Ask a Halo fanboy anything! Removing common misconceptions.

[Netrigan]

If Master Chief needed more money and had to moonlight in another game, what character would he play?

 

[godofallu]

ALL of the flaws you just pointed out are not present in the books.

Sadly, I never played any of the books

Well, there's your problem!

I realize that it's the game that you are talking about, not the books, but they are really that good.

But if we're talking about video game story telling, then the books are beside the point.

Such as, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic is really excellent... the movie, on the other hand, is shit. No matter how good the comic is, the movie continues to suck.

I know that's kind of your point, but I felt like insulting LOEG

I still wouldn't say the Halo games story sucks, its just confusing.

Let me jump in here. It's impossible to prove whether the Halo Storyline is good or bad, since it is impossible to prove an opinion.

As to the books, I would argue there was 1 great one (the short stories one), and a few fanboy only ones.

On Topic: OP what was your favorite quote/line from the halo series?

I just rebeat Halo 3 and the line at the end by commander hood blew me away.

For us, the storm has passed. The war is over. And let us never forget those who journeyed into the howling dark, and did not return. For their decision required courage beyond measure. Sacrifice, an unshakeable conviction that their fight... *our* fight... was elsewhere. As we start to rebuild, this hillside will remain barren, a memorial to heroes fallen. They enobled all of us, and they shall not be forgotten.

 

[Katana314]

I will at least concede that the game has GOOD music, but tailoring that music to the game is another thing. To illustrate this point, I'm gonna make up lyrics that fit the nature of the music, and dialogue that fits the nature of the gameplay.

Music: "The rain dances in the wind....a memory of the past...
slowly moving through time....though the day will not last..."
Gameplay: "DIE, HUMAN! Grenade! *BOOM* Eat...THIS! *thwack*"

So yeah, its soundtrack on its own is nice to listen to. While you're playing, it just feels horribly unfitting.

This confused me a bit. You made up lyrics (no offense, but REALLY BAD lyrics at that) that you believe "fit" songs that were written/composed to not include lyrics, and compared it to a brief summary of what is said in the middle of a firefight...to prove a point? I don't get it.

Also, since I post it whenever I can because I just love those goddam soundtracks so much-

<youtube=om0M6Ol8FjQ>


And to the OP, you are a far braver man than I, and you have my respect.

It wasn't about the quality of the lyrics, it's about the mood. The point I'm making is that the music is often calm, haunting and slow; what you'd expect when an adventurer is looking over an amazing new world, or when an important character dies. The gameplay is brutal, fast action, deserving of up-tempo music.

 

[Tupolev]

It wasn't about the quality of the lyrics, it's about the mood. The point I'm making is that the music is often calm, haunting and slow; what you'd expect when an adventurer is looking over an amazing new world, or when an important character dies. The gameplay is brutal, fast action, deserving of up-tempo music.

See, the issue here is that most of us have exactly the opposite experience from you in terms of gameplay-narrative-music fittingness. Do you have any specific example(s) of areas of dissonance?

 

[Katana314]

It wasn't about the quality of the lyrics, it's about the mood. The point I'm making is that the music is often calm, haunting and slow; what you'd expect when an adventurer is looking over an amazing new world, or when an important character dies. The gameplay is brutal, fast action, deserving of up-tempo music.

See, the issue here is that most of us have exactly the opposite experience from you in terms of gameplay-narrative-music fittingness. Do you have any specific example(s) of areas of dissonance?

Sorry, but I don't play the game often enough to recall specific instances. And from what I could see, the thread was mostly about Halo fans convincing non-Halo fans it's not so bad, so I don't see what you're trying to accomplish by saying "But we think it's good." I'm happy for you...does that mean you won an argument or something?

 

[Mr. Gency]

Have you ever had a Halo game sitting around your house that you can't play for whatever reason? Bonus points if you never got a chance to play it before not being able to.

Luckly, no.

Wish I can say the same about myself. Damn you, Xbox, with your hardware failures, and your expired warranties.

 

[Tupolev]

Sorry, but I don't play the game often enough to recall specific instances. And from what I could see, the thread was mostly about Halo fans convincing non-Halo fans it's not so bad, so I don't see what you're trying to accomplish by saying "But we think it's good." I'm happy for you...does that mean you won an argument or something?

No, it doesn't mean I won an argument or something.

We're not stating nothing more than something contradictory to your opinion on the grounds that we think it strengthens some sort of argument. We're stating it because we are, in fact, unsure of how to address your point due to the fact that we hold a decidedly opposite and, without further information, clearly unreconcileable opinion; the statements are strictly informative, not intended to push the opinion on you, but to clarify that that is our stance and neither side is capable of moving beyond it without further information brought to the table.

I could provide specific examples of areas where the music resonates with other aspects of the game particularly well, but pointing out specific examples of goodness would not be a particularly exhaustive or useful way of debating your point, since it would ultimately be nothing more than cherry picking from your point of view, and rightly so.

Hence, we aren't trying to attack you through simplistic means, we are simply asking for more specific input from your end, so that we may engage in actual discussion. This is why, earlier in the thread, I brought up specific examples to see if anything ticked. With more information, we might have somewhere to begin a civil and interesting discussion from.

 

[owyndevaldeck]

Whats for dinner?

 

[Tupolev]

Whats for dinner?

It depends. If your team wins and your opponents have less than 60 percent of your teams score when the score to win is at least 50, Luke owes you a steak dinner. Apparantly.

But according to my stats, he owes me 47, and I have received 0.

:/

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

It's one of my people! Finally!

I am so glad there is a person out there as in love with the Halo Universe as I am!

Spoiler: This must be done.

[image/]http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2010/9/25/af8fc265-122f-4e2f-b43f-06f07f183656.jpg[/IMG]

In terms of an actual question, from one Fanboy to another, do you consider Wars to be cannon? For me, it caused more than a few problems and I have had a hard time seeing in a way that makes sense with everything else.

 

[sylekage]

Yeah I have a question for you.

What are Kurt's last words in The Ghosts of Onyx??

And No Cheating!!

 

[repeating integers]

I will at least concede that the game has GOOD music, but tailoring that music to the game is another thing. To illustrate this point, I'm gonna make up lyrics that fit the nature of the music, and dialogue that fits the nature of the gameplay.

Music: "The rain dances in the wind....a memory of the past...
slowly moving through time....though the day will not last..."
Gameplay: "DIE, HUMAN! Grenade! *BOOM* Eat...THIS! *thwack*"

So yeah, its soundtrack on its own is nice to listen to. While you're playing, it just feels horribly unfitting.

This confused me a bit. You made up lyrics (no offense, but REALLY BAD lyrics at that) that you believe "fit" songs that were written/composed to not include lyrics, and compared it to a brief summary of what is said in the middle of a firefight...to prove a point? I don't get it.

Also, since I post it whenever I can because I just love those goddam soundtracks so much-

<youtube=om0M6Ol8FjQ>


And to the OP, you are a far braver man than I, and you have my respect.

It wasn't about the quality of the lyrics, it's about the mood. The point I'm making is that the music is often calm, haunting and slow; what you'd expect when an adventurer is looking over an amazing new world, or when an important character dies. The gameplay is brutal, fast action, deserving of up-tempo music.

You [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpWT0HbJXv4] sure [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpbEx8tvmLw&feature=related] about [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaYhzwACZVM&feature=related] that [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J67WCu2ojgM], son? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z2fdTqNka8&feature=related]

 

[AmbushIntheDark]

Yeah I have a question for you.

What are Kurt's last words in The Ghosts of Onyx??

And No Cheating!!

Spartans never die. =P

 

[Shirokurou]

What about the nazi fascist overtones MovieBob once mentioned.

It's actually sort of intentional, as moviebob and even Yahtzee has pointed out. ("trained to be suicide bombers")

They were raised to be faceless, personalty deprived tools of war, the covenant is composed of a slave army, more or less, outright says this in the video, but brushes it off that nobody lies halo for the story.

There's an entire group of websites with people. which will dissargee with him on that, and i'm one of those people.

I see.
But they are actually semi-intentional?

As in what?

Spartans with Nazi's? No.

Spartans as a faceless supersoilder collective? Yes, but only because that's techinally the most practical solution to the crisis the UNSC was facing at the time.

The UNSC has no problems with divirsty, it's just that a group of oliders like that is the best solution.

Not Third Reich Nazis per se, but actual Spartans. The purist and "kill all weak children" spartans of ancient history. Genetic selection and etc.

 

[Shirokurou]

What about the nazi fascist overtones MovieBob once mentioned.

I couldn't take a single word Bob said seriously in that video. That whole thing was a joke if you ask me.
I rarely take Bob's game commentary to heart because no matter what he says there are always two things that remain consistent regardless of what he's talking about:
1. Any Nintendo game is exempt from criticism and cannot be considered anything less than amazing.
2. Anything Halo or FPS related, no matter what, must be hated and reviled because it cannot be considered in any measure 'good' and you should go to extreme lengths to bring that point across.

Most of Movie Bob's opinion in that video was one part cherry picking, one part blind accusations, one part straw man and one part deeply rooted in ignorance.
It was cherry picking because he took the fact that Halo had diverse enemy types, like every game ever made since Space Invaders, he made blind accusations as well like the video with the blue eyed soldier (Bungie had nothing to do with that at all but he accused them anyway), he made an elaborate straw man by presenting his own interpretation of the overall Halo storyline and finally his argument was deeply routed in ignorance because as people consistently pointed out, in Halo 3 the humans and the Elites form an Alliance.

I dismissed most of Movie Bob's points there as someone who has a documented history of pointless aggression to a franchise as well as a history of trolling. It wasn't an attempt to analyze or understand, it was an attempt to incite. While I could write a whole article on all the ways in which Movie Bob was wrong, I don't bother.
Point is though, that I don't agree with his stance. Nor do I think many people on this site.

And the ones that do, at least in my own opinion, are the ones who already hated Halo and didn't care about the facts as long as they were given another reason in their laundry list of justifications for why they leap onto threads about Halo with the sole intention to bully everyone who happens to like something that they dislike.
All the while claiming that they are the mature ones.

I apologize by the way if you took offence from this, I wasn't trying to direct this at you.

Anyway to address the main point of this thread:

Honestly, I don't even know if anyone can honestly still talk down about the crazy Halo fanboys with a straight face anymore. These days when I log onto youtube and look at videos to do with Halo I'll see like twenty:
"HAlo SuCks andIF U LIEK it u r a faNBoY NoOb!"
Type posts.
Plus I've seen members of the supposedly 'mature' group of people who dislike Halo absolutely flip their shit and explode publicly into a sea of juvienile insults and accusations and psychotic rants because someone happened to correct them on something related to Halo. This happens all the time around here.
I've always maintained that it's the haters these days, not the fans, who are the problem. After all there wouldn't be any angry defensive fanboys if there weren't people going out of their way to antagonize them.
I'm a Halo fan, as are quite a few others on this site. Let me tell you, the existence of people who don't particulalry care for a game that I happen to love is not going to rile me up into anger and aggression.
However if people start insulting it and by extension me, then I will. It's not impossible to dislike something without also having to be a total prick about it.

As for the stereotypical image of the Halo fan? The undereducated loud mouthed drunken idiotic frat boy who only ever plays Halo and Madden and yells 'dude' a lot while drunkenly belching and of whom drives a jeep and insults anyone who doesn't like his game?

I don't fit that description. I'm not in a fraternity, I don't drink, I can be very quiet when I need to be, I've played loads of games from loads of different genres, I don't drive a jeep, I'm reasonably well educated and I try my best to be polite.

I know it might make it easier for the haters to justify being total pricks to people like me by trying to enforce that stereotype but truly all you are doing is going around being a jerk to people because you can't handle the existence of people who happen to like a game that you don't.

Anyway my overall view of the franchise is that it's a fun, action packed shooter with a charming nostalgia factor to it. It's got a great complex backstory, some clever references to religious mythology and the story within the game itself is complex enough to be interesting but simple enough to be accecible.
For lack of a better word, it's fun. It's fun to play with friends, fun to play alone, fun to do the forge, fun to watch the videos and fun to play Firefight. I've clocked a lot of hours playing Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo ODST and finally Halo: Reach. And I had fun with them.

Dude...
I totally agree with you on MovieBob. He basically admitted that Miyamoto is god to him and since then I threw all credability I had for his gaming opinions on Nintendo.
But Halo is something I never played and couldn't really tell if Bob was overbloating the topic or accurate.
Thanks for the very info-rich post.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

What about the nazi fascist overtones MovieBob once mentioned.

It's actually sort of intentional, as moviebob and even Yahtzee has pointed out. ("trained to be suicide bombers")

They were raised to be faceless, personalty deprived tools of war, the covenant is composed of a slave army, more or less, outright says this in the video, but brushes it off that nobody lies halo for the story.

There's an entire group of websites with people. which will dissargee with him on that, and i'm one of those people.

I see.
But they are actually semi-intentional?

As in what?

Spartans with Nazi's? No.

Spartans as a faceless supersoilder collective? Yes, but only because that's techinally the most practical solution to the crisis the UNSC was facing at the time.

The UNSC has no problems with divirsty, it's just that a group of oliders like that is the best solution.

Not Third Reich Nazis per se, but actual Spartans. The purist and "kill all weak children" spartans of ancient history. Genetic selection and etc.

sorta

In Canon, Dr. Halsey named the SPARTAN program as such because, like the Spartans, they would be abducting children with certain genetics from their parents at an early age.

the number of SPARTAN candidates was 300, etc.

 

[Shirokurou]

What about the nazi fascist overtones MovieBob once mentioned.

It's actually sort of intentional, as moviebob and even Yahtzee has pointed out. ("trained to be suicide bombers")

They were raised to be faceless, personalty deprived tools of war, the covenant is composed of a slave army, more or less, outright says this in the video, but brushes it off that nobody lies halo for the story.

There's an entire group of websites with people. which will dissargee with him on that, and i'm one of those people.

I see.
But they are actually semi-intentional?

As in what?

Spartans with Nazi's? No.

Spartans as a faceless supersoilder collective? Yes, but only because that's techinally the most practical solution to the crisis the UNSC was facing at the time.

The UNSC has no problems with divirsty, it's just that a group of oliders like that is the best solution.

Not Third Reich Nazis per se, but actual Spartans. The purist and "kill all weak children" spartans of ancient history. Genetic selection and etc.

sorta

In Canon, Dr. Halsey named the SPARTAN program as such because, like the Spartans, they would be abducting children with certain genetics from their parents at an early age.

the number of SPARTAN candidates was 300, etc.

Well i guess that does set Halo aside from the 'usual space marine shooter' where the protagonist is "an imperfect soldier in a perfect army" (directly from Killzone2 manual)
So I can see why some would get the nazi impression.

 

[Poisoni]

Just saying, while I respect peoples' opinions and understand why people say the story is convoluted (it is) I pretty much understood most of the plot from Halos 1 and 2 when I was 9-ish (I'm 16 now) and, because I liked it, I decided to read the books to add more to it. For me the Halo universe is a detailed alternate future which still contains plenty of mystery that keeps me hooked: the crystal from Fall of Reach/First Strike (not sure which); why Onyx was not used by the Forerunners/was it used by the Forerunners which makes me a proud Halo fanboy. Please note I play other games and do enjoy CoD so I'm trying not to be biased. But I would like to point out that if you ignore everything that you THINK you know about the Halos and play through from the start of Halo 1, if you pay attention, you should be able to get most of it because Bungie have added to the story as it progressed resulting in the convolution which we see now and blocks people from trying to understand it.

Not sure where I was going with that block of text. If someone else can please tell me.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Snippage

Mmmmk, I'll bite.

However I'd very much like to know why exactly you are a Halo fanboy? What do you find great about it?

No wrong or right answer or anything, just curious.

 

[owyndevaldeck]

Whats for dinner?

It depends. If your team wins and your opponents have less than 60 percent of your teams score when the score to win is at least 50, Luke owes you a steak dinner. Apparantly.

But according to my stats, he owes me 47, and I have received 0.

:/

oh...well done I'll take my smart arse back over here now