Ask a Halo fanboy anything! Removing common misconceptions.

[gussy1z]

its an ok game, well the story was quite good but it didnt fit with the type of game at all. To me the game didint know if it wanted to be a seiours game or a fun game. The multiplayer is the best bit and thats just basically unreal tournament...

 

[CrazyGirl17]

Okay, I'll bite.

...Um... have you ever seen Red VS Blue, and if so, what do you think of it? Does it work with the Halo story (especially the later seasons, which take a turn for the dramatic while still being downright funny)?

 

[Cry Wolf]

Are the Halo games good enough to make up for being on a terrible console?

 

[Chibz]

But I don't think ANY console game had even forge level editing until halo 3. PC games did, of course, but not consoles.

Timesplitters 1, 2 AND future perfect all had mapmakers with varying degrees of power and they were made years before Halo 3. (And the mapmakers were more limited by the system the games were primarily played on: PS2).

Why is Halo really that popular given that it did so little that was really new, or interesting?

Also, is it reasonable to hate the game'sfanbase based on the fact that almost none of them seem to know ANYTHING about gaming at large? I honestly heard a halo fanboy talk about Halo being "the first console FPS".

Spoiler

 

[DevilWolf47]

Ask a Halo fanboy anything? Okay, i'll give it a shot.

What is the best way to tell the difference between a tension pneumothorax and a pericardial tamponade before you can perform chest x-rays? How is it that Japanese citizens who consume nearly twice as much sodium as Americans have an average lifespan around a decade higher? Why am i only attracted towards women who show signs of being psychotic?

...oh wait, relevancy! Here's a question, just how the hell does the needle rifle work? It seems to me that the detonation effect occurs completely at random. That was one thing that annoyed me, since i really liked the new medium ranged semi-auto weapons.

 

[Frozenfish]

For me, my issue with Halo was the fact I loved Halo 2, and then Halo 3 felt like it didn't really change anything apart from the graphics, there were some good set pieces, but a lot were no better than the Halo 2 ones. Other than that my critisism would be, although only slight, that master cheif is kinda slow. Then ODST came along, and I heard the dev team saying that because they're human they walk EVEN SLOWER?!? than master cheif and they can't use alien guns, now although the gun list in H3 was pretty good, it was hardly big enough for them to be able to chop out fully half of them, Reach apart from jetpacks and other gimicky looking things they haven't really changed much. I'm wondering if these are valid assumptions I'd made, or if you've got a decent counter point.

Also, another thing that put me off, was I played some H3 online with a friend who was into it, and apart from a couple of players on there, it was a bit of a cakewalk, maybe it was matchmaking doing some kinda of fantastic job, but considering I dont play it, I should have realistically had my butt handed to me.

 

[repeating integers]

Ask a Halo fanboy anything? Okay, i'll give it a shot.

What is the best way to tell the difference between a tension pneumothorax and a pericardial tamponade before you can perform chest x-rays? How is it that Japanese citizens who consume nearly twice as much sodium as Americans have an average lifespan around a decade higher? Why am i only attracted towards women who show signs of being psychotic?

...oh wait, relevancy! Here's a question, just how the hell does the needle rifle work? It seems to me that the detonation effect occurs completely at random. That was one thing that annoyed me, since i really liked the new medium ranged semi-auto weapons.

3 shots to unshielded flesh = boom.

Also your post reminded me of the Madness song "Take it or leave it".

 

[Netrigan]

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.

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.

Yeah, his sweeping generalizations are definitely on the funny side. Something goes mainstream the way Halo and Call Of Duty have, it typically means that it's reaching all sorts of different people.

You might as well say that Nintendo fans are 30-something, over-weight man-children who refuse to grow up. And for a fair number of people, you'd be right... but Nintendo was far too mainstream for this to be the reality. It's simply the most vocal and irritating presence on-line that gives that impression. Put a mic on Nintendo's on-line gaming and I'm pretty damn sure it'll live down to the example set by first person shooters.... people just act like dicks when they're in no danger of getting punched by the person they're offending.

 

[Waffle_Man]

Damn it! I thought I had already responded to this. I guess I must have just closed it on accident during all of the hullabaloo last night. Well, here we go again.

I will concede to this point (minus it being the cause of shorter campaigns) and I can understand why someone would dislike the story. That doesn't mean, however, that it can be accused of not having a developed story. Also, "interesting" is subjective.

At no point have I accused Halo of not having a developed story (no character development, but that's not the end-all, be-all of a story).

Nor did I mean to accuse you of accusing it. I guess "it can't be accused" can construed as a defense against a supposed accusation. It was a figure of speech, err, writing that I used simply as another way of saying "It doesn't." Sorry.

I just reject the notion that stories were a rarity in first person shooters in 2001. The genre still had a lot to learn about *how* to tell a good story, but they were putting more and more effort into it.

On the contrary, it was the other way around. They were trying to find out ways of telling a story before they had any stories worth telling. There isn't anything wrong with this, as humans trying to learn a language develop the ability to compose syntax before they learn vocabulary. Aisde from that, unless a game is an abstraction, it will have a story. However, an undeveloped story, as with most first person shooters back then, is more accurately described as a premise.

Half-Life experimented with narrative forms and told a lot of the story with its setting. Unreal was creating little scenarios through set dressing and logs (yeah, just like Bioshock but without audio). Even id's Quake II made the attempt to string together your actions in a more plausible way, with your character committing acts of sabotage behind enemy lines.... not just pushing buttons to open doors and advance to the next level. There's a lot of story telling elements that are being explored and pieced together. Halo was a part of that.

The thing is, notice how all of those improvement are an extrapolation of action? Yes, Quake II tried to string together more believable actions, but notice how it never tried altering the player's perspective on anything. I didn't see anything in the game differently between when I finished it and when I first started it. Did I learn anything more about the Strogg? Well, maybe I learned that they're more evil then I first thought, but that isn't story development, it's a reiteration of the premise. It's a theme.

Half-life has a slightly more sophisticated story, but emphasis on "slightly." Your goal is always "plug up that hole in space," but the conflict does change from "man vs aliens" to "man vs aliens vs the government." However, this story change hardly tries to change the perception of anything.

Unreal is an odd case, because it doesn't start off with an explicit goal beyond "survive" and, in many ways, never gives the player a goal beyond "survive." One could almost make the case that unreal is the opposite extreme: it develops a complicated story with a barebones plot. All you do in the game is go from point A to point B, but the game puts a great deal of effort into trying to establish a world.

Return To Wolfenstein's story is pretty silly for all the reasons you've pointed out, but so are a lot of stories. Often characters are evil for no other reason than they're evil, even to the point of being recklessly stupid... and it could still be an enjoyable story.

I have nothing against silly stories. However, my point wasn't to call it a silly story. My point was that there is no story development. Story development can only take place if the various conflicts evolve. Note that evolve is not a synonym for "escalate." Learning that someone is more evil than I first thought is an example of escalation. Learning that the characters have a reason for horrible evil that I can sympathize with, then resolving my goal with my sympathy for the antagonists is story. Plot vs story, it can't be emphasized enough.

Am I a fan of Wolfenstein? No. I actually used the game as an example because it's pretty much shit. Years later I can't remember much of anything about the plot (one of the only things I do remember is fucking snipers at a dam), but when a franchise like Wolfenstein is bothering to put together any sort of a story, then I think it's safe to say that the genre has gotten past being strong premises holding together a map pack. People are answering the question "why is he shooting his way through a carnival?" instead of just tossing a carnival level in the game with no explanation.

The thing is, if the "why is he shooting his way through a carnival?" can be essentially answered as "because objective is on the other side of the carnival" that isn't really a story development, that's a plot development. When I say that story is the question of "why," it doesn't refer to every little action, it refers to the question that causes all of those actions. Going from point A to point B can be hellishly complicated, but that doesn't change the fact that you are moving there. What can change, however, is what B is, or why you're going to B.

I'd even go so far as say Halo was a pretty good example of video game story and narrative. But I don't think story in first person shooters was rare in 2001. Good stories, yeah... but stories were a dime a dozen.

Why weren't the stories good? Was it because they had ridicules elements? No. A story can be perfectly fine with some batshit crazy ideas. What separates a story from a premise with a resolution is the coherency between implicit and explicit development of perception.

Memento is probably my favorite example of how plot and story can diverge. The plot itself could very easily be described as "people do stuff." Sure, Leonard's goal doesn't change throughout the movie, but the apparent reason for everything is constantly changing. The plot is non-linear, but the story isn't.

Let's say a game tells me to do X. If the game consists of me doing X, it has a plot. If a game tells me why I'm doing X, it has a premise and a plot. If a game tells me to do X, half way through my ally turns on me and hinders me from doing X, so I kill him and do X, the game still has a premise and a plot. If the game has me do X, but I first have to do Y, the game still only has a premise and a story. If the game consists of me trying to do X because of Y, having Y be questioned, then having X change because of it, that's story. If the game consists of me trying to do X because of Y, having Y be questioned, but having me do X anyway because I am reassured in Y, that's story.

A game that puts an obstacle between me and my objective is developing it's plot. A game that makes me question my goal is developing it's story.

In some ways, the emphasis on story was making games less interesting, because figuring out a reason for a gun fight in a carnival is hard, but damn if that BLOOD carnival level wasn't cool... the story driven sequel had the shittiest level locations.

Again, games without stories have a place in the gaming world. This may seem overly technical and nitpicky, but this distinction is the major reason for Halo being a big development in first person shooters. Sure, it wasn't the first to have a developed story. It wasn't the first to have a well developed plot. It wasn't the first to have both, but I will say that it was a major leap in the direction of games having a developed story and plot while also applying the detail conservation principal.

The end result is a game that know where it wants to go, what it wants to do when it gets there, and (more importantly) why it wants to go there. This can't be fully said of some of the later games, but it certainly gave the series a massive footing.

 

[theheroofaction]

Ask a Halo fanboy anything? Okay, i'll give it a shot.

What is the best way to tell the difference between a tension pneumothorax and a pericardial tamponade before you can perform chest x-rays? How is it that Japanese citizens who consume nearly twice as much sodium as Americans have an average lifespan around a decade higher? Why am i only attracted towards women who show signs of being psychotic?

...oh wait, relevancy! Here's a question, just how the hell does the needle rifle work? It seems to me that the detonation effect occurs completely at random. That was one thing that annoyed me, since i really liked the new medium ranged semi-auto weapons.

It detonates when you have 4 or more needles in your target.

the needler works the same but with a different number of needles, (i think it's 13)

 

[lord.jeff]

Okay here's my question:

There seems to be a lot of hate for the Wii, Zanga, and casual games in general, and every time I see someone use the line "I'd rather play a real game like..." it's almost always Halo or Call of Duty. Why is it that the shooter fans are the most hateful or the most vocal about the casual game market? Also what are your opinions on Wii/Zanga/casual gaming?

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

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

Link.

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.

"I have beaten fleets of THOUSANDS! CONSUMED A GALAXY OF FLESH AND MIND AND BONE!!!

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

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.

My friend showed me CE back before I was a real gamer, and I thought it was pretty cool, go myself an xbox, got Halo 2, loved it, then I got into the extended universe, etc.

Okay, I'll bite.

...Um... have you ever seen Red VS Blue, and if so, what do you think of it? Does it work with the Halo story (especially the later seasons, which take a turn for the dramatic while still being downright funny)?

I saw it way back when it first started, was really funny then, and still is.

Episode ten of the newest one was amazing. tex FTW.

Are the Halo games good enough to make up for being on a terrible console?

Yes, but then again I don't think the 360 is that bad.

But I don't think ANY console game had even forge level editing until halo 3. PC games did, of course, but not consoles.

Timesplitters 1, 2 AND future perfect all had mapmakers with varying degrees of power and they were made years before Halo 3. (And the mapmakers were more limited by the system the games were primarily played on: PS2).

Why is Halo really that popular given that it did so little that was really new, or interesting?

Also, is it reasonable to hate the game'sfanbase based on the fact that almost none of them seem to know ANYTHING about gaming at large? I honestly heard a halo fanboy talk about Halo being "the first console FPS".

Spoiler

I've already answered your first one.

As per timesplitters, It does seem to be pretty damn good for a ps2 game, but it and halo are still the only real console map editors I've seen.

I've also already said that those people tend to not be the "real" halo fans, they just go to whichever game is really "in" at the time.

They give us a bed rep

Ask a Halo fanboy anything? Okay, i'll give it a shot.

What is the best way to tell the difference between a tension pneumothorax and a pericardial tamponade before you can perform chest x-rays? How is it that Japanese citizens who consume nearly twice as much sodium as Americans have an average lifespan around a decade higher? Why am i only attracted towards women who show signs of being psychotic?

...oh wait, relevancy! Here's a question, just how the hell does the needle rifle work? It seems to me that the detonation effect occurs completely at random. That was one thing that annoyed me, since i really liked the new medium ranged semi-auto weapons.

Canonically?

Current consensus is that the crystals that are used as ammo release a gas once they hit a target (this is visble if you look at them closely) which builds up inside untill they pop.

Okay here's my question:

There seems to be a lot of hate for the Wii, Zanga, and casual games in general, and every time I see someone use the line "I'd rather play a real game like..." it's almost always Halo or Call of Duty. Why is it that the shooter fans are the most hateful or the most vocal about the casual game market? Also what are your opinions on Wii/Zanga/casual gaming?

Again, these aren't really COD or Halo fans, once the next big franchise topples COD and to a lesser extent Halo, we will see less of these people around in Halo and COD.

It happened back when Modern watrfare came out, it happened again with MW2 and Black ops, etc.

I have not heard a single cursing "OMG YOU ARE A NOOB I PWNED U" type guy in a Halo match since Halo 3.

Feels good man.

 

[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.

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.

Yeah, and Halsey isn't even the most morally dubious "good" guy.

 

[Netrigan]

A game that puts an obstacle between me and my objective is developing it's plot. A game that makes me question my goal is developing it's story.

.

and right here is where we disagree. A story can really be anything. A plot, a conversation, a relationship, a picture that implies an action or relationship, or all sorts of things. What you're describing can be a part of a story, but often isn't.

But amidst this intellectual discussion, I constantly have the thought "we are talking about Halo, right?" I'm talking about Combat Evolved, the only fully self-contained Halo experience. No books, no sequels, why did this story stand out? I think the answer is it's a tightly executed *ahem* plot. Video game plots tend to convulted things filled with way too many plot complications. Halo paced it's story incredibly well and there are no extraneous elements like needlessly characterized NPCs or an alien adversary with a complex motivation. The humans are good, the aliens are bad, and they're both fighting over a mysterious artifact created by a mysterious ancient alien species. We learn next to nothing about either of these cultures and my perspective of neither changed as the story progressed. As for Halo and The Flood, both are mysteries that are revealed. Halo is still an incredibly powerful artifact worth fighting over and The Flood are introduced as incredibly dangerous and remain so for the rest of the story. By your definition of story, I simply don't see how Halo qualifies. It's a bit of well-told pulp sci-fi.

And I really don't see any sophisticated story telling in it. Set dressing next to non-existence as most levels take place in outdoor environments or overly sterile interiors (three architectual styles to represent each race). Halo: Combat Evolved is really all about plot. It's one of the few video games that could be translated to a movie effectively because it's narrative is so lean. Flesh out a few characters, let the set designers go to town, and the story would translate exceptionally well.

But mostly I completely disagree with your incredibly narrow definition of what constitutes a story. Star Wars didn't challenge my perceptions, but it's a damn entertaining story. Raiders Of The Lost Ark, ditto. Both are plot based stories, filled with just enough plot complications to be thrilling. Halo is in this tradition. Maybe the books and sequels fit in with definition, but I'm not expecting Reach to alter my perception about anything.

EDIT: The above is narrowly focused because I was typing it out on my phone... also leads to a bit of a word mix up, which I'll explain. Questioning your goal usually arises from a change in perspective. I would have reworded a lot of that differently but by the time I thought to do so, your comment was off my screen.

But the point remains, at no point in Combat Evolved's story did I question my goals. The Covenant was evil and needed to be stopped. At various times, you set out to do something that ends up being the wrong thing, but the wider objective never changes. The Flood needs to be stopped but listening to Spark is the wrong thing to do because you don't understand what Spark's programming is. It's just effective drama, because if things always went to plan, the story would be boring.

 

[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.

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]

Er...

The gameplay is brutal, fast action, deserving of up-tempo music.

 

[Tupolev]

The gameplay is brutal, fast action, deserving of up-tempo music.

Ah, well. Maybe I'll go on a limb and go ahead and try some listening example suggestage, since this has kept up.

Halo 1
Here's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO1y7WQfD9c&feature=related] a nice track from Silent Cartographer. Probably the most Doom-music-like of Halo 1's arrangement, if that's what you're looking for.
This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr3ViZXl5Ws], unfortunately, was balanced more than any other Halo 1 piece of music for CRT TV speakers, and unfortunately the low rolls are smushed out of it pretty badly on most listening devices, but you can still get some sense for it.
Covenant Dance [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fPFtDdqnJI&feature=related]
Brothers in Arms [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbkQ99OxQJU&feature=related]
On a Pale Horse [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1fPUejOTB8&feature=related]
And, of course, the theme [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6JK3fhYE1w&t=30].

Halo's 2 and 3 use less consistant percussionage, but they still have actionage of their own.
Leonidad Returns [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AcHoz_9vT4]
Earth City [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HAzqdqPxtQ]
Some music from Uprising [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu5ALSzqNUQ&t=122]
One Final Effort [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX63z4acmUo&feature=related]

ODST's action music mostly focuses around one theme, but it's awesome.
This [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhfh_cXBI3s&t=80] should cover several of its stuffs, though.

 

[Waffle_Man]

A game that puts an obstacle between me and my objective is developing it's plot. A game that makes me question my goal is developing it's story.

.

and right here is where we disagree. A story can really be anything. A plot, a conversation, a relationship, a picture that implies an action or relationship, or all sorts of things. What you're describing can be a part of a story, but often isn't.

That's getting into semantics and nomenclature. In that case, if I wanted to distinguish between the actual occurrences of a narrative from the subtext and rational, what words would I use? I'll let you name them for future use.

I'm defining story and plot separately because, for the most part, plot can be almost entirely defined by actions. While story is inseparable from plot, plot is separable from story. If I start considering both of them to be the same thing, I've lost half of the narrative.

There are only seven basic plots. What separates them is context. What separates them is the internal logic, the rational, and ideas. There are billions and billions of a stories.

But amidst this intellectual discussion, I constantly have the thought "we are talking about Halo, right?" I'm talking about Combat Evolved, the only fully self-contained Halo experience. No books, no sequels, why did this story stand out?

The story stood out because comprehensive world building in video games wasn't very common back then, at least not for shooters. That's the reason Halo answered so many whys. Despite what you might think, the extra material that existed at release of the game was part of the story. I don't want to continue bringing up the narrative conservation principle.

I think the answer is it's a tightly executed *ahem* plot.

This was part of it, but the actual stuff you do in halo isn't unique. All first person shooters have you shoot at stuff. What sets it apart is that you're given a reason that wasn't pulled out of the developer's ass as an excuse to shoot stuff. The world existed long before the game concepts did and it shows (well, this is subjective, but the game lacks a lot of the telltale signs of an excuse plot.)

Video game plots tend to convoluted things filled with way too many plot complications. Halo paced it's story incredibly well and there are no extraneous elements like needlessly characterized NPCs or an alien adversary with a complex motivation. The humans are good, the aliens are bad, and they're both fighting over a mysterious artifact created by a mysterious ancient alien species. We learn next to nothing about either of these cultures and my perspective of neither changed as the story progressed. As for Halo and The Flood, both are mysteries that are revealed. Halo is still an incredibly powerful artifact worth fighting over and The Flood are introduced as incredibly dangerous and remain so for the rest of the story. By your definition of story, I simply don't see how Halo qualifies. It's a bit of well-told pulp sci-fi.

First of all, "pulp sci-fi" is a subjective term. Hell, a great number of works now considered to be classics were considered "pulp" way back when. Do you think Shakespeare was writing for sophisticated audiences? Now, I'm not going to even suggest that Halo is world changing story material, but be careful about classifying it as "pulp sci-fi."

Secondly, are you sure you really don't understand why the halo games were successful? The fact that it had ostensibly black and white morality is an asset, because if there is one down fall of a great many number of shooters, it's that they try to tell a morally ambiguous tale while forcing you to commit mass murder, it will make people cringe. It's the same reason you can't have an anti-war action movie? It looks bad ass. Instead, Bungie decided to focus on exploring the world, which had plenty of substance to it.

Lastly, when you say your perspective of neither of the factions changed, that's because the first game wasn't concerned about developing the relations between the factions. The intentions of the factions were already quite clear. It was concerned with establishing the world. Can you honestly say that the second you landed on halo, you thought to yourself "Hey look, a device that killed everything in the universe that has an eldritch abomination in it." It was said and detailed fairly extensively why humanity and the covenant were at war, but the story revolved around Halo, not the war.

And I really don't see any sophisticated story telling in it. Set dressing next to non-existence as most levels take place in outdoor environments or overly sterile interiors (three architectual styles to represent each race). Halo: Combat Evolved is really all about plot. It's one of the few video games that could be translated to a movie effectively because it's narrative is so lean. Flesh out a few characters, let the set designers go to town, and the story would translate exceptionally well.

If, by sophisticated, you're saying that it didn't have any high philosophical ideas in it, I hardly see that as a problem. If you're saying that it didn't attempt to try any non traditional story telling techniques, fine, but that isn't a problem either. As for the level design, it was refreshing in it's simplicity. It made sense. Aside from that, the story would not have been nearly as effective if it told you up front that something bad had gone down.

Because you won't accept my definition of story, I guess I'll have to accept plot as a synonym for narrative. Ok, Halo is completely about plot, but plot is composed of two parts:

Action and context. Shooters before halo had developed incredibly extensive action. It had a lot of stuff happening. What halo did to set itself apart (though, again, it wasn't the first to do so) was context. I never knew why evil co. was out to retrieve some macguffin. It was always some really abstract goal, like world domination or power. Power and world domination are not ideologies. We might as well have explained the entire plot of those various games as "for the evulz." Contrast this to the covenant and humanity: Humanity was expanded for more than SCIENCE! The covenant hated humanity for more than just EVIL! This was detailed in the manual. Ask a question and there is a reason. It might not be a super profound reason, but that's subjective. It is a fact that the information exists.

Regardless of how good the overall lore is, its very existence set Halo apart.

But mostly I completely disagree with your incredibly narrow definition of what constitutes a story. Star Wars didn't challenge my perceptions, but it's a damn entertaining story. Raiders Of The Lost Ark, ditto.

First of all, you probably didn't have you're perceptions changed because the twists of the series were widely known the second the movie was known. Vader being revealed as Luke's father was a perception change. Han turning out to be a nice guy was a perception change. Character development can be an example of a perception change, and both stories have Character development.

Early first person shooters lack, by and large (though not entirely), Character development. They also lack revelations about the setting that alter the player's perception. Making something that seems evil seem more evil is not a perception change, which is almost entirely what most first person shooters back then (and even now) did: They took an already evil character or group, and found a way of making them even more evil. Again, there are exceptions, but they are not the rule.

Aside from that, Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark also shared halo's concern for context. Shit was happening for a reason. If the empire had just been known as "bad guys" and the rebels had been known as "good guys," would you have cared?

Both are plot based stories, filled with just enough plot complications to be thrilling. Halo is in this tradition. Maybe the books and sequels fit in with definition, but I'm not expecting Reach to alter my perception about anything.

You got me there. You can't really have a story with out a plot, that's just assorted information. Secondly, the quality of a story is subjective, it is possible to dislike a developed story. It is possible to "see it coming." It isn't possible to dismiss the entire context without removing part of the story. I will agree that the story of Halo 3 was largely undeveloped, and I would dare say that they story of Reach was undeveloped, but that doesn't take away from the development of the story as a whole.

 

[Netrigan]

snip

I do agree that Bungie did have a lot of background information that informed the basic story... although very little of that made it into the actual game. Obviously the Dark Forces game operated under the same circumstances, as did the Half-Life games, and Deus Ex, and a few others. When I call Halo pulp sci-fi, I'm not using that as an insult. I'd consider all of those games to be part of the pulp sci-fi tradition.

Incidentally, when I say Star Wars, I mean Star Wars, not any of the sequels. The original is a story of clear-cut good and bad guys, although Han's morality is a bit scuffed up... and in the end, he does the right thing. It's just a simple story, well-told... and then Campbell started talking up the archtype thing and suddenly everyone starts discussing the plot in intellectual terms.

Again, I agree that in 2001 Halo was one of the better examples of FPS story telling. It's plot has a good narrative structure and all the elements of the story slot together extremely well. As you say, it's simplicity is at the heart of that strength. It told us who the good guys were, who the bad guys where, set up something they were both fighting over, then had a solid twist halfway through with The Flood. I'm sure for a lot of players it was the first time they had ever experienced a good narrative in a FPS. Said narrative structure still holds up today, whereas the story of Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight is a bit of a relic of its time, although I think it's more emotionally involving.

One thing I do find a bit funny in reading yours posts is that it sounds like you're talking about Half-Life, a game that doesn't really have much of a plot or any characters at all, but uses exploration and action to tell a story. It even has a bit of a twist a third of the way through (spoiled by all the advance marketing) in which your would-be saviors are being sent in to contain the situation and are out to kill you... the marines aren't evil, but looking at the bigger picture (badly, as the case may be). To this day, I don't have the slightest clue what's going on in that franchise, but I always enjoy visiting it because the world tells a story. I'm not the hugest fan of the franchise, but it does utilize some of the most sophisticated narrative techniques in video games... while being deep as a puddle.

EDIT: As for how I use terms. I tend to use plot as the general outline of a story. In 20 words or less describe what happened in this story sort of thing. Premise, set-up, major plot complication, resolution... that sort of thing. For a plot-driven story, this is pretty much the story. A character-driven story, the plot might be a father and son are reunited and iron out their differences, which tells you virtually nothing about the story. There, the characters and their relationships are the story.

The whole "character needs to do X in order for Y to happen", that's plot complications. You can safely remove most of these from a summery, because they're ultimately unimportant. This is more seasoning than anything else, but this is where a lot of stories (in various mediums) go wrong. Plot complications are exciting... right up until the moment they become insanely boring. When games started focusing on story, this was the big mistake so many games made, they over-seasoned their stories with plot complications, so you had to go do X in order for Y to happen over and over and over and over again. It's still a story, but a very poorly paced one.

 

[Tupolev]

One thing I do find a bit funny in reading yours posts is that it sounds like you're talking about Half-Life, a game that doesn't really have much of a plot or any characters at all, but uses exploration and action to tell a story. It even has a bit of a twist a third of the way through (spoiled by all the advance marketing) in which your would-be saviors are being sent in to contain the situation and are out to kill you... the marines aren't evil, but looking at the bigger picture (badly, as the case may be). To this day, I don't have the slightest clue what's going on in that franchise, but I always enjoy visiting it because the world tells a story. I'm not the hugest fan of the franchise, but it does utilize some of the most sophisticated narrative techniques in video games... while being deep as a puddle.

That's possibly the case because the first Halo game makes incredibly extensive use of similar techniques. The rhythm of The Library's gameplay and aesthetics, the unovert promptings to just go and look around in some areas and the effect of that exploration, etc. It has more resonance between its many components than just about any other game I've ever touched. Heck, even time-of-day is used to symbolically flow with the narrative, very visibly in acts 2 and 3 (levels 4 through 10) (ODST applies a similar approach with great success).

It's why when people say that Halo 1 has shallow storytelling on account of shallow characters and simple plot, I argue that they're missing everything except for the outermost shell of the structure.

//=====

This, too, contributes to my argument that, while Halo looks accessable, it's not quite so much as you'd think. It's actually kind of sadly funny how many people stomp on ODST's storytelling because they think it's just some bare-bones story about some dudes in a city out to capture an asset, as opposed to a fairly sophisticated thingy that works together two main plotlines (an outer structural one and a thematic one told through the audio logs) and which ties into (and references, and is very heavily inspired by) Inferno. They think there's nothing there, because they never went in looking for it. Which is also strangely sadly funny, considering that the company that made it also made Marathon.