Halo 3 announcement trailer

Summary
At E3 of 2006, the Halo 3 announcement trailer was shown. Unlike Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, this trailer is in widescreen, HD (High-definition). Cortana's final line in it sems to reference the first of the Cortana Letters.

Transcript
Fade in from white to ruins at the edge of New Mombasa. A warning sign depicting a Grunt crossing swings in the wind(For those of you who don't know, bungie has an excellent sense of humor). The camera slowly pulls back as a gust of wind kicks up a cloud of sand. A flash of blue light flows toward and past the camera, a partial image of Cortana visible.

Cortana: (distorted) "...I have defied gods and demons..."

Cortana vanishes, and the camera continues to back through ruins. A cloud of smoke rises, along with the storm, distorting the familliar sillouete approaching the camera. Again, a transmission from Cortana flashes by, showing her lips moving realisticly. Cortana: (distorted) "...I am your shield. I am your sword..."

The figure, which is clearly the Master Chief walks through the smoke, an Assault Rifle over his shoulder. He stares off to the right. He readies the gun and looks straight ahead. A transmission flashes by showing Cortana's entire face.

Cortana: "I know you. Your past, your future..."

Her face fades away into the Chief. Three Banshees fly toward the camera from behind him. We follow them to see an Assault Carrier in the foreground with a fairly sizeable Covenant fleet in the backround. 9 Banshees (who's pilots' identities are hidden from us) are escorting a Phantom. The Chief stands at the edge of a cliff. We follow the Covenant ships to see a massive Forerunner building in the valley, The Ark. A hole is in the center, and matched above it, a swirling hole in the clouds with a storm raging. A shockwave sweeps the valley as plates in the structure rise. As soon as the shock wave occurred, the covenant cruisers start moving out of the huge crater. The cliffs start to break away, and the Chief watches his footing. Energy gathers in the center; we see the reflection in the Chief's visor. It fires; fade to white; cut to black.

Cortana: (voice over) "This is the way the world ends."

The Halo 3 logo is shown, and the trailer ends with:

Finish the fight 2007

Trivia
If you listen carefully, when Cortana speaks, the Gravemind is saying the same words.

On Cortana's second line, it sounds as if she says "source" rather than "sword." However, Martin O'Donnell has confirmed it to be "sword."

In the beginning, you can see a grunt crossing sign.

Also, if you look closely, when the shockwave moves across the crater, you can see a covenant cruiser get pushed away from the middle of the crater.

Secondly, if you pay close enough attention, when the shockwave goes across the land, you see banshees and a phantom go back in the direction of MC. However, after the scene when the cliffs fall apart, the banshees and phantom are gone for some strange reason.

In Halo 2, the The Prophet of Regret's cruiser jumped into slipspace out of New Mombasa, Kenya, destroying the city. It is believed that this explosion caused the crater to be formed, revealing the Ark. (In the background, you can see the remains of Mombasa.)

The enormous hole in the swirling clouds above the middle of the structure in the crater is, according to Bungie, caused by strong, unseen forces from the structure itself.

The gun that Master Chief holds looks like the assault rifle from Halo 1. However, Bungie confirmed that it is not the exact same weapon. Many belive that it could be the MA2B, or a new MA model.

Links

 * LARGE Windows Media trailer
 * SMALL Windows Media trailer
 * LARGE Quicktime trailer
 * SMALL Quicktime trailer