Halo 5: Guardians was released back in 2015. But it was only a few days ago that finally, after six years, players found a secret race involving mongoose four-wheelers. All it took to find this Easter egg was a little help from the developer who added it to the game.
On Easter Sunday, game developer Jan Willem Nijman posted a tweet asking fellow devs to share Easter eggs they had hidden in games. The tweet went semi-viral and a bunch of folks shared all sorts of cool secrets that they had buried in various games.
Today’s Easter: game devs, please respond with the best Easter eggs you ever hid in a game! ????✨
— Jan Willem Nijman (@jwaaaap) April 4, 2021
Patrick Wren, a multiplayer designer at 343, tweeted that inside Halo 5‘s mission “Evacuation” there is a hidden mongoose race that can only be triggered with four players in co-op. The winner of the race even gets a heavy weapon. This caught the attention of the Halo community and soon players went searching for this undiscovered secret.
There is a Halo Kart racing for four player coop with mongeese in my mission Evacuation. Winner gets heavy weapons at the end of the race. https://t.co/A48VvPqJzA
— Patrick Wren (@Witdarkstar) April 4, 2021
Various Halo YouTubers and secret hunters began searching the entire level for any hidden switches, sounds, etc. But even with the combined effort of so many Halo experts and fans, nobody found the secret after the first day. The following day, on April 5, Wren shared a short poem offering secret hunters some hints.
Four Spartans begin at the station
To seek Evacuation sensation
To race out of the gate
Simply stand there and wait
A duration of his designation— Patrick Wren (@Witdarkstar) April 5, 2021
With this new information, Halo content creators like RocketSloth and Ducain23 started up a stream and played together trying to find the secret. At this point, the best theory they had was that they would need to stand in front of a certain gate in the map for 117 seconds. (This is the Master Chief’s number designation, which the poem seemed to be referencing.) But this didn’t work. However, Wren actually was watching the stream and joined into the chat, giving a few extra hints and letting them know that their theory was right, but they needed to move faster.
Finally, after some extra hints and nearly two days of hunting, Halo 5’s hidden mongoose race was activated. Lik Wren explained in his first tweet that started all of this, the winner does in fact get a heavy weapon. Another interesting thing is that all the enemies despawn in the level when you activate this secret. Could be useful to any folks playing Halo 5‘s campaign on legendary with friends.
After seeing how well hidden this Easter egg was and how it was only found after a developer gave the community hints, I wonder how many other undiscovered secrets are lurking in video games?
Leave a Reply