Halo 3 announcement trailer

The Halo 3 announcement trailer was debuted at E3 2006. Unlike the Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 trailers, the Halo 3 trailer is in widescreen and HD (high-definition); it also rendered in real-time, being based on the ending cinematic of the level The Storm from Halo 3. An accompanying ViDoc, Finish the Fight, was released shortly after the trailer.

Transcript

Fade in from white to ruins at the edge of New Mombasa. A comical warning sign depicting a Grunt crossing swings in the wind. The camera slowly pulls back as a gust of wind kicks up a cloud of sand. A flash of blue light flows toward and past the camera, a partial image of Cortana visible.

• Cortana: (distorted) "...I have defied gods and demons..."

Cortana vanishes, and the camera continues to back through ruins. A cloud of smoke rises, along with the storm, distorting the familiar silhouette approaching the camera. Again, a transmission from Cortana flashes by, showing her lips moving realistically.

• Cortana: (distorted) "...I am your shield. I am your sword..."

The figure, revealed to be Master Chief, walks through the smoke, an MA5C assault rifle over his shoulder. He stares off to the right. He readies the gun and looks straight ahead. A transmission flashes by showing Cortana's entire face.

• Cortana: "I know you. Your past, your future..."

Her face fades away into the Chief. Three Banshees fly toward the camera from behind him. The camera follows them to a Kerel-pattern assault carrier in the foreground with a fairly sizable Covenant fleet in the background. Nine Banshees are escorting a Phantom. The Chief stands at the edge of a cliff. The camera follows the Covenant ships to see a massive Forerunner structure in the valley. A hole is in the center, directly beneath the eye of the storm within the raging clouds above. A shockwave sweeps the valley as plates in the structure rise. As soon as the shockwave occurs, the assault carriers start moving out of the huge crater. The cliffs start to break away, and the Chief watches his footing. Energy gathers in the center; in the reflection of the Chief's visor, it fires; fade to white. Cut to black.

• Cortana: (voice over) "This is the way the world ends."

The Halo 3 logo is shown, and the trailer ends with:

Finish The Fight
2007

Trivia

The Grunt crossing sign in the beginning of the trailer.

• In the beginning, there is a "Grunt crossing" sign as an Easter egg. In an FAQ released with the trailer, Bungie jokingly explained, "The New Mombasa City Council had an incredibly efficient public works department until and even during the tragic and devastating Covenant invasion."
• When Cortana speaks, a voice similar or identical to the Gravemind is saying the same words. This voice steadily fades with each dialogue; by the time she says, "This is the way the world ends," the second voice is completely absent.
• The terrain geometry used in the trailer was reused for the main menu of the final game, albeit with the inclusion of the Forerunner Supernal Spiral-class Keyship Anodyne Spirit at the center of the portal.
• Cortana's final line in the trailer references the Cortana Letters, a series of cryptic e-mails sent to marathon.bungie.org (a sister site of halo.bungie.org) as a publicity stunt before Halo: Combat Evolved's announcement during Steve Jobs's keynote at the Macworld Expo in 1999. The full line from the Cortana Letters is "...your poet Eliot had it all wrong: this is the way the world ends." This references T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men, whose final stanza (perhaps the most quoted of all of Eliot's work) goes:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Gallery

Development images

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  Early animation notes for the trailer.

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  Early animation notes for the trailer.

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  Storyboard of Cortana.

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  Storyboard of John-117 walking.

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  Storyboard of John-117.

Screenshots

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  The Master Chief's silhouette obscured by smoke.

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  Cortana, moments before she fades away.

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  The Master Chief holding the MA5C assault rifle.

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  The Chief watches as the Forerunner structure activates.

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  The Ark's portal reflected on John-117's visor.

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  A view of a Covenant assault carrier and the portal.