A little over a week and a half ago, Co-Optimus and Bungie had another one of our Halo Waypoint Co-Op nights. The focus of this particular event was to collect the skulls and audio logs from Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, respectively. Having not yet gathered all of the audio logs in my single player game, I figured that this was the perfect time to do so, and I was not alone. Nick and community member Bakken Hood were also pursuing these back-story fragments that were scattered all about New Mombasa, and were prepared with a map that showed the locations of all the audio logs. We were unprepared, however, for what awaited us at the end of our search.
Perhaps we should have taken it as a sign when our adventure started out a bit rocky thanks once again to those accursed NAT settings that were prohibiting our group from connecting to one another. We eventually were able to find a host and guest invite configuration that was agreeable with everyone’s respective NAT and then we were dropped onto the street of New Mombasa. Nick had the map pulled up and was our navigator for the hunt, marking out the locations of the audio logs using waypoints. To our amazement, these waypoints only showed up when you brought up the full map, and not on our VISR compass, so we let him lead the way.
Nick: It’s around here somewhere.
Me: Where?
Nick: It shows it at the edge of this building… I think.
(on the other side of the “street” in the middle of the square)
Bakken: Found it.
"I think there's one over here" "You sure? I'm pretty sure it's back over this way." "Hey guys? Found it somewhere else entirely."
This was a pattern that was to repeat itself for a bit until Bakken and I decided that perhaps it would make the process go a lot faster if we both had maps of the logs’ locations in front of us as well. Of course, it helps to synchronize efforts when you’re hunting down those last few remaining logs if you’re all looking at the same map, which I wasn’t.
Nick: Ok, I think we’ve just got 23, 17, and 18 left.
Me: Really? Didn’t we just get those? They were up in the upper right where we just came from.
Nick: They’re down in the lower left… What map are you looking at?
Me: … a… better one…?
We eventually were able to track down all 29 of the audio logs on the streets of New Mombasa, and were feeling rather jubilant about the whole thing. All that was left was to start up the ONI mission and claim the last one. Achievement unlocked, job well done, all that, right? Well, it seems that before we set off on our little venture, we neglected to do some research. Apparently, there’s a glitch with the way the game saves your co-op progress, so if you return to the mission lobby and start up the ONI mission, all of your audio log progress is lost. Two and a half hours of our time, just gone in an instant.
I can think of no better words to describe this kind of situation, than by paraphrasing the words of the Great Bard himself:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of three friends and their search for audio.