Halo 2 Streamer Issues $20,000 Deathless Bounty Challenge, Are You Game?

master chief scaled
Do you believe you're great at Halo 2 and feel the need to line your pockets with a cool $20k? Well, it might be your lucky day if you can pull off this challenge by a popular Halo 2 streamer.

Mo1stcr1tikal, or just cr1tikal, depending on where you see their name appear, has upped a bounty they offered around three weeks ago for about $5,000. That challenge was to be Halo 2. Now before you go and boot up your Xbox or launch up Anniversary or Master Chief edition saying "I've beaten Halo 2! I've got this!," there are some caveats because there really wouldn't be a bounty if it was that easy.

The outline of the rules from Cr1tikal is as follows. $20,000 will be awarded to the first person who can stream a complete run that adheres to the following.
  • Difficulty must be set to Legendary
  • 13 of the 14 Skulls (known as LASO in Anniversary) must be enabled
  • Envy skull must NOT be enabled
  • You are allowed to use in-game glitches, but no external hacks, macros, cheats, or other external manipulation methods.
  • You must complete all of the campaign this way without dying.
  • The entire event must be live-streamed via Twitch or YouTube
  • There must be no splits, save manipulation, or editing trickery.
  • Upon completion, you must submit a VOD to the submission form for judgment.
According to cr1tikal he believes this is the hardest challenge in gaming. The reason for this claim is, as far as he or anyone is aware, there has not been a single person to complete this in the 18 years since Halo 2 was first released by Bungie and Microsoft. At least no one has documented doing so. Not only that, since the $5k bounty was first introduced, only two people have consistently passed the first level of Halo 2, which he showcases in his update to the $20k video.


YouTube Video of Mo1stcr1tikal outlining the $20,000 Halo 2 challenge.

During the $20k video, some pieces of advice were given, as well as a clearer outline of the rules. For the point that you are allowed to use Anniversary Edition or Classic added in some interesting pieces. For example, in Classic, you must gather the skulls before continuing with the challenge, whereas in Anniversary you can just turn them on at a whim assuming you've played and collected the skulls at least in one playthrough of the game. However, the Anniversary edition operates at a higher tick rate, which allows for enemy response times, and even how quickly they fire their weapons at you to be much faster than classic, meaning you have less opportunity to react before, well, you likely die from those enemies.

Another interesting piece is the fact that cr1tikal is allowing in-game glitches. This makes sense considering how impossible he feels the challenge is though. Of course, external cheats, macros, or outside tools are not allowed. All this said, it also brings up another point of the difference between Anniversary and Classic. In classic, there's a glitch that can happen called Ghosting, where your player's hitbox is offset from your player's location. However, enemy targeting is based on player location—this can give you usually only milliseconds, but those milliseconds can be the difference between life and death. According to cr1tikal most of the people who consistently pass level 1 are doing so on Classic and using this glitch.

halo 2 arbiter
The Arbiter, Halo 2

If you want to give this challenge a go we aren't going to stop you, but it will be extremely difficult. Information and rules are in the YouTube video that we embedded. There is a special Discord where people can share tips and tricks for the challenge. If you feel like you've got a run that counts, hit up the submission form. Good luck to you, we'd love to know how you fair if you give it a try!