Game:

Counter-Strike 2 (2023)

Duration: 0:00

333 views

36

After being dreamt about for over 20 years, one of the holy grails of Halo 1 tricking is finally complete. The impossible challenge: the bottom of Keyes. Enjoy! :)

Music used: Mav - Skylines (Krone Remix)
I also used a portion of the original mix for the end credits

Sputnik is optional. It merely makes sections of this trick take less time. You can push the shade turret back through the mission to grenade jump up the hole, if you were so determined, or use some nearby flood for a boost.

I've been thinking about this trick since I first started tricking back in 2003. I attempted it a few times back in the day, but never made any serious headway with it. Then recently, I was documenting an undiscovered hidden ledge on the map, somehow phased out of the map in the process, and decided to go for a fly with Acrophobia.

Having recently discovered the Pillar of Autumn cutscene room, I knew everything on the map would surely be out there somewhere in void space. Sure enough, I found the gravity lift, then I found the inside of the ship. To my surprise, the "Upstairs, Downstairs" text appeared as I approached. From there, I was curious if I could find the hole in the ship at the beginning of the mission. I did, and amazingly, the cutscene trigger was still active.

I played through the mission normally, wondering how messed up this was going to get, until I got back inside the ship and was amused by the "infinite letterbox" glitch I had stumbled upon. I didn't think much of it, even as I fell to the bottom of the map trying to land on a banshee I had dropped down there earlier. I had Acrophobia on, so I felt like enjoying a silly fall and calling it a night.

... then I survived the fall.

I knew there was absolutely no way I had hit the banshee in such a way that allowed me to survive, but just to make sure, I fell directly onto the bottom of the map, and incredibly, I survived the fall. As it turns out, I had mistakenly discovered invulnerability. I immediately wondered if I could get to the bottom of the map with this newfound power, but what I didn't know was whether or not this translated to cancelling the fall timer. I had Acrophobia on at the time, you see, which cancels the fall timer.

So, I enlisted the help of my friend Little Mann ( ‪@terribleatgamesBSS‬ ) to figure all this out. My plan was for us to each pilot a banshee and hit our respective cutscene triggers, but we kept getting teleported back to the hangar each time. The plan then became, Little Mann flies to the "Upstairs, Downstairs" section, we push the shade turret to the blob room, phase out of bounds, and jump to the cutscene trigger. This approach failed.

Then it occurred to me. If I could figure out how to skip the banshees from spawning in, I could cross the "Upstairs, Downstairs" trigger myself, back track to the hangar, trigger the banshees, and use one of them to fly to the cutscene. This worked perfectly. All that was left to do after that was to simply fall to the bottom of the map, and conquer this long-thought-impossible, two-decade-old challenge.

I'm so very happy to see this challenge completed after all this time. I can't emphasize it enough. Myself and many others thought this would never be done. It just seemed too outlandish and too far out of reach, so it's a joy and a privilege to be the one to finally finish it. I never thought I would actually be the right person for the job, but there it is anyway. This marks one of the few remaining impossible challenges finally completed.

This achievement is the perfect representation of a philosophy of mine when it comes to tricking. It's all about throwing enough puzzle pieces at something until a picture starts to emerge. Guys like Spotcheck using the shield bump in early speedruns, Ms. Man glitching the map into oblivion, scurty using the banshees to fly through walls, and myself, flying around Assault on the Control Room in a banshee shortly after Anniversary came out for the first time. Everything came together to finish this.

With that said, I thank everyone who has ever explored this map. This is to be shared between all of us. And of course, I dedicate this video to High Impact Halo :)

Other Statistics