Everything about Master Chief Halo totally explained
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, commonly called the
Master Chief and
John alternatively, is a
fictional character and the main
protagonist of the
Halo universe, created by
Bungie Studios, and is a
player character in the trilogy of science fiction
first-person shooter video games,
Halo 2, and
Halo 3. Outside of video games, the Master Chief appears in the novels,,, and, and has cameos in and the
Halo Graphic Novel. He is voiced by Chicago
disc jockey Steve Downes in the video games in which he appears.
The Master Chief is one of the most visible symbols of the
Halo series and the video game universe. Originally designed by Marcus Lehto, Rob McLees, and Shi Kai Wang, the character is a towering and faceless
cybernetically enhanced supersoldier; he's never seen without his armor or helmet. The character has been called an icon, a relative newcomer among more established franchise characters, such as
Mario,
Sonic the Hedgehog, and
Lara Croft.
Electronic Gaming Monthly named the Master Chief as the eighth greatest video game character ever.
Character design
The task of developing the Master Chief for the character's first appearance in
Halo: Combat Evolved fell on Rob McLees and the project's Art Director, Marcus Lehto. Eventually, Shi Kai Wang was hired for conceptual art. One of Wang's sketches was accepted and became the basis for the Master Chief; however, after Wang's version was converted to a 3-D model, it was decided the character looked too slender, "almost effeminate".
In an interview on creating believable video game characters, Bungie's
Joseph Staten noted that, "Master Chief is really what kicked off the creativity," he said, "in terms of how people react to him. He's a space Marine in really cool green armor."
Steve Downes, who voices the Master Chief, is a disc jockey and voice actor who had never played video games before
Halo.
Martin O'Donnell, Bungie's music director, had worked with Downes on a previous video game,, and recommended him for the part. Downes has never appeared at Bungie or Microsoft events, and believes that the Master Chief is left masked because "[thecharacter's identity] is really in the eye of the player".
Attributes
Personality
Steve Downes said that his voice acting was based entirely on Bungie's written character description provided, which specified a character similar to
Clint Eastwood and of few words. In a
podcast interview, the actor noted that, during the recording, he was given a fair amount of creative leeway to develop the Chief's personality. Bungie concept artist Eddie Smith described the Master Chief as "pretty much the consummate professional. He does his job, walks off, doesn't even get the girl, he's that cool he doesn't need her." Although the Master Chief is usually depicted as calm, quiet, and wryly cynical, some reviewers stated that Eric Nylund's portrayal of the character in
Halo: The Fall of Reach deviates significantly from the treatment found in the games and other media.
Entirely encased in heavy armor and standing seven feet tall, the Chief inspires awe and terror in friends and foes alike. Despite his cold exterior, Master Chief cares about his fellow soldiers, especially the Spartan-IIs with whom he's trained. and withholds some combat information on the threat of the
Flood, an alien parasite, after realizing that the full disclosure of the combat data would mean the death of
Sergeant Avery Johnson. While in the Chi Ceti system, one of the Master Chief's fellow Spartans and best friend, Samuel-034, suffers an irreparable breach in his armor. The only physical description of the Master Chief comes from the novels. During a briefing scene in
Halo: The Flood, the Chief is described as tall with short hair, serious eyes, and strong features. His skin is "too white", a consequence of spending most of his time in his armor. without it, he stands six feet, seven inches (2 m) tall and weighs 287 pounds (130 kg). arrives and begins to destroy the planet, despite the best efforts of the Spartans and other UNSC forces. Aboard the spaceship
Pillar of Autumn, Cortana plots a random course of escape. The Covenant accidentally releases the Flood, which begins to spread across the ring. At the request of the installation's resident AI
343 Guilty Spark, the Master Chief retrieves the Index, a device used to activate Halo's defenses and eliminate the Flood. However, Guilty Spark neglects to inform the Master Chief that Halo would accomplish this by destroying all sentient life in a vast radius, essentially starving the Flood to death. by detonating the
Pillar of Autumns fusion reactor core. The Master Chief and Cortana escape in a Longsword, and believe that they're the only survivors.
Halo: First Strike
Halo: First Strike, the 2003 novel by
Eric Nylund, follows the Master Chief after the events of
Halo: Combat Evolved and bridges the events of
Halo and
Halo 2. Floating in Halo's debris field, Cortana and the Chief discover that there are in fact other human survivors. The Covenant is repelled, and the Master Chief joins the ship
In Amber Clad to fight the Covenant on Earth's surface, in New Mombasa. As the Covenant departs via
slipspace, the
In Amber Clad follows them to
Installation 05, another Halo. The Master Chief lands on this Halo and subsequently
assassinates the Covenant
High Prophet of Regret. Emerging from a structure, the Master Chief is attacked by orbiting Covenant forces, but is rescued by the
Gravemind, an intelligence of Flood origin. The Gravemind sends him to
High Charity to search for Delta Halo's Index. Subsequently, the Master Chief boards a Forerunner ship bound for Earth, intending to "finish the fight".
Halo: Uprising and Halo 3
The Master Chief appears as a main character in Marvel's
limited series Halo: Uprising, in which he breaks into a Covenant-held Forerunner structure before being captured by the Covenant. Like
First Strike, the comic serves as a bridge between two video games,
Halo 2 and
Halo 3, in which Master Chief is again the main character.
Back on Earth, the Master Chief helps to repel hostile Covenant forces from
Mombasa,
Kenya and
Voi. With the
Arbiter (a
Covenant Elite who has sided with humanity) and fellow allies, the Chief leads the assault on a Forerunner artifact that the Covenant
Prophet of Truth is attempting to activate. Soon after Truth escapes Earth through the slipspace portal opened by the artifact, the Flood lands on Earth. After helping to control the infestation, the Master Chief follows Truth to the Ark, an immense constructed world more than 262,144
light-years from the center of the
Milky Way galaxy and well beyond the range of any Halo. There, all the Halos can be remotely activated, thus killing all sentient life that could be infested by the Flood.
Appearances in other media
The Master Chief has appeared or has been referenced several times in non-canon media.
Team Ninja approached Bungie Studios and asked to use the Master Chief in their 2006 video game
Dead or Alive 4. Although the Chief couldn't be used due to storyline restrictions, Bungie's interest in the idea resulted in the development of
Nicole (Spartan-458).
The Master Chief is mentioned several times in
Rooster Teeth Productions'
Halo-based
machinima parody series
Red vs. Blue. In the first episode of the series,
Grif, talking to teammate, says: "I signed up to fight some aliens. Next thing I know, Master Chief blows up the whole Covenant Armada, and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, fighting ." In the Halo Zune exclusive video titled "
Turn On, Tune In, Zune Out",
Doc has a segment on his radio broadcast called "You're not Master Chief, and that's okay".
The Master Chief is referenced as a hero by a then-retired soldier in the live-action short, "
The Museum", and appears in the
subsequent video as part of a special advertisement series for
Halo 3 entitled "Believe in a Hero".
Impact and reception
In an article in
Time,
Lev Grossman stated that the Master Chief represents a "new kind of celebrity for a new and profoundly weird millennium" and is a symbol of the increasing legitimacy of video games as an art form.
Electronic Gaming Monthly noted that the Master Chief, in half a decade had become the
de facto symbol for the
Xbox and for a new generation of gamers. The recognition of the Master Chief has spread to mainstream culture;
Madame Tussauds in
Las Vegas has developed a wax sculpture of the Chief. At the ceremony,
Pete Wentz of
Fall Out Boy said that the "Master Chief is as much of a hero today as characters like
Spider-Man,
Frodo, and
Luke Skywalker were for previous generations."
BusinessWeek listed the Master Chief among several video game characters who have been branded beyond their respective video games, "helping them transcend the very medium in the process". In Australia, around September 2007, Hoyts Cinemas popcorn buckets were branded with high-detail images of Halo 3 and the Master Chief along with a prize advertising offer. Several
action figures of the character have been created to market of the
Halo series; the most recent were manufactured by McFarlane. These actions have been called necessary to the game franchise; Ed Ventura, director of Xbox's worldwide marketing, said, "We want to be in the hearts and minds of our fans as much as we can."
Roger Travis, associate professor of classics at the
University of Connecticut, compared the Master Chief to the epic hero
Aeneas, in that both superhuman characters save a civilization by defeating strong enemies in a martial setting. The audience is intended to become immersed and to identify with the protagonist similarly in both stories.
Matthew Stover compared
Halo to the
Iliad, saying that both stories share the meta-theme that "war is the crucible of character". As
military science fiction,
Halo further raises the issue of being human. Stover argued that, since players are to imagine themselves as the Master Chief, the character is correctly presented as a
cyborg, neither a flawless machine nor fully human. Players would be unable to empathize with the former, and the latter would be too specifically developed. Reviewers have suggested that the name John-117 could be a Biblical reference. Similarly, some critics see the Chief as a
stock action hero, with little added dimension. Neil Blomkamp, director of the stalled
Halo film, said the movie would have depicted the character as "the most important supporting cast member" because of his faceless nature. Instead, "other characters around him [...] did most of the emotional heavy lifting", with their story exploring their perception of the Chief.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Master Chief Halo'.
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