Why Are Old Halo Maps So Creepy? - Halo Lore 

Im so glad that someone was able to put this feeling into words! I would spend HOURS wandering around these maps thinking i would uncover some secret mystery if i looked hard enough

I used to play multiplayer maps alone as a kid, because i didn't have internet back then, either the friends to play with it may be sound weird but they made feel not alone at all (not in a scary way) and I think these experiences exploring empty maps shaped my taste in games today

The ambience in these games were perfect

I think its because of how big the older maps are and the simple textures leaving your mind to wonder?

I didn’t get to grow up playing Halo, or video games in general. All throughout grade school it was the biggest thing ever, but I wouldn’t experience it for myself until I was already a grown adult. Loading into these maps now, it’s like stumbling into a forest that’s already been burned, or the site of a car accident when everything has already been cleared out. Whole childhoods were built in these digital playgrounds, and now they’re barren. As weird as it sounds, I get a hollow yet reverent feeling just roaming these maps on my own. With that said, it’s nice others have picked up on this, and not just me looking too deep into things! Excellent video as always!

The ambience is something else in CE/2. It feels, to me, like you're an incomprehensible distance from home, even on the earth maps. If a Limbo exists between planes of existence, it's Hang Em High, I'm sure of it haha Great video!

The ghost of Lockout glitch happened to me before. Happened on Turf too. Every map has its own vibe and eerie vacancy.

I miss maps like this. This overwhelming feeling of emptiness, like people either were here and left never to return, or might have never been here at all. The descriptions really helped to sell this feeling, giving some backstory/lore about how these USED to be some important location of how it's a training area that.. might never be used agian. Modern maps all feel like high traffic areas, even with no one here. Like they all just went out to lunch and could be back any moment. I want that "last Spartan alive" feeling again. Even with a x4 overshield and infinite ammo rocket launcher, I still don't feel safe.

There is a lot of similarities in the older halo games that come from the movie Aliens and I think the creepy ominous vibe most of these maps have can almost mirror the feeling of walking into Hadley's Hope or the hive on LV-426 before the xenos pop out. Going through the old maps alone almost makes you feel like the flood are just waiting to start coming out of the godamn wall man!

People forget that Halo is a horror game. Yeah, it has its humor and bubbly heroic moments, but at its core, Halo is a horror/shooter. The atmosphere, lore, enemies, hell, the whole premise of the Halo is to wipe out the Flood's FOOD. The Flood is so infectious and unwavering it causes such an immense amount of fear within the universe that the forerunners designed the halo structures to eradicate all life because it's worth it to stop the flood. Tell me that's not the ultimate horror backstory for one of the main enemies in the game.

Like the flood is stored somewhere on this ring. I get the sand feeling too. Peak halo. God I miss it being good

When I was a kid, I didn’t have Xbox live or many friends to play halo with, but I absolutely loved the games. Just walking around these empty multiplayer maps for hours, listening to the ambience and imagining what actually being there would feel like. It was absolutely terrifying, but I couldn’t put it down. Thank you for bringing back those memories ❤️

Those mp levels, specially halo ce were so so unsettling, I just loved to enter alone and feel the creepyness, awesome video, keep em coming

The pit and last resort always gave me these feelings too on halo 3, looking out past the cages at the vacant pelicans and trying to get out too see more

I grew up with Halo! These maps are very comforting to me and remind me of good times playing games with friends. The maps are definitely lonely without anyone else and the maps in Halo 1 are old and blocky by today's standards. But I still really like the maps in the original, they had really great map designs especially the Gulch, how did they manage to make such an amazing map. But you know, let's say you play Halo 1 PC on release day and start a server without anyone joining for a while, either due to bad connection or bad timing, I'd definitely feel like how you feel now and it happened once in a while. Or Halo 1 PC joining a server that only had 1 other player who was AFK would feel gloomy too! So back then I'd always try to line up for the big servers with 32 players, watching the news or doing quick chores in the meantime. A shame custom servers aren't much of a thing anymore, I'd really like to have made my own 32 player server running 24/7.

I'm not sure how to put it into words but stumbling across this video was something I needed right now. Even if for just a moment I felt like a kid again and at peace with everything. Also great video btw!

I loved this video. Exploring the maps alone at night is very similar to swimming in a pool at night. You know there’s nothing there but your mind keeps saying there is and you can very easily convince yourself to get out. I’d love to see a video on the game Condemned. I know it isn’t all that popular but there were some serious scary moments in that game.

I think part of this feeling is that the early Halo multiplayer maps were very obviously arenas to play in, whereas the later Halo games made a greater attempt in blurring the line that is the confines of the map. It's creepier to be alone in an obviously enclosed area compared to one that appears open.

Back when i first played Halo 3 back in 2011, when i wasn't blown away by the campaign levels, the multiplayer maps did kinda freak me out as a kid. Sandtrap especially, it's vast dessert, ancient temples, downed ships, and looming towers just blew me away. I never grew up with wifi, xbox live or even friends to play, besides my older sister who wasn't as much into playing video games as i was, so exploring those maps alone, was pretty eerie.

Me who plays Gmod for over 3000 Hours without ever touching Multiplayer:

Halo 3 maps are also so creepy like Ghostown, that map with all the ambience and sounds it’s so creepy to play alone, more when you hear the footsteps inside of some structures than you can’t access

A creepy belief of mine that I like to indulge in is that those camo players are the ghosts of dead players who never left the game

Turf was a big hang out map for me back in the day and i frequently booted it up alone just to soak in the dreary ambience. It really felt like a strange forlorn part of Old Mombasa far away from everything else, reminding me of some of the abandoned neighborhoods in towns near me

To throw my two cents into the pile of coins, I think the reason empty multiplayer maps are so creepy and unsettling is that they give us a glimpse of what it'd be like to be the last person on earth. It's unsettling because it's a loneliness humans just aren't built for ('no man is an island', after all) so our brains try to fill in the gaps, imagine that there IS someone- or someTHING- else in there with us, as we just can't take being alone to that degree. As for why Halo 1 and 2's maps are creepier than Halo 3 and onwards, it's DEFINITELY the graphical style. CE and 2 have a timeless quality to their graphics, akin to a playable oil painting at times, where there's more than enough detail to get everything across, but juuuuust enough is left up to imagination that, again, our brains naturally fill in the gaps. And obviously, we fill those gaps in with Eldritch horrors. :P

I think it’s a combination of the ambience and sound scapes \ design ; as well as the fact that in some maps you aren’t alone. The Guardians are a real entity in a sense, they’re the devs killing you for breaking the map boundaries. They sorta add to the lived in sense feeling of the map.

Bungie did a great job leaving certain things unanswered like these maps and many things in the lore. 343 just gives answers and ruins mystery

Personally I never got so much creeped out as I was more in awe of the maps. There’s a certain lived in feel to them that makes you ponder what on went on there

The glitch you're referring to is called the Suicide Shot. It was banned at MLG tournaments because a player used it to get out of the bottom blue area on Lockout and force his team to have better spawn points. The phantom feeling you're describing exists because back on OG Xbox and XBL, players could join your open lobby and often would just by looking at their the recent player list. It was common to get shot at in a custom game before you realized another player(s) had joined the lobby. There was no party chat so many people just talked to eachother via the in game proximity chat. Some of this applies to online CE with Xbox Connect and GameSpy Arcade as well. And yes, the Guardians are always watching you, that's the presence you're feeling on those CE/H2 maps, you can feel it a little bit on H3's Guardian map as well. People used to talk about this in old Halo machinimas back in the day like FireTeam Charlie.

Another banger. Keep it up bro

I feel like the reason why the maps from Halo 2 and CE were more so “creepy” is because the attention was focused on that 30 second action mindset. In populated lobbies and intense gameplay you rarely have time to walk around and take in the entirety of the map. Your main concern is to complete the objective before the other team. Whether it’s slayer, assault, capture the flag, etc. you’re driven to fulfill that objective as a team and you’re racing against the clock. I guess that’s why RoosterTeeth, opted to use a lot of halo maps as their main stages. There wasn’t much audio having to be removed, and the scenery spoke for itself. I can’t imagine how difficult it must’ve been had the maps featured more sounds effects than it needed. In any case, when I played Halo 2 and CE multiplayer by myself. I was always greeted by empty halls and solitude. Mainly because mostly everyone had moved to Halo 3 or Reach by that time. The older halo maps are battlefields that had been left barren and a graveyard for all the countless of hours spent by people who had fun getting their kill streak medals announced by Jeff Stitzer.

Well for me I think it’s because I didn’t get access to halo online till last year I think it’s the fact I’m walking through a map where people once built their entire childhood that has now become a ghost town

I remember going through the multiplayer maps back on xbox and they always had a slightly off setting feel to them. Even a few of the net game maps the marathon series are like that too, empty and have an unsettling feeling to them. especially in marathon infinity, with the ambient sounds on the space station themed maps. Bungie was really good at making scifi epics with a bit of unintended? horror to them.

The eerie feeling is probably that the og maps feels a lot emptier, the newer maps feels more alive since some for example have battles happening in the distance of course with some exceptions. And the rumor of the ghost players did not help at all💀

Nice video brother!

Oh man, been wanting to share my story to why I personally found these maps so creepy. So when I was a kid I didn’t have Xbox live, I didn’t even know you needed it to play multiplayer, so anytime I loaded up a map I was fully ready to see teammates and enemies. When I spawned in and saw no one was with me on the map, it filled me filled me with a serious discomfort. I was so freaked out that I played these maps with the low volume because every time the spartan took a step, breaking the silent whistles of the maps, it genuinely made my skin jump.

Something that I was thinking of was “oh it’s because if the times and lack of good hardware is what led to these ominous maps and some devs just trying to create a fun map to run around and fight in until I saw the description “scary, huh” the devs obviously know what they are making is weird and unnerving so I feel that adds an extra layer of confusion to it all

I have seen the message "killed by the guardians" a few times in halo 2, but the one I remember clearly is the train in terminal. Who was driving it?

Damn. I am planning a video just like this, only I never have time to work on it and it will likely be much longer. Though I am glad that others are starting to take notice of this phenomenon. Great content, keep it up.

The fucking sound at 0:29 must come back if halo is to succeed. THAT and the occasional breath sound you hear on sidewinder etc

Excellent stuff here Woody

i have a memory of seeing something that looked like a player in active camo in sandtrap (xbox 360 halo 3)

halo three sandtrap has always freaked me out. particularly as a kid growing up.

Do you think you’ll make videos on any mods? There’s this cool single one on Steam Workshop called Facility that swaps out a bunch of the assets for ones from Sony’s “Halo Killer” Resistance. It’s a lot of fun. It does a good job of having an eerie atmosphere like you talked about in this video (unfortunately a lot of the areas loot the same and there’s too much fog. It could use a few light sources, a fog reduction, and coloring certain areas so you’re less likely to get lost). Although, you NEED to play the game on easy because it throws WAY TOO MANY enemies at you and I died several times after getting swarmed (so glad I took KYOT’s advice after watching his coverage of the mod. It also lags at a few parts because of the large influx of allied and enemy NPCs). You start out fighting Flood in this facility then you go outside into the snow and start fighting a mix of Slugmen and Drinols (the Slugmen are probably one of my new favorite enemy because they’re basically proto-Skirmishers. Both fill the role of these agile aggressive units that are right below Elites and can double as a sniper/marksman). You’ll need to carry the shotgun with you because in my experience you only get one of them and if you go too far you won’t be able to get it back because the level blocks off old areas after a certain point. Thankfully, it gives you a bunch of ammo at areas. It also could’ve made power weapons like the sniper, flame throwers, and mini guns more common because they’re fun to use (hiding them in out of the way locations would’ve been a good way to reward exploration). The modder also should’ve made the blue Slugman variant armed with the Bullseye 2 more common so you can get more ammo for that gun, increase the amount of Drinols seen (Hunterunt made a mod that ports them into H2, and he made it so they’re immune to being splattered, their armor resists small arms fire, and their “eye” is the weak spot. That’s what all mods going forwards should do with them. They should also make it so the creature ONLY flinches whenever you shoot the weak spot as a visual indication you’re doing more damage). The mod could also use some reskinned Sentinels because in Resistance 2/3 the Chimera have drones and it would add some much needed enemy variety into the mix. Even with these rough edges it’s still really fun and you should DEFINITELY check it out. I hope the modder makes an updated version that addresses these issues, and makes a part 2 electric boogaloo. It’s really too bad that Sony has abandoned so many of their older games. Let’s hope that with the explosive success they’ve seen from porting their games to pc that they’ll start porting a good chunk of their back catalog to Steam/GOG. Seeing cool mods like that Mercury Rising, Crash Site, and various others that use unused/new content make me wish that back in the day we would’ve gotten expansions for CE/2 (that’s basically what ODST is for 3). I think Gearbox would’ve been a good choice since back in the day they made Half-Life’s expansions and Opposing Force is possibly one of the best things of official Half-Life content we’ve gotten. Dumpster fires like Aliens Colonial Marines (there’s a mod made by the same guy who discovered the reason why the ai is so bad is because the worth tether was misspelled, and it makes the game good or at least just not bad. It fixes up the gunplay, so, graphics, and sounds to give a more polished experience. Unfortunately, it doesn’t completely overhaul the game to the point where it matches the blatantly false advertising) and Duke Nukem Forever (that’s one case where Gearbox gets too much flak. Like 90% of the game’s problems were caused by George Broussard. He’s the reason they kept switching engines and cramming in all these mechanics that didn’t belong in Duke Nukem. That being said Gearbox should’ve never released the game in the state it was in) were still a ways off. I know the pc port for CE was pretty scuffed, but it also added a lot of cool multiplayer content like maps and weapons/vehicles.

That was interesting. Too bad it took until Infinite for them to add bots. That should’ve been added a LONG TIME AGO. Bots will insure that multiplayer maps are still usable if you’re the only one there, or if you just have a few people. I like how the old maps have this weird esoteric geometry. Too bad things like the teleporters and various level hazards didn’t make it into the campaign. That would make the levels more interesting.

Seen a few videos revisiting empty Halo maps. Did the servers for halo 1-3 close down on PC and Xbox live? Or ppl just moved on nobody online? Hard to believe nobody at all plays these online anymore, they still hold up

Was the creature at 1:27 a real part of the game, or did you edit that in?

I remember this feeling so strongly as a kid, I was always so unsettled and it felt like I wasn't supposed to be there for whatever reason. Also I don't care what anyone says even if it's not in the coding the ghost of lockout is real and I will die on that hill, I've seen it with my own eyes and no one can tell me otherwise.

I’ve always thought the same Theres something about halo 2 especially that makes me unnerved

Halo CE and Halo 2 are goldmines for liminal spaces

Liminal spaces

i never found it creepy. i enjoyed playing spilt screen with my friends on it or lan.

THIS WAS BEFORE XBOX LIVE DAYS! WHEN YOU HAD TO GET YOUR COUSINS XBOX AND LINK UP AND GO IN SEPARATE ROOMS SO THEY WOULDN’T LOOK AT YOUR SCREEN… Ahh good old days man

ya

All these need remaster in infinite

That's one of the reasons I dislike newer games, there's to much detail It's like three pieces of chocolate always tastes better then ten And it almost always always makes it look creeper. AC 1 to 4 and Witcher 1&2 also has those bountiful old graphics

Bungie is good at what they do, when they're given the freedom to do it. They're still on this track. Even if you don't care for the game, you should watch the Destiny 2 Final Shape reveal trailer. I bet you'll get some of those vibes you're talking about

Some of the ambience sound effects are used in other movies and games. The sidewinder breathing/wind effect is used in other media. Hang em highs effects are very similarly used in other games from the 2000's such as Metal Arms:Glitch in the system.

weeeeee

peak username

I disagree on Halo 3 lacking the creepy ambience. Epitaph is one of those maps that is weird to be alone in.

Stop smoking weed.

It's the ambient silence. I used to feel the same way playing Gary's mod. The silence triggers our primitive brain into believing a predator is nearby.

Why don't you buy an original Xbox and test out these rumored oddities? I would watch.