The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[12th_milkshake]

... yeah talk about looking for meaning in shallow places. Your falling into the critics realm of adding contextual meaning to a game that had none intended, whether the symbolic cock ups are there or not shoehorning it into social dynamics is plain ironic.

The multi culture of the enemies might just be to do with hmm lets see the fact aliens have no limiting factor of imagine or creativity. Where human are limit by the fact that they are human... so cant be as diverse.

So the reasons you see things that you are banging on about are creative not symbolic. there are lot of aliens so the player has more interest in them. they only need to create 1/2 Spartan models to keep the costs down. End of story on visual reasons.

Yes game designers need to be aware of what they are doing and add more depths. But seriously wtf. It's a shallow FPS game that has nothing to say. What's next post-feminist arguments in Serious Sam?

 

[The Philistine]

For a segment called "The Big Picture," it felt like it was focusing overly much on certain aspects just to prove a point (hoho, like that isn't going to get thrown back in Bob's face every segment). The human military in the Halo universe might not be as diverse as the Planeteers, but there is a racial mix and there doesn't appear to be any separation of rank based on race. Unlike the Covenant, which is highly segregated. Nevermind that military units generally don't value high degrees of individualism.

Just to quibble on another point, were the character's eyes blue before the whole spartanization thing? If not, I would hazard a guess it was because glowing brown wouldn't show up well, red would seem sinister, and green might seem a bit eerie.

I like watching Bob's movie reviews because, even if I have to sit through Bob's trolling antics to stretch out a segment, I at least get a good sense of if I want to watch the movie (regardless of whether Bob likes the movie or not). While Bob's trolling makes for amusing filler, an entire segment watching him drag some logical leap is just facepalm worthy and shallow.

 

[Supernaut565]

To be fair the Covenant is working towards the collective goal of mass genocide which is pretty much never okay. Plus the Elites do join the humans side so the games are not really against mixing races, still an interesting video though.

 

[Ben Fishbein]

Will this interferer with the game overthinker?

 

[ANImaniac89]

Wow I can't believe that not only are you airing a new show today but a new OverThinker came out as well(Finally)

Thank you Bob you have entertained me on this day, keep up the good work.

 

[Zakarath]

That was just really terrible.

Lack of racial and cultural diversity? Are you kidding me?

The Noble team is made up of many people of many different cultural backgrounds.

This is really a matter of you looking too deeply into an issue when it really is just "Humans vs Aliens".

Try to look at the big picture. Yes, Noble team is "culturally diverse", but look at the Covenant. They're made up of mulitple species (not just races) that are just about as different from each other as humans are from slugs; maybe even more so because at least Humans and slugs have a common ancestor (I'd also like to point out that Grunts can't breath the same air as Elites). Yet you insist on lumping all aliens together as if totally original DNA is equivalent to just having a different skin color.

Compared to the Covenent, Humans have no diversity whatsoever.

Um... what the hell do you expect? Its HUMANS VS. ALIENS. With this line of reasoning you could call out every game from Half-life and Halo to even Space Invaders(Its you and your one white ship against the multicolored aliens! OMG!)...

 

[Bulit523]

Um...ok, I'm not a big Halo fan either....but fascism? really?

 

[Blind Sight]

I might just be naive, but I'm more of the opinion that the Covenant is diverse just because it allows for many different kinds of enemies. It seems like a gameplay choice, nothing more. I mean, hell, the Combine are diverse in Half-life 2, but I hardly think that Valve was going for a 'human purity vs. alien multiculturalism' point. No offense to your bias, but it seems like you're deliberately looking for controversy in order to bad-mouth the game.

Moviebob, I noticed that you completely ignored the elements of secularism vs. theism, as well as the individual vs. the collective within Halo, any chance you could expand on those too?

 

[droppingpenny]

Well at least Halo doesn't have a female bounty hunter who is too stupid to turn her Varia Suit on because Adam didn't approve it.

 

[Schmittler]

Glad we finally have a quality tuesday show.

On the topic of discussion, I think that's looking way too into it. The races are diverse because it makes it more interesting than fighting the same species of alien the whole time. Look at Gears of War for example, I don't know about you guys but I got tired of seeing the locust in the first one. If they could show humans in a more diverse way, I'm sure they would. I think we see them as the enemy simply because they are the enemy that is trying to kill us and we are being told that's why.

Interesting topic either way.

 

[The Austin]

Great, Movie Bob turned into Glenn Beck.

The reason we don't notice these subtexts is because THEY DON'T EXIST.
You're reading too much into things, kind of like how people claim that Left for Dead and Call of Juarez are racist.

Still, I have high hopes for this series's future, and I hope we can move past the whole "Halo is fascist" thing.

 

[darthzew]

While I enjoy Moviebob's reviews, I thought this was dumb. It felt like a poorly wound-together grab for attention. And while I respect the need for diversity as much as the next guy... really? Halo just seemed like a dumb target.

And, I just want to point this out, as far as the Marines go in Halo, they're as diverse as they come. You see men, women, and people of all races. I frankly don't understand the point to this.

 

[Uber Waddles]

Halo is pretty much a modern day re-imagining of the Spartans Vs. Persians. Few vs Many, victory for the strong willed against the too-big-to-handle empire. Granted, liberties were taken. I dont think a segment of Persia joined the Spartans. Or had Plasma Swords. But thats the way I have interpretted this series.

As for The Big Picture of it all, I think that was used as basis for these games. They had a shooter, broad topic to choose from, and easy to tailor to future settings. Now when I say base, I mean it just as that. Its a skeleton. Spartans didnt face zombies or rings that kill everything but are wanted for a religious experience. As for an underlying message that mixed races = bad, its not entirely. The point of the Covenant, as you said, was to be an oppressed group of aliens, fighting for territorial gain. The purpose of having different aliens was to mix up the genre: instead of just shooting Nazis (as was popular at the time), you shoot enemies with varying powers (small and easy to kill, travel in packs. Big guys, bigger guys, wimps with shields, etc.)

If anything, bungie mocks religious zealots. Their religious beliefs lead to their downfall. As for the eyes turning blue, they NEEDED to show some transition. And eyes are the easiest way. Good show tho Bob.

 

[Fygar]

I felt that Bob's attempt at creating controversy fell flat. Sorry, I ain't buying this.

 

[Scrythe]

Between this show and Extra Credits, The Escapist is now officially jamming double fistfulls of awesome directly through my skull.

Thank you, Escapist.

 

[CSB Fisher]

You usually just go off randomly in videos anyway so this should be a good outlet.

 

[Dukeoftacos]

I enjoyed your first episode, but for those of us who have been following you as the gameoverthinker this is all just more of the same. I'm really looking forward to seeing what other topics you are going to tackle with this new platform.

 

[JackRyan64]

Great! I now have something to look forward to on the Escapist every weekday!

Monday: Unskippable
Tuesday: The Big Picture
Wednesday: Zero Punctuation
Thursday: Extra Credits
Friday: Escape to the Movies

 

[kikon9]

Well ,yes, the SPARTANS are militaristic and faceless, but you forget that it's Humans the covenant are fighting so they have marines, ODST, militia, and rebels all fighting against the covenant. The covenant are also not a slave army (Only the engineers are), but religious fundamentalists that got a LOT of converts, and because humans refused to join the covenant, the covenant decided to kill them because they didn't want to believe the same things. Also, whenever a species of covenant detaches from the whole, they side with the humans. The elites ally themselves with them, and the engineers would if they were not slaves. Not to mention that for a game with "master race" undertones, it has a diverse number of allies. You run into marines and ODST of every race and gender and it never points it out to the viewer.