Halo — Peaceful Orchestral Music & Ambience in 4K

Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori wrote the Halo music in 2001, and the Gregorian chant opening Combat Evolved is still the most recognisable four bars in game music. Ambient Worlds assembled this in 2021, pulling the orchestral and choral themes from across the franchise and setting them against three scenes rendered in 4K on the ring itself rather than a static wallpaper.

Halo's quiet music is oddly pastoral for a war series — long string lines, piano, that hymn-like motif returning in every entry since. Two hours of it reads more like film score than game audio, and I use it for anything involving prose. The footage is the other half of the argument: whatever you make of the games now, standing on a curved horizon at dusk still looks like nothing else.