Poll: The Halo Story
- Thread starter Eipok Kruden
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Oh it's got potential. The problem is just that the whole plot isn't readily available to average joe. I spend a majority of my time playing RPGs, Platformers, JRPGs and Adventure games, in most of which the story is told well and by the end of the game I know why I've done what I've done, who the characters are and why I have blood on my sword.
At the end of Combat Evolved... I was just aware that I'd gone from environment to environment, ocasionally being interrupted by a pretty scene which stopped me shooting shit. The point and shoot gameplay smothers the story that's supposed to be being told. Let me compare it to two other titles which have somewhat famous story lines.
Metal Gear - Renown for having a convoluted plot. But, right from the start I developed a liking for Snake and Big Boss. Not because they were badass, but their motives and personalities. Because I cared about them, I cared about what they were doing and what was happening around them. I played through every title and can put together a coherrent version of events.
Resident Evil - Renown for having a plot that is comparable to swiss cheese. Average gameplay, bad character development and even worse voice acting. But from Resident Evil to Resident Evil 5, I can put together a coherrent story without having to fill in the blanks with the Chronicles games.
The problems I had with Halo? Master Chief is a faceless, nameless (not actually nameless, but he felt that way) Space Marine and I could not relate to him in the slightest, for he had no humanity whatsoever. Therefore I couldn't give a damn about his objectives. I certainly didn't care enough to have to resort to going to alternative media, I was never given enough reason to care.
Hence I ended playing Halo at Combat Evolved.
At the end of Combat Evolved... I was just aware that I'd gone from environment to environment, ocasionally being interrupted by a pretty scene which stopped me shooting shit. The point and shoot gameplay smothers the story that's supposed to be being told. Let me compare it to two other titles which have somewhat famous story lines.
Metal Gear - Renown for having a convoluted plot. But, right from the start I developed a liking for Snake and Big Boss. Not because they were badass, but their motives and personalities. Because I cared about them, I cared about what they were doing and what was happening around them. I played through every title and can put together a coherrent version of events.
Resident Evil - Renown for having a plot that is comparable to swiss cheese. Average gameplay, bad character development and even worse voice acting. But from Resident Evil to Resident Evil 5, I can put together a coherrent story without having to fill in the blanks with the Chronicles games.
The problems I had with Halo? Master Chief is a faceless, nameless (not actually nameless, but he felt that way) Space Marine and I could not relate to him in the slightest, for he had no humanity whatsoever. Therefore I couldn't give a damn about his objectives. I certainly didn't care enough to have to resort to going to alternative media, I was never given enough reason to care.
Hence I ended playing Halo at Combat Evolved.
I feel like there should be one option between the top option (incredibly deep story) and the one below it. But, since there is not, I choose the top one.
Personally I think the "It's great if you Read the books" excuse is a lame one.
The games came first and the story wasn't well told, now maybe this is because my only refference is halo 3but that is supposed to be the best one, or at least unil reach comes out.
The story barely exists the clear parts are
aliens suck
Master chief is awsome.
though the arbiter seems way more interesting
The games came first and the story wasn't well told, now maybe this is because my only refference is halo 3but that is supposed to be the best one, or at least unil reach comes out.
The story barely exists the clear parts are
aliens suck
Master chief is awsome.
though the arbiter seems way more interesting
I have only played the first three Halo games, liking the first the best. The flaw that I find with the games is that the mesh between storytelling and gameplay. On one hand, this powerful subject matter is being revealed through cutscenes and the overall premise of humanity's demise. Once the game starts, the human allies seem complacent with their would-be Covenant overlords, the characters all fall flat, and the Covenant end up evolving the most on a deeper level.
Throughout Halo 2 and 3, I felt that the overall narrative could have honed in more to captivate and show a higher sense of gravitas and emotional appeal. Even Halo 2's arbiter missions were lackluster to me because I would have preferred seeing the Covenant perspective not only against the heretics, but humanity as well. Either way though, the Arbiter displayed more interesting qualities in his limited time compared to many of the human characters, unfortunately. I forgot why I was even fighting, where I was fighting (because the humans sure weren't panicking about a hostile takeover), and became just lost in completing the mission to just move forward.
The overarching issue with the story appears to be more of a matter of Halo in general, which apparently has a lot going for it (the extras beyond the games, or the widely known games which many like myself are limited to as far as any Halo story.
Throughout Halo 2 and 3, I felt that the overall narrative could have honed in more to captivate and show a higher sense of gravitas and emotional appeal. Even Halo 2's arbiter missions were lackluster to me because I would have preferred seeing the Covenant perspective not only against the heretics, but humanity as well. Either way though, the Arbiter displayed more interesting qualities in his limited time compared to many of the human characters, unfortunately. I forgot why I was even fighting, where I was fighting (because the humans sure weren't panicking about a hostile takeover), and became just lost in completing the mission to just move forward.
The overarching issue with the story appears to be more of a matter of Halo in general, which apparently has a lot going for it (the extras beyond the games, or the widely known games which many like myself are limited to as far as any Halo story.
The story plainly from the games perspective is not all that informative. You have to read the books correlating with the games to fully understand and appreciate the vast story behind the Halo universe. You can complain about the game all you want, but read the damned books before you make blanket statements like "It has no story to it".
It does.
It does.
The story isn't really about that character though. That character is just a catalyst for you to experience the story thats going on around you. That's my view of it anyway. I've always considered the real characters to be the other commanders, Cortana, and after Halo 2 the Arbiter. Master Chief to me could have just never spoken or been definitively identified, and the story of the games would actually seem slightly more rich to me.greenflash said:
the in game stories, not bad, not amazing one bit, but if you pay attention they give you more than enough to get it all, but you can also fly right through just having fun if thats what your looking for.
the books however...some of my favorite of all time, they actually are FUN to read, i've read ghosts of onyx and reach 3 times each already, and i literally can't say ive reread more than 4 other books before besides those two, so you know thats saying something if a book can do that to me
the books however...some of my favorite of all time, they actually are FUN to read, i've read ghosts of onyx and reach 3 times each already, and i literally can't say ive reread more than 4 other books before besides those two, so you know thats saying something if a book can do that to me
I'm kind of impartial to the whole Halo thing, always meant to play at least the first one but have never really got around to it. Also, I obviously have never acclaimed or trashed the Halo story. But I gotta ask, when it all comes down to it is it really about people unfairly trashing it claiming the story horrible, or is it a negative reaction to Halo fans claiming the story is great/amazing/awesome?Eipok Kruden said:
That's kind of how I always looked at it. I mean I know the general plot, super soldier marine takes on hordes of aliens to save humanity. That's not a flaw that's just gameplay design, and they'll build what story they can around it. I understand liking something because you're a big fan of it, but it seems kind of silly to hold "Halo" the video game as a great piece of science fiction because it's popular enough that they could hire writers to create a book for it to sell to fans. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that technically you could do that for just about any video game. Like how many different writers patched holes, filled out, and expanded the Star Wars universe, it's basically just official fanfiction.
I mean if it was ever popular enough you could probably do the same thing with those old school arcade shooters, starting at Galaga and moving up through Raider, Ikarugi, etc. It's basically the same thing, gameplay = super soldier takes out enemy army vs super jet takes out space armada, you just need a team of great writers to bring the Universe to life and you can call the whole package amazing science fiction.
Eipok Kruden said:
just to add, they really underline it throughout the books/in the game at some parts with john being "the one special spartan", how if anyone, HE COULD survive that fall, just because he is naturally lucky/leaderish/courages/etc(insert awesomeness here), so if anything, he is the one person who would survive that fall, and like we've said, he had shields,super armor,armor locked,steel layered bones, super dense structure, in which it made it possible to survive the incoming impact of the re entering, in which it was all just luck of his trajectory in the fall that he made and survived.
The story in Halo is mediocre at best.Eipok Kruden said:
Positives:
Told quite well, in my opinion
Lots of depth, when you get into it
Negatives:
Almost everything in it is a sci-fi trope or cliche
The plot is unimaginative and bland
Not to mention there's a few bits of it that simply don't make any sense. For example:
1) Why would the Forerunners keep the Flood alive on the Halos? They know it's a direct threat to every major living organism in the galaxy, why in all seven hells would they not eliminate it entirely?
2) Covenant structure, especially the brute -> elite transfer of responsibility in Halo 2. There's no reason for it, and even if there was, the Sanghelli wouldn't relinquish their position without a fight.
3) The elites would never side with the humans. It's been beaten into them over and over again for decades that humanity is Evil. No matter how mad they are about the Brutes usurping their position, they'd never ally themselves with those they perceive to be basically Satan.
4) Humans being descended from the Forerunners is just about the most cliche, silly, and outright ridiculous plot decisions it's possible to make. The odds of such a thing happening are almost infinitely many to one. Especially since in the story, they activated the Halos. That should have eliminated all of them, and even if it didn't, there's no way to keep a viable population sample stable long enough for the food supply to re-stabilize. It's not as bad as the other three, if only because it's actually possible (if not necessarily plausible), but it requires a rather massive amount of suspension of disbelief.
There's a few more, but I don't care enough to dredge through my memory and remember them.
He meant the Elites. There's really no reason explained in the game why the Brutes suddenly took over for the Elites. It just came out of left field because Bungie wanted us to be able to play as the Arbiter and not kill humans.Eipok Kruden said:
Soft science at absolute best. It doesn't matter how strong your bones are or how dense your muscles are, any organic thing in an uncontrolled fall from orbit will die. If it's not incinerated by the friction of re-entry (which is highly likely, he Mjolnir armor was never designed for heat upwards of 5,000 kelvin), the impact will liquify them. I don't know the real values, but let's assume he was traveling at approximately 5,000 m/s at impact, and he weighed 1,000 kilograms (or a metric ton) with all that armor on when he hit the ground. That is a kinetic energy value of 25,000,000,000 J. One ton of TNT contains 4,184,000,000 J. That means he impacted the ground with energy roughly equivalent to 6 tons of TNT. There is no way he could survive that, let alone still be functional enough to fight off 400 times his number in random aliens. Especially since you can't take more than a handful or two of shots from anything without dying.Eipok Kruden said:
Edit: Just to be clear, I am in no way saying I don't enjoy the Halo games. Matter of fact, I fairly regularly bust out one of them and play through it because I enjoy it. That doesn't mean the story is not severely flawed though.
ill try and answer some of these. at least in my opinionAgayek said:
1) this is one that is truly explained like this: "the forerunners decided for unknown reasons to us that keeping the flood in stasis for studying or possible repurposing was a false decision in foresight", yes i know, not smart, but hell, they died off, so obviously they weren't too smart.
2) they weren't getting the job done, master chief, a.k.a. the demon, was destroying them like grunts, and the brutes actually brought up that challenge as they had not been part of "The covenant" beforehand, therefore, the prophets, a.k.a. the rulers, decided to discard the elites and go with the brutes. and no fight? oh im sure they did, almost garunteed, but it was obviously not shown in game, it was just showing they were stripped of their honor.
3) well the elites did find out that the prophets were basically brainwashing them, and that the forerunner technology was just going to destroy the universe, not "take them to the promised land", as the very close minded religion cult thought it would. So if i learned that i had just been brainwashed this whole time, im pretty sure i wouldn't hold it against humanity anymore, in fact id be more than obliged to team up with them knowing they were doing the right thing the whole time, especially if i was looking for an ally to destroy the massive covenant/brutes with.
4) while this is cliche for sure, all the technology reacts to humans, so obviously this is the case, and if you remember (they dont say this in the games, i know, but just saying) that in ghosts of onyx, they are able to access that other dimension, in which those spartans were trapped in with (dr. halsey if i remember?), so im assuming they might have been able to do that initially, in which the offsprings ended up on earth, the key to the rings essentially.
now this is just my subjective opinion on it, feel free to argue with it or w/e