I have said this before but here it goes again:
John Forge in Halo Wars.
I cannot for the life of me work out what made me hate this guy so much. Maybe it was the fact that his quips were so brainless even Duke Nukem would cringe if he heard them, or the fact that he was merely another in the long line of 'humanity hell yeah' kind of protagonists who is infallibly awesome and badass while all the aliens were turned into cookie cutter blarging monsters, or maybe it was because he was a piggish arrogant moron. I couldn't tell exactly what it was that drove me to murderous hate like that but seriously every single time he was on screen he said or did something that annoyed me.
His crowning moment was when Ripa Moramee had Ellen Anders hostage by the throat and he decided that that exact moment was the right time to call Ripa a 'freak'. Yes, insult the easily angered giant hunk of reptilian flesh and muscle that is right now well and truly capable of flaying your girlfriend apart and indeed has been known to do so on multiple occasions. That should go down well.
And of course this had to happen after he picked up a piece of scrap metal and suggest that she put it in her 'scrapbook'. EPIC ANGRY GROAN!
But still when I saw the Arbiter (Ripa) beating the ever loving hell out of Forge within an inch of his life all I could do was cheer. I was seriously hoping, desperately might I add, that the Arbiter would smash the smug grin right off Forge's face until all that remains is a splinter maw of broken bloody teeth and mutilated puffy flesh. It's funny because I hated the Arbiter from Halo Wars. Even though he was cool he was also an overdone evil villain who compromised the good humanized look of the Covenant by being a one note angry bad guy who beats up his subordinates, insults people, shows a complete disregard for honor and wants nothing more than to enact mass slaughter on a galactic scale.
(I admit though I like how he makes for an interesting contrast from the much friendly Arbiter from the main trilogy)
And yet I still rooted for him over Forge and suddenly I realized that Forge had actually made me want the Covenant to succeed. Sure, Ripa Moramee might have been a complete arrogant monstrous sociopath who fittingly died in a shameful honor-less way but at least he never made a 'scrapbook' joke.
I 'know' that Masterchief has a lot of these other characteristics but perhaps the fact that he knew when quips were appropriate and when to 'shut the f*ck up' and when he did the one note badass thing it was still more believable and a little less in your face. But I still can't be sure, after all while I don't hate Masterchief I still don't think he holds a candle to the Arbiter (Thel Vadam).
At the end of the day though, all the heroic traits the Masterchief had didn't bother me nearly as much as Forge's did.
I don't get it, usually I always develop some level of connection to the cast in a Halo game. In Halo 1 I genuienly enjoyed listening to the quips between Masterchief and Cortana, in Halo 2 I liked Johnson and Miranda and of course the Arbiter and Half Jaw and in Halo 3 I pretty much liked the lot of them, loved at best and at least partial to at most.
I liked the team in ODST, they weren't the best in the world but being voiced by the Firefly guys kind of rocks and I liked Noble Team in Halo: Reach even though when you come right down to it, they are drenched in cliche.
So I cannot, for the life of me, work out why I dislike John Forge so much. Maybe it's because it wasn't by Bungie but truth be said, I don't know....
