WHAT ARE VIDMASTERS? 

Defined by the Bungie game company as "someone who has mastered Marathon to its fullest", Marathon being a very old (in game terms) first-person shooter released by that company. A vidmaster must play on the hardest difficulty level, with every inconvenience possible to make the game harder to complete. While this later would include LASO or Legendary All Skulls On as apart of the technical definition, a Vidmaster and the Vidmaster Challenges originally did not include this and was a series of eleven achievements available for Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Spartan Assault, Halo: Spartan Strike, and Halo Wars 2. There are four Vidmaster Challenges in Halo 3, three in Halo 3: ODST, two in Halo: Spartan Assault, five in Halo: Spartan Strike, and two in Halo Wars 2.

The original seven challenges, released for Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST, initially served as the requirements for unlocking the Recon armor for use in Halo 3 multiplayer. After unlocking the achievements, players could log on to Bungie.net and request their armor through the "Road to Recon!" Although three of the Halo 3 Vidmaster achievements do not reward the player with Gamerscore, their use in unlocking Recon served as motivation for players to complete them.

The Vidmaster Challenges for Halo 3 did not ship with the original game, but became unlockable with Title Update 2; those in ODST were available at launch. With the exception of Lightswitch, Brainpan and Seven on Seventh, the achievements are widely considered very difficult to unlock. Thus, Recon armor remained difficult to acquire. However, on March 31, 2012 all record-keeping was transferred from Bungie.net to Halo Waypoint. As Halo Waypoint did not have the capability to unlock Recon, the armor was therefore unlocked by default for all Xbox Live profiles. The original Vidmaster Challenges therefore no longer serve any purpose beyond the achievements themselves.

The "vid" refers to the recording the player makes of their actions in the game that proves their skills. Using both the unofficial Halo API and the unofficial Xbox API we're able to add back this experience where Halo Waypoint currently does not accomodate for it. Reverse engineering data points in the game to create a sense of eternal progress and challenges outside of whatever 343 Industries has defined. We're able to make our own Vidmasters earning rare medals and achievement here or other forms of merit; payouts in credits on Halo Infinite to unlock armors and more on the shop, the changing times is exciting and I'm happy to share the celebration of this work in development and announce that it is not excluded to the Individual, THERE WILL BE VIDMASTERS CREATED FOR ENTIRE UNITS TO COMPLETE! 

Entire Units will be able to challenge and accomplish goals together for the Unit to be awarded. The kind of custom configurations we can achieve are a new level, beyond what Spartan Companies from Halo 5: Guardians are like and Clans from Destiny 2 have for progression. Absolutely any medal, any counter, even time played in game or what games every has will all be included in twisted evil challenge only seasoned Halo players will be able to accomplish. 

With all this exciting information, its a wonder when this might be available? But instead of sharing a date public, I'm going to actually silently publish this before the custom challenge generator, early next year. We're planning for so much and cannot wait to bring this feature that brought this clan together really in the comradery to unlock Recon. The Vidmasters Challenge will return!