Halo Infinite is the long-awaited return of Xbox’s most successful game franchise. Our mission was to bring lapsed players back and a new generation into the franchise.

Like every Halo game before it, Halo Infinite centers around Master Chief, a gaming icon and quintessential hero. In 2007, the highly regarded Halo 3 campaign asked gamers to believe in a hero. But in today’s society, it’s harder than ever to ask people to believe in true heroes. Our real-world heroes are letting us down. And, in entertainment, darker anti-heroes taken their place.

With the return of Halo, we had a chance to reignite something sorely missing in the world. The feeling of a true hero. A hero that doesn’t reflect us, but one that shows the best of us. And when we step into Chief’s armor, we become the hero we’ve been missing.

The face under Master Chief’s helmet has been a closely guarded secret for twenty years. Instead of continuing the tradition, Xbox challenged this secret and revealed for the first time ever that the face behind the Chief’s visor is…all of us.

‘Become Master Chief’ was developed to evolve Master Chief into a mirror for the diverse faces of modern gaming and the evolving perceptions of who a hero really can be in 2021.

A custom mobile site designed to authentically fit into the Halo universe pulled potential new fans into the 26th century. The site allowed any fan to scan their face and, through bleeding-edge facial-swapping technology, see themselves behind the iconic armor. The experience allowed each fan to create their very own, custom version of our fully cinematic, official launch commercial. Proving once and for all that heroism has many faces. And we are all Master Chief.

We talked to gamers about heroism and discovered that anti-heroes are more relatable than traditional heroes like Master Chief. They said, believing in true heroes seems childish. This leads us to our challenge. How do we create desire for a true hero in a world that no longer believes in them?

The answer lies within a psychological truth of gaming. According to a study by the University of Oxford, the further away your real life is from the character you’re playing in game, the more comfortable you are in that character’s skin, and the more fun you have playing the game.

Right now, our gaming audience feels completely disconnected from true heroism in their real lives. Halo Infinite allows us to step into the armor of Master Chief and be the true hero we can’t be in real life.

Our strategy was: invite gamers to feel true heroism again.

To launch Halo Infinite, one commercial with one hero wasn’t enough. So, Xbox featured over 300,000 of them. As the official commercial went live across broadcast and Xbox’s owned social channels, prompts during Sunday Night Football in the US and Premiere League Football in the UK called on fans to cast themselves in the film’s heroic main role.

Fans visited the custom-built mobile site to scan their faces and see themselves as Chief. More than a simple filter or AR app, high-res facial mapping matched each fan’s skin tone and unique facial features. And deepfake technology changed fully produced, moving film at scale. This allowed every fan to create their own, fully cinematic, personalized version of the official launch spot. Fans, partners, and celebrities shared their custom films on their channels, giving their audiences an authentic reason to watch and turning their combined social networks into a massive awareness channel.

Over a period of only three days, Become Master Chief yielded over 300,000 custom created Halo Infinite commercials. Fans spent an average of over 4 mins engaging with the site, resulting in more than 20,000 combined hours of eyeballs and engagement. All of this brought the brand over 36 million organically earned impressions in under 72 hours, leading to the 23.5 million players for the game and the biggest launch in Halo’s history.