In middle school, on the recommendation of a friend, I downloaded the trial edition of Halo Combat Evolved for Windows Vista. I didn’t have much experience with first person shooters at this point, but I quickly fell in love with the game, which eventually evolved (pun intended) into a passion for the series. The free trial version came with only one level, but it happened to be one of the most popular levels, and arguably the best designed level, in the franchise’s history. With this post, I would like to explore Halo Combat Evolved’s signature level, The Silent Cartographer.
The Silent Cartographer is the fourth level in Halo Combat Evolved, and begins with the invasion of a remote island that serves as the setting for the rest of the level. At this point in the game, the player is tasked with locating the silent cartographer before the Covenant find it first, requiring them to explore. This is the main theme of the level: exploration. The most noticeable design choice that demonstrates this is the lack of navigation waypoints. The first three levels of the game use these waypoints to keep the player from getting lost, a necessity in order to avert player frustration. So if these waypoints are that vital, why are they absent from The Silent Cartographer? The answer is that the level is designed for the player to lose their way. After all, getting lost is a common occurrence when exploring an unfamiliar area. However, what makes The Silent Cartographer unique is that getting lost can still be helpful, and can even make the level easier. To explain, I’ll discuss my experience playing through the level for the first time.
When I first played through The Silent Cartographer, I took the more obvious path at first. In the level there are two initial important locations, the entrance to the structure containing the cartographer, and the security building. The path that I took can be found straight ahead after clearing the beach. Once I eliminated the enemies on the beach, the game provided me with a Warthog to make traversing the level less tedious. The way that the Warthog was dropped in indicated that I should proceed counterclockwise around the island. This route took me straight to the cartographer structure. Once I fought my way inside the building, I was cut off by a cutscene of the door in front of me locking down. From here, I had to find my way to the security building in order to override the lockdown. However, at this point I got stuck. I could not find the way to the security building. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. So, I returned to the start of the level, and took the clockwise path instead. To my surprise, this made finding the security building a trivial matter. Since I only had access to this one level at the time, I ended up replaying The Silent Cartographer countless times. In replaying the level, I began to wonder what would happen if I went to the security room first. Once again, to my surprise, I discovered that not only does this path work, the game even has specialized dialogue for it. By getting lost, I had inadvertently discovered an easier route through the level.
So how does this factor into the narrative of the game? As I mentioned, the theme of this level is exploration. Narratively, this is shown by the instructions the player receives. The player is to explore the island to find the cartographer, something neither the player nor the characters know the location of, or even how it works. The whole island is accessible to the player, emphasizing that nothing is off-limits to explore, and the game even offers incentive for travelling off the beaten path, with a shortcut in an unintuitive direction.
There is so much more to talk about in this level. To learn more, I highly recommend checking out Max Bernard’s (maxbarnyard on YouTube) video on the level, which I have embedded below.
What's in a Game? 