Halo 5 podcast ‘Hunt the Truth’ returns today

I’m probably too excited for this

Let’s be honest with each other. Hunt the Truth, a Serial-esque podcast set in the Halo universe, is a marketing tool. It exists so people can get excited for Halo 5: Guardians. But you know what? It’s actually fantastic, thanks in no small part to the fantastic voice work from stars like Keegan-Michael Key and Cobie Smulders. Hunt the Truth is a taut dystopian sci-fi yarn filtered through the lens of investigative journalism. I was hooked during every bite-sized installment, consuming the entirety of the series in a weekend.

It appears now is the best time to catch up, because Season 2 drops today. The prologue and first episode can be found on SoundCloud and iTunes right now. Unfortunately Smulders’ Petra Janecek, the journalist who took over the investigation from Key’s Benjamin Giraud, is gone. Instead, rebel leader FERO will be the “focus” of the upcoming season.

Frank O’Connor, franchise development director at Halo studio 343 Industries, said that Hunt the Truth‘s upcoming season will “lead directly into the galaxy-shaking mysteries of Halo 5: Guardians” as opposed to the “subterfuge and espionage” of Season 1. That’s all well and good, but the struggle against a shadowy all-powerful intelligence agency was part of what made the first season so gripping. Giraud was a small fish in an ocean full of sharks. He knew nothing, which made him a perfect audience surrogate.

This first episode does a solid job of establishing the state of the world, changing everything we knew about the first season, and setting up mysteries I can’t wait to solve. I’m still interested, even if the existence of the show feels more implausible. Who knows, maybe they’ll run with that like they did last time. I’m sticking around one way or the other, and I hope you do too.

If you want to catch up on the show, I recommend you go on iTunes (or your podcast player of choice) and listen to the episodes individually. But, if you’ve got about three and a half hours to kill, there’s a supercut on SoundCloud.