Template:Realworld Template:Ratings Journey's End is a ViDoc released by Bungie Studios related to Halo 3. Released on December 5, 2007 (over two months after Halo 3 came out), the ViDoc is not aimed at Halo fans, but rather new customers; video gamers who have not played Halo: Combat Evolved or Halo 2 but are considering buying Halo 3 for the 2007 Christmas season. The video gives the backstory of the previous two Halo games, telling the entire stories so that players who are just picking up Halo 3 are not lost or confused about the storyline when playing the campaign[1].
Content
At over 16 minutes long (more than twice as long as all preceeding ViDocs, which ran around seven minutes), Journey's End is by far the longest released yet. It also lacks the Latin title scheme that all previous ViDocs used.
The video contains nothing in terms of new information or insight into the Halo universe. Rather, the video is almost entirely comprised of cinematic footage from Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. The story of the Halo universe is told by a group of Bungie employees, including Lee Wilson, Frank O'Connor, Joseph Staten, and Jaime Griesemer. They narrate the cinematics as they tell the story of all the events in the first two games, from the war with the Covenant to the discovery of the Halo Rings, the release of the Flood, and the background of the High Prophets and the Gravemind. The background of the Arbiter, Master Chief, and Cortana are also discussed. A handful of cinematic footage from Halo 3 is shown at the end, but it contains almost no information about the storyline of the third game.
Additionally, the ViDoc does not contain any backstory, information, or images from any of the five Halo novels which were available at the time, nor did it discuss any of the future games in production, such as Halo Wars. The ViDoc's limited scope only included images and details from the three released games.