The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[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.

 

[camazotz]

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.

Ultimately I agree. One thing I learned in college was just how ridiculously easy it was to read whatever intent you desired to in prose and poetry. I took several writing classes and some poetry classes (yes, I did, great place to meet granola chicks, at least back in the early nineties) and was always amazed at just how much my writing lost in the translation from conception in my head to dramatic reinterpretation by the audience.

Of course, the cool thing about fiction is this exact quality. One could almost say that the highly interpretive nature of a work after its creation says a lot on two levels: the audience's perceptions on the matter, and the sophistication of the work.

Put another way, the mere fact that we can have this conversation about Halo suggests that it is deep enough and/or interesting enough to be worthy of such discussion. If Movie Bob really doesn't like Halo, he should probably just not talk about it, heh!

I mean, we don't hear anyone talking about Fracture or Legendary, do we????? Nope, not unless its the sound of repeated gagging noises and groans of money flushed down the toilet....

 

[Brian Hendershot]

Well Bob certainly taught me one thing. If you want your videos to be viewed and talked about alot, just make the fanboys angry.

 

[Iron Mal]

That's one interpriation of it.

Or you could be looking way too much into one tiny detail of the series as a whole.

It must be pointed out that in comparison, the Covenent are more 'faceless' than the marines are in the Halo games, most of them have face obscuring masks or identical faces that lack anything in the way of emotive facial features (they aren't that much better than the bugs from Starship Troopers as far as individuality goes), the marines by contrast all have face exposing helmets or are named characters who are involved in the plot (the only 'faceless' humans charaters are the Spartans and ODST, both of whom are player characters and as such, are blank slates for the player to project upon).

There are more kinds of aliens but this is probably something that was created as a result of considerations being given to gameplay (it would be pretty boring if you just had to fight the same guys over and over again, having a multitude of alien races as enemies gives you a good excuse to mix up the gameplay and be creative with design) rather than as the result of a fear of diversity.

I don't know.... I remember being both disturbed and amused at some of the Covenant dialogue. "It's the demon, get him!" and the at once comical and tragic goofy voices of the little runt guys, right before you blow the hell out of them. In fact, seeing them on Reach speaking their own language....and realizing what that meant, that at a later date they either take the time to learn English or, even worse, Master Chief has a translator and/or understands them (which means his casual annihilation of the little dudes is considerably more callous than I might have imagined, given they are known to be a slave race, and one of the lowest on the totem pole) seemed just sad to me.

I think that their dialogue was translated to English for the sake of players rather than because it's actually what's going on 'in-game' (just like how the announcer in Multiplayer is always speaking in English regardless of what country team he's representing).

A lot of this does seem to be people reading way too much into nothing.

 

[duck-man]

Hehe, >500 comments! (Granted it's the first of a series) I think the extra show will pay off, they're not too crazy

 

[hem dazon 90]

Yep, there goes what little respect I almost had for the movie guy.

Comparing Starship Troopers to Halo. That's so original and thought provoking.

Spartans are just like Hitlers master race... yeah, I guess that was a joke or something.

Bob is way to much an intellectual for me to even try to understand him. I quit.

QFT


Moviebob is quite the annoyance now.

 

[NaramSuen]

Great episode, I look forward to what else you have to say about other topics. Perhaps you could expand upon why you liked The Watchmen because I can't understand why.

 

[Spazwell]

In the games, it is humans versus Covenant. In extended universe, it's the UN versus basically everyone. In the games, they only mention the Resistance at the very very very beginning of Reach. And what do these humans rebel against, the Earth based dominance. It's never truly mentioned in game, but UNSC (United Nations Space Command). Bob could have talked about the whole New World Order conspiracy or something.
And yes, generic space marines are pretty commonplace now, but hey, they are still badasses.
I think that whole "Nazi" thing is overthinking it. You could make the same connection to Gears of War, which comes right out and says that the COG is a socialist totalitarian government (Coalition of Ordered Governments was only a small socialist political party before E-Day, but came to power when the actual government toppled under the pressure from the Locust).

But that's a tangent. Big Picture: All videogames are point-click-repeat.

 

[FlyAwayAutumn]

Uh... no.

You just read way too into it. That wasn't really the BIG picture it was more like notice things that aren't actually there.

Besides, the spartans all being same? Bungie tried to promote diversity, they at the very least attempted to give the spartans in campaign unique personalities, they also gave so many options for customising your armor in game.

Also take a closer look at the covenant, sure there are different races, but within those races can you honestly tell me that you can distinguish one from the other?

Spoiler: One's name is Flipyap the other is Bob, which is which?

 

[Powerman88]

I think it's quite the opposite, we don't notice because we have gotten to a point where the majority are not fearful of difference in race and culture

This. Movie bob I have enjoyed your internet video's since the Game Overthinker but really dude? Bungie are Nazi's? I dunno man you lost me. Win me back next week.

 

[Tech-Mechanic]

Looking forward to more of these shows. Congratulations.

This first one however...

... I don't care much for Halo either but, I think you went a little off the rails on that one, son. They're just games, man.

I personally don't think Bungie is lacing their products with some kind of fascist agenda. But, I'm can't wait to see what you talk about next.

 

[mad825]

eh,xenophobia can been seen in all types of media and genres so really this is nothing new and not worth pointing fingers especially at the Halo series when there are plenty of other "liked" series/media that expresses this point even further.

 

[Spazwell]

You know, you could look at any zombie movie/game that way. They are different from us. We must kill them all. Zombie genocide. Now just replace the word "zombies" with "jews" or "gays" or "gypsies" and there you go.

Just BTW: I am Jewish myself.

 

[robb4rock6]

congrats nice show

 

[Withard]

Wow. Just...wow.

This "Big Picture" for all its size completely and utterly MISSED.

I LOVED the confusion over "The Covenant are bad guys??! WTF?!"

Fail.

Consider the following:

1. We tried peace. They just want to eradicate all traces of mankind
2. They want to kill us
3. They is gunna kill us good
4. The Spartans were created to HELP stop us being wiped out (Evil Spartans)
5. The Military complex presented in its form because....We are in danger of being made extinct
6. State Of Emergency
7. BILLIONS have been killed by the Covenant...Hence military is going all "Fascist?"
8. His eyes went blue BECAUSE....He had dark eyes to begin with. Its opposites of the spectrum. Makes for ease of telling the transformation.
9. We are evil because we don't want to die.
10. Maybe the Aliens in independence day were good guys bob.

I haven't even played anything after Halo 2 and this is just making arguments for the sake of arguments.

"OMG They want me for a new show!". Maybe THEY did. We didn't. The movie ones rile enough.

 

[kwagamon]

Great show! Can't wait for more!