Transcript
Speaker: Hello everyone and welcome to episode 4 of Control Alt Rewind.
Speaker: Dan, I am very excited for this one.
Speaker: We are getting into one of our all-time absolute favorite games.
Speaker: We're going to be talking about Halo 2 and all that resides around it.
Speaker: Look, I think
Speaker: Dan, you can agree that there's enough content when it comes with us with Halo.
Speaker: This is to really fill up a number of episodes and we may get to that one point, but we are really excited.
Speaker: This is a game that absolutely defined us as gamers.
Speaker: This was in our absolute prime.
Speaker: Yeah, it changed our lives.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Changed our lives completely.
Speaker: And we'll get into that in so many ways.
Speaker: This helped to really forge some of those personal connections, long-term connections, our connections with each other.
Speaker: Some of the obviously an enormous amount of competition and excelling to be the best at something.
Speaker: So we're really excited.
Speaker: We've got a number of things to unpack and really rewind about, as I said before.
Speaker: And yeah, I'm Bradley.
Speaker: This is Dan.
Speaker: And yeah, Dan, over to you.
Speaker: Yeah, so one of the greatest things about Halo 2 for us, you know, we're both hardcore gamers, Brad and I. And, you know, we live in our small town, our city of Brockville.
Speaker: You know, since there's like such a limited amount of people, you know, there's not really people that are as hardcore as us.
Speaker: So, you know, you have friends over, they say they're good at Halo, you load up, like, a custom game, like, lockout, whatever, they're like, let's do sword shoddies or something, which is fine, like, if you're having fun doing that, but that's not the way we played, like, we played hardcore, like,
Speaker: like the MLG settings and stuff like that.
Speaker: So what really hooked us with Xbox Live and just playing on that split screen together as a team, which we love that.
Speaker: Like that was awesome because, you know, you get to like see how your teammates do it, you know, throw a couple of jabs at them, like pick it up.
Speaker: And we did that a lot.
Speaker: But what really hooked us is, you know, in that small city, there was no one that could really compare to us in the game.
Speaker: Like they say they did, but they really don't even know what they're doing when you want to actually play with them.
Speaker: So being able to test your skills online against worldwide, like
Speaker: The whole lot of people.
Speaker: It was just something that we always wanted.
Speaker: We just wanted to find competition.
Speaker: Like, we could just destroy the local scene.
Speaker: So, yeah, finding that competition, it was just so addicting.
Speaker: And it was just, I don't know, it was just so awesome to experience, especially the first time, like the first few years of that.
Speaker: It was like, wow.
Speaker: Yeah, it was incredible because, yeah, and even at the beginning when we first started playing Halo 2, we would have, I don't know, scrounged up some money to buy it.
Speaker: I don't even know how I played it.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't even know how.
Speaker: Original Xbox.
Speaker: Yeah, we would have had to scrounge up some money to buy a second controller and all that.
Speaker: I remember, yeah, so I think we touched on it in another episode.
Speaker: I was...
Speaker: I really liked Halo 1.
Speaker: I loved the campaign.
Speaker: I played it with some friends like LAN.
Speaker: Obviously, there wasn't an online component, at least on the Xbox at that time.
Speaker: So I definitely was interested.
Speaker: I knew a bit about it.
Speaker: I was quite hyped about it.
Speaker: I'd heard a little bit of hype around Halo 2.
Speaker: So it was definitely something that Dan and I were going to get.
Speaker: But on Dan's point, this was the medium that you could go on to, yeah, test your skills.
Speaker: And I don't ever really remember...
Speaker: a point that we played the game where we weren't really competitive about it.
Speaker: Like even when we first got it and that this has been, I think us in every game, we always, as soon as we pick it up and we, we insert it into the console or download it, we want to be the best at it.
Speaker: It's just that way.
Speaker: the way something we me and Dan and a lot of others share share in common no matter what we do we just want to be really really really good at the game and and I mean it's hugely about competition like me and Dan are sitting next to each other on a couch playing split screen and we're yeah we're razzing each other up the whole time but then it's also yeah yeah
Speaker: But then it's me and Dan against the world as well.
Speaker: It was so good.
Speaker: And not only was it us like our skill and us playing 4v4 or 8v8 or whatever game type we happened to be playing at the time, but we had headsets and we could talk to people online.
Speaker: We needed two gamertags though for this.
Speaker: I think we did do guests for a little bit on Halo 2.
Speaker: We did guests for a while.
Speaker: We had to get our own gamertags.
Speaker: yeah so in the ranked game definitely at the beginning i think you were a little a little cut why we probably couldn't afford to have yeah i was probably just against you for a while yeah i would have until we could until we could save enough money uh remember no i actually remember i was we talked about another episode i was cool cat yeah okay i won
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, and three O's and another K and some T's.
Speaker: So it was horrible.
Speaker: Yeah, you could never remember how many O's.
Speaker: No, it wasn't good.
Speaker: But yeah, so Dan would play as... Halo had a guest function, so you could play... Dan could log in as my guest and we would play.
Speaker: So it would be Cool Cat, which is my gamertag, and then Dan would be playing as my guest.
Speaker: And Dan also liked being the little enigma or his alter ego.
Speaker: Like, being a guest, he was...
Speaker: probably never taken seriously but he was still very good at the game so he did he did like hiding hiding behind that as well yeah it's funny because like even even now like when i'm playing like halo or something i leave like all my armor default and stuff so like even now it's like kind of an enigma they're probably like this guy hasn't even changed his armor he's gonna suck and then they just get destroyed
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So, yeah, Halo 2, we would play, I was completely obsessed with, firstly, the campaign of Halo 2.
Speaker: Like, this was groundbreaking stuff for the Xbox at the time, firstly.
Speaker: It really was, yeah.
Speaker: The campaign was the story, like, the hype that it built.
Speaker: I need a weapon, we will be watching that trailer, so it'll be fine.
Speaker: It was epic.
Speaker: That's one of the poses just behind me from obviously from one of the big trailers.
Speaker: And yeah, the marketing campaigns for this were just so big budget.
Speaker: It was enormous.
Speaker: And it was almost like at that time, I swear these games were released and hype was built around the campaign.
Speaker: Multiplayer was second.
Speaker: Like this was before the Call of Duty era.
Speaker: Yeah, this was before that...
Speaker: Now games are completely the opposite.
Speaker: Some games don't even don't even launch with Yeah, this was um, you know a lot of people were skeptical because Xbox live you had to pay for it Why would I want to pay for it like to play online?
Speaker: Like you you have to like sell me a good product like I get enough product for me to invest in that and like this is the one that did it
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It totally changed the game.
Speaker: Like, obviously, yeah, we've mentioned it in other episodes that there was obviously other games.
Speaker: There was CSGO.
Speaker: There was Unreal Tournament.
Speaker: Like, there's games that have been... Yeah, there's been games that have been played online before this, but...
Speaker: not as many people, especially back then, had PCs.
Speaker: Even still now, way more people are playing on the console than they are gaming on PCs.
Speaker: We're starting to bridge the gap, but there was no way we could afford a gaming PC at that time.
Speaker: Not in our wildest dreams.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not in our wildest dreams.
Speaker: So this brought online gaming to the masses.
Speaker: And that's what I just want to really highlight.
Speaker: This is, yes, I'd played Unreal Tournament.
Speaker: That was the big one I played online as a first-person shooter.
Speaker: Halo was actually a lot of, I think I pulled a lot of inspiration from it.
Speaker: this is what brought online gaming online voice chat to the masses and then from that obviously esports really took off like this was yeah i mean mlg was on espn like they were showing halo 2 on espn it was crazy insane like absolutely insane maybe like i remember those broadcasts and i remember watching them and you know really enjoying them but you know that got cut after halo 2 and then it was just all online after that but
Speaker: Yeah, what a capture of time.
Speaker: The ability to test your metal on these online platforms.
Speaker: And I think like, you go like, yeah, sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, we were just used to, you know, your plugin controllers, local play couch co-op or like couch versus like, it's like, that's a real person right there.
Speaker: And it was just so crazy, like, especially to me because I didn't play PC games and stuff.
Speaker: So like, this was like, oh, it is unbelievable.
Speaker: Yeah, there was something different.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: I think a lot of it had to do with, to be honest with you, Dan, like the big difference for me, if I think of when I played, I played a lot of Unreal Tournament.
Speaker: The big difference was the voice communication, I think, was a huge one.
Speaker: like, I don't know what it was.
Speaker: It was difficult.
Speaker: You had to do, I can't even remember the name of the thing that you had to do if you wanted to use voice chat on like Unreal Tournament back in the day, but it wasn't just enabled through the game.
Speaker: Like you couldn't, you could chat like typing, but that was about it.
Speaker: But then, yeah, you really added the human being element that there was you, it was you and your mate up against some other people all over the world doing exactly what you're doing and absolutely just loving it and being pioneers into,
Speaker: the global transcendence of online gaming.
Speaker: It was, it was a really incredible thing to be a part of.
Speaker: And going back to that, touching on it, Dan, like the local co-op aspect like that also was a huge, a huge thing about these games.
Speaker: That was huge.
Speaker: It was the best.
Speaker: Connect your Xbox together with like an internet cable, you know, get a LAN going, get two TVs and stuff like that.
Speaker: So many people, so many people,
Speaker: like with Halo and just original Xboxes, they would have LAN parties.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what Halo one was like based off of.
Speaker: And that's why Halo one became so popular in tournaments and stuff, because it was just like such a well-built game.
Speaker: And yeah, it didn't have online.
Speaker: So everyone just played together and they're like, let's, let's bring this to the next level.
Speaker: You know, let's, let's start doing this at tournaments.
Speaker: So yeah, having Xbox live on Halo two was an absolute must.
Speaker: And yeah, it was groundbreaking.
Speaker: I think with the, I mean, going to like really diving into the game itself as well, like it was extremely in, well, every Halo game that, and part of the reason we've loved them is we knew that they were always extremely fair in how they were built.
Speaker: Like there wasn't really weapons that,
Speaker: you could the game types were very fair you knew that if if you went up you and me and dan went up against a team of two or four and we beat them we knew we were better than them like there was there was no there was no cheesing the game there was no no pain to win you know there's no loadout it's no you all start with the same weapons and you all have equal chances for the most part i mean like you know sniper unlock
Speaker: when you throw a grenade but but yeah you both just start with the same weapons and you have pretty much an equal chance to get like the power weapons and stuff absolutely and all that and that's and without even like we we can only look back now and recognize that at the time you were just playing the game right that now yeah we weren't we weren't that deep into it yet we didn't we didn't know as much we were just like
Speaker: You know, we were just learning and exploring different options, you know, dual wielding garbage guns.
Speaker: Yeah, so you could dual wield, you could hold two guns in one hand, but that was really big.
Speaker: That was really big at the time.
Speaker: And that had, I don't believe there was another game that had really brought in like akimboing weapons.
Speaker: at that stage.
Speaker: That was huge.
Speaker: Yeah, and you could do different combinations of two guns on the fly.
Speaker: Plasma rifle and SMG or plasma pistol.
Speaker: SMG plasma pistol.
Speaker: Pistol, just regular pistol, you know, you just do so many different combos.
Speaker: Needlers.
Speaker: which weren't very good in Hila 2, but, you know.
Speaker: Dan and I, just to have fun, and I think this is a good segue into this conversation, Dan, is there was a combination of weapons in the game that was referred to as the noob combo.
Speaker: The noob combo was a way that you could face...
Speaker: It was it was amazing in Halo 2 and you could basically knock off someone's shield in the game and then hit them with a quick headshot.
Speaker: It still took some skill and it was not unbeatable.
Speaker: You could beat people that were using it could be beaten.
Speaker: It still took some skill.
Speaker: Yeah, you could have dodged a plasma pistol.
Speaker: We had this unbelievable amount of synchronicity and Dan would actually dual wield the pistols where you couldn't actually kill someone if you're dual.
Speaker: Basically, you couldn't kill someone if you're dual wielding the pistols, but he would be knocking off their shields and I would be shooting them in the head.
Speaker: That was so funny.
Speaker: It was just so fun.
Speaker: There won't be another time where we can do something like that.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And yeah, just doing that kind of stuff was just so fun being creative because, you know, we just scheme, we were scheming.
Speaker: We're like, let's just do this.
Speaker: Let's try this.
Speaker: So let's see if it just destroys them.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker: Well, I'll pick up two.
Speaker: So then you make everyone one shot and then you're just picking off the heads.
Speaker: And we're just laughing like so hard because, because it is, it is really dirt baggy.
Speaker: We've never seen anything like it.
Speaker: No one ever did it to us.
Speaker: And it was just very unique.
Speaker: And we just like exploit the mechanics and stuff like that.
Speaker: Just have like an absolute blast doing it.
Speaker: In a perfectly fair way as well.
Speaker: In a perfectly fair way.
Speaker: And yeah, I was just thinking, yeah.
Speaker: So we would, in the game as well, like there was a lot of like de-ranking and de-leveling.
Speaker: It was just became this, we call it smurfing these days, we call it, where you'd build like a new...
Speaker: Yeah, smurfing, where you have like a different account and you rank up, you boost an account with another one.
Speaker: That was just rampant back in the day, just like it is now in games like Apex Legends and really any first person shooter.
Speaker: And what else happened in Halo 2?
Speaker: There was super bouncing.
Speaker: Yeah, super bouncing, sword cancels.
Speaker: Stuff like that.
Speaker: We would just sit in cousin games.
Speaker: Like if we had to go to like, if we couldn't play at Brad's house and we had to go to like his dad's or something and play on the internet, we would look up all the glitches and stuff and learn how to get out of the maps.
Speaker: We'd be doing super bouncing.
Speaker: We'd be doing that fly across the map with the sword move.
Speaker: and you cancel it so you don't actually kill someone that was on headlong on headlong we would like you you could use leverage one player to launch up and out of the map and you just thought at this time you just thought you were gonna find something and like he thought there was gonna be something outside of the map really it was just outside of the map what's funny about that is like
Speaker: online you would talk to people in Halo 2 because it's just rumors and there would be custom lobbies where people would be like we're finding the Guardians and they'd be sitting on Blood Gulch so you'd have like two Goss Warthogs in there
Speaker: And I don't even know what everyone else is doing.
Speaker: I remember because I was one of the victims of this home.
Speaker: And I would be trying this for hours.
Speaker: So yeah, there was a map that you'd play that there was some rumor that you could unlock this door.
Speaker: And then there'd be four massive guardians.
Speaker: that you'd have to fight and then you'd unlock this like segment of the game because there was basically a glitch in the geometry of a wall when you when you shot it with an explosive plasma weapon or a goss warthog and you continued to it would the geometry would actually like light up that was almost like a triangular doorway so you'd have a light oh yeah i know i remember what you're talking about
Speaker: Yeah, you would have 12 people in a room in the custom game lobby.
Speaker: Four Goss warthogs.
Speaker: So one, two, three, four.
Speaker: And then all the rest- In a small little case.
Speaker: This is a small space.
Speaker: It's a small- If you throw a grenade wrong, like you're flipping all those warthogs over and people are mad.
Speaker: No, people were serious about this though.
Speaker: Like I was serious.
Speaker: I wanted to unlock the guardians.
Speaker: Yeah, you were.
Speaker: You were very serious.
Speaker: And you're the one that showed it to me.
Speaker: You're like, we're getting the guardians.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: all about so if you if you weren't in a warthog you you either had a plasma pistol or a plasma rifle and you were just shooting the wall it was just it was very funny like that's right yeah i forgot what the other people were doing yeah you you were shooting it with a plasma gun so yeah like that kind of stuff the rumors were just rampant at that time like easter eggs i guess is what they'd be referred to as
Speaker: You don't get that stuff now because now people just like, you know, as soon as the game comes out, they just like look at through all the source code and see if like something like that's actually in it.
Speaker: But back then, like, no one really knew, you know?
Speaker: It was a mystery.
Speaker: It was all a mystery.
Speaker: Like, you couldn't just Google these things either.
Speaker: Like, you'd get mixed information if you Googled them.
Speaker: Like, if you looked up that at the time, you'd probably get enough information to say, oh, it's possible.
Speaker: You'd probably get someone saying, I found a guardian.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, there was very limited credibility.
Speaker: There still is all over the internet.
Speaker: Yeah, because it's the internet.
Speaker: You can see whatever you want, right?
Speaker: So.
Speaker: You can say whatever you wanted back then and people would truly, truly believe it.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a game where it just became such an amazing competitive experience overall.
Speaker: And I think we're going to get to it in a later episode because we really want to dive into, I guess, when it started to become, yeah, that esports competitive MLG.
Speaker: Top Sundance, Giovanni.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm really excited to get into that segment.
Speaker: But I think it's just worth highlighting that this was groundbreaking at the time.
Speaker: It was so, so, so innovative.
Speaker: And it really just brought, obviously, Dan and I completely together.
Speaker: And me and Dan against the world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Literally, like, that's how it felt.
Speaker: Like, it was us in the basement against the world every time.
Speaker: We'd play all weekend, every weekend.
Speaker: That's, like, all we would do.
Speaker: Like, we would never get bored of it.
Speaker: It took so many years for us to be, like, you know, maybe, like, let's just say something else, like some co-op game or something, like Gears of War, co-op campaign or something.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It took so long to even, like, have a little bit of staleness in it.
Speaker: Like, we were just so hooked.
Speaker: for so long on it and it was great all the game types all the maps you know they did a really good job on the Xbox live release like everything was really up to you know up to standards like exceeding standards like all the maps were cool the weapons were great it wasn't too unbalanced you know
Speaker: No, not at all.
Speaker: No, all the default game modes.
Speaker: And look, they updated things as they went.
Speaker: They added a few maps, if you can remember, throughout.
Speaker: But it just didn't.
Speaker: Even the maps that they added, like the core maps of that game were even... The maps that they added, most of the time sucked.
Speaker: And I hated them.
Speaker: Relic was... Like, they were big team battle maps that got added mostly, like Relic.
Speaker: They did the Halo 1 remake in Halo 2.
Speaker: You had to put it on the hard drive.
Speaker: It was a big team battle type map.
Speaker: Apparently everyone loves it in Halo 1, but I never liked it in Halo 2.
Speaker: Do you know the map I'm talking about?
Speaker: No, I actually... You have the towers on the corners of the map.
Speaker: And I think there's a catwalk in the middle.
Speaker: What's the aesthetic of it?
Speaker: It's kind of like an industrial grey aesthetic.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: No, I can't remember.
Speaker: No, it's fine.
Speaker: And look, in closing, like this is this game while we would obviously we would smack talk the hell out of anyone that.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, we are young.
Speaker: We would smack talk like everyone was, though, like this is what happened.
Speaker: Like it was it was skill against skill.
Speaker: And it was just a bunch of young guys and girls just absolutely just showing flexing, showing that off.
Speaker: But it really, really, really, really.
Speaker: It was Wild West.
Speaker: it was the wild west that's a good way to say it people can say whatever they want and not have any repercussions you know dan was a champion of that yeah yeah i was i was i was pretty rowdy but yeah the name of that map in halo 2 was tombstone i don't know if you remember that one oh of course yeah no no yeah you never had to never had to play it which was good yeah yeah yeah it was just very rare
Speaker: very rare occasion so look that's probably enough for for episode sort of v1 of this but we're going to do some other parts of this when we really get into the competitive side and um it just depends on what talking points we want to i think i think we really want to get into some of the details of some of the games we used to play and um like on some of those big team battle maps and oh and the multi-team multi-team like on turf or terminal
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Wild, wild, wild.
Speaker: Let's leave it at that.
Speaker: Thank you everybody for listening as always, as you can probably tell, we are very, very excited about this topic and really getting into it in more detail.
Speaker: So thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thanks everyone.
Speaker: Catch you on the next one.
