Above are screens from the aforementioned built-in cameras on the Colonial and UNSC Marines’ helmets.  On the left we see Hicks’ camera filming Hudson while they are under attack.  On the right we see Jenkins camera filming Johnson and a fellow Marine during a Flood attack.  The scene takes place in Halo: Combat Evolved.

I included the two small boxes underneath the main Jenkins shot to show that the UNSC video also documents number mumbo-jumbo and the soldier’s name, “Jenkins, Wallace A.”  The difference is the Colonial camera superimposes that information over the video feed whereas the UNSC camera displays it on a black screen between playback segments.

Some claim that Halo’s assault rifle (below) takes visual cues from Aliens pulse rifle (above).  I don’t think there is a real compelling case to be made when placing them side-by-side.  However, the assault rifle likely inherited the digital ammo counter from the pulse rifle (bottom right and above right).  I find it interesting that neither rifle has iron sights or a scope.  I guess sometimes when you’re killin’ aliens it’s more important to look cool and futuristic than it is to tag ‘em from range.

An earlier assault rifle design from the E3 2000 demo (left) and the MacWorld ’99 showing (right) had more in common with the pulse rifle, namely the olive-green and gray color scheme.  The MacWorld version also had a working grenade launcher (which may or may not be true of the E3 2000 version), as does the pulse rifle.

Another word ought to be said about the E3 2000 demo.  This demo was the first time we really saw a narrative in the Halo universe and it is telling as to how Aliens-esque this little clip was.  We have a group of Marines inserted into battle via dropship.  The dropship pilot (a female, as in Aliens) instructs them that they should, “hang tight, this might get a little rough.” (Apparently they were in for some chop.)

The hard-nosed squad leader (left) barks at his troops a la Apone except he’s white.  Perhaps this was before Bungie decided to lift Apone wholesale or maybe they didn’t want to reveal Johnson yet, who knows.  The white Sarge still does his best Apone impression.  Before they touch down and start heading to their objective he growls, “I want a quick tight dispersal.”  In Aliens, after the dropship sets down the APC and the Marines are in route to their objective, Apone says, “all right, I want a nice clean dispersal this time.”

Then the Halo Marines enter a dark, abandoned Forerunner facility with atmosphere very reminiscent of when the Colonial Marines enter the dark, abandoned colony for the first time.  Private Wang (read: Hudson) tells the Sarge that he’s got “no movement” on his tracker just as Hudson and Hicks had no movement on their trackers, upon entering the colony.   The Halo Sarge tells Wang to “put a sock in it” after Wang makes a comment he doesn’t like, just as Apone loved to tell Hudson to shut up.

Halo’s Marines and the Colonial Marines are ambushed from creatures sneaking at them from shadow.  Both sets of Marines retreat and many die as they flee.  Halo Marine “McLees” is wounded during the escape and detonates himself with a grenade, taking a number of foes with him a la Vasquez and Gorman from Aliens.

Then a giant green cyborg saves the day, which I’ll grant isn’t much like Aliens except that it’s awesome.

In Aliens the motion tracker (left) is a handheld device.  In Halo: Combat Evolved (middle) and Halo 2 (right) the motion tracker is built into Chief’s HUD.  Common features of the trackers are the blue tint, the circular patterns, the waves of blue light emanating from the center outward that detect movement and the representation of moving objects as fuzzy blobs.  The Halo’s tracker lists its range as fifteen meters “15m” and this is a static label.  The Colonial tracker indicates the distance to moving objects in meters and the number adjusts in real-time.

The Art of Halo author Eric Trautmann writes that “The ‘Swamp’ level’s gloom means that players have to pay close attention to their motion trackers-forcing a gameplay homage to the Aliens movie.” [vi] The level he is referring to is “343 Guilty Spark.”

Now let’s look beyond the UNSC Marines themselves and see how the Alien/Aliens aesthetic left an imprint on Halo in other areas.

In Aliens’ fiction, “atmosphere processors” (above left and right) are set up by colonists in order to alter the atmosphere on new worlds, to make them survivable by humans.  This structure is prominent in the story as it is the place where the colonists are cocooned and the Colonial Marines have their first “close encounter” with the Xenomorphs.  The Forerunner gateway artifact, which generated a portal to the Ark (below) is also a prominent set piece in Halo 3.

This is another one of those times that is blatantly obvious that design elements were lifted from the film.  Huge, nearly identical dual-pronged fins encircle both constructions.  Inside the circle an eerie blue light illuminates the scene.

When Hudson looks through digital schematics, searching for colonists, he finds them at the atmosphere re-processor (left).  Upon seeing the image it struck me that it looked like a blueprint for Halo 3’s Trip Mine (right). [vii]

As a sidenote, I wonder if we should thank all the bright blue technology in Aliens’ (motion tracker, schematics, processors, etc.) for Halo’s emphasis on bright blue (HUD, loading screens, text etc.).

Let’s discuss the similarities between Flood and Xenomorph biology.

A Xenomorph Queen lays large eggs (above left).  The Flood collective somehow create large egg-like sacs (lower left).  While the size of the Flood sacs varies, they approximate the size of the Xenomorph eggs.

Inside the Xenomorph egg is a “Facehugger” (above right) that contains a Xenomorph embryo.  Inside the Flood sacs are a number of Flood “Infection Forms” (lower right, as seen in Halo 3).  Notice the similarities between the Facehugger and Infection Form.  Both are roughly the size of, say, a football, their coloring is extremely similar, neither has visible eyes or mouth, both move around low to the ground on numerous long, thin appendages and both have a ridged tail.

Another characteristic that they share is their great ability to leap with appendages spread open in order to latch on to their hosts as Shown in these images from the upcoming videogame “Aliens: Colonial Marines” from Gearbox Software (left) and the “Cortana” level in Halo 3 (right).

When a Facehugger attaches to a host it implants the Xenomorph embryo inside of it, which will eventually become a “Chestburster” and smash its way out of the victim.  This tiny Xenomorph will grow very quickly into either a Warrior or a Queen.  When the Flood attaches to a host it will mutate and take over the host, transforming it into a Flood warrior (if adequate biomass is present).  In the case of both aliens the genetic make-up of the host will influence the genetic make-up of the resulting creature “born” from the parasitic process.  For example, if a Xenomorph hatches from a human it will retain human characteristics and if a Flood attaches to a human, it will adopt human characteristics.

When the Warrior Xenomorphs capture a potential host for impregnation they cocoon them in an organic resin-like material (left).  When the Flood captured Captain Keyes, they cocooned him in a revolting living mass (right) which many believe to be a “Proto-Gravemind.”

The Aliens Warrior model (far left) is from Sideshow Collectables.  The next three images are a chronological snapshot in the evolution of Halo’s Elite.  The “early Elite study” (second from left) is found on the Halo 2 Limited Edition DVD.  The Elite that appears second from the right is concept art.  Lastly is an Elite (far right) from the E3 2000 demo.

The early Elite study is shockingly similar to the Warrior Xenomorph.  They share the elongated skull that curves toward the back and a thin body with a generally skeletal and sinewy texture for “flesh.”  Where the Xenomorph has a series of “pipes” protruding up and out from its back the Elite has spines.  Both have long, bony and clawed fingers.  We even see a hint of what looks like a tail on the Elite study.

According to Bungie artist Shi Kai Wang, “Jason Jones always wanted to put a tail on the Elite.  That became the source of a lot of debate.  I felt it made the alien look too ‘animalistic,’ rather than a sentient, technologically enhanced creature.  Plus, we would’ve had to figure out where to put his tail when an Elite sat in a vehicle.” [viii]

As the refinement of the Elite’s design took place it began to look more unique and differentiated from the Xenomorph with the addition of elements such as technological body armor and hooves.

In the end, the Elite maintained an extreme rearward elongation of the skull just as the Xenomorph, as we see in the icon representing the Legendary difficulty setting (left).

The Elite skull overhangs the torso while the Xenomorph’s skull overhangs both torso and back.  However, Elite Helmets streamlined toward the rear in sharp projections add further length to the back of their heads’ profile, as seen in this screenshot from Halo 3 (right).

A comparison between Alien’s Xenomorph (left) and Halo 2’s Arbiter (right) can be readily made.

Beyond the shape of the head and razor sharp teeth, a thick, muscular neck is present in both species, no doubt to aid in supporting the bulk of oversized skulls.  The Elite also retained long, slender fingers and a generally thin humanoid body with dark and taut skin wrapped over bone and sinewy flesh.

The Xenmorph Queen (left) has an enormous and ornate head plate.  The highest-ranking Elites, the Councilors, have enormous and ornate headdresses.  Above, we speculated that the heads of the Warrior class of Xenomorph influenced traditional Elite helmets.  Perhaps the same principle applies here.

The giant unnamed fossilized alien in the above pictures is often referred to as the “Space Jockey.”  He appears to be a bio-mechanical creature, manning the controls of a spacecraft.  It is here, in this derelict craft where the crew from the Nostromo discovers the Xenomorph eggs, during Alien.  We can see a hole in his ribcage, where a Chestburster was likely to have emerged.

In Halo too, we learn of a very ancient, mysterious and highly technologically advanced species called the “Forerunner.”  There we are introduced to the parasitic Flood only after a Forerunner structure is explored and the parasite released.  In Alien we are introduced to the parasitic Xenomorphs only after a Space Jockey structure is explored and the parasite released.  Both the Forerunner ringworld “Halo” and the Space Jockey vessel contained the parasite.

We know the Forerunner studied the Flood and their containment on the Halo installation was at least in part, thanks to this.  It could be speculated that the Space Jockey race also studied their parasites aboard the derelict.  So close and ancient are the ties that both the Space Jockey and Forerunner share with their respective parasites, many fans have speculated that they each had a hand in the creation of the same parasites that killed them.

The first film in the series, Alien (above), and Halo: Combat Evolved also share a number of narrative components.  Both protagonists, Ripley and the Master Chief encounter a hostile parasitic alien life form.  Just as Ripley fights on after all her crewmates are killed by the Xenomorph, Chief fights on after his fellow Marines are decimated by the Flood.

Both Ripley and Chief initiate a self-destruct countdown on their ships, using their engines to trigger a massive explosion in hopes of destroying their respective threats.  Both make desperate escapes from these ships in smaller craft just before detonation.  In the end both are left to float in solitude in space (unless you consider A.I.s or cats to be sufficient company).

Was it, at least in part, this parallelism in story arc that caused Bungie to unashamedly credit Alien in Halo: Combat Evolved with a sign on the Pillar of Autumn?  The light blue poster reads, “LOST: CALICO CAT ANSWERS TO: JONESY.”  Anyone familiar with Alien will remember “Jonesy,” the calico cat that went missing aboard the Nostromo (and also appeared briefly in Aliens).

A similar poster is in Halo 3.  The above image was taken on the multiplayer map Foundry.  The poster fragment also appears on the map Rat’s Nest.  This image includes a photo of a cat in the corner and an “e” was added to “Jonesey.”

Of course some will chastise Bungie, claiming that they go beyond the realm of innocent homage and delve into cheap imitation when so many elements from Halo resemble Alien and Aliens.  For example, after watching Halo’s universe come to life in Neil Blomkamp’s short film “Arm’s Race” (above), 1UP.com’s Shawn Elliott criticized Halo’s designs for being too derivative of Aliens.

Whether Bungie crossed any lines of moderation in this regard is open to discussion.  It is true however that many works of fiction borrow great ideas from their predecessors while adding enough spice to the creative stew to make it uniquely their own.  For example, Dan O’Bannon, a screenwriter for Alien said, “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!”  [ix] Cameron himself was influenced by the novel Starship Troopers and went as far as to ask the Colonial Marine cast to read it before filming.

Either way you look at it you ought to respect the fact that Bungie admits the impact Alien and Aliens has had on Halo.  Griesemer doesn’t just say there was an Aliens influence.  He said, “…obviously there is a big Aliens influence.”  While Bungie clearly owes a great debt to the films, they also deserve credit themselves, for forging one of the most beloved, epic and intricate sci-fi universes in years.

A universe that will, no doubt, be borrowed and stolen from for years to come.

- Valor

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