The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[Treblaine]

Of course, it's completely impossible that any of that design was created that way for gameplay purposes. Because, you know, it totally wouldn't make any kind of sense for an enemy force with several levels of strength (which is incidentally more interesting to play against) to make each of their types instantly recognizable even in the midst of frenetic combat. Except that it would, and it would require that each enemy type look, sound, and move in extremely different ways, so that the player could say things like "Aha, I can see that this enemy is a grunt, and therefore little threat. I will instead focus my attention on the hunter, who is much more dangerous and likely to kill me." The ability to make judgements of that kind is vital to gameplay and has been around since people started to notice that the mushroom and the turtle did different things if you jumped on them.

Furthermore, it is clearly nonsensical that the spartans (sorry, SPARTANs) all look the same because they grew out of a design for a single character. Master chief needed to do two things design-wise:

1) He needed to look more powerful than a regular human. Thats easy, he's in power armor. The beckground stuff exists to make the player feel empowered and explain that whole "protagonist invicibility" stuff and gameplay mechanics like the shields.

2) As the protagonist of a first person shooter, he needed to be relatively faceless so that the player could more easily project onto him. This has been a consistent design element throughout the history of FPSs and exists because a first-person viewpoint is the most immersive.

"Oh wait, shit" says Bungee. "Now that we've branded such a successful character based around those two principles, we suddenly have to make a game where there's tons of those guys? I guess we'd better diversify their appearance a bit. Except wait, we can't make them crazy different, because A: that would ruin the instantly recognizable 'this is a spartan' branding we have, and B: could potentially confuse players in the midst of the game. In the middle of a hectic firefight a player has to be able to instantly tell the difference between friend and foe, especially since we've made a game so unforgiving that a split second hesitation could mean the difference between getting a beamsword shoved up your ass or not."

Also, its squad-based. Which basically just reinforces everything I just said. Now to balance out my unusually reasonable internet argument - Bob, you're a massive fucking toolbag, and I'm pretty sure they gave you a second, more controversial video is because you troll well enough to significantly increase siteviews. Which I guess is working, so congratulations. Hopefully this means your movie reviews will be a bit less ranty and stupid now and more like the informative ones you used to do.

Because each comment doesn't have a "Thumb Up" button:

Bravo! Encore! Encore!

I hope moviebob reads you comment... and if he reads it I hope he REALLY reads it, rather than just skimming over it to try to find holes in your argument (there appear none) rather than simply applying it to his own case and seeing how unreasonable he has been.

If he did that then maybe his next video won't be such a waste of time.

 

[OriginalityImpaired]

You're right, I never noticed that in the slightest,
Then again, I try not to put much thought into the Halo series,
Sure it's a rich universe with alot of great and iconic races/characters,
But Bungie has never really done anything with them, and it's intensely shallow overrall,
I just stick to the Multiplayer and pretend everything else doesn't exist

 

[thublihnk]

Good to know that Bob is right out of the gates provoking the fanboys with GASP, an argument that actually makes sense. And I've noticed at least once in this comment thread he's gotten the 'Professional Troll' line, as well as the 'I'LL NEVAR WATCH ANYTHING YOU EVER DO'.

What I like about good sir Bob is not only that he will, every few months, stir the pot a little--get people good and pissed off about whatever video. It's always an entertaining show for us cooler heads. But I can't think of a single one that didn't come from a very much legitimate and honest point of view. Good on yeh, Bob. Good on yeh.

EDIT: A serious note, for you folks screaming at Bob. You have a lot to learn about analysis and critical thinking about video games, and Art in general. Even if you do think there are gaping holes in the argument Bob presents, it's a valid point to be brought to attention. Even if, for example, the Elites join the Humans during Halo 3 and beat the Covenant (I hear that's what happened, I was never able to finish that game) that doesn't mean the arguments presented are invalid, it means maybe there's a different conclusion to be reached. Say, that using a homogenized 'Master Race' can only get you so far, that we should embrace diversity to achieve our goals.

I guess what I'm saying is that you can disagree with Bob without declaring him or his arguments worthless, and you can find a way to discuss this without turning it into a You Vs. Bob narrative. And guys, we really need to. We should be discussing the medium of video games as an art form and giving it the respect it deserves, not screaming at each other about how the Master Chief isn't racist.

I have watched and mostly liked everything he has done up to this point, as far as movie reviews and the game overthinker goes. I even voted to make him a regular feature on screwattack. Even when I didn't agree with him, or when he attacked fans of different games to some extent, I still managed to enjoy his videos. This argument of his is completely off base, and he stretches tiny little out of context points so far, that they have no value whatsoever. The facts are irrelevant to his argument. He openly dislikes halo, and he seems to be using this video to argue any point he sees fit without regards to facts, to make wild accusations that could have real world consequences. The people that attack our industry on a regular basis use arguments like this to their advantage. So yes, as far as "The Big Picture" goes, I will not be watching any more of them. He openly states that he has been given the freedom to talk about whatever he wants, however he wants. And his first video is him discussing something with extreme bias and no regard to facts. And he is getting paid. Therefore "The Big Picture"=Professional Trollery. I will continue to watch Game Overthinker, but if these kind of thought processes affect that show, I will stop watching it too.

You are better than this Bob.

K, no. His points about the overarching themes of Halo are very much valid, even if you don't agree with them. There is no 100% absolute truth about the interpretation of any art.

Seriously, guys, when we have discussions like these we need to start talking like legitimate appreciators of the arts, not just raging fanboys because THAT is what 'people who attack our industry' can really use to their advantage.

 

[ShadowStar42]

Bob, if you pulled your head out of your ass and thought about it like you seem to be trying to indicate you are, you'd notice that the Spartan program IS intended as the evil, oppressive, over the top militaristic side of humanity in the future war against the covenant armada.

Humanity had to design a 'master race' as you so painstakingly put it, because they were getting their asses whipped. The diversity present in the human race was getting obliterated by the multi-planetary slave army - so the UNSC made their own. Conscripts, stolen babies, genetically engineered for physical perfection and practically brainwashed in their mental programming. They only exist because of the war, they are humanity's dirty little secret.

This is funny since I've never played any of the Halo games and only read one of the books because a friend recommended it (and it was actually pretty good), but for someone so fervent in attacking someone for not knowing about Halo I feel this has to be mentioned. The Spartan program started before humanity ever had alien contact, they were being designed as a master race to kill other humans, that aliens attacked soon after was completely coincidental.

 

[Treblaine]

When chizzled down to the bone, they a a group of people with a vision that they feel strongly about, not evil.

Yah that always perplexed me, is true evil pursuing a goal unpopular with modern society or is it doing something wrong and you think its wrong but you do it anyway? If its the second one then technically the Nazi's weren't evil.

In my opinion, someone who is true evil would be a person who delebrately causes pain and suffering with no reasons or regrets. By this standard the Nazis are not true evil, they religiously believed in the master race and wanted to perfect it. They had a reason for what they did, not a justafieable one but a reason none the less. This makes them and their actions "Vile".

Evil would have to be a person who is on the same page as Satan.
------
Basically:
Bad with out cause = Evil
Bad with Cause = Vile

Well the upper echelon were certainly evil since they were the ones that concocted the lies that millions of Germans believed justified (only vaguely) all of their horrendous acts.

They deserved to hang. But I don't think ever soldier who fought for Germany (Nazi by definition of being in Armed forces) in WWII was "evil" I think we can all agree with you to that extent.

But surely the SS Death Squads who wore out their rifles with the numbers of Jews, Gypsies and Dissidents they executed. So many thousands murdered. They certainly were evil, the propaganda alone was not enough to do that. The SS chose those from their society who had an unjustifiable hatred, and similar with Imperial Japan.

 

[OriginalityImpaired]

Of course, it's completely impossible that any of that design was created that way for gameplay purposes. Because, you know, it totally wouldn't make any kind of sense for an enemy force with several levels of strength (which is incidentally more interesting to play against) to make each of their types instantly recognizable even in the midst of frenetic combat. Except that it would, and it would require that each enemy type look, sound, and move in extremely different ways, so that the player could say things like "Aha, I can see that this enemy is a grunt, and therefore little threat. I will instead focus my attention on the hunter, who is much more dangerous and likely to kill me." The ability to make judgements of that kind is vital to gameplay and has been around since people started to notice that the mushroom and the turtle did different things if you jumped on them.

Furthermore, it is clearly nonsensical that the spartans (sorry, SPARTANs) all look the same because they grew out of a design for a single character. Master chief needed to do two things design-wise:

1) He needed to look more powerful than a regular human. Thats easy, he's in power armor. The beckground stuff exists to make the player feel empowered and explain that whole "protagonist invicibility" stuff and gameplay mechanics like the shields.

2) As the protagonist of a first person shooter, he needed to be relatively faceless so that the player could more easily project onto him. This has been a consistent design element throughout the history of FPSs and exists because a first-person viewpoint is the most immersive.

"Oh wait, shit" says Bungee. "Now that we've branded such a successful character based around those two principles, we suddenly have to make a game where there's tons of those guys? I guess we'd better diversify their appearance a bit. Except wait, we can't make them crazy different, because A: that would ruin the instantly recognizable 'this is a spartan' branding we have, and B: could potentially confuse players in the midst of the game. In the middle of a hectic firefight a player has to be able to instantly tell the difference between friend and foe, especially since we've made a game so unforgiving that a split second hesitation could mean the difference between getting a beamsword shoved up your ass or not."

Also, its squad-based. Which basically just reinforces everything I just said. Now to balance out my unusually reasonable internet argument - Bob, you're a massive fucking toolbag, and I'm pretty sure they gave you a second, more controversial video is because you troll well enough to significantly increase siteviews. Which I guess is working, so congratulations. Hopefully this means your movie reviews will be a bit less ranty and stupid now and more like the informative ones you used to do.

You didn't destroy his arguement, you missed the point entirely,
He stated multiple times in this entire video that this was likely all a coincidence and unintentional,
This was just him idling thinking about philisophy and not him bashing anything or anyone in any way shape or form,
He acknowledged this, outloud I believe rather than just inferring,
He was utterly unconfrontational and didn't actively state he believed it was true, just a possibility and something interesting he wanted to share with people,
Thus your entire "hah I beat Bob" trip was wasted, irrelevant, and childish,
And didn't conflict with his theory in the slightest,
*sigh*

 

[ShadowStar42]

How is the multiple race enemy system similar to fashism (can't spell sorry)?
They have different character models to stop them from just having different armour to differentiate between the cannonfodder, officers, heavy weapons, snipers and weird monkey shock troops.

A better way to point it out in fiction would be with the Lord of the Rings, which was exactly what Bob is saying Halo seems like, but from the other angle. Basically the idea is that in World War II you had pluralism on the good guys side, and homogeny on the bad guys (at least from the winner's perspective). That obviously an over simplification (I mean the Japanese were pretty different than the Germans after all) but it's the point Tolkien was trying to make that a lot of different people working together (the Fellowship) are stronger that a single large un-diverse group (the Orcs)

 

[Bruce Edwards]

Of course, it's completely impossible that any of that design was created that way for gameplay purposes. Because, you know, it totally wouldn't make any kind of sense for an enemy force with several levels of strength (which is incidentally more interesting to play against) to make each of their types instantly recognizable even in the midst of frenetic combat. Except that it would, and it would require that each enemy type look, sound, and move in extremely different ways, so that the player could say things like "Aha, I can see that this enemy is a grunt, and therefore little threat. I will instead focus my attention on the hunter, who is much more dangerous and likely to kill me." The ability to make judgements of that kind is vital to gameplay and has been around since people started to notice that the mushroom and the turtle did different things if you jumped on them.

Furthermore, it is clearly nonsensical that the spartans (sorry, SPARTANs) all look the same because they grew out of a design for a single character. Master chief needed to do two things design-wise:

1) He needed to look more powerful than a regular human. Thats easy, he's in power armor. The beckground stuff exists to make the player feel empowered and explain that whole "protagonist invicibility" stuff and gameplay mechanics like the shields.

2) As the protagonist of a first person shooter, he needed to be relatively faceless so that the player could more easily project onto him. This has been a consistent design element throughout the history of FPSs and exists because a first-person viewpoint is the most immersive.

"Oh wait, shit" says Bungee. "Now that we've branded such a successful character based around those two principles, we suddenly have to make a game where there's tons of those guys? I guess we'd better diversify their appearance a bit. Except wait, we can't make them crazy different, because A: that would ruin the instantly recognizable 'this is a spartan' branding we have, and B: could potentially confuse players in the midst of the game. In the middle of a hectic firefight a player has to be able to instantly tell the difference between friend and foe, especially since we've made a game so unforgiving that a split second hesitation could mean the difference between getting a beamsword shoved up your ass or not."

Also, its squad-based. Which basically just reinforces everything I just said. Now to balance out my unusually reasonable internet argument - Bob, you're a massive fucking toolbag, and I'm pretty sure they gave you a second, more controversial video is because you troll well enough to significantly increase siteviews. Which I guess is working, so congratulations. Hopefully this means your movie reviews will be a bit less ranty and stupid now and more like the informative ones you used to do.

Sir, this post is made of win, and articulates my thoughts on the matter better than I could express myself.

You hereby receive + 1 awesomeness points.

 

[PrinceofPersia]

That is some deep and good questions Bob. I honestly have no idea, maybe it was a subconscious thought that sprung up in Bungies designers. All I know is I stopped playing the Halo series midway through 2, with some OST action cause I thought it would be a change of pace; Silly me. Anyway nice touch wish I had a soapbox to get on and speak to the gaming community.

 

[hyperpulsehammer]

Funny. I thought the absolute opposite about Noble Team. I thought they were too much like POWER RANGERS, and I thought the color coded armor made no sense. Frankly, I thought the color coded armor on the Covenant barely made any sense, since at least some part of the Covenant understands the usefulness of stealth, since they have cloaking technology, but they utterly refuse to use camouflage.

Halo is a military shooter. It's hard to work within those confines without emphasizing homogeneity, as chain of command and the subordination of individuality is actively encouraged within all militaries today.

But I get what Bob is saying, and I think part of the reason for the themes involved is because Bungie chose to write about a conflict where the preponderance of force lay with the other side; a fight for survival, in other words. In a fight for survival, you look to yourself first, then your family, then your friends and neighbors, etc, etc, etc. It is by human nature very tribal. Had the Human-Covenant war been a pitched battle, I think there may have been more opportunity for play in terms of racial variety.

And in deference to the Halo series, it isn't just a two sided conflict. There's also the Flood, who are even MORE hideously homogeneous than humans, and late in the war, various races defect to the human side.

 

[Kermi]

Bob, if you pulled your head out of your ass and thought about it like you seem to be trying to indicate you are, you'd notice that the Spartan program IS intended as the evil, oppressive, over the top militaristic side of humanity in the future war against the covenant armada.

Humanity had to design a 'master race' as you so painstakingly put it, because they were getting their asses whipped. The diversity present in the human race was getting obliterated by the multi-planetary slave army - so the UNSC made their own. Conscripts, stolen babies, genetically engineered for physical perfection and practically brainwashed in their mental programming. They only exist because of the war, they are humanity's dirty little secret.

This is funny since I've never played any of the Halo games and only read one of the books because a friend recommended it (and it was actually pretty good), but for someone so fervent in attacking someone for not knowing about Halo I feel this has to be mentioned. The Spartan program started before humanity ever had alien contact, they were being designed as a master race to kill other humans, that aliens attacked soon after was completely coincidental.

The original Spartan-I and Spartan-II soldiers were an experiment, deployed secretly to combat rebels and insurgents. More proof of my point if you ask me. The Spartan-II and Spartan-III project didn't gain official support until the Covenant-Human war, because that's when they became necessary.

In any case, book canon is rubbish. Although it's all extrapolated from Bungie's offical story bible they're not signed off on by anyone at Bungie, so the games are the only 'official' story if you ask me.

 

[Kermi]

EEven if, for example, the Elites join the Humans during Halo 3 and beat the Covenant (I hear that's what happened, I was never able to finish that game)

Apparently what you meant to say was "never played it at all". The Elites have left the covenant and are fighting alongside humans from the very start of Halo 3, the Arbiter having discovered how full of shit the Covenant is during Halo 2.

I knew the elites split off during Halo 2, I just didn't know if they beat the Covenant. Key words there. My argument is still valid. nub.

Yeah, I realised that about a minute after posting it and couldn't be arsed fixing it. Seriously, the game was promoted with the tagline "Finish the fight". What'd you think happened?

I know, I know, you only heard that that's what happened. I get it. You couldn't finish the game so you haven't seen it. Sheesh.

 

[Kermi]

You didn't destroy his arguement, you missed the point entirely,
He stated multiple times in this entire video that this was likely all a coincidence and unintentional,
This was just him idling thinking about philisophy and not him bashing anything or anyone in any way shape or form,
He acknowledged this, outloud I believe rather than just inferring,
He was utterly unconfrontational and didn't actively state he believed it was true, just a possibility and something interesting he wanted to share with people,
Thus your entire "hah I beat Bob" trip was wasted, irrelevant, and childish,
And didn't conflict with his theory in the slightest,
*sigh*

You are entirely right - he used Halo as an example of unintentional fascism and then used his strawman to propel himself into the query of why these concepts are so ingrained that we don't even really notice them.

Except then he completely failed to go anywhere with his argument and left us hanging with his amatuerish misrepresentation of the Halo story to dwell on. Maybe if he'd made some sort of point instead of ripping on Halo for five minutes then proceeding to not follow through on the point he was making we wouldn't be suffering through this conversational equivalent of blue balls.

 

[coakroach]

Wow, I knew Moviebob ranting about Halo would press my nerd rage button but that was incredible.
Yeah the Halo games are totally anti diversity, thats why in the second game you fight AS a member of the covenant alongside other races of the covenant that come to realize that they are blindly following a suicide cult, and should think for themselves.
The humans in Halo only finally defeat the covenant and the flood after their quasi-fascist military stronghold is destroyed in vain and they start working with the Arbiter.
Emphasis on that point actually: Reach FALLS. The Spartans are wiped OUT. Even Master Chief is 'sacrificed' in the end. The black guy works with the aliens who are working with the other aliens to stop aliens that want to glass the galaxy in the name of religious enlightenment.
Heck, with a title like Halo wouldnt you be more inclined to believe that the core theme, if any, would be something to do with the dangers of zealotry in religion?
Isn't it more concerning that games like Modern Warfare depict real countries like Russia as ultranationalist powderkegs that are gonna go tits up at some point and try to nuke the world?
Think of the multiplayer (the main reason most people play Halo games) and its Space Marines vs Aliens or other Space Marines
Not Brits vs Russians or Americans vs Arabs, Which do you honestly think is more dangerous?
Heck you want racist, try putting Azeroth under the magnifying glass

*deep cleansing breaths*

Halo's a dopey target for this kind of over-analysis, The only damaging cultural impact it has the potential of bringing is a drastic increase in tea-bagging amongst adolescent males

 

[werekitsune]

That was awful. He just went on a rant about one particular part of a popular franchise that wasnt probably intended to be taken that way, and a rant which can probably be taken apart pretty easily with logic. That's all. Just his annoying voice and dull video graphics for 5 mins. And great job making sweeping generalizations about our culture with no coherency or basis of any sort. His first series is hit and miss, so why is he getting a second one?

Edit: Whoops, I forgot that he said that what he was claiming was probably a coincidence in the video. But still, the video was ridiculous, silly and unnecessary, and I still maintain that he has no business creating videos. Someone else should do that for him.

 

[Justin Turner]

K, no. His points about the overarching themes of Halo are very much valid, even if you don't agree with them. There is no 100% absolute truth about the interpretation of any art.

Seriously, guys, when we have discussions like these we need to start talking like legitimate appreciators of the arts, not just raging fanboys because THAT is what 'people who attack our industry' can really use to their advantage.

You are welcome to think whatever you please. But before blindly agreeing with everything this guy says, you should read other posts besides mine. They are not "raging" fanboys(your fast and loose use of the term might deem them to be though). Some of the people in this forum have really done their research, and spent a lot of time disproving some of his points, and poking quite a few holes in the rest.
Discussions like this are fine, if people want to pay him to create controversy for more page hits, more power to him. I prefer a more scientific approach myself, I like facts, and interpretations of facts. I am not so big on interpretations of appearances, and interpretations that are admittedly(by him) taken out of context. If you are deeply moved by his interpretation of the arts(if you could call Halo that), and think that his discussions here are brilliant, that is fine. Enjoy. I'll be going now, and you can have all you want.

 

[ultrachicken]

Moviebob, have you played or understood halo 2 and 3s campaigns (this sentence isn't meant to be derogatory)? The covenant aren't bad guys, they're a bunch of good people who have been lied to by prophets, and are being manipulated. They think that activating the rings will bring them to heaven, when actually it will kill them all. They're simply mislead. Also, the elites join up with the humans later on, anyways.

So how many human civilians can a covenant soldier kill before he stops being "good people"?

*Sigh*

Stop taking quotes out of context. I said they were good people who were misled.

Who's taking a quote out of context?

Whether they were misled or not is irrelevant. It was still the soldiers who were pulling the trigger, not the prophets. They weren't brain washed. They weren't robots. They were thinking individuals who were given a story and they followed along.

Aren't soldiers accountable? How far does the "I was just following orders" excuse go before that soldier ceases to be a "good guy". Killing enemy soldiers in the name of a cause is one thing. Waging a genocidal war without mercy against all members of a species is something else. Did any of the covenant experience regret when they glassed entire colonies and shot down civilian transports? And even if they did, does it matter?

At some point the individual has to become accountable for their actions.
"Oh I was just following orders, I'm a good guy. I stuck my energy sword through a dozen or so unarmed women who were pleading for mercy, and shot plasma into a couple infants yesterday. But at the time I was under religious delusion. The war's over and today's a new day. So hey wanna have a coffee? On you?"

You were taking a quote out of context by refusing to acknowledge that I said they were misled.

The Elites did regret it, while the Brutes are, well, brutes, and don't regret a thing. The grunts and Jackals are like sheep when it comes to brain power, so they are easy to trick. Hunters and drones are slaves, pure and simple. The entirety of the covenant were not good people, maybe only neutral at best, but to say that each and every covenant soldier is a baby-eating maniac is stereotyping.

Also, keep in mind that the humans were not portrayed as innocent to the covenant. They were sinners, dooming the galaxy by defiling sacred relics. There is no galaxy-wide internet system in halo, so information is limited, keeping the covenant soldiers isolated within the doctrines and preachings of the prophets. They were told that the destruction and suffering of humanity would bring eternal bliss to many, many more. With no voices of dissent to combat this fallacy, the covenant accepted the prophets' as reality, because "We accept the reality with which we are presented."

The Elites did attempt to atone for their brutal murders by helping to save both humanity and the rest of the galaxy from the covenant and the flood. Saving the galaxy, I think, balances out murder.

 

[tetron]

Wow lol a ton of comments, probably nothing I can say that hasn't been said before so I'll just go ahead and put in my vote as a yay for the new Bob series. Definitely looking forward to more of this.

 

[Biscotti187]

just realized the zerg are the same way as the covenant

 

[The_awesome_one]

FUCK, I wrote such an epic writting explaning that most of that was paranoia and lack of knwoledge of the backstory and shit....going to write it some other day