Poll: The Halo Story

[Icehearted]

The games? Tripe. Everything else, never bothered. I can't be arsed to bother with a patchwork of pretentious convoluted cash grabbing in novel/comic/cartoon form ad nauseum.

If it matters (it doesn't) I'm a picky reader and hard to please.

If you've never read the books, or even tried reading the books then you can't call them pretentious, convoluted or cash grabbing, since you know nothing about them other than that they exist. They might be shit, and they might be pretty damn decent, and you don't know which it is, because you've never been arsed to read them.

Fair enough. It's been my experience with X-Files and Star Wars novels (especially Kevin Anderson's work) that these books are written less to flesh out the story or it's characters and more an appeal to fans for more money. They've been among the very worst works of literature I've read (including such classics as Spider-Pig and pretty much anything scrawled over a truck stop urinal), and have often not only failed to at least adhere to the nature of either the characters or their situations, but in many cases manage to destroy any suspension of disbelief by writing things into their books that are wholly nonsensical or woefully exaggerated. Sure I can accept that the force is powerful and can be used in many ways, but using it to grab an object while flying a X-Wing so you can turn on a dime during a dogfight? It stinks of cop-out, or worse, a writer working with source material they don't understand (ironic considering what Lucas did with his own creation).

I've never bothered reading anything on Halo sheerly because these books usually cater specifically to people that would otherwise lap up anything with Halo written on it. It could be a flip book, but if it's got Cortana wriggling around on it's pages you can bet the fans will go nuts and set fire to anyone that doesn't worship the series with equal fervor.

Ultimately, I have to care enough about the original story to want to learn more about it, which brings us back to my original opinion; at it's best the story in Halo achieves mediocrity, and at it's worst flatly sucks. I do not deride it's fans, more power to you, but a giant talking vegetable, a nasally sounding lead in goofy green armor, sassy e-chicks, and alien invaders that scream like coherently speaking Jawas are hardly a proper foundation on which one could readily build a literary masterpiece, or for that matter, anything literarily palatable.

That's my opinion.

 

[cheatking]

l*snip*...were from aliens ass well

*Spelling nazi*
Ass well eh? Hate to run a bucket down there.

OT: I do love the Halo universe from any other perspective than the Master Chief (the Sgt. Johnson book is brilliant) but it's kinda hard for that to give weight to the game when the series' story is about Mr -117. I personally would prefer it if the game and books could break their ties. The halo books are some good reads but they land with the stigma "From the award winning video game" and the game which is another one of your "space marines surviving against extinction from an instantly hostile alien race for no other reason than they want to" (albeit it does it very well).

I find it amusing that no one mentions Gears of War in this sort of debate. They have novels that relay the story well(ish) but in game its a bit thrown in your face.

In summery: Halo books=good (slightly stolen story) Halo games: Good block buster but not Oscar worthy

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I liked it until halo 2 started factoring in alein politics and halo 3 was just kind of boring. The most interesting part of it to me was the background behind the spartan program. Hopefully Reach will be cool.

 

[Korten12]

it needs more back story and to not have a faceless space marine as the main charictor

Im gonna be honest; This statement bugs the shit out of me. Mainly because it is some stupid thing Yahtzee or Moviebob said that people picked up on, mostly because it isnt true.

I personally find the Halo series a little "meh", but in video game terms, Master Chief is one of the most fleshed out characters. Look at the most popular character out there; Gordon Freeman. He doesnt talk, he never gives any personal insight to the present problem, and he never shows any emotion. Yet no one ever complains about him being shallow.

Master Chief: He is the last of his kind Super Soldier that has no idea where he comes from, but is one of the lasts hopes to save the world. Basically, he is the only character that could possibly play the role. You can't have a random guy who is feeling the weight of the world coming down upon him. He was built to be the bad ass who could realistcally do the job. He is chemically engineered to do what no one else can.

And what more backstory could you possibly need? Alien Zealots are trying to destroy the world and you need to stop it. What else is there?

I agree (though counting the books Master Chief is a really fleshed out character though even so...), I always hear about how Master Chief is shallow and gordon Freeman isn't. Honestly just as you said, Gordon never talks, we don't know his motives, thoughts, goals or anything, he isn't fleshed out and I was never given a reason in HL2 to even care for the guy.

 

[Wicky_42]

So, can people discuss why they think Halo's story is either good or bad? Give reasons and explanations? No flaming.

Sooo... It's incredible or not interesting, or just simply shit? Seriously, that's the granulation of your poll?

It tells a generic story well, and the books flesh out the universe nicely. Tantalising hints in the 'I love bees' viral audio clips were cool, as were the little history hints in the Halo 3 publicity campaign, and in the terminals in Halo 3 itself. There's some nice ideas in there - not especially original, but then a lot of themes in Sci-Fi have been mined out.

Halo did what it did well. Better than many games.

That needs to be a poll option.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

I found the story in the first game to be OK. The others? Not as much. It follows many standard Sci-fi lines, but that's not bad as it's not the sort of game that needs a extremely deep plot as that would slow things down. The characters aren't really fleshed out and the enemy isn't really developed until Halo 2. I haven't played them much but I think it has an above average story told simply.

The novels do the fleshing out and provide rich backstory and characterisation. However I don't count novelizations as part of the story. Even if they are canon they're not a videogame story, but a novel series. You could say the Fantastic Four movies have some of the best developed characters and richest world because you've read all the comic books.

 

[C95J]

Even though I don't particularly like the game series, I don't think anyone can say that it is not detailed and shit, because the simple fact is that it isn't. I has got lots of detail in it, and even though I am not a fan of the series, it is still a pretty good story.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Even though I don't particularly like the game series, I don't think anyone can say that it is not detailed and shit, because the simple fact is that it isn't. I has got lots of detail in it, and even though I am not a fan of the series, it is still a pretty good story.

you sir deserve one big ass motherfucking cookie for being not a troll/flame war brewer

 

[C95J]

Even though I don't particularly like the game series, I don't think anyone can say that it is not detailed and shit, because the simple fact is that it isn't. I has got lots of detail in it, and even though I am not a fan of the series, it is still a pretty good story.

you sir deserve one big ass motherfucking cookie for being not a troll/flame war brewer

yay, who doesn't like cookies

 

[Pandalisk]

The books, background and story is immense and wonderful, i love it to bits on par with DeadSpace Lore.

 

[ZorroFonzarelli]

I think the storyline for Halo used to be much better. Halo 4's, however, was a huge departure in that it wasn't clear from playing the game (only) what was going on. The way they ran the story may have been interesting for the Halo Universe, but it was terrible for Halo 4 as a stand-alone game.

Huge mistake IMHO.

 

[Lionsfan]

I think the storyline for Halo used to be much better. Halo 4's, however, was a huge departure in that it wasn't clear from playing the game (only) what was going on. The way they ran the story may have been interesting for the Halo Universe, but it was terrible for Halo 4 as a stand-alone game.

Huge mistake IMHO.

Behold the all-powerful Necromancer!

But seriously, I'll bite on this topic. I think the original trilogy had a pretty neat story, and I liked Reach too (even if we knew everything). But for Halo 4, I thought it was a huge downgrade

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

I sort of like the universe Halo tries to create, but I despise most of the characters. They're uninteresting, boring and pretty much devoid of personality and yet the games keep insisting we should care about them.

Spoiler: Here be a major Halo 4 spoiler!

That's why when Cortana starts going bonkers, I didn't care and it annoyed me more than anything. And when she sacrifices herself at the end of the game, the only thing going through my mind was: "Guess there'll be a different voice talking in my ear next game."

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

People who defend Halo's story generally lean upon the books and whatnot. While I can imagine that great care was taken to flesh out the universe in such places, the games themselves have been relatively dull story telling devices.

For example, the series has a number of named characters and yet very little effort is expended attempting to characterize them. The core of the shooters has given us Master Chief, Noble 6, and The Rookie and of the three only the Master Chief has made any headway toward being something other than a simple avatar of the player (and even then only in the most recent entry in the series). The game is full of dissonance as well, beyond the usual "Important people only die in cutscenes" (though Halo has that in spades). In mission after mission we see various exemplars of humanity deliver crushing and brutal defeats to the covenant only to be told in a cutscene that we're actually badly losing a war. One spartan without support kills countless thousands across the series and a fresh ODST trooper operates well behind lines causing tremendous casualties in the course of an evening and yet they're constantly a part of losing battles.

Were I to try and narrow down what the problem is, I'd say it's that the story is always happening somewhere else. There is a story about the Spartan's creation that happened long before the franchise started. There is a story about how the marines on Halo were eventually overwhelmed but we only see a single platoon lost in an event that happened before we ever arrived on the site. The Halo universe may well be full of excellent stories - the Halo games make little effort to tell them.