HALO 2 starts off with production values so high that it sort of shocked me. This is looking ahead a little bit, but even compared to HALO 3, HALO 2 feels like a different breed.
It starts with a cutscene interweaving the commendation and military pomp taking place with the Master Chief and the trial of the Elite who will become The Arbiter. It would be over-blown to call this groundbreaking or par-excellance in narrative craft, but I would be lying if I said I was not struck in the best way by this gripping sci-fi nonsense. These restored cutscenes throughout HALO 2 are so much more refined than what has come before in HALO: CEA or after in HALO 3 as to make this game really feel like a distinct middle chapter in its own tropey way.
HALO 2 is absolutely the game of the original trilogy that I think about the the most often with the highest fondness; it is narratively the most interesting, it firmly planted itself in what makes the mechanical gameplay of Halo games so great, it has fantastically diverse combat arenas and encounter design, and it even manages to give some subtle difference to the play of Master Chief and the surprise playable character in The Arbiter which give the game the ability to be much more interesting narratively than before both by playing opposing (until they are not) sides of a conflict, but also giving breath and beats to each other character within their stories.
Famously, HALO 2 ends on a cliff-hanger. This is further proof that Halo 2 isn’t just the best of the original trilogy; it’s also the most brazen, the one with attitude, the one that is, on its own terms.
Ultimately, this is what Halo 2 does differently; it prioritizes its character’s relationship to the world in a way that HALO: CEA did not; In the first game, Master Chief and Cortana being our primary characters are motivated by their allegiance to humanity. They want to prevent the Covenant from using the Halo as a weapon. This is broad as it gets, a soldier who is loyal to his cause. HALO 2 introduces complications that are by no means wholly original, but they do create more intrigue within the narrative. The Arbiter and the rest of the Covenant leaders give us character antagonists whose own objectives serve as clear obstacles to our primary protagonist. The stakes are more defined and have more nuance which makes the eventual partnership between the two more dynamic. This is HALO 2’s legacy, it complicates things, and that’s good. It’s still paperback sci-fi, but it's nicer paper.