The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

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General Vagueness

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Feb 24, 2009
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OK, so this is the thing that made me really aware of Bobby boy here (Moviebob or whatever you want to call him). I wound up watching this series to see if he was off-base in general or was superficial in judgment or if it was a more specific thing (and the idea sounded interesting), and it was mostly pretty good. Eventually I got into watching his movie reviews, where I kept hitting these put-downs and dismissals of Halo (and one or two of FPSs in general, which seems very narrow-minded to me). So I went back to double-check what he really thought and said, and he doesn't address most of why it seems like he dislikes Halo-- yeah, he says he just noticed certain things and that's what he'll talk about, but I'd rather hear the rationale for the apparent lack of respect.
Possibly more on topic, as others have pointed out, the different races of the Covenant were made for enjoyable combat.
Also there are a lot of people that play Halo, and read the books and the comic books, for the context and the story (I don't want to send a flood of traffic, although it should be able to handle it... you might want to Google HBO and see what comes up besides a movie channel). The thing is those aren't usually the people you hear screaming into headsets on Xbox Live (not necessarily because they're more rational or don't talk much; they tend to prefer single-player) so they're not as well-known. A lot of them would say people that are only in it for the multiplayer aren't really fans-- I wouldn't go that far, but if someone can't really appreciate all the parts of something that are clearly different and important parts then I question if "fan" is the right word to describe them.
 

a ginger491

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Apr 8, 2011
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Well time for me to be different and not blindly agree with a guy who knows jack about the lore. I like Bob's more recent stuff since I feel like he actually knows what he's talking about but going back and watching this lost some of my respect for the guy. If you don't like a game for whatever reason that has to do with gameplay or how the narrative is that's fine, but to go deep into your perception of the subtext with little to no context and somehow pull a nazi card out of your hat just seems like your trying too hard to hate it. If you look at it from the human side of things the whole of the conflict is a group of fanatical zealots attacking a particular race of people unprovoked for the sole reason that it's an affront to the zealots' religion, now which side sounds like the nazis. Also the humans were about to have a civil war and then the covenant attacked and made the humans put aside their differences to avoid complete extinction. But now I'm drowning you guys in such a large amount of halo lore that I should be embarrassed about it. My point is that trying to be an intellectual and completely misinterpreting something because you think you can get away with it is insulting to people who actually know about the subject. I apologize for the rant.
 

thereverend7

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Aug 13, 2010
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Maybe his eye's turn blue because blue is the best eye color. <------ has blue eyes

Oh, damn it. I was subtlety racist... or eye-cist?

OT, yeah, not really seeing it Bob. Re-watched this episode today just for fun and I didn't agree with you then and i don't now. and this is coming from someone who is guilty of over-analyzing shit to the point that people who know me get annoyed by it at times. But Halo is a first person shooter. you know, with the guns and the boom boom's. it isn't supposed to be deep or have subtle hints of racism. If bungie wanted that to be the over-arching theme of the games, why would they hide it? it seems more likely to me that the "theme" would be humans like to survive when aliens try to overtake their planet and turn them into more slaves for the slave army.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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May 24, 2008
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To his credit, it is totally possible for an audience to perceive a message that wasn't intended by the creators. Or, a work could suggest a certain viewpoint held by the creator even if it isn't explicitly stated. The problem is that a diverse slave army does not an anti-diversity message make. It's a perfect example of Hitler Ate Sugar. While I'm not prepared to call Halo particularly sophisticated, there's very little that is so simplistic as to suggest that the fact of a bad guy doing something makes it bad. The bad guy is bad because the things he does are shown to be bad. It doesn't work the other way around. To say "the things the bad guy does are shown to be bad because the bad guy is bad" is just silly. MovieBob knows a lot about films and storytelling and knows this perfectly well. But he also knows a lot of his viewers don't. And if it did work that way, real life would be an anti-diversity message. That's what makes MovieBob's argument not only bad but harmful.

A much better argument would be that Halo has a pro-diversity message because it uses enslaving diverse races and robbing them of their diversity to show that the bad guy is bad. That's what I, and I'm sure most people, took from Halo. Turning that good message on it's head was an extremely insidious and nasty thing to do. And it was all in the name of bringing attention to his new show. This is why people call MovieBob a "bad person". He doesn't care about the quality or integrity of his work and his presence reflects badly on the escapist.
 

Stavros Dimou

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Mar 15, 2011
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Come on it was a fine episode.
Dont get all that furious because somebody said something about a game you like that isn't positive.
I actually enjoyed this episode. Reading between the lines is something I love to do or watch someone telling me about games. For example,there are so many Zelda theories.
But we don't hate Zelda,actually it feels like the conspiracy theories around Zelda add to the game's mythos.
I dont get why particulary Halo fans get so furious about it.