The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[TomLikesGuitar]

Combat Evolved?

This week MovieBob rants about Halo.

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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.

It is called an opinion. Some people like Halo, some people don't. Get over it. I like Halo somewhat, the multiplayer can be fun sometimes and the story is okay, but I'm not going harp on people that don't like it.

Bob's video was funny and interesting, and even if I really really liked Halo, I would have still thought it.

Though I do believe that he was "reaching" with his message. But as I said before, opinion.

OMFG. I really hate all of you "opinion crusaders" on this site.

I don't understand when this happened, but people need to chill out about clarification of opinions. I mean I don't have to attach an addendum of "in my opinion" to every single freaking thing I say for reasonable people to know that I'm speaking an opinion. Hell, it's an important part of rational thought to never be 100% sure of anything, but let me edit my post here for you so you'll be happy.

"OMFG. I really hate all of you "opinion crusaders" on this site.

I don't understand when this happened, but people need to chill out about clarification of opinions IN MY OPINION. I mean I don't have to attach an addendum of "in my opinion" to every single freaking thing I say for reasonable people to know that I'm speaking an opinion IN MY OPINION. Hell, it's an important part of rational thought to never be 100% sure of anything, but let me edit my post here for you so you'll be happy IN MY OPINION."

Is that better?

 

[Warachia]

Hmmm... The BIG PICTURE has a really NARROW VIEW.

I can't fathom why a show would be called the big picture without looking at broader implications, but bob has always loved taking things completely out of their original context and demonizing them anyway.

 

[Gigaguy64]

I know it's kind of your job to over think things but would you not think that maybe the reason that the enemies in halo are alot more diverse then the player characters is because......they're the ones we're looking at all the time. It's a first person game remeber?

Also there are no good guys in halo. The spartans kill just as many humans as they do covenant, and in all of the stories surrounding the series, just as much sympathy is conveyed for the races of the covenant as for the humans, including halo 2 where you actually play as an elite.
In fact the only thing that comes close to a villain in the entire series is the flood......you know the homogenous consumption driven mass, the only aim of which is to propagate itself by means of wiping all individualism from the face the universe.

Exactly. He is reading waaay to much into this, and he's coming at it from the wrong angle. By the end of Halo 3 you're practically working with the Covenant against the Flood, whose STATED GOAL in the ark terminals is the utter homogenizing of the entire galaxy/universe.
Oh, and also: We were fighting the Covenant because their "arcane belief system" led them to try and wipe us out. I guess because they looked more diverse we should have just let them kill all the humans, right? Oh, and they were going to extinguish all life from the galaxy because their crazy prophets wanted to become gods. THAT is why we were fighting them, not because they were "the other". And honestly, DIVERSITY IN YOUR ENEMIES IS NECESSARY FOR INTERESTING GAMEPLAY. Oh, and one last point: you might want to note that for Halo 3, your team is comprised primarily of an alien, a black guy, a robot, and the love interest is an AI. If that isn't a diverse cast, I don't know what is.

but does that mean your ALLIES have to look the same? hell no.

I remember in Halo 2 i had a Hispanic man, a Woman, and SGT.Johnson on my team during several missions.
And hell you got to work with Elites in H3.

You played as a Human, generally Humans look the same in certain ways.
And they were apart of the military.
The Military uses uniforms.

 

[harv3034]

Well. I was far too sober for that conversation just now...

the scary thing is, even if you were as drunk as humanly possible PLUS high as the International Space Station, this would still kind of make sense.

NOW, I'm not sayin Bungie are racists, only that the points Bob brings up about "unindended symbolism" have some weight to them.

*hopeing to God is is unintended*


In retro-spect, it seems to me that Bob may be riding the Sparta V. Persia angle a bit too hard, but it WAS a great metaphore for the organization for the Covenant.

In further retro-spect, the point Bob made about blindly following beliefe (or whatever it was) reminded my of the Midievle (yes I know I botched the spelling) Christian knights.
Think about it; the Profits would represent the Church (with Truth as the Pope), the Arbiter would be the chosen leader, the Elites would be the actual Knights, the Grunts would be infantry/auxiliaries, the Jackles would be the archers, and the Burtes... well, they're harder to place but if I had to, I'd say they would be the Armoured Cavelry.

In fact, this idea can be continued to the Halos and the Arc. The Arc could be a reimagining of the Holy Land while the Halos could be various artifacts (the Original Cross, the Holy Grail, that cloth with Jesus's face on it...).

In a way, the entirety of Halo's (as Yahtzee called it) "impenetrable" plot can actually be explained (to a person who's never played the Halo games) by assuming that Bungie used the Crusades as insperation and as a general template for Halo.

This also leads back (somewhat tangentaly) to Bob's Nazi idea in the way that during WWII Hitler and Himler (head of the SS) financed and ordered numerous expaditions to find the Holy Grail and other occult items (I'm srs, go look it up).

(WOW that was a long rant, and one hell of a tangent.)


All in all, I thought it was pretty damn good (especially the opening about his bosses and the subject matter) and I personaly can't wait to hear more.

 

[team star pug]

halo is a game, not a movie. Im sure bungie thought "lets make the covenant include many different races to let the player shoot at something that isn't bland and brown" and most definatly not "lets make the covenant include lots of races to show that we are neo nazis"

That "there's a campaign" cat picture is a HUGE insult to many of the people who play halo. That one picture basicly sums up your opinion. "Lol, halo attracts ALL of gamings retards. I is smart for finding this." for someone who usually talks about video games and refers to himself as the "game overthinker" you really hurt me with that discriminating picture.

"His eyes turned blue, HE ARE NAZI"... (sign) I exspected better Bob.

Saying that noble six contains unoriginal characters is like saying avatar rips of dancing with wolves. Saying it in a smug voice makes you look dick, not slick.

Not the best first episode, but it does angry up the blood.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Well that was a big overthinking. In interesting one though. It's hardly an 'attack' on Halo though.

 

[Red Pawn]

Eugh. This guy is the Escapist's Glenn Beck.

 

[Gigaguy64]

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?

Then how hard would it have been to give more variation in the things you shoot WITH?

What?
Aside from the main humean wepons like the Rocket Launcher, Assult Rifel, and Shot Gun, you also got to use alien weapons like the Needler, Plasma Rifel, Fuel Rod Cannon, Plasma Gernades, and Covant Combine.
Even though some of the Alien weapons are the Equivalent of a Human weapon, it just fires energy, id say that was a good variety.

 

[team star pug]

That was awesome Bob! Now to play Halo Reach... WAIT, THERES A CAMPAIGN?!

there has always been a campaign.

 

[ZephrC]

You're making a dangerous and sadly common mistake here. You assume that fascism equals racial purity. That's simply not true, however. Fascism only requires a clearly delineated "Us" and "Them" to provide an artificial conflict between.

Certainly racism is a possible source of that delineation. On the other hand, there are other options as well. Which side of an imaginary line you were born on is a pretty common one. Also your deity of choice, or even simply how you choose to worship said deity can be used as a tool by fascists. Even within a group it can come down to something as vague as actions. How you dress, what music you like, who you like to fuck, all these things can be used to group people into "Us" and "Them".

When you're looking for signs of fascism, don't look for similarities to Hitler. Those are easy to pick out and will never gain any kind of foothold again at this point. Look for someone saying that we have to stop "Them". We need to make sacrifices to stop "Them". It's okay to do bad things to "Them". That's when you really need to start worrying.

 

[Nouw]

Right on Bob! Referring to Starship Troopers!
I'm sold.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

*Snip*

Sorry, but in your original comment to Bob, you came off as abrasive, and acted like there is an actual "need", as you said, to hate Halo.

But no, there isn't a need to hate Halo, that is a fact, because when people hate Halo, it is an opinion. If people don't like it they don't like it.

There are multiple camps. The Fanboys. The people who think it is good or alright. And finally the people that don't like or hate it.

It is common sense; there isn't some big conspiracy set against Halo to make people hate it.

 

[Zakarath]

One other thing: so what if some guy's eyes turned blue? It takes a lot more then one guy's eyes turning blue to have nazi/aryan undertones in something. From what I've seen, hardly anyone fits into the blond-hair-blue-eyes type, and I'd say you would at least need around 33% or more to fit that type before you can legitimately call Nazism. I swear, you're grasping at as many straws as Glenn Beck usually does. Oh well, that's Godwin's Law for ya.

 

[Jandau]

1. I'm happy Bob got another show. Many here seem to know him only as the "movie guy", but he's been doing gaming commentary much longer (look up Game Overthinker). So no, the "movie guy" didn't get a new show, the guy who just happens to also do the "movie show" got a new show. In addition to the two other shows he's already doing.

2. I like the overall format of the show, and I like Bob's style overall. This applies to Game Overthinker and Escape to the Movies as well. Though I do admit, I'm starting to wonder at which point the whole "slides of funny and somewhat relevant pictures with audio commentary" thing will get stale. Not yet, but not that far into the future either...

3. However, I disagree with the choice of theme for a first episode. It will piss off a lot of people who like Halo and it will not really sit well with a bunch of people who don't really like Halo but find this to be overthinking and nitpicking. I do admit, the whole "eyes turning blue" thing was creepy...

4. I always liked the Covenant better. The only Halo game I really liked was the second one, and that was mostly for the parts where I got to play the Arbiter. Whenever I had to play as Master Chief, I couldn't wait to get through those levels and get to the real star of the show.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

Interesting, but I think you dove way too deep into the subtext there. In my opinion, the whole point of the covenant is to express that unity behind the wrong cause is just as bad and dangerous as the 'traditional' badguy portrait of having faceless and emotionless enemies. I also do wonder why you called it "Combat Evolved?" if you were going to rant on the undertones of the game. Odd.

Good piece though. This kind of series will really get people talking on the forums, so I applaud you for bringing it to the site.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

While I'm glad to see another Moviebob show, since I love the other show as well, I can't say I felt this was a great start.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I certainly see how things could be read that way. I even see how you could go so far as to point this out as a collective sociological issue that we don't even notice, and that really needs to be addressed. But I think that in this one case there's one big thing to take note of here, which is that he's only analyzed this in the context of a story. That's fine and all, but a videogame is interactive story telling, and when you've got a game like Halo there's a purely mechanical issue to be addressed, specifically that you want variety in your enemies.

I can't know this for certain, but I would bet all the money in my wallet that in the case of Halo the people at Bungie were concerned primarily with the issue of having a variety of enemies for the player to fight so that it would be more interesting. They gave these different enemies different shapes and said "what story can we make up that will explain why all of these different aliens are working together?" The fallacy in analyzing Halo games like this is in the assumption that the story came first, when it's also possible that the different enemies (the game part of the game) came first and were then placed into the mold of a story that came second.

 

[jabrwock]

I like the new show, but I have to disagree on Bob's characterization.

The diversity of the "aliens" has been present throughout Bungie's games. In Marathon, the Pfhor were the "master race" alien, enslaving others and sending them into battle. They even had "enforcers" who would ignore humans, only firing on their own troops when they fled battle (they shot at the player too, but that was a plot point).

In Marathon, you even assist one of the slave races to rebel.

In Halo, the same ideas are there. Yeah, they're diverse, but only because of slavery, and (for those who joined the Covenant willingly) a common belief that humanity is the equivalent of devilspawn.

If we're going to go down the path of competing ideals, think of it less as "purity vs. diversity", but instead as "facism vs. theocracy".

 

[Warachia]

Normally I would criticize Bob for not reading into the Halo lore more, but the sad fact is he hit the nail on the head when he said that MOST halo players seem not to give to shits and a fuck about the campaign, and expanded universe.

The funniest thing is that the Covenants campaign of genocide against humanity is centered around the fact that a bunch of middle managers on a archeological dig found that it was the human race, a group largely ignored and avoided by the covenant, that was designated as the chosen heirs to a "Gods" legacy and not the crazy Camel people or the Pseudo-Predators. Read the book Contact Harvest for more.

I do appreciate the point being made however. Slave army or no the covenant do fascinate me more then humanities role in the Halo Universe, though that may be based on the unfamiliar vs familiar. Hell I want there to be an entire game centered around the Arbiter, preferably from well before or well after the current Halo Timeline.

there WAS a game centered around the arbiter, play halo 2.