Below is a detailed description of the images, dialogue, soundtrack and events of the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer, shown first at E3 in May 2006.
00:00 Black screen.
00:01 White screen. A piano chord is struck that slowly fades.
00:05 From right to left, a scene "washes in" of an arid African plain. We hear wind and the sound of slowly beating bass drums.
This Banshee roars over the head of the Master Chief in the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer, flying towards the mysterious buried artifact in the distance. But who is flying it? The cavity the pilot would normally appear in seems to be empty.
A delibrate omission by Bungie, to avoid revealing the species of Covenant currently invading? Or just a clever strategy to minimize the amount of artistic effort needed to create the trailer, thus ensuring the least impact on real development work?
The music in the trailer may suggest many things about the upcomming game. For example the note played on the piano at the very start of the trailer and at the end right before, "this is the way the world ends" is said, the exact same note is played on the piano. Perhaps suggesting that the humans will be equal to before the war started. And after that the trumpets, they could signify triumph, but for who the covanent or human kind? Also when the artifact in the video opens up the classic halo battle music start. Could this all mean something?
[image:10174 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] Chris Sohl captured three more interesting images from the Halo 3 Announcement trailer, and we've added them to our Halo 3 Announcement Trailer Sceen Captures page.
Chris Sohl, who captured this image from Bungie's Halo 3 announcement trailer, had this to say about it:
Who is this dude?!?! His faces are less than a second apart in the trailer.
The first face doesn't have a lot of definition at all, so while I wouldn't bet the house that it isn't Cortana, I wouldn't argue strongly against someone who felt that it wasn't, either.
The second is so distorted that it's difficult to say much at all, except that it looks menacing. Sort of like a slee-stack from Land of the Lost.
As for what's going on in the trailer with Cortana, I think there are two possibilities:
Cortana mentions during Halo 2 gameplay a "presence" in the Covenant system that is resisting her, that she thinks is unusually strong for a Covenant AI. Perhaps it is a Covenant AI, or a Forerunner AI, or something else. This face might represent that entity, whatever its identity is.
We know that Cortana is being held captive by Gravemind. But we still don't know much about who or what Gravemind is beyond the "Flood hive brain" description. We don't know what his genesis is.
If, as some believe, the process of the formation of a Gravemind-like entity is what we were seeing in the Keyes blob, it's possible that perhaps in the distant past, Gravemind was also a humanoid. Perhaps it is that face we are seeing here; the initial or primal identity subsumed by the Flood into the body that eventually became Gravemind.
Some of the more conspiratorial theorists may still hold to the notion that Gravemind himself is the Keyes blob, somehow escaped from the destruction of Installation 04 and transported to Delta Halo. As unlikely as that is, this would make the face perhaps Captain Keyes. I don't particularly see any resemblance, but again, the image does lack definition.
Chris Sohl, who captured this image from Bungie's Halo 3 announcement trailer, had this to say about it:
The ghostly "ancient artifact" shows up one additional time, again in a single frame.
Chris Sohl, who captured this image from Bungie's Halo 3 announcement trailer, had this to say about it:
I'm a photo restoration artist, and I decided to extract the clearest picture of Cortana and clean it up from the weird lighting effects. Here's the result. This is the first and best look we have at Cortana in Halo 3, and she's lookin pretty cute... for an AI... *This is not technically a true screen capture; it's about 15% rendition and substitution.
[image:10173 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] This week's Bungie Weekly Update becomes the first Halo 3 Weekly Update as Frankie answers fan questions about the Halo 3 Announcement Trailer unveiled earlier this week at E3 2006.
Hey guys, a Q&A about the trailer which answers a lot of the questions we can freely address.
[image:10167 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0] IGN's Halo 3 Announcement Trailer gallery had four images in it not published by Bungie. We've now added them to the gallery here. We've now subdivided the Halo 3 Images page into separate galleries: one for storyboards, and one for screen captures from the trailer itself. As other images are released we'll create separate galleries for them.
The weather is stormy over the mysterious buried artifact, as lightning strikes in the distance and a mysterious funnel cloud swirls directly overhead. Some have speculated this is the result of Covenant technology at work that uncovered the artifact.
The sun glints off his armor as the Master Chief strikes a pose. He thinks this is his best side.
Anyone who thought that after Halo 2, things couldn't possibly get any shinier, was obviously wrong.
The glare of the sun nearly obscures the Master Chief as he stands near the cliff edge and a Covenant ship-- presumably a cruiser although possibly an assault carrier-- passes overhead and towards the mysterious buried artifact.
