History was broken

 But, you know: Gaming History

Some points in time are unshakable, unchangeable moments that stand straighter than the mountains and more frozen than the ice caps. Unbreaking truths that cannot be revised no matter how strongly we rage against the very substance of their claims. Gravity pulls us ever to the centre of our floating space rock, the burning skyball will always blind us for half of the day and Halo 2 will never be completed deathless LASO. For what being could possibly task themselves with attending the impossible task of completing the hardest Halo game on Legendary difficulty with all skulls on (except Envy) because that is what LASO stands for if you didn't know. 'Legendary All Skulls On'. Which does not mean that the challenge has never be attempted; oh it's been a trial ever since the launch of Halo 2 and the discovery of the easter egg skulls in each level that each drastically altered the state of the game. But... no one actually completed the thing, because that was impossible. Literally.

You have to remember that straight away, HALO 2 on Legendary is a tough game where a single concentrated barrage of fire will kill you straight away. Then throw in the Skulls and you'll find that each one makes the game significantly harder. Like the one that makes all enemies permanently cloaked (You can still see their shimmering outline, Predator style, but that slight second of confusion will be more than enough to get you if you're unprepared. Or somewhere dark.) Or the skull that makes enemies shoot faster, which is about as bad as it sounds. Then there's the skull which disables the auto regen on your shields so that you can only get them back by meleeing enemies. And the one which disables all HUD so you can't tell your health or ammo without listening to the audio cues. (And the audio cues only kick in when either you shields are dead or your ammo is gone.) AI enemies drop half  the ammo they usually do. You're only allowed to board vehicles they enemy AI is driving. (I have no idea how the heck you're meant to do the Tank mission at the beginning of Halo 2.) And the only skull you're not allowed to use is Envy; which replaces your flashlight with an camo cloak, literally the only skull which is beneficial.

Playing each level with these stipulations is pretty much legal torture, and to ask someone to endure the whole campaign with those rules and not die is just about the only thing worse than a war crime. And yet that is exactly the challenge issued by MoistCritikal just a few weeks ago, who upon learning that literally no one over the years had completed the challenge with proof reasoned that the only obstacle to success was a lack of proper incentive. As such Charlie offered up a $5000 bounty which he then upped to a $20,000 dollar bounty, all in the hopes of seeing one of gaming's greatest challenges finally wrapped up. That last pimple on the arse-end of history popped out of existence; all at his personal behest. Making him yet another in a long line of men happy to send others to their damnation whilst they watch from the sidelines. (Okay, he did give a few tiny attempts himself but he stopped before the experience could scar him too heavily.)

Some of the big problems for entry are the fact that a lot of people didn't even have the tools to attempt this challenge, given that the remake version of the game in the Master Chief collection makes this challenge impossible. Not only do enemies fire even faster due to the refresh rate but a few of the level skip options are patched out. So players have to rely on the originals, which are hard to get ahold of, and they have to finagle their way around the annoying skull collection system which unloads all collected skulls the second you turn off the console. Meaning that those serious about the challenge need to traverse every level and create save profiles as close they could to each skull so they could do a quick collection run before starting each proper LASO run. Wonderful. At least the impossible version of this challenge on the remade version of Halo 2 completely nullified that issue with skulls in the options menu and a playlist with all of them pre-turned on. But even that is a bit weird when you think about it. 343 just offers up a mission playlist of a near-impossible to complete challenge for the average player to accidently stumble upon? Talk about a landmine.

But note how I said 'near impossible', because lo-and-behold, just this past week history was shattered and reality scarred, when a Twitch streamer who had himself a few priors in attempting this hell put his mental stability on the line once again in pursuit of cold hard cash. As one of the very few applicants who actually managed to make it past the opening level, Jervalin managed to push himself through some of the hardest Halo levels ever created to become the first person in history to complete a deathless LASO run. And it was not a trial that came without errors, without heartache, without suffering; but the man was always one of the favourites to win and just like a hero from a Shonen Anime he just kept up bashing his bleeding head against the brick wall until the material caved in.

To call his victory miraculous is to do the art of the craft a misjustice. Because this achievement was cold hard tactical precision mastered over the course of years and distilled into a few concentrated weeks of runs. By Charlie's own words, Jervalin dedicated 40 days straight of runs to getting this challenge down, racking up countless deaths and countless killed runs in that time frame. Of course, it was all just a set-up for the inevitable moment of victory when he finally managed to convince Johnson's AI to shoot down Tartarus' shield so that he could finish that brute, and this run, for good. I can only imagine that also marks the very last time Jervalin will ever load up Halo 2, because who in their right mind would want to be reminded of all that chaos and pain?

And if you think you're 'pretty good' as Halo, I recommend you look up his record of the VOD on Youtube and have humility served straight to your eyeballs from the simply god-like gameplay Jervalin demonstrated in this challenge. It is no exaggeration to say that Jervalin probably knows the ins and outs of every aspect of that game better than the developers do at this point, and has mastered them more than any of those artists could ever dream to do. He one-lifed an impossible challenge and proved that 343's LASO playlist isn't an impossible feat served directly up to players. Except I just lied, he didn't do that; because 343's LASO playlist is only on the Master Chief Collection with the remake of Halo 2 wherein many of the strats and gameplay that Jervalin used wouldn't have worked or been enough. Yes, even perfection can't overcome every problem.

Still this is a time for celebration as one of the biggest seals of gaming challenge has been snapped and we're one step further to the awakening of the Dreamer and the dissolution of reality to his tentacled embrace. Because that's how big of an accomplishment this is; reality threatening! All of the runners who pushed themselves past the first level all proved themselves to be shining symbols of Halo players too, and I can only imagine what sort of hijinks this community will get up to now that they've all discovered their fellow demi-gods from such a challenge. It's like Charlie was the Nick Fury assembling the Avengers of challenge runs; they should form a international collective of challenge gamers and go around breaking records across the industry. And you know what; that's the head-canon I'm going to maintain about the legacy of this beaten Halo run. Drink well this sensation, reader; for you're taking in the end of an era. Isn't it beautiful?