Visiting The Halo Museum
I am ashamed to admit that for all the nerding out I am doing around Halo I did not know that there is a Halo Museum up until a few weeks ago. Thanks to the kindness of an engineer at 343 Industries I managed to get a tour of the facility together with my wife, and it was nothing short of amazing for someone who is a huge Halo nerd (I promise you I am not paid to say any of this).
First of all, have you ever seen how massive Atriox is? Yeah, we all played the game, but it’s a completely different thing to see the proportions in real life.
And yes, this is the Atriox outfit used for the Halo Wars 2 commercial. And the other one. No wonder he could easily toss Chief out of UNSC Infinity.
Compared to Master Chief I was a little more… comparable?
We managed to also see some of the early Brute models.
As well as an Elite Ultra.
All sorts of variations of the Chief’s armor through the years, including the one in Forward Unto Dawn.
The holo-table was there too, all complete with the Covenant and UNSC fleets.
Another version of the holographic table was used for Hololens demos.
Compare the armor above to the Halo 5 Chief variation (along with Spartan Locke).
Compared to the above, the Halo 2 version was significantly less detailed, for obvious reasons.
The OG Chief was there too, along with the assortment of Reach posters.
Halo also has representation in the media, like the Halo Legends and The Fall Of Reach works.
The amount of all sorts of Halo memorabilia in the venue was staggering (apparently production really ramped up after Halo CE and Halo 2).
343 Industries also partners with Limbitless to create Halo-themed prosthetics to help children with limb differences.
Halo 2600, not surprisingly, also made the museum cut! It was written by Ed Fries, former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft, who helped with Microsoft’s acquisition of Bungie back in the day.
Modern-day Halo Infinite was, of course, in its own dedicated part of the museum. The special edition Xbox is the staple of the shelf.
Fun fact - the Forerunners statue is something given in parts to early testers of Halo Infinite. There’s only twelve in the world that assembled the whole thing.
Fun fact - Australia actually has Halo-themed Chibi coins that are legal tender. There are also Swarovski energy swords and Master Chief helmets out there (which were never sold - there’s only 117 models in the world), but the coins are more interesting to me personally.
As a nice surprise, there was also a section dedicated to the Halo community!
I mean, who wouldn’t want a full-size Ghost to be stationed in their building?
Or a 100-pound Gravity Hammer?
A nod to Jervalin’s LASO feat was also there.
Master Beef (not a typo) helmet was safely preserved too. It’s a bunch of Arby’s wrappers around the Chief helmet, proudly displayed alongside all the other Halo 20th Anniversary merch.
If you haven’t yet explored the lore through the Halo books, the museum basically contained all the recommended reading.
One of my favorite parts of the museum tour was the brick-built Raid on Apex 7 from Halo 5, made with every little in-game detail implemented.
Could not have stopped by the museum and not take some photos with the available props. Those conveniently included a MA-40.
As well as the famous Battle Rifle, the BR-75.
If extreme sports are more like your jam, Halo-branded snowboards and skateboards do exist:
A huge thank you to the folks at 343 for inviting us over and sharing so many insights about the Halo history!
I want to also extend a huge and special thank you to my wife for spending a good chunk of her time taking the photos that I then shamelessly aggregated in this blog post. She supports my Halo fandom beyond what I would expect of anyone.
