Halo 3 Trilogy

In appreciation of Guitar Hero and Halo fans alike, Neversoft, Bungie, Activision/RedOctane, and Microsoft have all joined forces to bring players the iconic Halo theme (MJOLNIR Mix) as a free playable song for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, exclusively for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. The theme will be available from Xbox LIVE Marketplace on Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 22nd.

The Halo theme was written, composed, and performed by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori; and the MJOLNIR Mix features guitars performed by the Grammy Award winning guitar hero, Steve Vai.

“It’s a real pleasure to hear one of the best loved and most iconic themes from Bungie’s Halo Universe in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock,” said Marty O’Donnell, Composer and Audio Director for Bungie Studios. “As longtime fans of the Guitar Hero® franchise, it was great to collaborate with Neversoft and Activision/RedOctane to offer this exciting free download to our fans.”

                                                                                                                                                                                            The full soundtrack for Halo 3 will be in shops later this month, which is about as surprising as doing your teeth.

Officially the US will get it on 20th November, while retailer Amazon believes we will have it on 26th November. Microsoft Europe was unavailable to comment, helpfully.

The two-hour soundtrack contains some really rather impressive music from Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, which has been recorded by a full orchestra and voices of real people who can sing.

It is one of the most memorable scores from one of this year’s biggest games, and we had a chance to talk to O’Donnell about it at the Videogames Live concert held recently as a part of the London Games Festival.

Pop over to our Halo 3: Music To Watch Armageddon By article to find out more

Remember way, way back before Halo 3 came out when we chatted with Marty O’Donnell and Jay Weinland about just a bit of Halo 3’s audio? We released an MP3 of a door opening on Crow’s Nest and Marty gently walked readers through how he incorporated music into Halo 3.

One of the key components in implementing audio in Halo 3 comes from Waves Audio Ltd, a software company specializing in audio plug-ins. Bungie Audio Lead Jay Weinland remarked on the partnership with Waves saying, “These plug-ins, specifically the L360 Limited/Maximizer and the Q10 Equalizer allowed us to process our overall mix in real-time without digital clipping (the L360) and create authentic sounding occlusion/obstruction and radio filters (the Q10).”

To anyone who isn’t an audiophile that can sound a little bit confusing, here’s Jay’s translation:

“The Waves plug-ins process our audio in real time as the game engine generates the audio calls.  This is a major shift as typically to use Waves in development before we would use the plug-ins offline (such as in Pro Tools) and then put the processed assets into the game.  As an example in our game it is possible to have the same dialog play over the radio or not over the radio depending on how close the actor (such as a marine) is to the Master Chief (the player).  If the Marine is standing next to the Chief, the line of dialog would just play un-processed, but if the Marine is in the next room it be processed on the fly and play as if it is coming over the radio.  Another great example is when audio (such as an explosion) is played within your line of sight vs. behind a door or wall.”

We’ve put together a short video showing before and after examples of several sections of gameplay demonstrating how Waves impacts our audio and presentation.   Download it here.