Gaming Urban Legends Wiki
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Crystal Armor is an urban legend related to the 2007 first-person shooter game Halo 3.

Description

In Halo 3 multiplayer, the player can customise their own spartan or elite character with various armor permutations that are all unlocked through completing campaign or multiplayer achievements. In 2009, rumors began to circulate amongst players, online forums and YouTube that there was a hidden set of armor in the game known as the “Crystal Armor” that was unlike any other armor permutation in the game. The crystal armor would usually be described by players as either reflective, shiny or glowing.

One of the most common methods of obtaining crystal armor that was spread around was that the player had to receive a picture of the crystal armor and then send that picture to 50 other players.[1] The pictures that were circulated amongst players that were supposedly of the crystal armor, were instead pictures of regular armor sets that were taken on multiplayer maps that had been edited with forge mode in order to make use of the special effects.

Some maps in Halo 3 allow the player to place special effects into maps that can drastically change the colour grading, lighting and style of said maps as well as screenshots taken on those maps. This allowed players to take screenshots of their spartans from certain angles that had specific special effects and objects in the background in order to make them appear as if they were glowing or beaming with light. These screenshots would gain a lot of visibility in-game as players could include them in their public file share.

A video was uploaded to YouTube on February 22, 2009 by Juanjo AE which contained supposed screenshots of the crystal armor and had a slightly different spin on the rumor as it claimed that the crystal armor was cut from the final game and could only be seen in prerelease screenshots.[2] Currently the video is titled “Halo 5 secret Crystal armor REVEALED!”, though it originally had Halo 3 in the title as opposed to Halo 5 as can be seen when viewing it from the internet archive.[3]

References

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