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Halo 3 - The Official Guide
Updated September 27, 2007

Being ardent fans of the Halo series, this guide has been a labor of love for the Piggyback team. After half a year of research and development, including three intensive months on site at Bungie’s offices and many hundreds of hours of play, you might suspect that the editorial team would be looking forward to playing something, anything, else. But no: at the time of writing, we’re currently enduring a painful period of withdrawal while we wait for our boxed copies of Halo 3 to arrive.
Without wishing to appear unduly arrogant, we’re also extremely fond of the book. Why? Well …
Quality is everything
We have striven to create a book that we would genuinely like to read, rather than one that would be easy to write.

This is a strategy guide, not an instruction manual
The short Basics chapter offers a quick, ten-page crash course to help first-time Halo players get up to speed, and that’s it - blink, and you’ll miss it. From there, we leap directly into the Campaign chapter, just as you most likely will as a player.
Spoilers are the work of the devil
We’ve gone to great lengths to avoid mentioning even the slightest detail about Halo 3’s storyline in the Campaign chapter. Millions of players worldwide, even those who howled with outrage at Halo 2’s cliffhanger denouement, have been fidgeting impatiently for three years while waiting to learn how the story ends, and it’s not our place to ruin it for them. We’ve also been very careful to respect the importance of gameplay-related surprises, such as new enemies, weapons, vehicles and equipment, by introducing them only after you encounter each during play.
We focus on guidance, tips and finer points that you actually need
You may be surprised to read this here, but a meticulous blow-by-blow account of how to play through Halo 3 on the Normal difficulty level simply isn’t necessary - there are plenty of onscreen prompts, visual waypoints and spoken clues that tell you where to go or what to do next. Thing is, though, playing on the default Normal difficulty setting is pretty much a dress rehearsal for the real Halo 3. Sure, you’ll get to see how the story ends, enjoy plenty of unforgettable sights and sounds, and kill alien adversaries in clever, creative ways … but if you want to experience the true game, you’ll need to complete it on Heroic and, eventually, Legendary.
The Heroic difficulty level is where all veteran Halo players and dedicated gamers should start, and is, in Bungie’s words, “Halo 3 as it is meant to be played”. Legendary comes later. Unlike its equivalent mode in Halo and Halo 2, it has been carefully tuned and refined to remove needlessly cruel difficulty spikes. It’s consistently challenging, sometimes maddeningly so, and will push many players to the very limits of their abilities. You may hurl your joypad aside in disgust from time to time, but never so furiously that you can’t simply reach over to pick it up and try again. We would speculate that the Gamerscore reward for beating every level on Legendary will be the most gratifying Achievement many Xbox 360 owners will ever unlock.
For that reason, our Campaign chapter is rather unique, as we’ve divided each double-page spread into two distinct sections. The left-hand page is designed for readers playing through on Easy, Normal and Heroic, and features a detailed map annotated with the positions of weapons, vehicles and points of interactivity, surrounded by bite-sized captions that provide targeted guidance, practical tips, and useful observations. The right-hand page, though, is written specifically for those playing Halo 3 on Legendary, and features exhaustively researched strategies, tactics and techniques for every key battle you fight.
So: while you don’t necessarily need a guide to finish Halo 3, you won’t truly “beat” Bungie’s opus until you complete it on Legendary, and unlock all associated Achievements. And this is where you will need our help.
Of course, there’s much more to this guide than the Campaign walkthrough. The Extras chapter that follows it is meant to prepare players for life on Heroic and Legendary, and also reveals detailed information on special features that you can read about after you’ve witnessed the game’s ending. We strongly advise - nay, insist - that you refrain from reading it until you have finished the Campaign mode for the first time. Last, but by no means least, the guide’s closing chapter focuses on Halo 3’s magnificent multiplayer mode. It has detailed annotated maps, of course - essential for those seeking to learn the location of principle “power weapons” straight away - but also includes essential tried-and-tested techniques and strategies either contributed by, or approved by, the Halo 3 team.
Finish Halo 3’s Campaign mode once, and you’ll have seen a mere fraction of what it has to offer. Complete it five times, and you’ll still feel that there’s much more that you could experiment with … not to mention a multiplayer mode that will keep you playing for years. There’s no doubt about it: Halo 3 is a game designed to last. And so, as we hope you’ll soon appreciate, is this guide.