CCRB RECORD No. 0072
Halo 2
Determination: Implied — Corruption 2, Denial 1
A heresy trial, a branding, and an assassination ordered by a church. Halo 2 is where the Covenant becomes a theocracy on screen.
Halo 2 is the entry that earns the series its record. The Covenant gain voices here for the first time, and what they voice is a religion. The three High Prophets — Truth, Mercy and Regret — rule as Hierarchs with near-absolute power from the mobile holy city of High Charity, teaching that activating the sacred rings will begin a Great Journey to salvation and that non-believers will be left behind as punishment for heresy. The player spends half the game inside this structure. Thel 'Vadamee is stripped of rank, branded before a jeering crowd, spared by the Prophets and made the Arbiter, a religious office reserved for the disgraced, who serves by dying. His first assignment is to silence a heretic whose heresy is preaching that the Prophets lie. He is correct, and the game shows it.