Halo: The Master Chief Collection has a so-called “mystery” achievement, whose description is simply “inscrutable, mysterious”. The way to unlock it might seem totally arbitrary (and kinda lame), but it actually ties into a story from Halo‘s distant past.
As seen in videos like this one from OneTickShaka, unlocking the achievement is as simple as creating a custom multiplayer game and naming it “.fortune”. After that you get a quick prompt and then, boom, achievement.
But why? Well, a post on Reddit suggested that it’s actually a reference to the very first Halo, so I did some digging. Turns out, .fortune was a goofy easter egg in Halo: Combat Evolved that allowed you to get a nice, uplifting Fortune-Cookie-style fortune by using the word as a map or profile name.
Fortunes included:
- All your hard work will eventually pay off
- Everything lies in silence.
- If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
- Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
- Never wear your best pants when fighting for freedom.
- Rest is good, but idleness is its brother.
- Don’t wear your best pants in war.
- Smile when you’re ready.
OK, maybe not all of them are uplifting. They’re not all fortunes either. I have a 45-minute rant about fortunes that aren’t fortunes (I’m a hit at parties), but I’ll save it for another time.
Apparently there was also a similar gag in Bungie brother-in-arms Myth, which itself might have been a reference to the “fortune” command found in many Unix distributions. The rabbit hole goes deep, eventually striking a rich vein of geeky in-jokes.
Halo: Master Chief Collection‘s wink to it is a pretty cool throwback, in other words — even if it seems kinda dumb at first. Given all the history 343’s managed to cram into this one — all the piping hot nostalgia they have affectionately ladled out — it’s quite a shame that it released in such a buggy state. I don’t know what exactly happened behind the scenes, but here’s hoping they get a handle on it asap. Master Chief is supposed to give bombs to his enemies, not star in them.
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