hint to Virgil being an engineer, he said he’d talk about the importance of engineers to Virgil, not the runes themselves.
My god this game, this was the first game that I felt was just “yes this is a great game and it is my favourite” before that I was just kinda “I like all these”. One of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard too second only to night in the woods.
this has always been my favorite halo game, and generally one of my favorite games of all time. the neon noir style, the abandoned city, the loneliness, the mysterious vibe, the *soundtrack*, it all comes together so beautifully
Holy shit, Bungie was really ahead of their time when making this game. Easily the most interesting, unique, in-depth analysis I've heard anyone do for ODST. Until watching this, I never would've even realized that the game had such a deep story like this.
Considering the fact that Bungie made ODST nearly 14 years ago and this details get uncovered only after millions of players invested millions of hours in enjoying it, gives me goosebumps. What gives me even more is that OP uncovered this after so many people already invested that time, makes him a Master Chief for me.
@@khoaanh2224Activision never bought Bungie, they were just partners. And Bungie severed that tie sometime in 2020 (I think). Bungie stopped making Halo games because they choose to and even if they came back, how many Halo people are even left at Bungie these days. Plus, would they make games alongside 343 or be absorbed into them, what about Destiny? But, those questions don't even matter, since Activision never owned Bungie in the first place.
ODST is easily my favorite of any Halo game, it came to me at just the right time and I sat through the entire game in one session, starting from the late night and going to the early dawn. I wholeheartedly believe it has the best soundtrack of any Halo game, just hearing Deference for Darkness come on is enough to bring me to tears, something that happened many times throughout my time playing the game. The game is just so fucking good at establishing a mood and an atmosphere that embraces you and never lets go. Beyond happy that you are talking about it all these years later, not enough people mention it when talking about the Halo series.
to add to the point that we needed to be reminded how dangerous and overpowering the covenant was, I feel like reach really nailed that feeling in perfectly. the whole campaign was basically showing us that even with spartans the covenant could crush humans into dust, and that the best we could do was small scale guerilla missions. when you go back to the original trilogy you get reminded of how badass master chief really is.
Literally my only issue with the video is that ODST's aren't higher ranks, they're basically special forces. Other than that, honestly this video is a masterpiece.
"I'll say something about his game that nobody else did" this summed up my reason of subscription. keep thems good content coming. i love new perspectives.
loved that there were moments that you could ambust the enemies as they sleeped, heck the sleeping enemies were a great detail to both humanize the comeant and to show just how much of a losing battle that occupating alien troopers were camping out in the city.
Seeing something related to ODST makes me feel sad and angry at 343, they shouldn't have done dirty to the player character Rookie, true we didn't had a clear connection with him or had enough time to for one compared to the other faceless but beloved player character, noble six, but still it was our avatar, our vessel on that phase of the game story
problem is that they couldn't go anywhere with him as a character since he was a blank slate. So unless 343 wanted to characterize him. Which is something that would've pissed people off anyways. So death was the only thing for him.
@@Ahriman13 i agree on that one with you, but i believe there were better ways to handle a death of a faceless player character than on a book story, i would say a comic would have been better but the Didact's death was potrayed that way and no one liked it either
@@lonewanderer6172 it had to be done in the book. It wasn't like they wanted to kill the rookie just to kill him. They had to kill him because the story of odst was being continued in books and not games. They weren't going to make a game to kill the rookie just so they wouldn't have to do it in a book. A comic would have been no better than a novel. If you ask me all that matters is that the rookies death was done well which to me it was. It was tragic and lead to real character development for all the characters, dutch and mickey especially. That's the most I think you could've ask for there.
This might be a weird take, but rookie in the book dying never really bothered me, since it's still a stand-in for you. And having YOU get killed, allowing the emotions you felt in that scene be the rookies emotions for your version of the book is really cool, IMO.
The ODST audio logs where the first time in a game I was desperate to find all the logs. The story was so gripping and how you could see it's effects in the game, really made for good content.
One of the potential angles of reading the Halo series from a religious perspective is the potential for realizing the manufactured nature of a lot of the present religious elements. Yes, John-117 is being a savior, but John was also a child that was taken from his family and made into that being which can be a savior. And we can see similar things in the Covenant too: ever notice how all the bits of their religion we know about basically all return to the idea of "Serve the Prophets"? What we get to see in this exchange of religious symbols vs religious symbols as the marines and elites duke it out is a peek into the mechanisms of social control in these various societies. We learn that Earth as a side is willing to destroy people to create its heroes to push its colonialist efforts (mind you not saying that Earth is genocidal but they definitely are pushing into the rest of the galaxy and that behavior has a whole fuckin history behind it). We also learn that The Covenant is a faction so removed from logic on a larger level that their societal forces all push someone towards wanting to serve the Prophets in their ever-expansionist and explicitly genocidal-if-they-don't-join-us plots. So in the end, we learn that Humanity and The Covenant are really not all that different.
This was further expanded, Spartan Black team (?) I believe on ONIs orders destroyed a Sangheili colony planet out of nothing but pure Dresden fueled spite to show the covenant humanity were not afraid to show their fangs and commit horrible war ctimes themselves if pushed
When you learn more about the story you learn that the UNSC *needed* the Spartans. Ends justifying the means and all that. As for humans expanding into the galaxy: is that so wrong? To cement our own place in space?
@@oniemployee3437 I wouldn't say so. The Innies were an excuse to experiment on Children after their first supersoldier project failed. In reality the UNSC never needed Spartans to take out the Innies. The Covenant yes, but that's just a lucky coincidence, which goes in toe with Halo's theme of humanity being the perfect mix of luck and tenacity that keeps us going. Also, idk man. Expanding into the galaxy is cool and all but you learn that a lot of the Innies are just people who were neglected because of the never ending expansion of humanity.
I've played all original Xbox and 360 games back to back twice in the last few months. I think ODST is one of the best, and as evidenced by the player's search for their companions, and Dare's search for the Engineer to help win the war, and Buck's search for meaning in the fallout of his relationship and the search for anything to revive in said relationship, the game's theme was about the hunt for one another in the face of overwhelming loneliness and horror. You can say the theme was togetherness, resilience, comfort, safety, etc., but the word I would use is hope.
I also think it's worth noting that the explicit references to Inferno and the ties to the audio logs etc. should not be considered as part of ODST's theme, given that they are effectively 'hidden' or optional content to follow, and thus do not inform the theme of the game, which is as stated above. Much of the game is spent playing the missions - Romeo's/Micky's/Dutch's/Buck's. For a comparison, you could not say that the deleted scenes of (film X) constituted the theme or message or the film, given that only the most thorough of viewers would bother to search them out in the extras, and their not being present mean that the film lacks their inclusion, and thus the film as released, lacks their contribution to the thematic elements of the plot and conflicts. Whilst the references to Inferno are interesting and a pleasant curio to uncover for the player, that they encapsulate what ODST was 'trying to say' is too much of a stretch to be academically robust, and the addition of them should be considered along the lines of the references to shoes in the Big Lebowski or the like - a pleasant leitmotif for the faithful.
When I played through ODST again recently, I thought a lot about how ballsy it was for Bungie to make it's story unfulfilling for most people. If you don't get (and listen to) every audio log, which I didn't manage despite searching hard for them, you're left with a noir detective story where the detective fails. You move on, just another grunt, with loads of questions and the distinct feeling that something's missing. It fits the tone of the game perfectly, and I respect the hell out of Bungie for doing it, but I get why a lot of people felt a bit cheated.
I had to play the game for several year until I found all the audio logs. I remenber every feeling that gaveme those "new" scenes that i haven't seen before. Just an amazing game.
Many people's least favorite, and by far my favorite Halo game for that reason haha. I suppose the lack of good multiplayer/forge was a component for people not liking it as well (the firefight system they added to the game was also kinda meh), but the campaign, soundtrack, story, and even graphics hold to this day and make you feel something uncaptured by any other game.
8:00 Intresting thought I had: from the perspective of the covenenant this whole dantes inferno completly checks out as they are the ones glassing this sinfilled city and they should just trust their god (the prophet) that he knows best and to not feel bad about the humans they are torturing.
Halo odst and it's atmosphere is soo good it really makes you feel small and alone as you use the bare minimum to survive and just like reach hope is all our main characters have in the end considering that the covenant won with sheer numbers alone
My favorite Halo game. Since I was a kid and saw my first ODST fighting alongside Chief, I always wanted to be one of them. This game gave me that and so much more.
ODST and Reach will always be my top 2 Halo games mainly because of the tone, atmosphere and setting. It truly felt like you were fighting a losing war against the Covenant. Even though it was shown and explained that humanity was losing in the other games I never felt like we were. Though that was probably because we were playing as Master Chief.
I just love Rookie, he's my favorite character in the Halo universe (and i say that as a guy who actually read some of the books). This faceless nobody who slinks around a dying city, investigating and picking up clues like an honest-to-God noir detective, complete with rain-slicked darkened streets and a saxophone in the background. Not only does he track down his squad, he goes out of his way to solve a completely unrelated case along the way, bring a corrupt cop to justice, and make friends with an alien who wordlessly helps him throughout the whole quest by tapping into the City's AI, leading him around with car alarms and holographic street signs.
Ima correct you, ODST isn’t a rank, it’s a special forces group like if the navy seals was their own thing. Any branch can submit their personal to be a ODST IF they make the cut, which is extremely difficult
Probably one of the most immersive halo campaigns in the series. The sounds and the environment while sneaking through the streets of new mambasa was a great experience. Suggest playing on Legendary for the full experience.
You know what would further reinforce how badass Chief is and how powerful his enemies are? A sequel to ODST where you fight the Flood when they invade earth in H3
I always really enjoyed the struggle of the rookie in order as compared to the chief. In a weird way I felt like I had more consequences to my actions. With ammo and armor scarcity, my choices for plan-of-attack felt more focused. The ai was intelligent enough to know (or not know my actions) and made me feel like everything I did had a bigger consequence than mainline games. I always felt there was more of a story for odst but I did skip all the logs. Thanks for this video! It helped me understand why it's easily one of my favorite games of all time.
finished halo 3 odst a few days ago, missed a few of the audio transcripts but otherwise i tried my best to not miss a thing man was it a great experience. everything of that game is so well done and the gameplay is really fun gonna edit once i finish the vid as many people do lol edit: i forgor……….
Thank you for bringing me even more love to one of my favorite games of all time. I will never forget the excitement leading up to release - my walls were plastered with the pull-out posters from the XBOX magazine special issue on ODST! and it is incredible that over ten years later this six-to-eight hour game still surprises us. One of the most under-rated channels for video game essays, great work as always!
ODST had a dramatic shift in the themes, characters, setting, dialogue, atmosphere, level design, and enemies, yet it's still distinctly a Halo game. The fact that such a wild spinoff stands as a masterpiece in its own right speaks volumes about Bungie's talent back then.
Just a small nitpick, the actual work of Dante Alighieri isn’t called “Dante’s Inferno”, it’s called “The Divine Comedy”. The inferno bit is just a small portion of the work.
fun fact:the cutscene changes when you meet vergil if you found all the logs if you do it at first with no logs, its just a told to stand down or something do it with the audio logs, and you just whistle them over
Glad to see ODST is getting more recognition over time. Honestly my favorite game ever since it came out, I played the shit out of this before getting internet and being introduced to online halo multiplayer
"Kinsler gave me real specific instructions, make sure the doc's dead and make double sure no one knows about it" and he rams a table while saying it at 14:15 lol XD
game came out on my birthday... knew from the trailers I would love it... my brother got me loving the odst since h2, and It's still cemented as my favourite halo game to date.
Thank you! I never got all this during my playthrough. I only recently played ODST for the first time and I fell in love with it, especially the Rookie part. Given, it was claustrofobic in a way and scary to me, but it was so different from Halo in general that I loved it, despite pooping my pants. It is definetly a game I will go back to after I finish Halo 4. I didn't find all the audio logs on my playthrough, but I will do my best to try and find them on the 2nd run. Now I'm off to watch your Halo 3 video. (A quick sidenote on Halo 4, I really loved the beginning of it; you're alone, have no idea where and what's going on. It really drove home the feeling of desolace, and in a way I wished it would've stayed that way. It became pretty basic Halo game after you encounter the other humans. Given, I haven't finished it yet, but something just was lost when MC wasn't alone anymore. I'm still curious how the story will turn out though.)
I love your use of the theatre mode to add in clips, especially after Oni alpha site showing the rookie sneaking through the tunnel. I've played this game to death and you nail how it feels to play and I just love everything about this :3 As a big halo fan I'll be hoping for a video on Reach, but we will see o.o
@@PantheraLeo04 I don’t wanna offend anyone but I never know what to say and call someone the wrong thing and offend them by accident so I’m just gonna say I really appreciate their content and I never even knew about the Dante’s Inferno references. I always learn something new here.
I think the "Hell" in Halo's situation is just the Covenant. Not so much the wars they bring or whatever, just them themselves, they represent the Hubris of those who worship all others than Him. Dunno, sounds possibly right
They're called hell jumpers because they're launched out of orbit and expected to land directly in the center of an ongoing battle in a war zone. Like their made mode of conduct is to land deep within enemy territory and start wreaking havoc as quickly as possible before being overwhelmed by a seemingly endless hoard of enemy combatants. You have to keep in mind that ODST were created during the insurrection wars so they were originally meant to be deployed into hostile human terrorist strongholds. "Hell" is just an allegory for being thrown into the middle of an extremely bloody battle against overwhelming odds with little to no ability to call in any extra support. Like how in fantasy you'd see crusaders teleport to actual hell and be stuck fighting an endless amount of demons without any way of calling in back up because they're essentially stranded in another dimension. A good example is in TES 4 Oblivion, where those soldiers in Kvatch have to enter the teleporter to the plains of oblivion to destroy it and stop the daedra from entering through it
@@Gameprojordan oh yeah totally, I wasn't talking about the ODSTs with this though, moreso responding to the comparison between New Mombassa and the damned in The Divine Comedy. The covenant are damned in the sense that their rulers (the false prophets) are mobilizing them to not only destroy humanity but themselves too. They are hell not because they bring the damning, but because they are the dammed.
I never played halo 3 or odst.. didn't actually know what odst was till now But near the end of the video you mentioned about seeing master chief from another point of view That makes me think about raiden, how you are seeing how cool solid snake is from afar
I'm very very glad you focused on Vergil. I've always wanted there to be a video that just focused on all the things he can do throughout the game to try and indirectly communicate with you
This is my favorite game in the franchise. However, the marketing set completely different expectations compared to what we got. If you were to go off of the marketing, you would expect each flashback to show a less than heroic death of each of your squad mates, with you being the last to die or the only one to make it out. Instead we get a decent story, but not carrying the tension the marketing suggested. My guess for why they didn't do that is because Halo reach was coming out a year later and had a story similar to what I just described and they didn't want the two to feel too similar.
I played this game recently with the MCC on PC. I did not put much thought into the game when playing, collected a few logs and went on to 3. Really puts the game into a interesting perspective I would've otherwise missed
I hadn't seen the Halo 3 vid, so when you asked me to go watch it I did. Your voice has changed a lot over the last year. Well done, I can't imagine that's easy.
Another piece of religious imagery relating to the Flood is how the Forerunner (Seen as Gods) created the *Ark,* the last hope against the Flood to save all Life from the Flood, afterwards from the Ark the universe was repopulated. It's a beat for beat retelling of the biblical story of Noah
Hey man. Phenomenal Video! I really like your addition and development on the Inferno theory. I hate to be the "That was me" guy, but I genuinely thought I had cracked some massive easter egg when I first coined this theory with Scatcycle of the SGP. (You can actually see my original post regarding this at 5:14 on Gruntspyjamas. We knew that Sadie's Story was an allegory, but finding out that there was something of substance within the actual levels was awesome. After we had developed this, I had intended to get down to breaking into the WHY. Why was ODST an allegory? What purpose did it serve. I don't think I could have done that anywhere NEAR as well as you have done - I think it could be developed further, but I think at this point it is out of my hands.
drop into hell what the ODST would say is actually just in reference to the fire that would generate underneath their feet from dropping feet first into orbit but it plays nicely into the rest of the actual references to religous symbolism
as an italian it really feels like anyone who hasn't studied dante's comedy and talks about it just doesn't grasp just how important that piece of literacy is, it is an amazing text that has so many layers that overlap in so many ways
"these ODSTs and virgil are probably the reason ultimately won the war" im gonna be real, this is a bad take. the only reason humanity had a chance was elite support bc of the great schism. like the intel on the ark was probably useful but literally nothing couldve been done without the help of the arbiter and his faction, humanity was in absolute shambles by the time the plot of halo 3 starts. hell i think the fleet that goes to the ark only has 2 human ships in it, the rest being elite faction forces.
I felt bad for that cop on my first playthrough, he usually gets ripped to shreds by drones if you don’t do Sadie’s audio logs. Now I don’t feel so bad!
This was such a good video, I knew about the religious allegories in Halo but not to this extent with ODST, I think you just convinced me that ODST is my favorite story in Halo. Def subbed
FYI, ODSTs are more or less an evolution of modern day Marine Recon/Force Recon units. Not quite special forces, but as close as you can get without being proper special forces.
I really enjoyed ODST for its atmosphere and unique story. Still I was completely oblivious to any of this. One final brilliant nuance is that the protagonist is an ODST, an Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, which aligns perfectly with their decent into hell. What a brilliant set of writers for this game. Love these literary analysis videos.
