25 Greatest Musical Tracks From The Halo Series

5. The Light At The End - Halo 3: ODST

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Yy4wuCrEmCk This, right here, is the beauty that is Halo 3: ODST. The apex of its soundtrack, the glory of all its accumulated efforts in audio all lead to this one piece of absolutely breathtaking audio that is reminiscent of a big-budget Hollywood drama film. For right now, I want to focus on the final five minutes of the track. The remainder of the track has the ODST team reunited, fighting through as a team to meet the extraction team out of New Mombasa. Sure, "The Light At The End" takes cues from other tracks from the soundtrack, but it's how it's planned out and categorized that makes it worth the whole package. From starting off as a stealth section then jumping into full-blown action that the player has, by this point, grown familiar with by now. This ensemble moment in the game comes from one man working alone to a full team brought back together thanks to this rookie's courageous efforts at carrying out the task before him. Because of him, he saved his own team by doing what he does best: detective work. Which leads me to the first couple minutes of the track..... Wow. If there is ever a reason why someone should invest their hard-earned time to give ODST's music a try, this is it. The use of jazz-type instruments may seem like a strange caveat, but when fitting well with the game's core idea and mechanics, it makes perfect sense. "The Light At The End" incorporates every idea used throughout ODST"s soundtrack and basically makes it the rookie's theme. Because he is the detective of the story, you need to give him a suitable theme that tells us not who he is as a person, but who he must be. It's only fitting to have him be the lone wolf in this scenario where he's split up from his team, only to be burdened with finding them and getting the hell out of the city. But it's what he must do. And the jazz-inspired soundtrack lends so much credibility to his skills as a lost detective doing the only he can do. I'm glad that Halo 3: ODST won Best Soundtrack after its release. It deserved it. It took huge leaps in totally different directions and emerged victorious. Some say change is a hard thing to come by, that it's only determined by how patient and talented you are at what you do. It seems Bungie and O'Donnell and Salvatori's team really are that talented and patient enough to deliver a product, a video game and a game score of all things, and make it memorable. Halo 3: ODST may be underrated by the Halo fan base, but its immortality lays in the outstanding efforts brought by those who wanted to make it more than just a Halo game.