A 3D breakdown of
Halo’s iconic armor

Since 2001, Master Chief’s suit has become
as recognizable as Captain America’s shield

The hero of the Halo video game franchise, Master Chief, made his debut in 2001 in the game “Halo: Combat Evolved” for the original Xbox game console.

In the time since, he has become Microsoft’s version of Mario, though just a bit grittier. The Chief, in his iconic green armor, and his fellow superhuman Spartans are more juggernauts than soldiers.

Weighing a half-ton, and able to absorb anything short of a tank shell, the armor includes technological enhancements that improve everything from vision to reflexes, turning Spartans into the ultimate weapons. Here are some of the suit’s highlights.

The Mjolnir helmet contains an array of essential systems, from air filtration to communication uplinks. More interestingly, the life support systems include ways for Spartans to eat and drink, dispensing food and water. Fun fact about that water: Rather than pulling from a reservoir like a canteen or camelback, it instead repurposes and recycles the water excreted — you can imagine how— by the Spartan inside.

“They have a full spectrum waste recycling system,” Peters says. “I won’t say how it works.”

No one ever said the life of a Spartan was glamorous.

A big difference between the Chief’s armor and that of similarly clad Marvel hero Iron Man is that the Mjolnir suit is comprised of individual, interchangeable plates mounted onto a Spartan’s “techsuit,” the name for their padded underarmor. This is similar to how a medieval knight’s armor plating would be buckled to a garment under the suit.

Introduced to the Halo universe with “Halo Inifinite," the grappleshot can fire a high-tension wire that attaches to surfaces, allowing Spartans to vault to new vantage points at high speeds or retrieve objects (or snare enemies) from a distance.

According to the lore, it was the result of a civilian-led initiative called “Project Magnes” — named after the mythological shepherd said to have discovered magnetism — and uses magnetic pulses to fire the grappling hook. The cable is similar to the high-tensile fiber used in Halo’s orbital elevators, which are capable of lifting people from a planet’s surface into outer space.

Like the pauldrons, the chest plates are fastened to a Spartan’s underarmor and can be easily switched out after battles if they’re damaged. Spartans also sport their ID numbers (like the Chief’s 117) on their breastplate to help with identification. In the TV show, the logo for the Spartans’ unit appears on the opposite plate.

One of the armor’s most distinctive features is its integration of AI — for example, Master Chief’s computerized partner Cortana. A port in the back of the helmet allows Spartans to insert the AI via a datachip interacting via a neural interface.

The port also allows for the Spartan and the suit’s AI to work as one. The AI can detect threats and alert the supersoldier to react accordingly, enhancing the Spartan’s reflexes via the armor. This — combined with the armor’s force multiplication that further amplifies a Spartan’s strength — is why regular marines can never don Master Chief’s duds. Without the genetic modifications performed on the Spartans to strengthen their bones and muscles, the armor would quite literally shatter a normal person.

“You would break all your bones,” Peters says. “The force multiplication would stretch and break and tear the muscles off your bones.”

Guess we mortals will have to settle for admiring the Master Chief’s armor from the outside.