Hunt the Truth
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- "What seems like the end, is only the beginning."
- — Tagline[1]
Hunt the Truth, stylized as HUNT the TRUTH or the hashtag #HUNTtheTRUTH, is an ongoing marketing campaign for the upcoming release of Halo 5: Guardians[1], hosted on the popular microblogging and social networking site Tumblr. After a countdown ending on Monday, March 23, 2015 at 1:00am UTC, the site displayed the "Halo 5 Bullet" trailer, as well as acting as the front page of journalist Benjamin Giraud's hunt for the truth about the story of Master Chief. Giraud states that the site will be updated weekly with new episodes of his podcast until E3 2015 in June 2015.[2]
Episode transcripts
Episode 00: PRIMER
Benjamin Giraud: When you're a war journalist, you see a lot of horrible stuff. All the stories I've done—I've seen the absolute worst of humanity. But I've also gotten to seen the best. Six years ago, I saw him. The greatest, most mysterious hero of our time, up-close in action. I witnessed, first hand, what he did that day, and it changed everything for me. Anyone listening to this knows exactly who I'm talking about. The guy who saved us, saved Earth, saved mankind: Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117, whom we now know as simply "the Master Chief".
A few months ago I was hired to do an in-depth profile on the Chief—exclusive access, the whole thing—since then, I've gotten to talk to a lot of people who claim they know the real Master Chief; the boy, the soldier, the hero... the traitor? See, I've always known where the story was going before it started. I'd known exactly the story I wanted to tell for years, the story of all of us wanted to hear—glossy, inspiring, the blockbuster hero biography. That's all this was supposed to be. But the truth isn't always that clean.
When I pulled that first loose thread, something broke. Now everything is caving in and I find myself stuck with all these ugly questions, questions I never intended to ask. Fabricated histories? People who aren't who they say they are? Cover-ups of cover-ups? That steady drumbeat of theories that used to sound insane, now they don't seem so '"out there".
And these disturbing rumors, reports of anomalies. Something big is happening in deep space, and I can't even corroborate a single fact about one man's life. It's clear to me now. I can't fix the pretty story, but maybe I can break the ugly one.
For the first time in my career I can honestly say I don't know the shape of where this is going. And in fact, the possibilities have me lying awake at night. But I believe we all deserve to know the real story. We need to know where this leads. I know I do.
So I find myself back at the beginning. Who is the Master Chief? Where does he come from? And is he keeping us safe?
Join me as I hunt the truth about the Master Chief.
Episode 01: A HAIRLINE FRACTURE
Benjamin Giraud (voiceover): There's a story you tell yourself when the world blows up in your face. There's no way you could have seen it coming. No one could have, so there was no way to stop it. This is what lets you sleep at night. But go back in your mind to before it all happened. Replay it in your head, except this time, maybe you'll see it: something small, out of place. Maybe it's just a single thread, but it's the truth. Nobody saw it coming when they arrived, an alien race known as the Covenant. Before 2552, there was no way anything like that could ever happen on Earth. On one of those distant planets in the Outer Colonies, maybe. But an attack on Earth? Couldn't happen, until it did. It's called glassing. Covenant warships rain plasma down on a planet until everything and everyone on the surface melts. Usually it's complete world destruction. Earth only got a taste. The prolonged orbital bombardment destroyed East Africa, killing millions before it ended. None of us were safe anymore. But something else happened that day, too. Or someone. You've heard the eyewitness accounts, every skeptic has seen the footage, I was there, and yet still to this day it's unbelievable. A massive man in green armor appeared, seemingly out of nowhere in New Mombasa, performed superhuman feats to singlehandedly repel a global invasion, and then disappeared. This was the Master Chief. The Unified Earth Government's military body, the UNSC, eventually released a statement: who he is, where he came from, and that he's continuing to keep us safe. And that was that. But, who is the Master Chief? Where did he come from? Is he continuing to keep us safe? I'm Benjamin Giraud, and this is Hunt the Truth. For all us cosmopolitan Earth types who don't venture into the far reaches of space, there's a planet way out in the Outer Colonies called Eridanus II. If you're thinking of visiting, don't bother. It was catastrophically glassed in a Covenant attack in 2530. But 19 years before it got wiped out, our hero, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, then known as John, was born in a metropolis called Elysium City. That's where I started.
Deon Govender (in call): Do I remember him? Oh yeah, you don't forget a kid like that!
Giraud (voiceover): That's Deon Govender. He chatted with me from his home in the Outer Colonies. Deon's retired now, but years ago he taught John at Elysium City Primary Education Facility Number 119. Apparently, schools in the Outer Colonies don't have the catchiest names.
Govender (in call): John was something else. He was sharp and quick, always evaluating the situation. The other kids just gravitated to him, you know?
Giraud (voiceover): Deon seemed most excited to talk about John's athletic ability. The kids used to play King of the Hill after school. Ya' know, the game where you wrestle and push each other to try and be the last man standing.
Govender (in call): I would-- I would walk by sometimes, see 'em playing after school, ya' know, and w-- w-- w-- without fail, I swear, it was always John standing alone at the top of that hill. (laughs)
Giraud: Right. Right. (chuckles)
Govender (in call): Every single day. As a matter of fact, I think the other kids ended up fighting for who got to be king of halfway up the hill 'cause nobody was messin' with John.
Ellie Bloom (in call): I definitely remember John. You're going way back.
Giraud (voiceover): That's Ellie Bloom, another lifelong resident of the Outer Colonies. When she was young, she and John lived on the same street, just a few houses down.
Bloom (in call): Well, he was a little younger than me, but, let me tell you, that boy did not look like a kindergartner. He was a big kid. My friend Katrina and I used to meet him in this vacant lot in the neighborhood. The three of us would build these obstacle courses out of random junk and then race. Ya' know, just kid stuff.
Giraud (voiceover): As Ellie talked about her early years in Elysium, it wasn't long before she was getting nostalgic.
Bloom (in call): On warm nights, sometimes our parents would let us go out to the green space and lie in the grass. And we'd just lie there, stare up at the stars. It was a nice place to go out.
Giraud (voiceover): Finding Ellie was a huge win for me. When a planet's been glassed tracking down former residents can be damn near impossible. Any records kept locally; paper, hardened data storage, even human memories; after a full-scale glassing, they're just gone. Thankfully, though, the Office of Naval Intelligence, or ONI, had furnished me with a list of interviewees. That's how I'd gotten Deon. But I wanted to go the extra mile with this story, so I'd hit up some of my old connections in the Outer Colonies looking for more sources. Ellie was my only hit so far.
Giraud: Did you-- did you keep in touch with John?
Bloom (in call): No. I wasn't allowed to use Waypoint much when I was little. But I did keep in touch with Katrina. We still talk, actually. You know, she probably remembers John. I'm gonna tell her I talked to you. Wait-- uh, what was this for again? This a military thing?
Giraud: Oh. (laughs) No. No, John, uh, John is, uh, the Master Chief.
Bloom (in call): What? He's--
Giraud: Yeah, Jo- John became the Master Chief.
Bloom (in call): Like, the Master Chief?
Giraud: Yep.
Bloom (in call): Oh my God! No-- no way! Are you serious?!
Giraud: (laughs) I'm not kidding you, I'm telling--
Bloom (in call): Oh my God! That's crazy!
Giraud (voiceover): Ellie lost her mind for a few minutes. I guess it's not every day you find out that your childhood playmate saved the galaxy.
Ellie (in call): Oh my God, now I'm definitely telling Katrina! I mean, she is gonna freak out!
Giraud (voiceover): Alright, so maybe Ellie wasn't gonna be much help. I needed more of the 'young warrior' angle. Here's Deon again.
Govender (in call): Oh, did I tell you the boxing story?
Giraud: No. No, no, what's that? Not yet.
Govender (in call): Ok, ok, so-- I taught the primary kids, ya' know, right? But I also ran this-- this boxing league at the high school-- Now second week, the second week we're doing drills in the gym, John walks in.
Giraud: Yeah.
Govender (in call): Now, mind you, John is in sixth grade at the time. I say, "Hey, John, what's up?" He says, "I wanna sign up for boxing."
Giraud: (laughs)
Govender: And I say, "John, you're twelve," ya' know? (chuckles) "What are you talking about?"
Giraud (voiceover): But John was adamant.
Govender (in call): Well-- (laughs) But I-- I look at him and he-- he ain't leaving.
Giraud: Right.
Govender (in call): So I said, ok, what the hell, figure let it be a formative lesson for the kid. I don't know, but it's-- so I put him in the ring with one of the smaller guys. John pummeled this boy! Was over in about fifteen seconds, ok? So I, well-- well, I put him in with this bruiser, now a real good fighter.
Giraud: Yeah?
Govender (in call): Ok? Good fighter. Two punches! John laid him out. Twelve years old!
Giraud (voiceover): I liked talking to Deon. He was warm and funny in that grandfatherly, memory-lane kind of way. I realized I'd gotten lost in it all when the narrative took a dark turn.
Govender (in call): But then, one week... John just didn't show up.
Giraud (voiceover): It was 2524. John was 13. That's when the nightmare of the Insurrection that had been plaguing the Outer Colonies finally landed on John's community. Under pressure from UNSC troops, the rebels were on their last leg, desperately seizing territory in the region and launching paranoid inquisitions to find spies. Civilian abductions and interrogations became commonplace.
Thomas Wu (in call): Uh, they would just... (sighs) Ya' know, um, question you. Just these meaningless questions, for... hours, and hours.
Giraud (voiceover): Thomas Wu was living on a neighboring colony when the rebels showed up and hit hard, sweeping up Thomas and thousands of others in raids. What followed was months of horribly overcrowded detainment, neglect, and often constant questioning.
Wu (in call): Ya' know, "Did you know this guy? What are the encryption codes for this system? That system?" You know, and you have no idea... what they're even asking you.
Giraud (voiceover): In the final couple months, Thomas says his captors started coming unhinged. And then toward the end, they just disappeared, leaving Thomas and hundreds of others locked up, starving. I don't want to play this part of the interview, but I'll tell you it got bad. He talks about being packed in like sardines. Warm bodies, cold bodies, people dying in the dark, the smell. He doesn't know how long it lasted, maybe weeks, but Thomas and many others survived. They made it out.
Wu (in call): Well, you know, we-- we-- we helped each other, ya' know, we looked out for each other, ya' know, and I mean that's-- that's-- that was the only way. And we, and we made it through to the liberation. (sighs) And then we left. No, we-- we-- we-- we never looked back.
Giraud (voiceover): When I asked him where the survivors relocated to, Thomas began to list off which cities were safe for refugees at the time. Decades later, he can still recite them all from memory. I asked about John's hometown.
Giraud: What about Elysium City?
Wu (in call): No. Insurrectionist cesspool. Yeah-- no, they got it bad there.
Giraud (voiceover): Deon Govender confirms this.
Govender (in call): In Elysium City, people just disappeared back then. Just happened. Once Insurrectionists took over, whole neighborhoods just got scooped up.
Giraud (voiceover): This went on for months. He talks about watching his community get torn apart slowly, every day. I asked him about John.
Govender (in call): Yeah. Him and his parents. John missed the first practice... then the last one. Back then, seemed like everybody h... I'm sorry. (clears throat)
Giraud: No, no no, it's fine, take your time.
Giraud (voiceover): It was hard watching Deon break down like this. He just looked defeated. These kinds of interviews are brutal. I wanted to comfort him but it just felt condescending. Like I have any idea what it was like for him. So we were quiet for a bit. Before we ended, though, he said this:
Govender (in call): I think that if anything good can be said to have come for all of this, it's that... everyone who went through it can know that their struggle wasn't for nothing. When you have a young man who can rise up from something like this and do what John has done, he honors all of us.
Giraud (voiceover): Deon believed in John the way the rest of us believe in the Master Chief. He made it seem like this tragedy that shaped him was almost necessary. I certainly felt like I had the proper beginnings to a hero's origin story. The story made sense, it felt right. Sometimes, you have to go back though. Look again, because maybe you'll see something, something small... out of place. That single thread. Later that evening, after my interview with Deon, I was pretty drained, so I spent some time sifting through a bunch of file boxes. I'd paid this scavenger in the Outer Colonies to dig around and send over any Elysium City documents she could find. The only local government records left were hard copies but I took them anyway. I was sorting through a messy box of local census registries, when I stumbled across John's name. One line of basic information printed out in black and white. That's when I saw it. A single letter next to his name: D. I was staring at an official document that said quite plainly that in 2517, John died at six years old. Please join me for the next episode of Hunt the Truth.
Episode 02: BAD RECORDS
Benjamin (voiceover): I couldn't believe it. According to the document I was looking at, John, the boy who would go on to become the Master Chief, died forty-one years ago. My protagonist, the greatest hero of our time, was dead at six. It was a major discrepancy - and I needed to find a way to fix it.
I'm Benjamin Giraud, and this is Hunt the Truth.
[theme music]
Office of Naval Intelligence AI (in call): Continue to hold.
Benjamin (voiceover): If you ever happen to obtain sufficient clearance to call the Office of Naval Intelligence, you'll be on hold for at least an hour. If you ever happen to get a call from them, you will also ... wait an hour. And in the end, they never unblock the video, so you just end up talking to a really crisp insignia.
Benjamin (in call): I am waiting to talk to Michael Sullivan, hoping he can help me with my little ... records problem.
ONI AI (in call): Continue to hold.
Benjamin: And it's been ... eighty-five minutes.
Benjamin (voiceover): Michael Sullivan, also known as Sully, works for the ONI in public relations. If it seems odd to you that the most secretive agency in our government has a PR department, you're not alone, but that's not something I'd mention to them. Besides, Sully had hooked me up with the assignment in the first place. I was grateful for the opportunity.
ONI AI (in call): Office of Naval Intelligence. Public relations.
Sullivan (in call): Ben!
Benjamin (in call): H- Hi! Sully, hey! Ah yeah, thanks for taking my call.
Sullivan: Absolutely. How are the sources?
Benjamin (voiceover): Up until this point, I'd had no problems with the story. All my facts had been lining up nicely, but now ... I had an obscure document from the far reaches of the galaxy that listed John as deceased. This contradicted everything. I needed Sully to make it make sense, and thankfully, he did just that.
Sullivan (in call): Welcome to the Outer Colonies! Nothing makes sense out there.
Benjamin (in call): No, I know, I know, it's just, uh- I just wanted to make sure that I buttoned up all the details.
Sullivan: And that's what you're doing! Look, Ben - it's the far reaches of space out there, and the planet you're talkin' about was glassed to hell. You know just as well as anybody that if there are any local records, they're a mess.
Benjamin (voiceover): OK, so - I felt a little stupid. Sully was right - it's a real problem in the Outer Colonies: planets destroyed by glassing have bad records. Every researcher knows this, and every researcher knows that questioning that fact is standard fodder for conspiracy theories.
Mshak (in call): It's a coverup! That's Government Secrecy 101!
Benjamin (voiceover): That's a message I received last week from a man named Mshak Moradi. He's one of many truthers out there who've come out of the woodwork since I started doing this story. Apparently, he heard I was investigating the Master Chief. Mshak seems less ridiculous than most of the characters who've been filling up my inbox, but he's definitely been the most persistent. He's left me a message every day for the past two months. I never respond, but I did find the timing of his last message pretty funny.
Mshak (in call): Let me guess - the government is telling you that the records don't make sense because the planet was glassed. Right? That's what they tell you!
Benjamin (voiceover): Technically, Mshak was right. That was what the government was telling me. But unfortunately for Mshak's theory, it was true - glassed planets have bad records. John's childhood friend Ellie Bloom has dealt with this reality her whole life.
Ellie (in call): ... you have no idea ...
Benjamin (voiceover): I recalled what she'd said in her interview.
Ellie (in call): I mean, it can be hard enough out here trying to do business between planets that haven't been glassed. There's so much upheaval. Keeping track of personal records, financial documents, medical records - it's a total crapshoot.
Benjamin (voiceover): In retrospect, I'd probably been asking for this kind of hiccup. Getting cute with the research, opening up a rat's nest of old paper records - and for what? All I'd dug up from slogging on my own was a few hazy kindergarten stories from Ellie and a nonsensical death record.
But - things were looking up. Sully had arranged a face-to-face interview with ONI Vice Admiral Gabriella Dvorak. That not only got me offworld, but it was onboard the newest Autumn-class heavy cruiser, the UNSC Unto The Breach. Got a private shuttle up, full luxury - they had me riding in style. When I came aboard, Dvorak even greeted me personally.
Now, civilians aren't normally allowed onboard an active duty ship, let alone given this sort of attention.
Benjamin (in recording): Ah, I-
Dvorak (in recording): Please. Call me Gabriella.
Benjamin (in recording): Okay ...
Benjamin (voiceover): This was not the kind of hospitality I was used to.
Benjamin (in recording): Um, what- what, uh, brings you way out here?
Dvorak (in recording): [brief laugh] Work.
Benjamin (voiceover): She told me she was on a detachment and in the neighbourhood. I guess I lucked out. The white-glove treatment continued too - captain's mess, officer's quarters, the whole thing. By the time we finally got to her office for the interview, Dvorak could have said anything and I'd have been thrilled. But she's the real deal, and she jumped right into it.
Dvorak (in recording): It was that 'finally' moment. After all the fighting was done, I was helping lead all the prisoners out of the containers. (fade)
Benjamin (voiceover): As lieutenant in the UNSC, Gabriella not only took part in the grand operations that freed John and countless others from the rebel labour camps in Elysium City, but she remembered the 13-year-old as well. She described the liberation.
Dvorak (in recording): When you saw them, what had been done to them, you realized who you'd been fighting to save. The aftermath of it, ah ... it was ugly. Everyone was streaming out into the daylight squinting, limping, just - grey and fragile and sickly. Their ... backs were hunched, all their eyes just staring at the ground, and - they looked ... they looked dead.
Benjamin (voiceover): That's when she saw John.
Dvorak (in recording): He was sticking out like a sore thumb. In the middle of all this - just - beaten humanity, there's this ... tall, young kid walking toward me, towering over the others, his shoulders back, his eyes forward, and when he passed me, he looked right at me. Looked in my eyes. Ah, I mean, that doesn't sound like much, but that eye contact coming from someone in that moment, who'd been in that circumstances ... was shocking. He looked malnourished and dehydrated like everybody else, but he was so young, and whatever had broken all these people - it hadn't broken him.
Benjamin (voiceover): In the aftermath, Dvorak remained stationed in Elysium City, working in the refugee camps. From the first day, John stepped up to help Gabriella with her duties. She came to know him well over the next several months.
Dvorak (in recording): There was a point when he told me about his parents. That they'd been abducted along with him. He didn't say much, but, um ... they didn't make it.
Benjamin (voiceover): Her understanding was that it had gotten ugly in there. They died a couple days apart, a few weeks before the Liberation - and John was there when it happened. On the rare occasion when John opened up about this, Dvorak says it was memorable.
Dvorak (in recording): He would get this look on his face when he talked about - eh - it's hard to describe. I'd see it on him other times too - he seemed to feel the weight of all that had happened, but still ... he was calm. Not angry, not desperate, just ... resolute. He was a remarkable young man.
Benjamin (voiceover): Like so many people at the time in Elysium City, and throughout this region of the galaxy, John had lost his home, his family, everything. People packed up whatever they had left, got out of town, and most never looked back. But Deon Govender - John's boxing coach - said many of them found a way to get some measure of closure.
Deon (in call): (fade in) Yeah, yeah, definitely. We all got separated and spread out across the planet and all the Colonies, but - some of us were able to cobble together a list of names. An, uh - kind of a memorial, that grew longer as we got more information. Yeah ... I remember seeing John's parents' names on the list early on, but ... but not John. After he missed that last practice ... never saw him again, but ... I remember thinking, "That's OK, you know, as long as I never see his name on this list, that's OK." And I never did.
Benjamin (voiceover): His will to survive left an impression on then-Lieutenant Gabriella Dvorak as well.
Dvorak (in recording): I think ... John just didn't wanna be a victim any more. I remember him telling me he was gonna enlist. He said he was gonna make a difference. I've never been more sure of another person than I was of him when he said that.
Benjamin (voiceover): Out of the chaos of war, from the rubble, a young John was able to forge a purpose for himself. A purpose that would drive him to become the hero the galaxy would one day need him to be. This is the kind of turn in a story that gives me patriotic goosebumps. I was feeling genuinely moved on my trip back home. When I got there, though, Ellie Bloom was gonna ruin all that for me.
Ellie (in call): Hey, I just wanted to follow up with you about your story. I'm - really confused.
Benjamin (in call): OK, uh, what's-
Ellie: Remember how I said I was gonna tell my friend Katrina about it?
Benjamin (voiceover): Katrina was that other girl in John's neighbourhood - the third wheel in Ellie's childhood stories of playing with John. Ellie had moved offplanet in 2517, but Katrina had stayed.
Ellie (in call): Sh- she said that John was dead. He died when he was six.
Benjamin (in call): Wai- wait a minute, wait, what?
Ellie: John was perfectly healthy, but then he just started wasting away. At first I thought maybe it was some autoimmune thing and then they thought it was something else, and then something else, and then meanwhile he's getting all these tests but the doctors couldn't figure it out at all, and his parents were panicking, I ... it sounded horrible.
Benjamin (voiceover): Then - John died. Just like that. I had no idea what to make of this. Ellie seemed convinced, though, so I got her to put me in touch with her friend Katrina. Katrina wouldn't let me record the interview, but this woman was adamant. I wanted to discount what she was saying, but she seemed to remember it so vividly, providing extensive detail - I couldn't ignore it. As far as this person was concerned, John - was - dead. Before I could even begin to wrap my head around that claim, though, here was the kicker from Katrina: John's parents were alive and well in Elysium City, all the way up until Katrina left the planet in 2528 - four years after their supposed death. She was wrong. She had to be thinking of someone else, or - she was lying? Why would she lie, though? I had to admit, she seemed pretty convincing, but - it didn't make sense otherwise. I still thought I could fix the story, though - make the pieces fit. Make it make sense. But what I didn't realize was that this crack was only the beginning - and the whole ugly mess was about to split open.
Please join me for the next episode of Hunt the Truth.
[theme music]
Appearances
Characters
SpeciesOrganizationsLocations
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Events
Vehicles
Equipment and Technology
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Trivia
- With each successive turn, the bullet reads: SON, ABDUCTEE, VICTIM, ORPHAN, RECRUIT, SOLDIER, WARRIOR, ALLY, HERO, SAVIOR, TRAITOR. An image of this is shown below.
- Benjamin Giraud is voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, of the show Key & Peele.[2]
- Hunt the Truth establishes that Halo 2's cover art is actually an in-universe photograph captured and edited by Giraud.
Gallery
A graphic showing the successive frames of the Halo 5 "Bullet" teaser
Halo 5 promotional art featuring Locke and John-117, displayed at the end of the "Bullet" teaser
The avatar used on the HUNT the TRUTH SoundCloud profile
The countdown to the HUNT the TRUTH reveal on March 23, 2015
Locke and John-117
A grid from the site
Michael Sullivan's message to Benjamin Giraud
The artwork for Episode 1. Some of the files Benjamin Giraud looked though.
Giraud's original photo of John-117 during the Battle of New Mombasa
Giraud's photo with ONI and UNSC notes for propaganda
The final version of Giraud's photo; this is actually a slightly modified version of Halo 2's cover art.
Katrina's diary entry #1, talking about an encounter with John.
Katrina's diary entry #2, talking about John's flash clone death.
