Commando harness

The Commando harness is a harness worn by the Covenant's Commando Unit, a special operations formation of the Covenant military.

Specifications
The Commando harness' helmet design pattern for the Commando Unit formed in 2552 was based on a pre-contact ground forces pattern with upgrades that include hardened communications gear and uplink capabilities.

The Commando harness is a lighter and sturdier counterpart to the standard-issue combat harness. Lightweight construction materials and advanced internal components increase overall performance making the wearer more deadly in combat.

Visually, the Commando harness is similar to the Assault harness but is more smoothed and unlike the Flight harness, it is more rounded than angular. Unlike the Assault harness it features separate mandible guards. There is a small blue light on the forehead, one on the chin and one under each eye, which are also small blue lenses. The helmet also angles and slopes forward, giving the head a narrower appearance. The helmet also has a transparent neck guard with some aesthetic stripes down it's sides. The helmet additionally features hardened communication gear and up-link capabilities.

The shoulder pauldrons for the Commando armor appear to be similar to the combat harness model, but more smooth and curved. The thoracic cage has a line of separation in the center, with a small, silver, half oval-shaped block protruding in the center, and is streamlined for greater maneuverability in close environments.

Usage
The Commando harness was employed by the Covenant's Commando Unit. The armor's design bears similarity to that worn by heroes during the Second Illumination and the Struggle for Ideological Purity.

Halo 3
The Commando harness is unlockable as an armor permutation for Elite characters in Halo 3.

Production notes
The shoulder pauldrons were originally meant to be unlocked by earning the Killing Frenzy achievement. However, the unlock condition ID for the shoulder pauldrons was entered in the code as, when the actual ID for the achievement was. As a result, unlocking the Killing Frenzy achievement would not cause the pauldrons to unlock, because the pauldrons were keyed to unlock on a different, non-existent achievement. Bungie could not fix this mistake through an update, because it would have required players to re-download every multiplayer map, and the main menu's map file, which would total at approximately 1.11GB in size. An update of this size would not have been allowed at the time, because updates were limited to 4MB at maximum. Instead, the shoulder pauldrons were made available to all players by default in a later update to the game.

In a Bungie Weekly Update posted by Luke Smith, the Steppin' Razor achievement was incorrectly identified as the achievement meant to unlock the pauldrons, when actually it was the Killing Frenzy achievement.

List of appearances

 * Halo 3