The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[maddawg IAJI]

from the African Americans like Master Chief.

You're fucking kidding me, right? Or trolling? Please, tell me you're purposefully sounding stupid here.

In the books it plainly details John as a pale white kid with freckles. Where the fuck did you hear he was black?

I never read the books. In fact, most information I have on the matters have been through bored weekends browsing the Halopedia place, of which they have 2 pictures where John is pictured as a very tan kid, often with a shadow covering a portion or his whole face.

Spoiler

He doesn't look that pale to me, nor do I notice any freckles on him. The only notable mark I see on his face is a birthmark under his right eye and that just may be dirt. I apologize if I got confused, but there is no reason to jump down my throat.

I could just as easily point out other Spartans of different heritages, such as Solomon [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Solomon-069].

Fhajad [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Fhajad-084] who, and forgive me for stereotyping here, sounds like he comes from middle eastern descent.

Soren [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Soren-066] who may be Indian, due to the fact that Bungie likes to choose the major nationality of a planet (In this case, Dwarka) after a real city or word from that country. Like but like they did with the cities in Reach. Once again, that one is just a guess.

Again, I'm sorry that I got the information wrong, but next time, please try not to just scream "TROLL!" when someone doesn't get it right.

 

[Dansrage]

Pretty cool analysis of Halo. Initially I was thinking, "you're reading too much in to it," and suspect Bob hasn't played Halo 3, where we see much mending of the human/alien relations, or at least a glipse in to a more complex web of intrigue for the Covenant, but I have to admit, Halo as a series would be even cooler if it had story campaigns focused on Covenant characters, as well. Imagine a completely separate plotline for the Arbiter or others, parallel with Master Chief's tale, but with different goals and intentions....that would be cool, and also emphasize that the Covenant weren't necessarily bad in any inherent way.

In fact, that got me to thinking about how there aren't too many games that do that anymore. When was the last time we saw that, a split campaign, each part showing the other side's point of view? We need more of this, mixing the black and white and making it all ambiguously gray. That would help inject some ethical complexity in to video games again, I suspect.

In the meantime, I am sure somewhere marketing specialists are continuing to point out how the public prefers to pay for games that don't ask these hard questions....or how sure, a story about Monkey would be cool, but can we replace his weird buddy with a hot navel-exposing chick, and so forth. Ah well.

Look forward to more of this series!

Well you could play as Arbiter in certain missions in (correct me if i'm wrong, it's been a while since i've played them) Halo 2, and you saw a lot of the Covenant's side of the story in Halo Wars (thats the immensely pissed off Arbiter i mentioned earlier).

But i agree, i LOVE the sangheili, and just being able to play as them in multiplayer and certain levels (including the multplayer campaign in 3) is not enough for me.
I would love a spin-off where you get to play as an Elite vs UNSC, but seen as Reach is officially the last Halo game (by Bungie) i doubt that will happen.

 

[clockout]

Is MovieBob going to become the escapist's Glen Beck? Connecting, and comparing things just because it's easy and conveinent? Kind of like what I just did?

 

[camazotz]

Pretty cool analysis of Halo. Initially I was thinking, "you're reading too much in to it," and suspect Bob hasn't played Halo 3, where we see much mending of the human/alien relations, or at least a glipse in to a more complex web of intrigue for the Covenant, but I have to admit, Halo as a series would be even cooler if it had story campaigns focused on Covenant characters, as well. Imagine a completely separate plotline for the Arbiter or others, parallel with Master Chief's tale, but with different goals and intentions....that would be cool, and also emphasize that the Covenant weren't necessarily bad in any inherent way.

In fact, that got me to thinking about how there aren't too many games that do that anymore. When was the last time we saw that, a split campaign, each part showing the other side's point of view? We need more of this, mixing the black and white and making it all ambiguously gray. That would help inject some ethical complexity in to video games again, I suspect.

In the meantime, I am sure somewhere marketing specialists are continuing to point out how the public prefers to pay for games that don't ask these hard questions....or how sure, a story about Monkey would be cool, but can we replace his weird buddy with a hot navel-exposing chick, and so forth. Ah well.

Look forward to more of this series!

Well you could play as Arbiter in certain missions in (correct me if i'm wrong, it's been a while since i've played them) Halo 2, and you saw a lot of the Covenant's side of the story in Halo Wars (thats the immensely pissed off Arbiter i mentioned earlier).

But i agree, i LOVE the sangheili, and just being able to play as them in multiplayer and certain levels (including the multplayer campaign in 3) is not enough for me.
I would love a spin-off where you get to play as an Elite vs UNSC, but seen as Reach is officially the last Halo game (by Bungie) i doubt that will happen.

Yeah, that would really rock. I think there are a lot of stories on both sides of the fence to be told.

In reference to an earlier post re: English speaking runts; wonder if any of the expanded universe fiction has dealt with efforts to break in to the conditioning or whatever controls are used to control the runts, to try and assist in gaining their trust and/or freedom? Seems like they are the weakest and most exploitable link in the Covenant chain. That would be another cool storyline.

 

[Tupolev]

Think of it this way: what Bob is suggesting (I think) is not that the game is portraying fascists/racists as we tend to imagine them, but rather how fascists/racists see themselves; the minority elite, put upon/threatened by the vast unwashed masses of "Them." The game is basically a sympathetic presentation of how the master race might feel when the barbarians are at the gates, essentially. Also, curiously exactly like that excellent propaganda film about the Spartans in 300, in which the barbarian hordes in that case were the virtually demonic Persians, overwhelming in their number and their endless capacity for evil.....in the eyes of the Spartans, anyway.


It's an interesting and disturbing reversal, and thanks to Bob, I probably will never view Halo the same way again...

Again, though, the problem is that humanity's perceived superiority is never there in the story. Humanity in Halo has a lot of issues and the people in it know it. If anything, they're the Soviets to the Covenant Reich, getting the crap beat out of them for being technologically inferior, scattered, and backed into a corner.

 

[Dansrage]

Well a new MovieBob show? Sounds good but, we'll have to see where it goes.
From this just this episode I can see the thing I disliked about The Game Overthinker. Which is not that you read in to things to much, it's that you connect dots of things that aren't actually there.
"Okay so covenant diverse... Spartans not... I find the covenant much more interesting." Okay I guess so, I mean you do have a point, I do like learning about different and visually interesting aliens then faceless space marines, I mean thats why I like viewing other cultures then my own, I know about my country and culture already, I want to learn about new, foreign things.

"Spartans are anti diversity" Um, I guess...

"Spartans are shooting for a master race." Wait what? How did we go from diversity of aliens to master race?

I could believe what you were saying if man in the story, wasn't trying protect itself from a crazed alien cult. There aren't any moments in halo where some blonde hair, blue eyed leader of the spartans tells everyone else they must 'purify' the universe of alien lifeforms, but there isn't, this is a story of man protecting himself from a crazed, essentially cult, of aliens.

Anyway, criticism aside congrats on a new show, I'd like to see where this goes. Just please, don't connect ideas that aren't there...

Again I'd like to see where

Think of it this way: what Bob is suggesting (I think) is not that the game is portraying fascists/racists as we tend to imagine them, but rather how fascists/racists see themselves; the minority elite, put upon/threatened by the vast unwashed masses of "Them." The game is basically a sympathetic presentation of how the master race might feel when the barbarians are at the gates, essentially. Also, curiously exactly like that excellent propaganda film about the Spartans in 300, in which the barbarian hordes in that case were the virtually demonic Persians, overwhelming in their number and their endless capacity for evil.....in the eyes of the Spartans, anyway.


It's an interesting and disturbing reversal, and thanks to Bob, I probably will never view Halo the same way again...

A good contrast for a franchise that is in the same vein but which I feel does not do this is Gears of War. Gears reflects a more disturbing conflict, I feel....some sort of vague allegory for the problems between Israel and Palestine, maybe, but with humanity and the Locusts in their stead....a different kind of tragedy in the making.

I get where you're coming from, but i think the point of your opposition is that Bungie didn't sit down one day and say "Lets make a deeply metaphorical and cleverly disguised statement about fascism." They just made a game where you're a cool guy who shoots wierd aliens.
Anything more than that is what people read into it, and lets be honest, you can read whatever you want into anything as complex as the Halo universe.
I could just as easily say halo is sexist because the female protagonist (cortana) is carried everywhere by the stronger male (MC). It doesn't make it any more credible.

 

[Eisenfaust]

ehhhhhh... you say it's obvious but then it's the enormous multiculural mass attacking the humans, basically because of petty jealousy... the humans offered peace/negotiation but didn't go through, etc, etc + willing to coexist with alien races, like the elites after the civil war... etc, etc... *add more halo fandom, etc*

it's not that i think you're reading too much into it, i think you're reading too much into it in the wrong direction

although the blue eyes thing was probably a mistake

 

[hamster mk 4]

Congrats to Movie Bob on his new show. I like his off topic tirades on Escapist to the Movies, and giving him his own show dedicated to only tirades is a good idea. The Escapist was crazy for not doing this earlier.

 

[Dansrage]

Pretty cool analysis of Halo. Initially I was thinking, "you're reading too much in to it," and suspect Bob hasn't played Halo 3, where we see much mending of the human/alien relations, or at least a glipse in to a more complex web of intrigue for the Covenant, but I have to admit, Halo as a series would be even cooler if it had story campaigns focused on Covenant characters, as well. Imagine a completely separate plotline for the Arbiter or others, parallel with Master Chief's tale, but with different goals and intentions....that would be cool, and also emphasize that the Covenant weren't necessarily bad in any inherent way.

In fact, that got me to thinking about how there aren't too many games that do that anymore. When was the last time we saw that, a split campaign, each part showing the other side's point of view? We need more of this, mixing the black and white and making it all ambiguously gray. That would help inject some ethical complexity in to video games again, I suspect.

In the meantime, I am sure somewhere marketing specialists are continuing to point out how the public prefers to pay for games that don't ask these hard questions....or how sure, a story about Monkey would be cool, but can we replace his weird buddy with a hot navel-exposing chick, and so forth. Ah well.

Look forward to more of this series!

Well you could play as Arbiter in certain missions in (correct me if i'm wrong, it's been a while since i've played them) Halo 2, and you saw a lot of the Covenant's side of the story in Halo Wars (thats the immensely pissed off Arbiter i mentioned earlier).

But i agree, i LOVE the sangheili, and just being able to play as them in multiplayer and certain levels (including the multplayer campaign in 3) is not enough for me.
I would love a spin-off where you get to play as an Elite vs UNSC, but seen as Reach is officially the last Halo game (by Bungie) i doubt that will happen.

Yeah, that would really rock. I think there are a lot of stories on both sides of the fence to be told.

In reference to an earlier post re: English speaking runts; wonder if any of the expanded universe fiction has dealt with efforts to break in to the conditioning or whatever controls are used to control the runts, to try and assist in gaining their trust and/or freedom? Seems like they are the weakest and most exploitable link in the Covenant chain. That would be another cool storyline.

In the lore there was a "Grunt rebellion" where a group of Grunts fought back against the Covenant, the grunts are generally badly treated, and i believe the only reason they fight for the covvies is because the Prophets threatened to destroy their planet if they didn't cooperate. The same is true for the Hunters, the Prophets would have wiped them out if they hadn't agreed to join up.
As for the Elites, the Prophets attacked their planet looking for the Forerunner weapons the Elites held to be sacred, they fought for years, never being able to defeat the military-minded Sangheili, but it got to the point where the Elites had to actually use the weapons they had been defending as sacred artifacts to stop the Prophets, after having lost the reason they were fighting, they joined up.

On the subject of language, when i played CE as a kid i thought only the Grunts spoke english because the Elites had those wierd split mandibles for mouths and couldn't pronounce the words.

 

[sune-ku]

Well there was me thinking the point behind the Covenant having lots of different races was to give enemies variety...

 

[knight56]

When I saw a new show I was like yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Then I saw Moviebob I was like cool.

Then it was going to be about Halo. I was like really? You're going to have some big rant on halo where I could just play clips from your game overthinker show and get the exact same vid?

Then it turns out it works. XD Awesome.

 

[Solon5694]

That was very thought provoking... though the extent of the covenant being evil isn't as overlooked as bob makes it out to be. In halo 2 the characterization of covenant clearly shows that they are the antagonists. The profits are portrayed as flawed religious leaders who use their authority to commit genocide (xenocide?) via their army of soldiers. Notice the irony of their names Truth(lies a lot), Mercy(unforgiving), Regret(reckless: lead first failed invasion of earth with 3 ships). This is further evident as the majority of battles fought are on human territory (Reach, The Pillar of Autumn, Earth). We never really see humans invade covenant planets its always the covenant on the offensive.

Further examples lie in their decision process. Master chief in halo one realizes that the flood is a problem, and wants to destroy them by activating the ring, but when he learns the full extent of destruction the ring will bring about, he changes objectives. The covenant (in halo 2 now) want to activate the ring regardless of any consequence and despite knowing what the ring will do.

Finally, bob totally overlooked that the humans are full of diversity. Sure they are all human, but all halos (not as pronounced in halo: combat evolved) have a very diverse composition in their armies. See the number of different accents for the soldiers, as well as skin colors. Just cause they all wear the same armor doesn't make them all the same people.

I could go on, but you get the point. I'll definitely keep watching these. Though I disagree with bob if he hadn't brought up those points I wouldn't have even though more about the topic.

 

[Apackof12Ninjas]

I wonder if Bob will read through any of this...

 

[Soushi]

It seems like this could be an interesting series. However, to be honest, i am not sure if it really was 'the big picture' for this one. I mean, yeah, reading into things is fun, but as long as you read into things too deeply, you'll always find something questionable. The whole "blue eys' thing doesn't fly with me, nor does the argument that the covenant is evil because they are are multinational. Besides, in the Halo universe, when we did finally find an alien race that wasn't trying to kill us, we befriended and worked to protect them (i think, i am no big Halo nerd.) But that is just nitpicking. It isn't like these arguments aren't relavent, they just are really big picture.
I respect his opinions and i look forward to seeing more of the show, but to be honest i am not really sure if the 'big picture' is such an approrpiate title. Movie Bob certainly CAN look at the big picture, but in all honesty he is a nitpicky kinda guy. Ah well, a decent first episode, here's hoping for a high quality series.

 

[tkioz]

FFS... way to completely take everything out of context in order to twist to your views. I don't even like Halo and I'm pissed off with you, pulling that kind of shit is what I'd expect from Fox News not the escapist.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

Well the series seems to be pretty interesting. I'm looking forward to see your take on different subjects other than movies. And the different emotion-face guys are pretty interesting too.

As for Halo, I'll admit you do have a point now that I think about it. I usually end up liking the "bad guys" in some stories because they have more interesting things and are a bit more diverse than the stereotypical "good guys" which will always include humans unless all the good guys are humans.

Still though I think that the subtext you brought up was just in your minds eye and any unfortunate implications the Halo series might contain are just there due to accident. I imagine that the Covenent have some many different races in it because it makes diverse enemies to fight against. The small, numerous grunts who generally aren't that much of a threat (The Grunt). The physically weak jackels who, although dangerous at a distance, aren't as strong when you get up close (The Sniper). The dangerous elites who are harder to kill and have much more specialized weapondry (The Elite, yeah I'm using the nicknames for the races but why do think they are called that?). The aggresive brutes who use very straight forward tactics (The, well, Brute). The very durable and very powerful hunters (The Heavy). Although it would be possible to just make the Covenant one race, it makes it more interesting if the different enemies aren't differentated only by different armors or colors. As for the Spartans, well the idea of a space marine is generally pretty much of a very-discipled super soldier that very good a fighting and killing.

Still a very interesting look on the Halo series and I hope to be continued to entertained in further instalments.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

Excellent new series, though perhaps next time try not to bait so many fanboys, eh Bob?

 

[teknoarcanist]

I AM A HALO AND THIS OFFENDS ME :O

Congrats on the new show btw. What do you think of Walking Dead?

 

[Littlejib]

Halo 1 and Reach are very much like that, but when the elites break off from the covanent in the second game, the humans are far to quick in forming a allince with them, they take literally seconds. By the end of the 3rd game, their isn't much hate towards the elites at all, even though the elites torched most of the humans out of existance. I think they were more gettting at that diversity helps, the bad guys stopped winning when they lost diversity.

 

[aaronmcc]

Can someone tell me the point of having a volume button on the video but not the mother-fucking advert?! It's doing my fucking head in, having these surprise adverts practically blow out my speakers and my ear-drums. Get it fixed FFS.