Covenant Escape

Covenant Escape

The Covenant Escape is an experience at Halo: Outpost Discovery.

Official summary

Explore a reclaimed section of a Covenant ship in this escape-room-style experience. Here, attendees aim to familiarize themselves on various high-risk boarding maneuvers and strategies commonly undertaken by the UNSC. As the challenges intensify, guests must work together to disable the Covenant technology as quickly as possible in order to set themselves free!

Transcript

Instructor video

When attendees are waiting near the experience, a video plays going over the experience itself. Below is a transcript of the video.

The instructor video starts off by showing Major Narain introducing himself and giving a basic overview of the experience. Throughout the video the video several clips of the a Ceudar-pattern heavy corvette are shown.

• Major Narain: "Recruits! Welcome. This is Major Narain. Glad you could be here. We've got one heck of an operation waiting for you inside. Your mission today will take place inside an actual Covenant ship. That's right! In just a few minutes, you will have the rare opportunity to interface with genuine Covenant environments and technology. But first, here's a bit of history to set the stage... In 2552, near the end of the war, a Covenant corvette crashed on the planet Tribute. The corvette, named 'Supplication of Purity', was found to be mostly intact a lucky break for us. As a result, several key ship compartments were salvaged by the 'lovely' operatives down at ONI. Now, this remarkable asset has been assigned to Outpost Discovery, where Recruits like you can learn more about this top-secret technology. Alien vessels like these played host to some of the UNSC's most perilous operations. The following brief exercise inside the ship will highlight the rigors and challenges of infiltrating a Covenant vessel. It will also serve to communicate the necessary tactics of a UNSC boarding action in a hostile enemy ship. Simply put, to understand the strategy, you need to understand the terrain and the mindset. Navigating a ship like this was no walk in the park. Once a boarding party was detected inside a Covenant vessel, the enemy crew would immediately engage in a sweeping lockdown protocol. And then, they would deploy seek-and-destroy units to neutralize the boarding action. But don't worry, our own asset has been carefully transformed into a controlled learning environment. Our analysts have combed this machine extensively and removed anything deemed to be 'dangerous.' So, you can rest assured, there'll be no searching or destroying today... hahahaha. RIght now, the corridor ahead is sealed off. When the lights turn green, your Training Instructor will open the doors for you and let you board the Covenant structure. From there, your guide though the ship's interior will be Outpost AI Gabriela, to whom now I'll turn things over."

• Gabriela: "Thanks, Major. Recruits, I'll be walking you through the tactical stages of a hostile boarding protocol. Our exercise will begin in a standard maintenance corridor one of many woven through the interior of nearly all Covenant ships. You may note its compact dimensions this section of the ship was primarily meant for smaller Covenant species."

• Major Narain: "Gabby brings up a good point. Per UNSC regulations, do not participate in this exercise if you suffer from any head, neck, or back injuries or if you suffer from dizziness, if you experience seizures, or if you suffer from cardiac issues, including high blood pressure. This also applies to anyone who may be claustrophobic or pregnant. It's worth mentioning... it can get a bit spooky in there. This is still a real piece of alien technology, after all, and this training exercise might not be suitable for everyone."

• Gabriela: "Please see one of the training instructors if you have any questions but beyond that, I think we'll be ready to go in just a few minutes."

• Major Narain: "Excellent! Well, that's all I got for you, Recruits. You may enter the ship when so instructed. Good luck and have a great day!"

Main experience

The guests enter the escape room alongside one of the event instructors, and are greeted with the interior hallway of a Ceudar-pattern corvette. Gabriela's voice can be heard on the speaker.

• Gabriela: Recruits, welcome aboard Supplication of Purity. This is the actual interior of a Covenant ship and today, it will be the site of an extremely rare and advanced training procedure. For the purpose of this exercise, imagine the following scenario; you have just boarded this enemy vessel, and the ship's commander has initiated "lockdown protocol". The Covenant have isolated you in this corridor, and are now sending a hunter-killer squad to eliminate you and your team. That's the situation. Ready to get started? Let's begin.

You're sitting ducks in here. Your first call is to escape this corridor. Like a UNSC ship, there are various maintenance access areas along the bulkhead wall of this vessel. These are not visually obvious, but you can locate them by touch. Try running your hands along the wall, about chest-height off the deck. You should find a walled section that slides very easily.

The guests slide a panel off the wall, finding some technology and lights beneath.

Gabriela: Notice the vertical cables inside. There are three sets of two, and each set has a series of dial switches. These cables funnel power to the entire Covenant ship but, if reconfigured properly, the system will trigger a localised short and interrupt the lockdown in your area. Or, to put it another way, you're going to trick the door into opening. See what you can do.

The guests complete the first puzzle.

Gabriela: Okay, step one down. The door is next - you need to access it in order to complete this exercise. But as you'll see, it requires a password of sorts. Notice the sensor buttons on the door. The symbols you see are in Sangheili, the Covenant's primary language. These glyphs are about to flash in a particular sequence across the wheel. When the sequence completes, you'll have a few moments to repeat the sequence you just saw by pressing the correct symbols in the correct order. Pay attention, it starts now.

The guests complete the second puzzle.

• Gabriela: Good work Spartans. The door should open momentarily. Not bad team, in the field, this would have all been much-

A digital shriek can be head, cutting off Gabriela.

• Gabriela: Wait, stand by. There's... strange. I think there's something here. An anomaly.

A second shriek.

• Gabriela: Woah... okay recruits, this isn't a normal part of the program. It seems naval intelligence missed something in this section of the ship. I think your actions may have just... woken it up. Let me try-

Gabriela is again cut off by the shriek. The lights on the door begin to flash more rapidly.

• Gabriela: Recruits? Recruits, listen to me very carefully. This is not a drill. There's some kind of intelligence still active in this vessel. If it is alien, it is hostile - and it does not want me in the network. It's hunting me out of the systems, I'm cycling the access hatch right now. I should still be able to get the door open so stay right there.

The door hisses.

• Gabriela: Do not approach the door that just unlocked. It is not safe, move back! Move to the door on the other side.

The guests move to the other side of the room.

• Gabriela: Well... that's going to blow up. Recruits, you need to get out of this room immediately. I've opened the next door for you to get inside and seal off this door to protect you from the blast. Hurry!

The door behind the recruits opens, revealing a room with two wheels, each covered in buttons. The guests rush into the room and are instructed to each grab a button. The lights in the room flash red and blue, with the guests having to press the buttons in the order of the lights.

• Gabriela: Okay, progress! The next chamber is secured but move quickly, that explosion in the other room is about to go off. I'd prefer you to be as far away from it as possible.

The next door opens, revealing a longer corridor with machinery embedded in the walls.

• Gabriela: That was close. Too close. I can give you the exact math, but I don't want to freak you out. Listen, the training exercise is shut off - this is real. That thing has me blocked from the internal sensor grid, so I could cut out at any minute. See those energy core cylinders around the room? They'll disconnect the intelligence long enough for me to open you an exit. You need to gather up the energy cores right now. Do that by rotating them-

Gabriela is again cut off by the same digital noise as before. The guests perform the assigned activity

• Gabriela: We're losing time. Let me see what I can do. Aha, excellent! I'm back online. If you've removed the energy cores, then we need to move to the next step right now. I've discovered that this thing is an autonomous security protocol subroutine - I've never encountered anything like it before so I'm gathering as much intel as I can. This thing is still putting up one heck of a fight. We need to move fast. Okay, team, I've neutralised the subroutine and made a record of it for future research - that's the good news. The bad news is that it looks like there's going to be another explosion, a big one this time. One that cannot be contained in this chamber alone. Before I could stop it, the subroutine initiated the self-destruct order that would overload the power conduits at the base of the entire structure. If you don't stop that from happening, all of Outpost Discovery will be vapourised.

Double time it recruits, triple! I need you to find two Covenant keycards in the immediate location. They will be small, flat objects that the Covenant use to access the subsystems in this compartmnent. The Grunts typically stored them nearby. You must find these cards. Everyone needs to be looking.

The guests find the two necessary keycards.

• Gabriela: I am impressed! Job extremely well done. Not that I want to make this a habit or anything, but if I'm ever trapped in a Covenant ship again, I know who I want on my team. In all seriousness, thank you. Please accept my apologies for this mess, and my deepest gratitude for your brilliant work. Consider your training exercise passed and completed with flying colours! Not all days with the UNSC will be like this one, there'll be times where the galaxy takes us by surprise - but that's when we discover who we really are and then, you are heroes. Dismissed, recruits! Keep fighting the good fight.

Gallery

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  The interior of the maintenance causeway of Supplication of Purity in the Covenant Escape event.

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  The interior of the maintenance causeway of Supplication of Purity in the Covenant escape event.

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  The interior of the maintenance causeway of Supplication of Purity in the Covenant escape event.

External links

• YouTube - Covenant Escape Room - Halo Outpost Discovery in Orlando FL - a recording of the Covenant Escape event at Halo: Outpost Discovery in Orlando.