In 1999 Steve Jobs stood on stage at Macworld and introduced an open world science fiction game as the future of Apple gaming. Two years later that game was the flagship title selling Microsoft's Xbox. This deep dive follows Halo: Combat Evolved from Bungie's 1997 real-time strategy prototype, with working titles like Monkey Nuts and Blam!, through a third-person open world with roaming dinosaurs, to a frantic nine-month first-person shooter sprint in Redmond that rewrote the rules for console shooters.

We explain how an uninstaller bug in Myth II that could wipe a player's hard drive triggered an $800,000 recall, left Bungie near bankruptcy, and led to Microsoft's acquisition in 2000. Then we look at the story duct tape cutscenes that bridged deleted levels, the glowing floor arrows added for lost playtesters, the multiplayer rebuilt four  ...