This Halo 3 Easter Egg was TOO HARD For Players To Solve (Halo 3 IWHBYD Skull)

Halo has a ton of Easter Eggs that sometimes took players quite a while to figure out, before they got unraveled. One of the biggest and most interesting Easter Eggs was always been the Halo 3 IWHBYD Skull. This Halo 3 Easter Egg was too hard for players but how do you solve this Halo mystery in the right way?

[TheMartyODonnell]

Sorry I got the wrong name Mr. Sloth. It was the first one to come up in my quick Twitter search. Thanks for doing this. You have come close. The pinned comment here (spell the scale the correct way) makes a big difference. I’d love for someone to elegantly put together how and why this could have been figured out without the hack. All the ingredients have been identified.
It seemed difficult but not impossible. Hacking was a cheater solution.
Disappointed, but getting happier.

[TheRealGuywithoutaMustache]

Imagine being that one player who figured it out for themselves, but never told anyone

[BizKwikTwist]

Mom : why are you crying?
Me : they made fun of my CQB helmet at school today.

[franknbeans]

Halo 3 makes me so sad nobody around me knows the journey of this game and how it felt back in the day to play. The best halo game there was and ever will be.

[yikes]

I love that it's the _last_ 7 notes of the halo melody, because it means that players trying to perform the entire thing from the start of the melody will get the skull and probably feel even more accomplished for it.

[mtthrawnurud]

"This was one of the most hyped helmets, for what ever reason, and armor sets."

One word: KATANA

[warzoneguy]

So in the cutscene entering the area, one of the flood says to Chief and Arbiter “Do not shoot, listen.” This was the hint telling the player to listen for the notes the rings play.

[MikeyMutz]

I'm annoyed you didn't splice the whole song together after finding that out. Would of loved to hear it with the rings

[FaddaJoe]

It wasn't mentioned here, and many probably noticed this, but the 4th ring is red and broken because Installation 04 was destroyed by Chief. Hence, it didn't light up in the cutscene. It's also the first note in the sequence. Simple, and a clear hint of where to start, but easy to overlook if you don't have your lore goggles on.

[TheeShaggySniper]

As soon as you said "the rings made different pitches"... I knew exactly where it was going. Brilliantly hidden, makes me sad nobody found it that way.

[DTHMusic]

Are the halo rings an instrument?
"yes, Patrik"

[AaronBueckert]

Musician popping in here: It's not a "typical major scale" because it's not a major scale. If you rewrite the Db and Gb as their enharmonics (C# and F#) you can more easily see that it's a B Natural Minor (missing the octave). This shares the same key signature as a D Major, but starts on D's relative minor.

(That is, if the notes you listed per ring at 8:40 is correct, I haven't gone and checked)

Coming in with an edit because a large number of people are claiming I'm incorrect because I didn't say it was an E Dorian scale. The first replies to this comment covered this in brief, but let's go a little more in depth.

The pitch classes we're dealing with are D, E, F#, G, A, B, and C#. These exact pitch classes will make 7 scales from Western tradition: D Major, E Dorian, F# Phrygian, G Lydian, A Mixolydian, B Aeolian, and C# Locrian. Remember that all these scales use the same pitches - so how do you tell them apart? Their starting pitch.

Where everyone is getting hung up on is that the Halo theme, which you recreate by jumping through the hoops, is in E Dorian mode. This means it's a piece of music using these pitch classes with E as a tonic - like a home base. The important thing to note here is that keys(or modes) and scales, while related, are not the same thing. Keys/modes indicate harmonic function, scales are just a set of pitch classes with a starting pitch, spanning an octave.

At around the 8 minute mark, the video is discussing not what key the notes are, since that could be any key so long as you jump through the rings in an appropriate order. The video is discussing the scale specifically, and with these pitch classes starting on B, it's known as a B Aeolian, otherwise known as B Natural Minor.

Carry on.

[sladec-m]

I love when new things are discovered in really old games, makes you think bungie should make a hidden objects/puzzles game.

[jeremiahwright]

"Do not shoot, but listen."


Gravemind was telling us the solution all along

[ChimichangoBoom]

I remember when me and my friends we all jumped in and I specifically remembered jumping through the rings in a certain order, shit those days are now 12 year old memories with friends that all drifted apart, such a long time ago now

[noahnnc]

“I Would Have Been Your Daddy” is the name of the cutscene at the beginning of the Halo CE mission “Assault on the Control Room” (also 7 syllables). Perhaps the secret lies there...

[jimmyshousevideos]

My friend and I discovered the musical connection on our own. We are very proud of that.

[J_claud]

Is that why there’s that Easter egg with the piano playing melody on the covenant to sort of give a hint?

[Urkstore]

Gathering all of these skulls added so much replayability to the campaign. I hope they implement them in Infinite as well.

[xdarckstrack]

8:40 just change the flats for sharps and you get the B minor / D major scale.

B C# D E F# G A

It's also the notes in E Dorian which is the mode in which the Halo theme is in.