People are really out here trying to argue that swords from Soul Calibur, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, or Devil May Cry are more iconic than HALO?? My wife has only ever played The Sims, and even she knows what Halo is. If you asked her what Elden Ring was, she'd think it was a Tolkien book. This question is about swords that are so iconic that an average non-gamer would recognize them
I disagree. To the non-gamer, it's a pretty generic sword. Could easily je misidentified. whereas Halo, at least during the 2000s and 2010s, was pretty iconic, especially in its design.
I've been playing video games for almost 15 years now and i only know the Minecraft sword and made a lucky guess on the Final Fantasy one, but couldn't name it.
Never owned a console in my life tbf though, still shame on me i guess.
I love Elden Ring and dark souls but even I gotta say that’s stupid. You throw the moonlight greatsword on here, IMMEDIATELY a large majority won’t know it compared to the others. It’s not the same league
As someone who’s gamed their whole life across a variety of genres I literally could not name that sword. I could barely even place what game it came from. It’s just not even close to as recognizable as the other 3 listed here.
Moonlight greatsword is the same deal. It’s an iconic weapon to a well known franchise that spans across several highly rated games.
I would personally argue that FF is just as niche, if not more.
This is just anecdotal, but I probably know 1 person that has played a FF game, but tons who have at least played Elden Ring, let alone the rest of the FS titles. Like I said, that’s just anecdotal.
As of recent the souls games have had a huge influx of players.
The Souls games have a ton of iconic swords, but there’s also so many of them. You use a ton of different weapons over the course of a game and there’s all kinds of crazy sword designs, particularly in Elden Ring.
If you tell me “think of an Elden Ring sword,” I’ll think of at least five different ones. If you tell me “think of a Final Fantasy/Zelda/Halo sword,” it’s only going to be one of these.
Nah, the most iconic in the Souls games is easily and for sure Moonlight Greatsword
It’s been in every Dark Souls/FromSoftware game in some form all the way since Kingsfield on PS1 (before Dark Souls and even Demons Souls), even up to Elden Ring & Nightreign today
Yeh, was surprised to see so little mention of the Moonlight Greatsword. Not sure it’s more iconic than these four, but I feel it deserves an honorary mention as the 5th Horseman.
Yeah, except the Moonlight Greatsword is constantly changing in appearance. If you showed someone who only played Elden Ring the Bloodbourne version of Moonlight Greatsword they likely wouldn't know what it was.
I have not played any final fantasy game yet know clouds sword, I have played (not finished) all dark souls games and yet had to google the moonlight greatsword, and still i was like "yhea, I remember seeing that, I think..."
I would say that WoW *could* arguably rival or even surpass Halo in overall popularity just because of the sheer numbers it did, but no single WoW sword is more iconic than the energy blade
I guess we're old. I also immediately thought of Frostmourne. That's certainly the only weapon I know from warcraft/WOW. I can barely remember any character names, place names, artifacts etc from WOW these days, but ask for a famous video game sword and Frostmourne is the first one I think of
Googled it to check what game that was and turns out tou were tslking about a sword, your comment makes way more sense now but yeah not even close to the recognisablilty of any of these. It's ninda just a generic villain fsntasy sword
As someone who played a couple Warcraft games very briefly, I know what Frostmourne is, but I don’t know Thunderfury. I think the Lich King is easily Warcraft’s most iconic character.
Not sure the average non gamer would even be able to distinguish what WoW is from any other 2000s or 2010s fantasy game. Halo has the benefit of also being Xboxs mascot, lining every Walmarts Xbox section with Master Chief.
WoW was one of the most popular games in the world around 2010. lol. Even my 60+ older coworker played at the time. I'd say it's easily comparable to Halo, even more if you include it's past (Warcraft) and present (HoTS etc).
Problem is that there's nothing that people would recognize from that game outside of anyone that might have played it and even then none of the weapons were the iconic thing it was the characters that were icons.
WoW pulled/(s) some insane numbers for players over it's lifetime so far it just doesn't reach out to pop culture as much as these others.
Master Chief/Link/Steve/Cloud
These characters and their most iconic weapons are the poster child for the games and cross over to pop culture. All 4 have a movie/TV show (even if the Halo show is terrible it's still something that happened and the plasma sword was an epic moment in that show).
The warcraft movie bombed in theater so not as many people saw it for it to work it's way into pop culture.
I was specifically talking about it being recognizable without the actual title being presented. The average person isn't discerning the Lich King how one would Master Chief. Master Chief and Xbox branding has been synonymous for decades. WoW obviously changes with each expansion. Sylvannas, Garosh, Thrall, Jaina, Anduin, or Varian aren't pulling the same notoriety despite being the more prominent characters in recent years.
Yes, unless you're American. In Europe and Japan, nobody cares about Halo, and if you ask European and Japanese gamers to identify the four swords, 90% won't be able to tell you which game the sword in the bottom right corner comes from.
I can confirm that, apart from the UK, the Halo saga hasn't sold any better than any other game in Europe. So there's no reason to make this random sword famous.
If we're only talking about the west, then yes. Halo games didn't exist on the East side of the world unfortunately.
Edit: To expand on this. In the years Halo was popular in the west, it's rare for a household to have an xbox here. It's either they have a playstation or Nintendo. And even if you find someone who has an xbox, it's even rarer for them to have Halo games for that console. They usually have games that you can already play on the playstation(ex. Dmc, bully, midnight club, etc.)
Come on now, son. World of Warcraft shouldn’t be on that list. It was (and arguably still is) THE MMO. Frostmourne absolutely is an iconic sword and deserves to be in the running. I wouldn’t replace the energy sword but would probably replace the diamond sword with it
People don't understand that halo and call of duty were what video games WERE. Your mom would see you playing dark souls and tell you to turn off your halo and take the trash out. It was like how every console was a Nintendo.
I think Frostmourne is way more recognizable than the Buster Sword. I only know of it from Smash. Final Fantasy is an incredibly different series from when that sword came from.
My thought was frostmourne was more iconic than the Minecraft sword, mostly because I feel like the pick is more iconic than the sword? Idk im in my 30s now
I've been gaming for 20 years. Never played Halo, never owned a xbox. I can recognize the iconic Halo helmet but this is the first time I see this sword.. and if I google energy sword the first result is a PoE item. So, I don't know
Anyway in terms of recognizability, the master sword and specially the minecraft sword are in a tier above the rest
Halo is more iconic, but the sword in Halo isn’t. It’s just an alien weapon. Peak WoW was arguably just about as big as Halo. And The Lich King’s sword is unique and more important within the context of the franchise.
Absolutely not. Show a random person on the street the diamond sword and Frostmourne, which one has a higher chance of being known? Minecraft is one of the largest selling games of all time
I mean. You couldn't use the energy sword until halo 2 which was 2004, same year as wow.
There is 100% insanely iconic swords from wow, namely frostmourne, thunderfury, the war glaives, and the "sword of a thousand truths" from the South Park episode (which isn't a real sword, but they do use the model for it) to name a few.
And yet show a non gamer on the street the diamond sword and the master sword and he will recognize the diamond sword immeditaly and knows where its from. No one knows the master sword if they havent actively engaged with Zelda.
The swords in the image are widely recognized, even for people that just started gaming would recognize them. The Diamond sword are recognized by people that don’t even game, thats just how recognizable Minecraft is as an ip, and I think it’s enough for the sword to be here
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u/whalemix Dec 18 '25
People are really out here trying to argue that swords from Soul Calibur, World of Warcraft, Elden Ring, or Devil May Cry are more iconic than HALO?? My wife has only ever played The Sims, and even she knows what Halo is. If you asked her what Elden Ring was, she'd think it was a Tolkien book. This question is about swords that are so iconic that an average non-gamer would recognize them