Here's three hours of Halo 5: Guardians lore for you

You might not be aware, but part of the Halo 5: Guardians pre-release tease campaign has been a weekly podcast hosted by a famous comedian, playing the role of a minor character from a comic book. It's kind of weird.

The story of Hunt the Truth began as a fairly blatant rip-off of podcast ultra-success, Serial, as Benjamin Giraud uncovers the story behind Master Chief's upbringing. Quickly he stumbles on inconsistencies, half-truths, outright falsehoods and, eventually, a full-on conspiracy - at which point the whole thing goes a bit "All The President's Men" (but with more aliens).

It's a little hokey in places, but it adds more weight to the stories behind the Spartans and, as time goes on, begins to solidify the role of the shadowy ONI organisation - laying down tracks that will no doubt run throughout the Halo 5 campaign. If you're a Halo lore obsessive, or just want a primer in what seems to have happened between the fourth and fifth games, it's a neat little thing - and here's the entire first season, in one handy (downloadable) audio file:

You'll notice it ends on quite the cliffhanger, with the promise of a second season to bring us even further up to date on the events preceding the new game - there's no word as yet when that will be coming (I've reached out to Microsoft for clarification), but, given the last series culminated at E3, I wouldn't be surprised to see it coincide with Gamescom next month in some way.

Joe Skrebels
Joe first fell in love with games when a copy of The Lion King on SNES became his stepfather in 1994. When the cartridge left his mother in 2001, he turned to his priest - a limited edition crystal Xbox - for guidance. And now he's here.