The Empire Strikes Back of Video Games
Like it's predicessor the game is very imerserve, with a strong plot driven single player campaign, which is divided into two points of view that of the legendary Master Chief and the mysterious Covenant Elite known as the Arbiter, both of wholm the player controls during various parts of the game. At first the two storylines don't cross that much, with the first Arbiter mission being directed against Covenant Rebels while Master Chief's first mission is to repel a Covenant invasion of Earth.
The two story arcs finally intersect on a second HALO ring, but during the course of the Arbiter missions you get a deeper view of the Covenant, which in the first game were portrayed as almost mindless monsters. Instead you are shown that the Covenant is infact a highly structured cast, ruled over by a trio of aliens known as the Prophets, who have established a sort of dictatorship over the other Covenant races, and the Elites are suddenly portrayed has being proud and honorable warriors, who are not that different from their Human counterparts.
HALO 2, like the first HALO, takes advantage of the Xbox's powerful hardware to create a detaled and believable envrionment that helps immerse the player in the HALO Universe .