The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[0megaZer0]

that... was fucking retarded Bob. I'm disappointed in you.

We have this epic, complex (ok, maybe not THAT complex...) storyline about intergalactic war, a hierarchy of religious nutjobs crusading across the universe, enslaving entire planets and causing mass destruction and mayhem as they go, our race set to be next on the list, and, in all probability the last hope of stopping these maniacs from total universal conquest---and all you can see with your bob-squint-o-vision is "eww, "BAD" aliens are diverse, and the "good" people in the military all look the same... THE CREATORS MUST BE RACIST CONFORMIST PRICKS!!"

*sigh* I keep wanting to think that you're better than this, but you keep proving me wrong...

 

[silverdragon9]

EU doesn't matter.
Reach should have made that clear when it contradicted its own source material.

nope turns out they didn't
http://www.bungie.net/projects/reach/article.aspx?ucc=personnel&cid=24040

 

[Turbo_Destructor]

I like MovieBob and everything - he does great movie reviews. But I thought most of what he said the Covenant and Halo, while only his opinion, was kind of nonsense.

While yes the characters were fairly stereotyped, that obviously wasn't the salient point of the video. And While, yes maybe society does still view variety with a subconsciously negative feeling, I do not think this applies to Halo at all. The Covenant are a 'variety' because it makes them more interesting on 2 levels. One is the mythos, they are more interesting to learn about, from the noble elites to the worm-like Lekgolo (Hunters).

The other level is gameplay: having a variety of enemies makes the game a lot more interesting for the player. Who the hell would prefer a game where there were ONLY elites, or ONLY jackals. Sure it might be amusing for a while, but the lack of variety would make the game get boring fairly quickly. The varied enemies force the player to adopt different strategies for each species (e.g. precision weapons for grunts, anti-shield weaponry for elites etc.), and when several come at you at once, it keeps you on your toes (at least on the higher difficulty settings).

And I suppose you could add another level in that they're more interesting to look at (before they start shooting at you).

Having said all of that, that bit where the Spartan's eyes turn blue was definitely an ill-advised little symbol. Like, what were they thinking?

 

[clockout]

Well at least he did a great job at getting peoples panties in a bunch.

 

[shadowyoasis]

The soldier is also a clean shaven "skin head".
As opposed to the typical military crew cut or even the electric razor cut.

Yes and the borg and robocop had long flowing hair. Completely hairless is also a common trait in cyborgs. For that matter most cyborgs in C&C were also completely hairless, only kane(if you could consider him a cyborg) had a goatee.

*I decided to go watch a hi-def version of the "how to make a spartan video". He starts out with a crew cut going into the installation and is then shaved(something thats actually common for medical procedures is that they shave the area). Also he starts out with blue eyes, its hard to tell because he has dark grey-blue eyes. But its blue eyes. They just suddenly gain a glow which is also slightly purple-ish not blue.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Interesting video. Looking forward to seeing if anything good comes of this. I hardly ever agree with his movie reviews anymore but I've enjoyed The Game Overthinker and this appears to be quite similar to that so we shall see.

 

[Krion_Vark]

some food for thought

How about this as some food for thought. The people on Reach have no definitive race all they have is a common Language so that they can communicate with each other. Which in the case of Reach is Hungarian. If you pay attention to facial features the supposed Hispanic Jorge is not Hispanic. All he does is have darker skin that can be attributed to many different things. You say that they pushed the boundaries with this game? How about this was the only game that they could really push the boundaries. Reach was the first game that didn't star a single character. The other games stared a SPECIFIC person. Halo 1-3 Master Chief. ODST a Space Marine. Reach any type of person you wanted to make with a supporting cast of different people. In the end Reach is a straight story without any deviance from the story but unless you are alone you can pretty much be a pansy who sits back and does nothing or you can be the badass up front.

 

[TomLikesGuitar]

Combat Evolved?

This week MovieBob rants about Halo.

Watch Video

I love how he rants about how honestly cool and in depth the story really is, but then pretends like he thinks its bad.

Congratulations MovieBob, you're just as brainwashed about the "need" to hate on Halo as the rest of the world.

So if he thinks the characters lack depth he must be brainwashed? I haven't played Reach but the characters he's describing are cliche and uninspired (although I guess I shouldn't take his word for it)

No Reach WAS pretty lame... The characters were overdeveloped IMO, but, just like ODST, there's literally 0 investment in any of the characters.

The overall story is pretty cool though as far as I'm concerned... who cares that it follows the basic sci-fi race formula?

 

[Timbydude]

Bob, your shows are usually entertaining, but this was just too much of a blind leap. I sort of get the feeling that you wanted to start off with a bang by saying something to which you knew people would react.

I don't really think anyone looks at the Covenant while playing Halo and thinks, even subconsciously, that "they're bad because they're diverse".

The Covenant are diverse because it's not fun to shoot the same character model over and over again. Gamers demand a little more, and thus in pretty much every game, the enemies end up as a more diverse group than the players.

Look at any given RPG. Your party consists of maybe 3-4 people at a time, and there you are killing hordes of different creatures. Sure, they're not all united under one banner, but enemy diversity is just inherent to gaming as a whole.

Plus, the blue-eyes thing? That was just too much of a stretch, though you seemed to realize that as well.

Most of all, though, I'm just having trouble seeing how you look at the very diverse members of Noble Team and call them "faceless". They're cliched characters, sure, but I'm pretty sure each one has a different accent of some sort. They're as diverse as humans get, and arguably more diverse than the Covenant you're fighting.

 

[Keepitclean]

He sounds like my English teacher. Bob, I don't think Bungie thought about it this much.

 

[Tears of Blood]

Bob,

Gotta' tell ya', I love your movie reviews.

That said, I HATE it when you talk about games, because you're a huge Nintendo fanboy who thinks the Wii is dominating the market by a landslide, but also a retro gamer who tends to favor the older games of the previous generations, and tends to forsake the amazing games that are out this generation.

I'm not saying you're a bad guy, but your opinions on games seem to lack a certain amount of validity, and this latests episode on the Halo series kinda' cements that view I have. I know you weren't accusing Bungie of being some sort of terrible people who want to propagate the "master race," but you certainly made it seem that way, and you're looking way deeper into the game's themes and story than intended. I am not saying the games are shallow, just that you sound more like a "conspiracy theorist," rather than a "concerned citizen."

It would be like if I were to analyze the Mario games, and with the theme of eating plants and fungus with varying effects depending on what specific sort was intended to be a theme about drugs and the trips associated with them.

Oh yes, and this felt more to me like crazy sensationalism. Like I was watching an episode of Glenn Beck's show, rather than a real analysis of what was presented to us.

 

[The Journey]

I'm liking this. This is good, very good.

Well done Bob and thank you Escapist.

 

[beefpelican]

Has it crossed bobs mind that maybe their isn't some big ugly subtext and maybe the reason for all the different creeds and colours of the enemies is to give you more variation in the things you shoot at?

Agreed. At no point is their diversity ever a reason for their attack on the humans. Nor are they a disorganized destructive horde. They're just aliens of a bunch of different species attacking the humans. The humans are obviously less diverse than the aliens because there is only one species of humans doing the defending. It is silly to demand any sort of interspecies platoon of the side that just made first contact with aliens.

 

[WarpZone]

I'm pretty sure that's the conclusion the Marketing Suits were hoping you'd draw. Only, they were hoping you or someone else would draw attention to it as soon as the advertisement dropped, so there would be a big juicy controversy and public outcry against the game, ideally about two weeks before the release date. It's GTA and its contemporaries all over again.

The only problem is, the symbolism was too subtle this time. Critics didn't call 'em on it, until you, and by now the game's first-week sales have long since dried up, so any controversy at this point would be pointless. Because it's too late for a dialogue to serve the developer's interests, so they won't bother calling attention to it by publicly apologizing.

That's what I'd be saying if it weren't friggin' HALO. Microsoft doesn't need any controversy in order to push this game; everyone already knows what HALO is. Probably just an honest mistake lol.

(It would be funny if it were a marketing ploy and it backfired, say by powerful special interests deciding that the ad is racist and that Microsoft has deep pockets, but I say that because I hate advertisers, not Microsoft.)

 

[Radioactive Bob]

Has it crossed bobs mind that maybe their isn't some big ugly subtext and maybe the reason for all the different creeds and colours of the enemies is to give you more variation in the things you shoot at?

I was thinking the same thing. The Halo games have always been good about bright colors, which is nice compared to the drab colors most games have today, so i don't think there's any deep context to all that. Mind you, i do love digging deep into stories and context, i just don't think Halo was made to be nitpicked. It definitely places polish and effeciency over anything else, so while the story, to me, has had it's ups and downs, i don't think Bungie was going for the whole "master race is good, color is bad" vibe.

I'm thinking the marine's eyes just turned blue because it's Bungie's main color for many things.

However i am looking forward to this show, and im interested to see Bob take a look into many interesting topics, so despite me criticism right above, i mean no foul, just my opinion as a Halo fan.

 

[Biscotti187]

woah woah woah did i miss something big where did those clips of the Spartan bio-augmentation come from?

 

[shadowyoasis]

Plus, the blue-eyes thing? That was just too much of a stretch, though you seemed to realize that as well.

I'm going to repeat myself here cause I said it earlier. But I rewatched the "a spartan in the making" video. The spartan in the video had blue eyes before hand, they change to a very light purple, they also have a slight glow.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Bob, may I call you Bob?

I think this new venture has started out as a failure, my friend.

The faces are cool...but they get repetitive, and personally, and I AM one to analyze things to death, but couldn't you have picked something with a bit more meat on it than fekkin Halo? Really man. You're ragging on Halo? One of the most over-done things EVAR!? Talk about how gaming violence is being challenged right now, and then Black Ops shows a commercial with kids blowing each other up! The commercial is awesome, but I find that it came at the worst possible time! You're better than Halo!

I'm meh on the series at best, and Reach severely made me not want to trust Bungie again...despite jetpacks, but I have a feeling a lot of the stuff you're talking about it merely just coincidence or taken out of context. It makes you sound...kinda like Glen Beck, or another political guy with a talk show that merely just spouts what he considers facts.

So what if the guy's got blue eyes? He wasn't blond. Guy in that vid is Carter, he's got brown hair. It's just to show he's 'supercharged', or whatever. If you were a real geek, shouldn't you have realized, as I did, that the whole eyes going blue means you have superpowers thing seemed oddly reminiscent of FF7 and SOLDIERS? When I first saw that commercial, I did a double take, and HAD to make sure the remake of FF7 (or another spin off game) wasn't here without my noticing.

Bottom line, I am VERY disappointed sir. VERY, VERY disappointed. I've been with you since Game Overthinker 5. :[

 

[Brockyman]

WAAAAY over-thinking things there Bob... seriously...