Bungie unveils render of the Orbital Drop Shock Troopers featured in the new game.
Developer Bungie.net further stoked Halo 2"s hype-firestorm by releasing a render of new soldiers featured in the game. The render shows a trio of heavily armored Orbital Drop Shock Troopers clutching assault rifles, ready for action. Mentioned previously only in the Halo novels, the ODSTs are the United Nations Space Command"s (UNSC) second-most-elite soldiers, after the Master Chief and his fellow genetically altered SPARTAN troopers. Also known as "Helljumpers," the all-volunteer ODSTs are the paratroopers of the future, traveling to planets" surfaces in one-man reentry modules, much like the soldiers in the original novel Starship Troopers.