A better way to point it out in fiction would be with the Lord of the Rings, which was exactly what Bob is saying Halo seems like, but from the other angle. Basically the idea is that in World War II you had pluralism on the good guys side, and homogeny on the bad guys (at least from the winner's perspective). That obviously an over simplification (I mean the Japanese were pretty different than the Germans after all) but it's the point Tolkien was trying to make that a lot of different people working together (the Fellowship) are stronger that a single large un-diverse group (the Orcs)MrJKapowey said:
The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?
- Thread starter MovieBob
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Sir, this post is made of win, and articulates my thoughts on the matter better than I could express myself.FrueDestruction said:
You hereby receive + 1 awesomeness points.
That is some deep and good questions Bob. I honestly have no idea, maybe it was a subconscious thought that sprung up in Bungies designers. All I know is I stopped playing the Halo series midway through 2, with some OST action cause I thought it would be a change of pace; Silly me. Anyway nice touch wish I had a soapbox to get on and speak to the gaming community.
Funny. I thought the absolute opposite about Noble Team. I thought they were too much like POWER RANGERS, and I thought the color coded armor made no sense. Frankly, I thought the color coded armor on the Covenant barely made any sense, since at least some part of the Covenant understands the usefulness of stealth, since they have cloaking technology, but they utterly refuse to use camouflage.
Halo is a military shooter. It's hard to work within those confines without emphasizing homogeneity, as chain of command and the subordination of individuality is actively encouraged within all militaries today.
But I get what Bob is saying, and I think part of the reason for the themes involved is because Bungie chose to write about a conflict where the preponderance of force lay with the other side; a fight for survival, in other words. In a fight for survival, you look to yourself first, then your family, then your friends and neighbors, etc, etc, etc. It is by human nature very tribal. Had the Human-Covenant war been a pitched battle, I think there may have been more opportunity for play in terms of racial variety.
And in deference to the Halo series, it isn't just a two sided conflict. There's also the Flood, who are even MORE hideously homogeneous than humans, and late in the war, various races defect to the human side.
Halo is a military shooter. It's hard to work within those confines without emphasizing homogeneity, as chain of command and the subordination of individuality is actively encouraged within all militaries today.
But I get what Bob is saying, and I think part of the reason for the themes involved is because Bungie chose to write about a conflict where the preponderance of force lay with the other side; a fight for survival, in other words. In a fight for survival, you look to yourself first, then your family, then your friends and neighbors, etc, etc, etc. It is by human nature very tribal. Had the Human-Covenant war been a pitched battle, I think there may have been more opportunity for play in terms of racial variety.
And in deference to the Halo series, it isn't just a two sided conflict. There's also the Flood, who are even MORE hideously homogeneous than humans, and late in the war, various races defect to the human side.
The original Spartan-I and Spartan-II soldiers were an experiment, deployed secretly to combat rebels and insurgents. More proof of my point if you ask me. The Spartan-II and Spartan-III project didn't gain official support until the Covenant-Human war, because that's when they became necessary.ShadowStar42 said:
In any case, book canon is rubbish. Although it's all extrapolated from Bungie's offical story bible they're not signed off on by anyone at Bungie, so the games are the only 'official' story if you ask me.
Yeah, I realised that about a minute after posting it and couldn't be arsed fixing it. Seriously, the game was promoted with the tagline "Finish the fight". What'd you think happened?thublihnk said:
I know, I know, you only heard that that's what happened. I get it. You couldn't finish the game so you haven't seen it. Sheesh.
You are entirely right - he used Halo as an example of unintentional fascism and then used his strawman to propel himself into the query of why these concepts are so ingrained that we don't even really notice them.OriginalityImpaired said:
Except then he completely failed to go anywhere with his argument and left us hanging with his amatuerish misrepresentation of the Halo story to dwell on. Maybe if he'd made some sort of point instead of ripping on Halo for five minutes then proceeding to not follow through on the point he was making we wouldn't be suffering through this conversational equivalent of blue balls.
Wow, I knew Moviebob ranting about Halo would press my nerd rage button but that was incredible.
Yeah the Halo games are totally anti diversity, thats why in the second game you fight AS a member of the covenant alongside other races of the covenant that come to realize that they are blindly following a suicide cult, and should think for themselves.
The humans in Halo only finally defeat the covenant and the flood after their quasi-fascist military stronghold is destroyed in vain and they start working with the Arbiter.
Emphasis on that point actually: Reach FALLS. The Spartans are wiped OUT. Even Master Chief is 'sacrificed' in the end. The black guy works with the aliens who are working with the other aliens to stop aliens that want to glass the galaxy in the name of religious enlightenment.
Heck, with a title like Halo wouldnt you be more inclined to believe that the core theme, if any, would be something to do with the dangers of zealotry in religion?
Isn't it more concerning that games like Modern Warfare depict real countries like Russia as ultranationalist powderkegs that are gonna go tits up at some point and try to nuke the world?
Think of the multiplayer (the main reason most people play Halo games) and its Space Marines vs Aliens or other Space Marines
Not Brits vs Russians or Americans vs Arabs, Which do you honestly think is more dangerous?
Heck you want racist, try putting Azeroth under the magnifying glass
*deep cleansing breaths*
Halo's a dopey target for this kind of over-analysis, The only damaging cultural impact it has the potential of bringing is a drastic increase in tea-bagging amongst adolescent males
Yeah the Halo games are totally anti diversity, thats why in the second game you fight AS a member of the covenant alongside other races of the covenant that come to realize that they are blindly following a suicide cult, and should think for themselves.
The humans in Halo only finally defeat the covenant and the flood after their quasi-fascist military stronghold is destroyed in vain and they start working with the Arbiter.
Emphasis on that point actually: Reach FALLS. The Spartans are wiped OUT. Even Master Chief is 'sacrificed' in the end. The black guy works with the aliens who are working with the other aliens to stop aliens that want to glass the galaxy in the name of religious enlightenment.
Heck, with a title like Halo wouldnt you be more inclined to believe that the core theme, if any, would be something to do with the dangers of zealotry in religion?
Isn't it more concerning that games like Modern Warfare depict real countries like Russia as ultranationalist powderkegs that are gonna go tits up at some point and try to nuke the world?
Think of the multiplayer (the main reason most people play Halo games) and its Space Marines vs Aliens or other Space Marines
Not Brits vs Russians or Americans vs Arabs, Which do you honestly think is more dangerous?
Heck you want racist, try putting Azeroth under the magnifying glass
*deep cleansing breaths*
Halo's a dopey target for this kind of over-analysis, The only damaging cultural impact it has the potential of bringing is a drastic increase in tea-bagging amongst adolescent males
That was awful. He just went on a rant about one particular part of a popular franchise that wasnt probably intended to be taken that way, and a rant which can probably be taken apart pretty easily with logic. That's all. Just his annoying voice and dull video graphics for 5 mins. And great job making sweeping generalizations about our culture with no coherency or basis of any sort. His first series is hit and miss, so why is he getting a second one?
Edit: Whoops, I forgot that he said that what he was claiming was probably a coincidence in the video. But still, the video was ridiculous, silly and unnecessary, and I still maintain that he has no business creating videos. Someone else should do that for him.
Edit: Whoops, I forgot that he said that what he was claiming was probably a coincidence in the video. But still, the video was ridiculous, silly and unnecessary, and I still maintain that he has no business creating videos. Someone else should do that for him.
You are welcome to think whatever you please. But before blindly agreeing with everything this guy says, you should read other posts besides mine. They are not "raging" fanboys(your fast and loose use of the term might deem them to be though). Some of the people in this forum have really done their research, and spent a lot of time disproving some of his points, and poking quite a few holes in the rest.thublihnk said:
Discussions like this are fine, if people want to pay him to create controversy for more page hits, more power to him. I prefer a more scientific approach myself, I like facts, and interpretations of facts. I am not so big on interpretations of appearances, and interpretations that are admittedly(by him) taken out of context. If you are deeply moved by his interpretation of the arts(if you could call Halo that), and think that his discussions here are brilliant, that is fine. Enjoy. I'll be going now, and you can have all you want.
You were taking a quote out of context by refusing to acknowledge that I said they were misled.Akalabeth said:
The Elites did regret it, while the Brutes are, well, brutes, and don't regret a thing. The grunts and Jackals are like sheep when it comes to brain power, so they are easy to trick. Hunters and drones are slaves, pure and simple. The entirety of the covenant were not good people, maybe only neutral at best, but to say that each and every covenant soldier is a baby-eating maniac is stereotyping.
Also, keep in mind that the humans were not portrayed as innocent to the covenant. They were sinners, dooming the galaxy by defiling sacred relics. There is no galaxy-wide internet system in halo, so information is limited, keeping the covenant soldiers isolated within the doctrines and preachings of the prophets. They were told that the destruction and suffering of humanity would bring eternal bliss to many, many more. With no voices of dissent to combat this fallacy, the covenant accepted the prophets' as reality, because "We accept the reality with which we are presented."
The Elites did attempt to atone for their brutal murders by helping to save both humanity and the rest of the galaxy from the covenant and the flood. Saving the galaxy, I think, balances out murder.
FUCK, I wrote such an epic writting explaning that most of that was paranoia and lack of knwoledge of the backstory and shit....going to write it some other day
I'm glad that others brought up the secularism vs. fanaticism in Halo, I assumed that's what Bob was going to talk about. It's far easier to find examples of that in Halo, why? Because it's actually symbolism that the developers meant to do. This analysis of Halo definitely shows a lack of research. Also, I noted before in one of my posts, but I'll say it again, Bob seems to ignore the fact that some of the games he LIKES shares the points he brings up. Within the Mushroom Kingdom, for example, the Toads are all ethnically the same, while the Koopas are diverse. Does Bob comment on that? Of course not, because this 'big picture' is simply his bias for Halo coming out.Treblaine said:
I'm not a fan of Halo myself, but there are FAR better things to complain about the series, rather then just making assumptions without doing any kind of full research.
so... he figures the best way to start his series is with flame-bait?
veeeery mature, Bob.
anyways, do missing cereals next (WHERE THE FUCK IS MY WAFFLE CRISP?!)
veeeery mature, Bob.
anyways, do missing cereals next (WHERE THE FUCK IS MY WAFFLE CRISP?!)
This video wasn't at all what I expected. I had hoped for something interesting about the series story at the very least. What I would have liked most was some sort of analysis on my favorite game of the series, the first one, seeing as the title really leads you on that it is very related to Halo CE.
But no...a flame-bait rant about shit that has no relevance to Halo in any meaningful sense.
But no...a flame-bait rant about shit that has no relevance to Halo in any meaningful sense.
Well, that might be a tougher argument to make, because it can so easily cut both ways. The members of the Fellowship are all assumed to be white. Furthermore, the word "white" is so frequently associated with goodness versus the evil "black" that a trend starts to develop. Now of course white/black is a common visual symbol in western culture, so using that alone to say Tolkien is racist would be immature race-carding. And sure, Saruman the White is evil, but he metaphorically mixes with evil goblins, breeds (yeah, literally breeds) the evil mixed-race Uruk-hai, and eventually gets his title revoked.ShadowStar42 said:
On the other hand, the Nazgul, the Black Riders, are just as frequently called the "Black Men" in the original text, which leads to a lot of (maybe unintentionally) problematic statements, like "No Black Man shall disturb you tonight, little master". That last is a close paraphrase, in case I've offended any purists out there. Even worse, the orcs are usually described as being "swart" or "slant-eyed," terms which usually denote the ugliness of non-Europeans. The unsubtly named Easterlings are the only men to join Sauron (Saruman imploys the low-bred hill men peasants against the blond, blue-eyed Rohirrim nobles).
Now add to this stewpot of awkward connotations the universal theme of fading glory. Among Men that glory is said to spring from the lost line of Numenor. Now for a bloodline to become lost it must be diluted by mixing with others outside the bloodline. These guys aren't some vanished Atlantis type thing, Tolkien actually says things to the effect that "the line of Numenor still lingered in him" to characterize Aragorn as noble and worthy, and therefore the rightful heir to kingdoms and whatnot. And these fellas confront an army composed of evil orcs (bred from elves in twisted mockery, yet weaker as a result) and trolls (bred from ents, believe it or not, in twisted mockery, yet weaker as a result), and it starts to look sort of iffy.
This sort of analysis is a slippery slope though, since its hard to say what Tolkien was trying to say other than that he thought his constructed language was really cool and that he thought industrialism sucked. The man himself always insisted that his book wasn't an allegory for anything at all anyway.
Yes, I was a bit childish and self-indulgent in my phrasing of that last part, which is why I mentioned/implied that it was unreasonable. Its funny, you can actually see my grammar degenerate as I descend into puerile bile spewing. Mind you, this is the guy who gave Piranha a recommendation because it had 3D lesbian titties in it, and summarized his review of Expendables (Spell Focus: Necromancy)with "fuck this movie," so do try and keep maturity in perspective a little here. I stand by the spirit of what I said though, if not the exact letter. I watched it again, and he is much less confrontational than I first thought. I expect my perceptions were clouded by his usual air of smugness and general condesencion. That lolcat with the campaign jibe was pretty dumb, since if you play online its homogenous elites versus homogenous spartans, so the fanboy joke certainly got in the way of his argument.OriginalityImpaired said:
So there are my concessions, spartan as they may be (har har). Heres yours: he was totally bashing Halo in addition to everything else he was doing. Come on. Look at that thing. The point at the center of that video was potentially interesting, even thought-provoking, but he certainly took his sweet goddamn time getting around to it, and then never developed it. The bulk of the argument is then snide jokes and Halo=Nazis. Equating something to Nazis is the cheapest of cheap shots one can take. Its why so many movies and videogames use it to characterize their villains (see Extra Punctuation for more on that).
In closing, I would contend that my argument does in fact conflict with Bob's most developed theory, i.e. that Halo=Nazis, because it provides a perfectly rational explanation for why the developers made the choices that they did. And as happens so often to conspiracy theorists, the simplest and most logical explanation is often the truest. I also like how your punctuation choices transform your comment into a kind of longform poem. Its a pretty neat effect.
P.S. that new video stemming from professional trolling is totally working, and seems pretty logical to me. Expendables review? BAM controversy, comments explosion, siteviews go up. Tackling Halo? Fanbait galore! BAM controversy, comments explosion. A website gets money from pageviews. Controversy generates them. Its simple journalism.
Pay attention to what I say. I didn't say the humans were actually sinners, I said that the covenant were told that, and had no way of knowing that that was wrong. Therefore, half of what you said about humanity being in the moral goodness zone was superfluous. Good job.Akalabeth said:
Factory workers operate complicated machinery all the time, yet they don't have good education on average, and subsequently lower education on average. Just because the grunts operate complicated machinery doesn't mean that they have a complicated job. And, again, we accept the reality with which we are presented. If you were force-fed propaganda about how the prophets are totally amazing since you were born, you would certainly believe it.
The Elites, I suspect, were both out to save humanity and to save themselves. We can't really know for sure, however.