The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[artstsym]

Talk about over-analyzing it. Seriously, are you scraping the bottom of the barrel on your first episode, Bob? That's not a good sign.

It may have sounded like gold to you, but let me throw your argument back to you, in so many words: Halo is racist (and promoting the master race) because while your SPACE MARINES are wearing similar uniforms, the enemies are wide and diverse? Well holy shit, I think you best not stray to far from space invaders or whatever you're playing where all the opponents are EXACTLY THE SAME. The shock might just kill ya'.

Before I get a torrent of "you're completely misinterpreting the point he was trying to make! there's a ton of other points he made that you skipped!" etc. comments, let me make it clear: he just did EXACTLY THE SAME THING with the entire Halo series.

Seriously, name a game in the past forever that didn't have a protagonist fighting various flavors of bad guy. I know that game design might not be your forte, but are you really so inept as to completely miss Making Entertaining And Easily Discernible Enemies 101? Creating foes that aren't your species isn't new.

You don't even have a leg to stand on as if you'd even played Halo 2, you'd know that you even PLAY as the enemies for half the game. Your review reeks of smug first impressions you're only spouting because you weren't lucky enough to play it back in the day and thusly resent anyone who derived enjoyment from an admittedly bland but solid series. Would Reach win awards if it was a movie? Obviously not. The dialog is about as engaging as a fight with a cardboard cutout, but fortunately there is more to a video game than just cutscenes and I actually felt that poor characterization aside, they put a lot of work into the final installment.

I'd just like to know, by the way, is writing a review with completely no consideration taken for context WHATSOEVER the norm? Should I be taking notes here? Because I clearly have this journalism thing down all wrong if you're getting paid for this. I mean, you even had a legitimate point with the somewhat anti-religious themes, but it all had to come back to race in the end, didn't it?

Christ, who'd have thought we'd be wishing back the days when the biggest problem with games was their gameplay?

 

[Vrex360]

So how many human civilians can a covenant soldier kill before he stops being "good people"?

*Sigh*

Stop taking quotes out of context. I said they were good people who were misled.

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.

So, first they're good people, and now they're neutral? How do you know the elites regretted attacking humanity? I just thought they regretted believing the prophets. Do any of them say they're sorry?

Yes actually, the Elites did. It's not really covered that much in the games but it is brought up in an animated comic called 'the Return'. Basically there's an Elite shipmaster returning to a world he glassed back when he was serving the Covenant and he believes that he needs to find redemption for what he did there.
Hell, at one point he even stumbles across a pile of dead humans that had locked away in a shelter and seeing it renders him helpless and mortified.

Plus it's also revealed in a few character bios and the odd wiki entry that quite a lot of the Elites were questioning the prophets orders to commit genocide, wondering why the humans were not being allowed to join the ranks of the Covenant.

Hell one of the reasons the Prophet of Truth ordered the brutes replace the elites in the first place was that the elites were becoming more and more questioning of the prophets will.

Do any of them try to rebuild Earth with humanity? All the Elites really do is get pissed at the prophets and rebel against both them and the Brutes who usurped their position of honour. Then of course they co-operate with humanity to save their own people and stop both the flood and the prophets. I don't recall anyone saying "oh shit, our bad. Sorry guys. Sorry about those 12 or so colonies we glassed".

Actually, they do a lot to help humanity. They welcome humans onto their phantoms, they operate human weapons (something they wouldn't have done before), they allow the human survivors aboard their carrier when they leave the Ark, as well as broadcasting in a frequency understandable to both sides. They also communicate effectively between each other to co-ordinate attacks.
Plus, when Johnson dies the Arbiter shows sympathy and even regret at his death, as well as wanting to help save any surviving marines in the barracks during the level Crows Nest.
Plus, he is present at the memorial on Earth, whereupon he shakes hands with Lord Hood, the leading human general, as a sign of peace.

Oh and sheep can't operate plasma guns.
Just because no Skirmishers, Jackals or Grunts have dramatic roles in the cinematics doesn't mean they're not intelligent. They're all just obviously weaker than the Elites and Brutes. It's survival of the fittest and if they want to survive they better keep their mouths shut.

Actually, Jackals are mostly a mercenary race. They were scavengers and pirates who joined the Covenant (after being bombarded, natch) in order to gain more resources for themselves. They aren't trusted or even that greatly respected by the rest of the Covenant, being regarded mostly as untrustworthy.

EDIT - not only that, but in Reach we see Grunts on the bridge of the Covenant corvette. If you're smart enough to drive a spaceship, and or manage whatever department you've been assigned to, then you're smart enough to think for yourself and make up your own mind about whether the Prophets are full of shit or not.

If the grunts ever actually rebelled, they would be killed on the spot. In fact there was once a grunt rebellion that ended with the grunt army being slaughtered, save for the ones that fought with honor who were then welcomed into the Sangheili teams. So if anything the one time they ever rebelled taught them to be more obediant.
The grunts aren't dumb, they are being manipulated with fear.

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.

Curiosity is NOT a sin.
Releasing the flood UNINTENTIONALLY was not a sin.
The humans were desperate, they were looking for WEAPONS, the weapons turned out to be the flood. I've yet to hear anything that legitimately demonizes humanity.

All humanity does the whole time is try to save their own asses. Fighting for the control and secrets of ancient powerful rings helps to accomplish that goal. There's nothing morally reprehensible about anything they do so far as I can remember.

Except of course for turning 6 year olds into human weapons ala Kurt Russel in Soldier except with fancy armour. see "Hitler Jugend" hahahaha.

The Covenant was lead to believe that humanity was a threat to their religion, as it was a large ever expanding force that was colonizing worlds the Covenant deemed 'holy' and in turn that was the justification given by the Prophet of Truth to rationalize killing millions of humans. So to the Covenant, in the early stages at least, the human race was an entirely alien threat to their beliefs and they thought they were saving the galaxy by eradicating them.
Upon realizing the truth about their beliefs, the Elites stopped and in turn allied with their former enemies.

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.

Does saving the galaxy bring back the billions of humans that were wiped out?
And do you KNOW for a fact that they were motivated out of helping humanity? Or did they simply have similar goals in humanity in stopping both the flood and the prophets. Ie, they were saving their OWN asses not helping humanity.

Please refer to the post above. About the ships and the communications between UNSC and Separatist and whatnot.

The Elite/Human alliance was an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation. Not "I like you, let's be friends". Remember Halo 3 opens with MC wanting to kick the arbiter's ass. At the end, he might have a grudging respect for him, but I doubt he likes him.

Yes, in the beginning, there were grudges. No denying that, on both sides. However they were able to let the past be the past and by working together, both sides were able to come out of it victorious.
I think this can best be summarized by what Lord Hood says at the end of Halo 3:

"I remember how this war started, what your kind did to mine. I can't forgive you, but you have my thanks. For standing by him to the end."

Which was followed by this:

So there, that's my two cents on the validity of the Elite/human alliance.

... I don't even know what the debate on this thread is about anymore. Seriously, I assume this is still somehow linked to the 'Halo promotes facism' thing but how I have no idea.

 

[D_987]

I'm not even going to watch the video; just judging from the comments, and Bobs previous [and horrible] gaming comments [you know, the videos in which he proclaims everyone that doesn't like everything he likes is an idiot, you know kinda like that other movie video series he does] this sounds like a terrible combination; for someone that claims to dislike Halo so much Bob sure spends a hell of a long time talking about it; to hear him painfully miss basic design and story concepts whilst proclaiming his intellectual superiority would just be to annoying to listen to; and I can pretty much assume that's what occurs in the video.

 

[Sheinen]

I just love how any comment about halo, whether positive, negative, true, pointless or meandering will always garner a massive response.
It IS a pathetically simple game, both in premise and play. It IS a whole lot of fun. It is NOT a way of life people.

Look, I've been playing Halo since day one. It's been a multiplayer favourite of my band of digital brothers throughout the entire series and I have a lot of affection towards it. It's not great though. It's not even good when you sit down and think about it - it's just good fun rolled in to a mass of hysteria and hype.

AND It's fun to poke holes in things! Hell I could sit here and spin yarn about how Star Wars is an ideological drama that echo's the Vietnam war perfectly. The big bad Empire would represent the USA, determined to dominate and control the worlds population and resources. The poor, under-prepared Viatnamese 'Rebel's' fighting to maintain their integrity and land...there was probably even a general in the ranks who resembled Chewbacca somewhere.

It doesn't mean it's true! It certainly doesn't mean that Mr Lucas had that intention when he put pen to paper. It's just fun to play around with the idea!

You guys need to drink more, then you'll be having these kind of rants all the time.

 

[Enosh_]

christ that was stupid

the covenant aren't presented as the bad guys beacose they are a mix of difrent races working towards a common goal, they are presented as the bad guys beacose their goal is to kill all the fucking humans, which in a game played from a human perspective is kinda of an obvious thing

and I find it funny for a video like this to come from someone with a hard on for Japan, probably one of the most mono cultural and mono ethical countrys still left in this world

 

[13lackfriday]

...That was not "The Big Picture."

That was you surgically dissecting one tiny aspect of the game to support your lumbering giant of a hatred for Halo as a whole (which I still found rather arbitrary and unclear).

Planting the seeds of racist suspicion in your viewership seems a pretty low way to sway people to your way of thinking.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

You sir, are my hero. I haven't laughed out so loud in a non-Zero Punctuation video on this site in... well, ever.

For all the people saying "it's not meant to be taken that way, don't read so much into it": clearly none of you have ever encountered deconstruction before - that's the entire point of this style of criticism. You know, it is possible to enjoy something even if you find some of the subconscious cultural attitudes it presents a little disturbing; that was certainly my experience with Bram Stoker's Dracula. The point is, don't attack someone for demonstrating the intelligence to see past the surface and say "here's a completely different way of interpreting what's being said here." We should value such people in society. Seriously, taking things only at face value is NOT something you should be proud of.

 

[The_awesome_one]

Why start talking about something you don't like, in fact HATE. For startes it's clearly that Mr Chipman here does not likes fps's and much less Halo. Why, just why?.

Well...the message of the Covenant is more against religious fanatism. The prophets used religion and a promise of "Great salvation" to gather the other species, taking advantage that they where the first sentient species to find Forerunner technology and understand it. But then when Humanity appeared we assume now due to Halo:Reach, that humanity had knwoledge of this ancient alien species too. Infact there are 2 great Forerunner structures on human planets (Reach and Earth). With this notion, the Covenant empire was going to sure enter on a religious conflict. Prophets just said "Fuck it, kill them...they...are bad". And due to blind fanatism, the others followed.

That's the condesded eplanation that I was to lazy to post yesterday

 

[ShadowStar42]

How is the multiple race enemy system similar to fashism (can't spell sorry)?
They have different character models to stop them from just having different armour to differentiate between the cannonfodder, officers, heavy weapons, snipers and weird monkey shock troops.

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)

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.

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.

While I don't believe that Tolkien was a racist I never made the claim to the contrary either. One of Tolkien's stated themes in the books is pluralism vs. homogeny, whether through cultural insensitivity, racism, or simply failing to correct our assumption that the characters were white, that skin tone was neglected as an additional layer of multiculturalism isn't really salient to the point.

 

[Thespian]

Wow, he read into that game harder than those fake christians pretended to read into Minecraft.

EXTREME Necro-quote for truth.

OT: I think he had some valid points, and it truly is the things we don't think about that are most telling. I'm sure no one intended to have a "pure" philosophy put through, but it is a bit odd that it was sort of the default enemy. Even so, usually I don't like Moviebob's stuff.. Glad he slated Reach's characters though xD

 

[technoted]

I wouldn't say it's racist, I'd say that humans are the most relatable and most played race in games overall so obvious when you go for Space Marines it's most likely that you're going to be playing as a human space marine. And as for the enemies I'd say that's more to do with creating more variety, most games have a wider variety of enemies than playable characters.

 

[Zer0Kill]

Holy #@!% MB, this really snowballed into an intense debate. I think this new show = success. Big time.

 

[mb16]

I remember reading somewhere that they lied about the human race because Guilty Spark told them the true purpose of the Halos and they knew if the rest of the coventant found out, then it would fall apart. However I dont know this to be set in stone so please correct me if I am wrong.

people have probably answered you but...

covenant scouts looking for forerunner relics found a human colony which they detected 1000s of relics on. They then raid some ships leaving the planet which should have relics on, but they find nothing but humans. an oracle (like guilty spark) tells them that the humans are forerunners which undermines their entire religion so the top profit/s declare war on the humans killing everyone they can find. then halo starts

few other points which lead to bits in halo:

It was the brutes who found the humans and told the profit of truth about us. so they know the secret, this lead to the brutes gaining power as Truth felt the elites would rebel if they new this.

When war was declared the elites asked why the profits didnt try and get humanity into the covenant; this is one of the points that made them question the profits. this also helped the brutes rise to power.

In the elites culture having a "name" is a sign of honour and shows you as a "man" rather than a child. Humanity is the only other race that the elites have given a name to due to how well we battled against them.

 

[Comando96]

I hate Halo.

Well done movie Bob for having standards and speaking in such a way that no halo fan boys could understand what on earth you were on about

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Woah 800 comments, slim chance of me saying anything that hasn't been said ... But it may all have been just a coincidence, i mean players need various types of enemies so they don't get bored by the monotony, while their own team doesn't need diversity, it just needs to be cool enough or something.

Anyway i loved the new show and im looking forward to more, you got lots of smart stuff to say but you kinda spoil movies when you do that.

 

[shadowstriker86]

one thing i noticed.....there's a vp in marketing & sales for this show?

 

[frostgiant]

Next week, Bob ridicules Christians because they believe in something.
Bob, I am sorry I tuned in for this, I think I will stick to your movie reviews as my rage towards your liberal douchey idealogy might make my head explode. Good luck with this though.

 

[phantasmalWordsmith]

damnit, why is it every time halo crops up on this site it makes me feel ashamed of playing it?

anyway not the point, Bob makes a good point.

 

[Vytautas Rindzevicius]

Nice! Good show Bob!

 

[pigmy wurm]

I don't agree completely with your view of the covenant, when I see them I think of a harsh cast system: your born a grunt, you are a foot soldier, your born an elite you are a Sargent or general, your born a jackal you are a marksman, but I to found the covenant far more interesting.

Specifically the arbiter's plot from Halo 2 I found a lot more interesting than any of the rest of the games (although the level design could have been better in places) you have a disgraced general who goes on a suicide mission to regain his honor. On that mission he finds out that his leaders are blind fouls who's plan will result in their own destruction and he has to team up with his former enemies (the ones who disgraced him) in order to save his people. That is an interesting plot, I want more of that and less of "get from point A to point B and kill everything in your way."