The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[Vrex360]

Okay I'll go into more detail in a second but before I do I feel I must show you something to demonstrate the huge hole in your logic in regards to this whole 'conformity VS diversity' thing:

In Halo 2, you take on the role of the Arbiter. During which time after so much time fighting against the Covenant, you find yourself fighting alongside them. When this happens you learn a lot, that the Covenant are not by definition evil.
True the brutes are savage and there is a war to eradicate humanity going on, but from their perspective humanity is the bad guy who threatens their religion. As far as the Elites are concerned, they are fighting for the right cause.
But of course they were tragically deluded, lied to by the Prophets and their religion was actually something that would bring about doom. They thought activating the Halo rings would take them on a Great Journey to transcendance, in reality the rings were weapons that would kill them.
So while their intensions weren't evil, they were putting the galaxy at risk. They were working towards a common goal but that goal was based on huge scale misunderstanding and they founded it on genocide.

Eventually the Elites learn the truth about the Forerunners and are ordered genocide by the Prophets, causing them to leave the Covenant and join humanity. Humanity accept their help (in fact by this point if they had turned the Elites down as allies they wouldn't have had a chance) and in two notable scenes we see the Masterchief and the Arbiter share a nod of respect, and see the Arbiter at the memorial to heros fallen at the end, shaking hands with the human general.
This kind of throws away the idea that the franchise in any way thinks that diversity is 'wrong' because literally if it hadn't been for diversity and putting aside past differences in particular, both sides would be dead.
Two sides that were once enemies, unite against a common enemy for a common goal.

Wow. Just...wow.

This "Big Picture" for all its size completely and utterly MISSED.

I LOVED the confusion over "The Covenant are bad guys??! WTF?!"

Fail.

Consider the following:

1. We tried peace. They just want to eradicate all traces of mankind
2. They want to kill us
3. They is gunna kill us good
4. The Spartans were created to HELP stop us being wiped out (Evil Spartans)
5. The Military complex presented in its form because....We are in danger of being made extinct
6. State Of Emergency
7. BILLIONS have been killed by the Covenant...Hence military is going all "Fascist?"
8. His eyes went blue BECAUSE....He had dark eyes to begin with. Its opposites of the spectrum. Makes for ease of telling the transformation.
9. We are evil because we don't want to die.
10. Maybe the Aliens in independence day were good guys bob.

I haven't even played anything after Halo 2 and this is just making arguments for the sake of arguments.

"OMG They want me for a new show!". Maybe THEY did. We didn't. The movie ones rile enough.

Yes, what he said as well. They aren't bad guys for being diverse, they are bad guys for committing genocide. And even then with the Elite's honor code and their succession from the Covenant, it's hard to really even declare them as fully 'evil' but it's really a no brainer about why the army that has been travelling the galaxy burning entire planets with the intent to wipe out an entire race, is considered the 'enemy'.

And hell this is coming from a known Covenant sympathizer here....

Another Halo rant? Really? Well, I suppose if you're launching a new show, the best way to get it loads of views and comments is to make a flamebait video like this one.

As mentioned, the Covenant are all different because you need to shoot more than one kind of enemy. If all you did was shoot Elites, Halo's famed open-ended strategy system would be dead and it wouldn't have been a success. You can't judge games by the same rules you do films, Bob, because games need to make certain decisions based on their interactivity, and nothing else. If you're going to talk about undertones, a lot of the religious stuff would have been a more interesting point, but I guess going for the more flamewar-enticing option (at least on a gaming forum like this one) of implying "OMG HALO IS RACEIST" (sorry, that's essentially what he did) is pretty much par for the course after the Expendables review taught Bob that controversy = success.

EDIT: Also, I forgot the Flood, and evidently, so did you Bob. Awfully convenient you didn't factor in the entirely uniform hive mind enemy in Halo, especially after praising the same sort of thing in Starship Troopers.

Exactly this as well, there were diverse enemy types running around because it made gameplay more interesting. If it was just one enemy type over and over again there would be no statergy or even fun, diversity in terms of enemy types is what makes a game fun.

Someone else already pointed this out but I will repeat it, the logic that Halo is racist for having a diverse group of enemy types can be applied to any number of other games out there. Hell using that logic one can argue that Mario is racist for killing all the goombas and koopa troopas and ghosts and ba-bombs who clearly must be a diverse fuctioning society whereas Mario only promotes Mushroom Person dominance.

That said, it's still nice to know that he agrees that the Covenant are far more interesting then the Spartans. Seriously, I've only been saying that for like, EVER!!

EDIT: Also there is this to be said:

 

[ZeroMachine]

from the African Americans like Master Chief.

You're fucking kidding me, right? Or trolling? Please, tell me you're purposefully sounding stupid here.

In the books it plainly details John as a pale white kid with freckles. Where the fuck did you hear he was black?

I never read the books. In fact, most information I have on the matters have been through bored weekends browsing the Halopedia place, of which they have 2 pictures where John is pictured as a very tan kid, often with a shadow covering a portion or his whole face.

Spoiler

He doesn't look that pale to me, nor do I notice any freckles on him. The only notable mark I see on his face is a birthmark under his right eye and that just may be dirt. I apologize if I got confused, but there is no reason to jump down my throat.

I could just as easily point out other Spartans of different heritages, such as Solomon [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Solomon-069].

Fhajad [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Fhajad-084] who, and forgive me for stereotyping here, sounds like he comes from middle eastern descent.

Soren [http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Soren-066] who may be Indian, due to the fact that Bungie likes to choose the major nationality of a planet (In this case, Dwarka) after a real city or word from that country. Like but like they did with the cities in Reach. Once again, that one is just a guess.

Again, I'm sorry that I got the information wrong, but next time, please try not to just scream "TROLL!" when someone doesn't get it right.

Actually, I sincerely apologize for that. I was in a horrible mood. I shouldn't post when I'm like that... but either way, fair warning, that comic is kind of... secondary to the book. I wouldn't trust it as much for an accurate telling or image.

Also, excellent points on Solomon, Fhajad, and Soren.

 

[mikespoff]

Another series from my favourite Escapist contributor? That's like an "Anne-Hathaway-serving-me-cake-on-a-speedboat" thing, right there.

 

[Horben]

Dark and powerful force? Not quite. Just nerdrage.

 

[Horben]

Dude, come on. They're the enemy because they're trying to assimilate the human race. Violently! They're not bad because they're diverse. That it's many races against one race is irrelevant. They're the bad guys because they're trying to subjugate the humans- "us", while missing the actual threat to the known galaxy. It has nothing to do with skinheads; the defense of the world is composed of people from all nations. How could Halo have racist undertones when the entire world gets together to defend itself against the Covenant, and the flood?

At least try to get your opinions right. This was bad.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Congrats on the show. I think we're all envious of people that can get screen time just to vent their spleen without having to be part of the Fox "opinion" group. Same congrats for getting so many people POed within 5 minutes.

To answer you end question, most of us on some lower level know that the bad guys are diverse due to our own ADD and intollerance at shooting at the same thing all day and the good guys are similar becase of the same reason real armies are similar: we need purely visual recognition to know who to shoot. There might be somthing accidental to it, but it's up there with damsels in distress as something that persists more to our own lack of effort to break from it than from any serious intent. Maybe people should. I don't know. I'm not a Halo fan so I can't really commment on specifics.

 

[Chaos-Spider]

Does this mean that we'll finally get that semi-coherent treatise about the patriarchial dynamics present in the Bearenstien bears that we were offered in one of the episodes of Escape to the movies. I can't remember what episode exactly but I know it existed.

 

[Therealgijoe]

I really don't think Bungie was trying to play the Neo Nazi, master race versus team-of-several-different-people's-coming-together card. Especially since in the first 4 Halo shooters whenever you had people following you, there was always an Australian, a Latino, a black guy, a white guy, and I think some Hispanic chick. Granted, they all spoke English, but I bet the French heard them all speak French, and the Germans heard them all speak German, etc. And in the 3rd one, Master Chief learned to put aside his differences and made friends with all the elites (awwwwwwwwww).

And even Noble Team had ethnic diversity. There were 3 Slavic? people, one of which was also Oriental. It's just easier to show racial diversity when all the aliens are way different, or does Movie Bob only judge sentient beings by the way they look?

I think Movie Bob is just going Glen Beck on us and taking one small detail, and making conspiracies with it. Pretty soon He'll have a chalkboard on his new show.

 

[GEAR BOSS]

Uh, Moviebob, no offense, but whole argument is sort of based on coincidence. The Covenant, like you said, is a slave army. Every race was forced to give blind faith to the Profits. Also, the reason why the Spartans look similar and don't seem to talk much has more to do with the structure of the previous Halo games then who the Spartans are, IMO. Halo: Reach is one of the few games in the Halo series to take elements from the entire cannon, from Dr. Halsey to the inaction of a Winter Contingency. Further more, I've noticed lately that he seems to have more bias in his videos when he talks about games that he personal likes or dislikes. I noticed this a lot when he did his Metroid: Other M video. I'm trying to bash Moviebob or anything, but I liked it when he talks more about concepts then about specific games. But hey, it's just my opinion.

 

[Bruce Edwards]

I had a feeling that Bob, doing this on Halo, would put forward an intellectually dishonest devils-advocate rant that would serve to piss off many and generate traffic. Because he dislikes Halo and likes pageviews.

... and I fell for it. So, yeah, uh, well done again Moviebob.

On a side note: Does Godwins law apply to moviebob articles?

 

[silverdragon9]

I think you're way of base here. firstly the unsc has shown itself to be racially and culturally diverse; obviously int the expanded universe, though still noticeably in the games. The unsc seems homogeneous because well, it is. As in a blending of many different things into a single mass. Such as new york city, where playing basketball with your friends, going out for Indian food, then going home to drink Heineken and watch anime isn't the slightest bit unusual. secondly while humans are the protagonists both the games and the E.U. repeatedly point out that humans can be truly horrible. Thirdly the quasi fascist under tones seem a hell of a lot closer to to the state versus federal argument of the American civil war. or to make a reference to another scifi, alliance vs brown coat in firefly. Albeit with much darker morality on both sides in the halo universe. And finally i doubt Bungie meant anything by it; they were just trying to make a good story.

 

[shadowyoasis]

I want to say first that I love movie bob. But this video didn't just attempt to jump the shark, it attempted a triple spinning backflip while doing it. I understand your not aware of the halo lore and that you in fact hate the game. But master race vs diverse race? Kinda reaching there.

As far as the blue eyes thing this is how I took it:
They just pumped soldier X full of nanobots so now he's part machine. How do we show this? blue or green glowing eyes to signify electronics. Green is usually considered evil(damn necrons) and is generally harder to do because of green-screen effect. So we go with blue, which also has a significance of being good. That is somewhat part of the whole master race thing however. Ever notice that in the first two fables the good/pure to the max will turn your eyes blue and your hair blonde? DBZ anyone?

Concept of blue eyes and golden hair being "good" precedes the master race, we just impose that upon that image because of one crazy bastard. Its also the reason why anything with a swastika is generally viewed is bad, but its heavily dominant as a symbol of good in Asian culture. Did you know it was also at one point a common symbol used by special divisions of the US military?

 

[ThePants]

GREAT first episode, Bob!

But....Now I'm going to think of Halo in the space-nazi-undertoned way you talked about it. Halo will never be the same for me. I don't even own it, or an XBox for that matter, and I play it at friends houses very little.

 

[Traun]

This is what happens when Movie Bob talks about Halo or FPS games in general. Now Bob is an intelligent guy and he has proved it a lot of times, however when he talks about the two subjects mentioned in the last sentence you can see a mix of bias and a bunch of wrong facts or misunderstandings(not to say ignorance). I am going to watch this with interest, as I do MovieBoB and TGO, however Bob, please stay away from FPS games, please? They aren't your strong point.

If it's any comfort, he posted a video on GameOverthinker about how the FPS genre is destroying all that is good in the world.

Yes...I noticed...afterwards. I just hope that this kills the topic and he never speak of FPS games.

I would be curious to see him talk about other genres, but honestly - he is better sitting in his comfort zone, he wants to go in-depth about things he doesn't understand( or really care about) which makes him look pseudo-intellectual on those occasions that he does.

Bob, if you are reading this (and we know you are reading these forums), nothing personal, we love ya'.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Woohoo I'm not the only one who thought the humans in Halo were the boring bunch of guys ever created and thought the Covenent were the complete opposite. Seriously who likes listening to a bunch of thick headed, "badasses"(a word thrown around way too much nowadays) yelling out military jargon and suicide worthy one liners. Then you have the Covenent with the Elites and their deep spiritual beliefs and warrior code, the Grunts and their general comedy, the Brutes and their pack behaviour and animalistic strength determined pecking order. Way more interesting than the humans and their brown and black uniforms, guns, ships and personlities.