Epicurus said:
I really liked this video! Fantastic work, Bob.
Oh, and every who's saying "Nuh uh, the covenant are bad because they're trying to kill everything, not because they're diverse!", you're missing the point. Destroying the universe is the plot device used to convey their evil nature in the game's narrative. You're still dealing with a multi-ethnic religious culture fighting a racially homogeneous militaristic culture, and that carries its own subtext whichever way it's portrayed.
However, you have to realize that this is a game. Games need various enemy types to make gameplay stimulating, it would get boring if it was just Elites over and over again. Hell, that argument could be given to any game with aliens in it, seriously name one game that has aliens in it where there is only ever one race and one enemy model.
Varying enemy types are the reason for the Covenant races, Grunts are the little ones, the Jackals are the snipers, the Elites are the regular Warriors, the Hunters are the big ones (tank class as it were), the Brutes are the 'new regular warriors' and the drones are the flying ones.
The main reason, I think anyway, that no one ever thought about this was that prior to Bob's rant, it went without saying that many different enemy types were expected to make games more interesting. Hell, you could use Mario in this exact same context, arguing that Mario is against multiculturalism because the 'pure racial force of the Mushroom people' opposes the 'multinational forces of Bowsers Kooper Trooper and Goomba army'.
Allies need to look similar to distinguish from enemies and enemies need to be diverse to make it interesting.
Plus even though they are working together, they aren't equals. The grunts are treated as canon fodder and are rarely even allowed to have a name or any form of identity. In fact if you look into the way the Covenant races interact with each other and the way the racial caste systems work, it's actually more like fascism then the UNSC.
The UNSC don't segregate entire people into various set duties and levels of respect based on what race they are, the Covenant did.
Plus, Bob manages to conveniently 'forget' that in Halo 2 you take the role of the Arbiter and over the course of the story, forge an alliance with the humans. After which, the two races that had spent so long in war put aside their differences for a common goal that they both shared, and gained a respect for each other. Fighting alongside each other in Halo 3 and being allies as a result of that.
The story makes it clear that both sides needed to work together and that it was having diversity and working alongside each other that ultimately allowed them to win. If they had remained enemies, both sides would have been wiped out, but fighting alongside each other and developing a respect for each other, they won.
So basically, diversity in their armies is what saved both sides in the end.
Instead of covering this part that overthrows his argument into the mud completely, he instead goes on a tangent about blue eyes. Ignoring that blue eyes had been a symbol of heroism and bold heroic characteristics long before it was considered to be the ideal norm by a crazy dictator.
Plus I notice he seemed to use it as a way to cut off from all that stuff about how the extended media acknowledges the amorality of the Spartan project so he didn't have to say anything to compromise his point. But that's just me.
As for the "reading too much into it" crowd. I don't think we read enough into things like these. Just because a story isn't meant to be complex doesn't mean it doesn't carry with it a ton of insight into the nature of the author's (and perhaps humanity's) psychology.
But like I said, it's a game so fascist undertones we certainly not intentional. And considering there were plenty of other games that have the same basic set up (various aliens, only one humanity etc) it only feels like an immature cry for attention that he mentions Halo out of all of them. Because anyone who knows his videos knows he notoriously hates Halo and insults it, and the fanbase, frequently. So doing this, as the very first episode no less, is probably the main reason he's getting such bad press.
This is a troll tactic and, unfortunately, it worked.
Just to be clear, I have respect for Bob as a movie reviewer and he seems fairly clever and funny as well, but sometimes, especially when he mentions Halo, I just want to punch him. Because he barely knows what the hell he's talking about, glossing over major plot points that any even novice fans of the game know about and then seem to dismiss the Halo community rudely while proclaiming some level of smug self superiority.
Seriously, in this episode alone he used a damn lol cat to represent our community and said sarcastically 'how many people play this game for the context?' This is a community that has been insulted by him many many times, that alone might be a reason for why they are pissed at him.
Also I most certainly agree we need to look deep into things, because we learn a lot about the world around us by doing so and indeed some forms of human psychology. But I just think it's something that we have to be careful of or else we come across as people overreacting and looking like panicky people in doing so.
This is going to be a long example so get comfortable:
For instance I read an article by a woman who was very upset by the Jack (Subject Zero) romance in Mass Effect 2, arguing that it demeaned women. Basically she said that for depicting Jack showing a soft vulnerable side when Shepard shows her some love and for crying while he cuddles her gently, it was some kind of variation of a rape fantasy. That it was implying that the game and the audience seem to think that strength in women is unacceptable and that the only thing more sexy than a tough woman was one that was submissive and vulnerable.
I bring this up because certain aspects about her argument can be called true, for instance I found it rather annoying that Jack had to become so fragile whereas Shepard remains so passive the whole way through (I figure if someone is baring their soul to you you can at least show a little more emotion) and it is rather annoying that a woman need become so fragile so fast.
And yet the rest just sounded like the work of a debatebly insane misandronistic fanatically pro female rights advocate who still thinks she lives in the nineteenth century, seriously here's a quote:
"You have Subject Zero (not so badass now, eh?) trembling, weeping and wordless, acknowledging that Shepard has a deeper understanding of her needs than she does, admitting tacitly that the person she has become is little more than a façade for her truly vulnerable, properly feminine self. And then she lies down, passive and submissive, her arms stretched over her head while Shepard heals her with his mighty mancock."
Apart from the fact that all I saw in that scene was her smiling having finally found someone who loved her and cared about her (Honestly Shepard being male in this instance I didn't even think was an issue), and that I'm not even sure they actually had sex in that scene, the woman writing this also neglects to mention (or even acknowledge) the fact that a similar romance happens for a lady Shepard to in the form of Thane Krios who starts the game being sold as a badass assassin with no conscience or ethics going around killing people.
Then his romance ending with him in tears and helpless and vulnerable while the Lady Shepard, clearly in power, comforts him over the tragedies of his own life.
So basically with this in mind, one could consider the Jack romance with Shepard really more just an example of her being vulnerable and emotional at finding someone who cares about her and weighing her emotional problems on them, just as one can with Thane as a female Shepard.
And yet, because such aspects might contradict her theories and analysis or at least cause things to be less concrete, it doesn't get mentioned and the woman continues to maintain that Mass Effect 2 is an example of hating women.
So my point to this is that this woman does have a few points present that actually require looking into, but in the process she has come across as an alarmist and her complete ignorance of any point devices or even elements that might go against it makes it very clear that she's either biased towards a conclusion or just ignorant of the majority of the subject matter. Plus her angry overreactions are not helping anything. Nor her apparent hatred of the male gender.
So yes, over analysis is not in and of itself a bad thing. It can help create new ways of looking at things and understanding our perception of the world. However, it must be done fairly with all points addressed to come to a conclusion, rather than just rooting out one or two pieces that you can use to help your case while overlooking everything else. Especially when you are notorious for having a bias against the subject matter in question.
Bob is doing the latter here, not the former. And this form of overgeneralizing to reach an already biased conclusion is something that can actually be considered harmful to our society, as that is how concepts of racism and religious fundamentalism even get started, to some extent.
And THAT'S the Big Picture.
... Sorry, couldn't resist.
That said, Halo isn't nearly as bad at the Treyarch Call of Duty games, which appear to be an exercise in exceptionalism, with other races and political ideologies always being portrayed as eeeeeeevil compared to the "righteous might" of the American military and western democracy.
Right, now there's something we can agree on. Although it does show the amorality of your allies at points, I still thought the 'Russia invades America' thing was rather suspicious.
EDIT: Also I apologize if I came across as rude or anything like that, I don't want to cause any offense.
R? MovieBob is an elitist tool and that's the Big Picture.
