Halo Elites Art Style Analysis - Part 2

The Depiction of the Elites in the Halo series

2009 to 2011 (The Prequels and Adaptations)

Posted May 2023

2009 - Halo Wars

The year was 2009, the Halo trilogy had long been concluded and Bungie were hard at work on a spin off game called ‘Halo Recon’. In February that year, Halo Wars was released to the public and brought with it what is one of my favourite depictions of the elites in the franchise.

The elites in Halo Wars take a lot more from the Original Xbox era Halo games versus Halo 3. The sleek helmets and plating are back, the armour is smooth and metallic again, but the elites now look more muscular, more vicious, and significantly more detailed. To be fair to Bungie, these are CGI cutscenes rather than in-game screenshots, but the actual design is what I’m examining here and I think Ensemble Studios nailed it.

Halo Wars Elite (duel weilding energy swords)

The Big Screen

Throughout the mid 2000s, Microsoft was discussing a potential Halo movie behind the scenes. At one point, this was set to have Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Welsh as executive producers. As a huge Lord of the Rings fan, this sounded like a match made in heaven. Jackson showed his respect for Tolkein’s books when making those movies, and there is no reason to be believe this wouldn’t have been the case when adapting the Halo video games.

During this time, the Halo movie was set to be directed by Guillermo del Toro, who you might know for Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and most recently Nightmare Alley. This again sounds like the perfect person to bring Halo’s weird and wonderful creatures to the big screen, but it wasn’t to be.

After del Toro left the project to work on Hellboy 2, Jackson turned to the less experienced Neil Blomkamp to fill the role. Reading this now, you probably know that the Halo movie never released and remains a mystery to this day. You probably also know that Blomkamp utilised a lot of the props and sets initially made for the Halo movie, for his hit film District 9.

The images below are some of the only looks we will likely ever get at the Halo movie that never was. In case you’re wondering, that thing on the left is an elite, or at least the way the elites were planned to look at some point during production of the Halo movie. More recently, concept artist Aaron Beck posted an unused design on Instagram, which has been linked to the elite design for the Halo movie. As for the image on the right, I really have no idea what it is, but the shape of the body indicates that it could be some sort of elite exoskeleton.

You might think I’m crazy, but I actually quite like the design of this elite despite how different it is from the look previously established. The mandibles still close up and allow the creature to look somewhat sophisticated and capable of speech, then the body looks fairly familiar with the exception of some proportion changes. I do think that the armour in the concept art looks overdesigned although it is cool that the elite retains it's 'shark fin' helmet from the games. As for the exoskeleton, this could be a re-design of the elite ranger, or something else designed for space combat. The weapon appears to be mounted on the wrist, or it could be built into the suit like the Hunter’s arm cannons.

Although the Halo movie was never finished, Blomkamp did create this stunning short film in the lead up to Halo 3’s launch, titled Halo Landfall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyOAdrxlPVs

Legends

If you’re a long time Halo fan, you might be thinking Halo Reach is next, but wait, you’ve forgotten about Halo Legends. This selection of animated short films was our first look at a Halo lead by 343 industries. It features a variety of interesting art styles, though quite honestly, I found some of the depictions of characters to be downright bizarre. Let’s jump into it…

Now, Halo Legends is split into 7 episodes, 5 of which feature elites to some extent. I’m going to order these by how strange the depiction of the elites is, starting with the most ‘normal’ first.

Prototype

Real quick – the elites in Prototype are faithful recreations of their appearance in Halo 3. You only see brief glimpses of them before they are blasted to pieces by the mechanised spartan, but when you do see them they look good.

The Package

The episode titled ‘The Package’ is interesting because the depiction of Master Chief would go on to be re-used in the film Halo Forward unto Dawn, and would also be a source of inspiration for Master Chief’s Mark VII amour in Halo Infinite. As for the elites, their design combines elements from Halo 2 and Halo 3. Elite zealots (gold) have more elaborate helmets ala Halo 3, whilst lower ranking elites have simpler helmets reminiscent of the original Xbox era designs. I do like how they also incorporated the ‘assault’ armour from Halo 3, which is used by the elite manning his terminal in certain scenes.

One thing I didn’t notice when first watching is that the elite minors (blue) have a design which is very similar to the one from the Halo Wars announcement trailer.

Elite Minor with energy sword (Halo Legends)

The elite major (red), has body proportions more similar to that of a Bungie era elite. Props to 343 for including such a diverse range of designs in this episode.

Elite Major with energy sword (Halo Legends)

Origins

Another quick one, the elites appear in the episode titled ‘Origins’ very briefly. They are depicted in armour reminiscent of Halo Wars, with the Halo 2 honour guard armour added in.

Without armour, the elites feature large, fanged mandibles not too dissimilar to the way they are depicted in Second Sunrise over New Mombasa (see my previous article).

The Babysitter

Strangely, this episode gives the elites armour which is clearly inspired by Japanese Samurai, right down to the plated shoulder armour. I quite like the design, although I would never want to see it in a Halo campaign as it makes no sense for an alien culture to develop armour like this. If we ever get playable elites back, this would be an excellent addition for multiplayer!

Elite Samuri Honour Guards (Halo Legends)

The Duel

Finally, we have The Duel, an episode which is entirely focused on the elites. In these images, we can see the Arbiter, whose face looks somewhat squat compared to that of the elites in the games.

As we get further into the episode, the changes to the elite’s designs becomes more apparent. The elites are portrayed wearing human clothing, with the female elite even wearing jewellery with her hair tied back. To my knowledge, this is the first time a female elite was officially shown in any Halo media. I can’t say that this is how I imagined them.

Before moving on, I have to cover the elite named Haka. He is depicted wearing armour heavily inspired by Japanese samurai, similar to the elites from ‘The Babysitter’.

Halo Reach

Moving back to the games, we have Bungie’s final game in the franchise, Halo Reach. As a prequel to Halo CE, Bungie wanted to redesign the elites in an attempt to re-capture the feel of the intimidating opponents from back in 2001. The elites had become far too familiar to players, and this was a prime opportunity to flip that on its head.

I feel compelled to show all of the elite ranks here, as Bungie designed distinct armour for each type of elite, in order to help distinguish them on the battlefield. This became a tradition in following Halo games by 343 Industries.

As you can see, the elites received a significant makeover. Their amour is sleek with fins and spikes similar to those of the original Xbox era elites. I always thought that the legs and waists of these elites looked far too skinny in comparison to their upper bodies, but I do love these designs, particularly that of the ultra (white armour embellished with red symbols).

One other thing I want to highlight is the similarities of the elite minor (blue) from Halo Reach and Halo 2. Here you can see how the proportions of the elite’s body have changed, but the armour style and overall silhouette is very much the same. The Reach elites have the same finned helmet, the same plated wrist armour on their non-weapon arm, even the same glowing lights.

The main area that has changed is the face, which is much more animalistic in Reach, with many rows of sharp teeth. I always got the impression that the Reach elites couldn’t close their mouths the way elites could in the Halo trilogy (it certainly looks difficult in the concept art!). Interestingly, I read online that this design is partially based off the legendary difficulty logo, which is a cool detail.

Evolutions

Halo Evolutions is an interesting one. It was originally released in 2009 as a book containing a series of short stories by a variety of writers. In 2011, 343 Industries released 4 motion comics depicting the events told in ‘Headhunters’, ‘Mona Lisa’, ‘The Return’, and ‘Midnight in the Heart of the Midlothian’. Below are images of the elites from Headhunters; as you can see, they are heavily based on the Halo Reach designs with almost identical armour.

In addition to these elites, the motion comic also featured 3D models of a new design for the special operations elites. I think this is a really strong design which builds off what bungie did with spec ops elites from Halo Reach, whilst establishing a new villain via the introduction of the Silent Shadow covenant group.

There is also an elite character prominently featured in Mona Lisa. Not much to say, but I felt it important to include him so nothing is missing. Once again, the elite picture here appears to be inspired by the Reach elites.

Moving on to Midnight in the Heart of the Midlothian, we get some glimses of the elites. The depiction appears to be a blend of the Halo 3 and Halo Reach elites, and the actual art style for this motion comic is something I’m quite fond of.

Elite (Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian)

Elite 2 (Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian)

Finally, we have The Return, which is entirely focused one 1 elite character. If we compare the face of this elite with the one from Midnight, we can see that 343 kept a consistent style and anatomy for the elites in these motion comics, just with slight differences to the details, such as eye colour and amour permutations.

Elite close up (Midnight in the Heart of Midlothian)

As far as I’m aware, the amour the elite is wearing is entirely unique to this episode. It has a sealed chest piece almost reminiscent of the flight armour from Halo 3, with thick plating on the shoulders and biceps.

Generally, I think that both Evolutions and Legends showed that 343 Industries were on route to stay faithful to the design of the Bungie era elites. When looking over all of the designs I can see how inspiration was pulled from each of the Bungie games, and I think the result is pretty positive overall, with The Duel being the outlier. If you’re interested in watching these, both series are available on Youtube from various channels.

Happy Anniversary!

On 15th November 2011, exactly 10 years after the launch of Halo CE, 343 Industries released Combat Evolved Anniversary for Xbox 360 consoles. With the assistance of Saber Interactive and Certain Affinity, this was the first Halo FPS title not to be launched by Bungie. From memory, the game garnered praise from critics and a mixed response from fans at the time of launch. As the gameplay was almost identical to that of CE’s, the main differentiator was the art style and presentation, which I will cover briefly while focusing on the elites.

As is well known by this point, Halo Anniversary uses character models from Halo Reach fitted on to the skeletons of the Halo CE models. This means that the designs are almost identical but looking at them side by side you may be able to tell that the Anniversary version looks a bit wonky. What this comes down to is that the CE elites have a different body shape, so the Reach model looks a bit stretched in places. This looks even stranger in game! One quick note is that the shoulder armour is actually unique to the Anniversary elites, which is strange as the Reach elite’s armour looks a lot closer to CE’s.