--- description: What will happen in season two of the popular Halo podcast title: An Exclusive Sneak Peak No Halo Fan Should Miss image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt75427ffac483893b/69886487f887dce350e92751/halo-hunt-the-truth-2.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) ## Tech Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Listen to an Exclusive Preview of _Halo 5_'s 'Hunt the Truth' Season Two by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Sep 21, 2015 1:00 PM CUT  Microsoft by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Sep 21, 2015 1:00 PM CUT It’s strange days in Microsoft’s _Halo_ universe. Uncomfortable mysteries abound as _Halo 5: Guardians_ nears. The series’ hulking Master Chief—savior of 26th century humanity—is inexplicably AWOL. Super-soldiers hunt super-soldiers. Ghastly revelations threaten cherished mythologies. Unrest looms. This spring, in a series of podcasts dubbed _Hunt the Truth_, the mythology of the _Halo_ universe was thrown into tumult. Loosely modeled after radio dramas like _This American Life,_ the program explored, and called into question, the franchise’s de facto narrative of a noble government forging genetically augmented superhumans to save the world from theocratic aliens. (The program also recalls 2004’s _Halo 2_\-related [I Love Bees](http://www.42entertainment.com/work/ilovebees "undefined") campaign.) Listeners loved it: _Hunt the Truth_, which [just won a Clio](http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/leo-burnett-rga-droga5-win-gold-clio-awards-unveil-ooh-audio-and-pr-winners-166940 "undefined"), wound up drawing an audience of over 6.7 million, putting it in the top 1% of all iTunes podcasts. At the outset, fictional war journalist Benjamin Giraud begins work on a rhapsodic profile of Master Chief, only to discover cracks in his sources that only widen. By the end of season one, Ben has flipped, his military hagiography become a salvo aimed at the heart of _Halo_‘s Office of Naval Intelligence, the shady black ops and propaganda group that commissioned him to write the puff piece in the first place. It’s a tale that feels parsecs from the gung-ho, boo-rah tone of the shooter that debuted on Microsoft’s original Xbox over a decade ago. And yet the story ended ambiguously, leaving fans to speculate about the impact of Ben’s actions. Where was he now? What of his revelations? What would insurrectionist leader FERO, who’d helped Ben from the shadows, do next? Who _was_ FERO, anyway? And how did any of this tie into _Halo 5_, which arrives on October 27? (Seriously, it’s captivating stuff _Halo_ aficionados should not miss.) Answers to the questions above are coming in _Hunt the Truth_‘s second season, which debuts September 22 on [the series’ official Tumblr page](http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com "undefined"). _Halo_ franchise development director Frank O’Connor, _Hunt the Truth_ creative director Noah Eichen and season two lead Janina Gavankar (_True Blood_, _Far Cry 4_, _The Mysteries of Laura_) shared exclusive details about _Hunt the Truth_ season two with TIME, and it starts with the following audio clip: That would be FERO, played by Gavankar, the inscrutable rebel leader who saved Ben’s bacon last time around. By the way, _not_ Ben’s war journalist compadre Petra (voiced by Cobie Smulders), as season one’s finale maybe had you, like me, thinking. At this point, glancing at season two’s mostly new cast list (which includes series newcomers Tamara Taylor, Mark Hamill, Vanessa Marshall, Alan Tudyk, Rosa Salazar, Bruce Thomas, Peter Serafinowicz and William Salyers), Petra is missing in action. There’s a perfectly good reason for this, Eichen tells me: He didn’t want another season of “journalist tells a story.” ### Meet America's First Video Game Varsity Athletes  Jonathan "McSleuthBurgur" Lindahl, 19, a freshman in computer networking, practices League of Legends and other video games in the video game practice space of Robert Morris University's athletic department in Chicago, March 18, 2015\. The university recognizes video games as a varsity sport under its athletic department and has been offering sports scholarships to video gamers to play League of Legends. The team practices four to five nights a week in a $100,000 classroom outfitted for video gaming. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Chris "STARS FourEyes" Broadnax, 21, a graphic design major, plays video games in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Rachel "Razur" Zurawski, 20, plays League of Legends and other video games in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Student video game athletes play League of Legends and other games in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Derek "Zig" Shao (left), 20, and Blake "Oberan" Soberanis, 22, play League of Legends in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015\. Shao and Soberanis are two of the best members on the school's video game team. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Chris "STARS FourEyes" Broadnax (right), 21 and Mario "ThirstDrinker" Huang, 26, practice League of Legends and other video games in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Rachel "Razur" Zurawski, 20, practices League of Legends and other video games in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Robert Morris University associate athletic director, Kurt Melcher (second left), Jonathan "McSleuthBurgur" Lindahl (right), 19, and Dean "keyboychespin" Mitchell (second right), 18, watch others play the game Heroes of the Storm in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Derek "Zig" Shao (left), 20, and Zixing Jie (right), 20 play League of Legends in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME  Mario "ThirstDrinker" Huang, 26, a sophomore studying Drafting Technology, practices League of Legends and other video games in Robert Morris University's video game practice space in Chicago, March 18, 2015. Kitra Cahana—Getty Images Reportage for TIME “Ben’s story covered a lot,” he says. “And where we landed with season two tells a story that’s very different from season one and allows us to get a little bit closer to the action than I think we would have been able to be in canon otherwise.” Imagine Ira Glass as an insurrectionist bigwig in an interstellar yarn–or not–and you can see why Eichen needed to ditch the NPR pastiche. It’s still a narrator telling a story, of course, but Eichen says the tone is completely different. “It’s not a person making a show, it’s not a host who’s making this for an audience,” he tells me. “I started thinking about it like _True Detective_ season one, where it’s a person recalling events. And it’s a little more like a horror film to me, there’s some really horrific stuff going on as we get closer to _Halo 5_.” Season two, which will be shorter than season one but with longer episodes, picks up shortly after the events of season one, and deals with the implications of Ben’s tectonic revelations, this time with FERO in the driver’s seat. Whatever happened to sever communications with the _Halo_\-verse’s outer colonies during season one–clearly portending what we’ll be grappling with in _Halo 5_–season two is about the trials and tribulations FERO undergoes to expose what she knows to the rest of the world. Speculation about who FERO might be runs the gamut. Is she Ilsa Zane, a supersoldier-turned-insurrectionist who appeared in a _Halo_\-related comic book? Perhaps Dr. Catherine Halsey, the very scientist who created Master Chief? Gavankar tells me we’ll find out soon enough. “She’s a fascinating enough character for the entire second season to be hers,” she says. “I can say she’s a complicated lady. She told you a little bit of who she is, and she’s been through a lot.” Ben, voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, is coming back, too, but in what fashion (realtime? past tense?) remains a mystery. If the first season was his character just finding stuff out, basically victimized by information, O’Connor says season two is about “taking a step back.” FERO knows a lot more than Ben did, and “that helps us provide an interesting perspective on Benjamin.” So can we trust FERO? “I don’t want to give anything away, because I like that you’re questioning everything,” Gavankar tells me. “After season one you couldn’t trust anybody. All I can say is FERO saved Ben, so if you’re going into this season trusting anyone, you should trust her.” **MORE:** [12 Things We Learned About Halo 5‘s ‘Hunt the Truth’ Season 2](http://time.com/4041702/halo-5-hunt-truth-microsoft-xbox/ "undefined") ### See The 15 Best Video Game Graphics of 2014  Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Activision's futuristic first-person shooter in which players take on a rogue private military company uses a brand new engine built specifically for PCs and new-gen consoles to handle its cutting-edge lighting, animation and physics. Sledgehammer Games/Activision  Far Cry 4\. This pulled back shot of fictional Himalayan region Kyrat is in-game, believe it or not, rendered with an overhauled version of the engine Ubisoft used to design Far Cry 3. Ubisoft  The Last of Us: Remastered. Naughty Dog's meditation on the worst (and best) of humanity is built on technology that reaches back through the studio's pulp-adventure Uncharted series. The graphics are so impressive, TIME recently assigned a conflict photographer to photograph inside the game. Ashley Gilbertson for TIME  Alien: Isolation Built from scratch, the Alien: Isolation engine's outstanding deep space visuals all but replicate the set design of Alien film concept artists H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb's work. The Creative Assembly  Assassin's Creed Unity. Ubisoft says it "basically remade the whole rendering engine" in its AnvilNext design tool to handle the studio's meticulous recreation of Paris during the French Revolution. Ubisoft  Child of Light Inspired by filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki and artist Yoshitaka Amano, Child of Light's hand-drawn artwork puts the lie to presumptions that graphical richness depends on shader support or polygon counts. Ubisoft  Destiny Built from scratch by ex-Halo studio Bungie, Destiny's game engine was designed to scale across the next decade, says the studio. Bungie  Mario Kart 8 Nintendo's kart-racer for Wii U reminds us that raw horsepower is just a facet of crafting a beautiful game world. Nintendo  Infamous Second Son Sucker Punch's freeform Seattle-based superhero adventure models all sorts of minutia, from the intricate wrinkling of an aged character's face to the way eyelids stick, slightly, before separating when characters blink. Sucker Punch Productions  Monument Valley Escher-like at first glance, Ustwo's mind-bending puzzler was also inspired by posters, bonsai plants, arabic calligraphy and filmmaker Tarsem Singh's The Fall. Ustwo  Grand Theft Auto V Rockstar's remastered crime spree opus was crafted from an in-house engine first employed in a game that simulated table tennis. Rockstar  Titanfall Respawn Entertainment  Forza Horizon 2 Turn 10's Euro-racer actually models light refracted through drops of moisture, the render tech plausibly simulating something as intangible but essential as the earth’s atmosphere. Microsoft Studios/Turn 10 Studios  80 Days Inkle's anti-colonialist vamp on Jules Verne's famous novel uses crisp art deco imagery inspired by travel posters to unfurl 80 Days' tale of intrepid globetrotters Monsieur Fogg and his valet Passepartout. Inkle  Tomb Raider Crystal Dynamics' radical reboot of its popular series about an athletic archaeologist uses a modified version of the engine that powered Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006. Square Enix ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4039922/halo-hunt-for-the-truth/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4039922/halo-hunt-for-the-truth/"},"headline":"Listen to an Exclusive Preview of Halo 5's 'Hunt the Truth' Season Two","datePublished":"2015-09-21T13:00:10.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:44:25.916Z","description":"In a series of podcasts, the mythology of the Halo universe was thrown into tumult. 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