The Big Picture: Combat Evolved?

[reeper4444]

1) No matter how diverse a group is, if they're trying to wipe out humanity for no good reason I think we're allowed to hate them.

2) Now gamers not only have the "games harm children" arguent against them but also the "games are racist in a way one man noticed" argument against them

 

[AgDr_ODST]

this could be good, but he neglected to mention that the humans teamed up with the Elites in Halo 2 and 3

so... the humans just really wanted ANY ally, but the other people didn't WANT to be their ally. THEY were the ones who wanted to do the "cleansing" of the human race. WE were just sitting back and defending ourselves

but yeah, Bungie isn't exactly helping themselves with the whole "blue eyes" thing. (unless it's a The Who reference )

yeah thats the thing that he seems not to get, on top of whats been said about all the different races being thier to give some variety to the player.

 

[Ampersand]

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.

Their soldiers the wear uniforms, also theres normally only like 2 or 3 or them on screen at a time and in spite of that they still have a surprising amount of diversity (they were even given names.)

not all soldiers look the same. Say that to a US military officer and he will ***** slap you back to the stone age. As i said before, soldiers mean MORE than just a guy with a gun, they have different ROLES, UNIFORMS, AND WEAPONS. All halo soldiers are just jackasses who run around shooting things with the same armor and the same gun. Just because modern warfare shows soldiers running about quick-scoping doesn't mean that's how actual war is. try that in a war zone and that will get you blown to bits. diversity in halo: combat evolved in the starship trooper look-a-likes? bull shit.

I didn't say they did now did I?
In halo they didn't give the soldiers alot of diversity, because they aren't the primary focus of the game. If i'm a 3D modeler i'm not going to break my back working on something that the player isn't even going to be looking at.
That being said there is still some diversity in the halo support characters, at the very least you have the marines and ODSTs on the battle field with you, all of whom have carry a variety of weapons including covy weapons they've found lying around.

On a seperate note, don't assume that you know more about warfare then I do. If games were an authentic recreation of what battle was really like, they wouldn't be much fun would they?

 

[Jammy Fingers]

While I have to concede that yes the good guys are samey and militaristic and the bad guys are diverse you know what is really going on: the covenant is a metaphor for jihadism. think about it the prophets want to eradicate all non-covenant species or convert them to the covenant.

but the thing is that its not the writers that are racist, it is the person who feels the need to point it out.

going back to the original point its not a matter of race it's a matter of game design. if I have an elite I know that this guy will be kinda tough and is leading this nearby group of cannon fodder(aka grunt) Oh shit a hunter these guys are tough I have to shoot him in the back though. damn sniping jackal! see what I mean diverse, easy to identify classes with a context that fits.

 

[Wrds]

Maybe this has already been said, but how do you start with a title like Combat evolved, then end on racial diversity issues.

I'm not complaining, I just find it hilarious.

 

[Risingblade]

but didn't humanity and the elites join forces later on? >.>

 

[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.

bull....shit. People hate halo because its so overdone. it stole 90% of its content from other successful literature, games, or pop culture.

flood = Half life.
shields = starcraft.
etc.

[sarcasm]Yes.

Halo stole the idea of energy shields from... Starcraft.

There were never energy shields in any Frank Herbert novel.[/sarcasm]

Hell they date way back before Dune.

Oh, and having a relatively brainless alien race that ends up converting humanity into slaves dates WAY back before Half Life in science fiction. Hell they all tend to look the same too with their brain suckers and whatnot. Just because a fictional work wasn't released during your lifetime doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Do your fantasy theme research.

Way to prove my point that people will say ANYTHING to make Halo seem bad. It's like, when someone who dislikes Halo hears that another person likes Halo they HAVE to attack it. It just shows that you are an angry internet fanboy.

technically its the starcraft community saying they stole regenerating shields. However a small animal that latches onto your body and turns you into a zombie? a couple years after a popular game was released that was revolutionary? on the same platform as Halo? before it went to consoles? seems a bit... too coincidental don't you think?

Well first off, Marathon has some concept art of Flood-like creatures, so Bungie absolutely had the aesthetic idea first. This picture is from 1995 BTW:

Second, this may not be important to you, but the basic method and speed of transformation is different. Not to mention The Flood is a hivemind.

Third, both are basically the end result of Metroids fucking Aliens, so there's two more examples of previous iterations in sci fi.

And honestly, this is just how basic sci fi works...

Individually stupid but extremely dangerous race vs. Relatively smart/ efficiently dangerous race vs. Humans (and/or other relatable race)

Aliens, Predators, and Humans
Flood, Covenant, and Humans
Zerg, Protoss, and Humans
Headcrabs, Combine, and Rebels

 

[Urazel]

Obviously I lost all credibility when this came out, but I was already a big covenant fan to begin with, they were visually much more dynamic (not to mention I preferred their quirky guns).
Grunts are kinda funny, elites are made of awesome, brutes... ok they're kind of bland, hunters are living tanks and pretty damn impressive, prophets are the religious zealots, jackals are really shifty.
Their simple species common traits give them more personality then more or less any other character in the Halo universe, except maybe Sergeant Johnson.
Oooh and the entire cast of Red vs Blue.


But I always prefer the more unusual races and creatures to bog standard humans you encounter everywhere to begin with.

Never stopped to think about the whole sub-text though, a little scary when you do.
I just liked the covenant

 

[Rassmusseum]

I love The Game Overthinker and Escape to the Movies, but I feel like you're really reaching (no pun intended) on this one, Bob.

You honestly thought that Halo Reach was about fascists fighting diversity??

Wtf??

 

[Nomanslander]

tl;dr, but as far as I remember the eye color changing is side effect of one of the chemicals in the augmentation process responsible for enhancing eyesight.

Apologies if this has been stated before.

OT: Nice to see this show, hopefully it will be good.

Another words, made up techno babble.

Who ever came up with the idea wasn't thinking about chemistry and the augmentation process of the human body, and it's effects.

They were thinking, "hey, what if his eyes turned blue, that would be kinda cool, right?" Then someone smarted told him what that would symbolically represent, and since Bungie hates Halo considering all the years they've been enslaved making this game by Microsoft, they decided to tell the world how the really feel about the series.

I kid....;P

maybe?

 

[Wolfinton]

It is interesting. I will give you that.

also saying your employers are maybe batshit loco is not the way to go. That is what got me fired from my second job.

He was joking.

Yes, we must protect Bob. Of course he was "joking". *Winks*

Seems like a nice show so far, hope he goes into detail about a lot of the subjects though.

 

[greygelgoog]

Maybe I'm over analyzing this video, but I start to wonder if Bob isn't implying that if you like Halo then you are a Nazi. Maybe it's unintentional, but really guys?

 

[Pwner]

The "face" on the at the movies are bad enough, these are awful

 

[Jammy Fingers]

If games were an authentic recreation of what battle was really like, they wouldn't be much fun would they?

well certainly not if you got all of the traumas and emotional issues from coming home and everything that happened while you were there.

 

[fleischwolke]

Very nice, I'm looking forward to the next installment. Just one thing though: The clip art heads didn't work for me at all, because I just couldn't identify the emotions they were supposed to convey at a certain moment. I'd like a return to Movie Bob's smileys, but then that's just my impression.

 

[David Bray]

I usually have big problems with you, Bob, and certainly have issue with your dislike of (the first and only) halo, but this was an excellent new feature.
While i massively disagree with you about the campaign thing (although i agree that once matchmaking was introduced single player took a dive into the cess pit), the inherant undertones of Halo are disturbing and the dullness of humanity is upsetting, if not slightly self-depricating.

I'll be watching these quite regularly me thinks.

 

[Nautical Honors Society]

That was just really terrible.

Lack of racial and cultural diversity? Are you kidding me?

The Noble team is made up of many people of many different cultural backgrounds.

This is really a matter of you looking too deeply into an issue when it really is just "Humans vs Aliens".

Also, the pop-art faces? That is just your excuse to be lazy. It isn't original.

There is absolutely no focus to this video.

It starts off critiquing Halo: Reach and then it turns into some discussion about how Bungie is promoting fascism.

No one wants to here a dude rant if there is no substantial aim to support what he is saying.

Also, as for the blue eyes thing do you really think Bungie makes the commercials? Seriously? Wow...

By the way his eyes were blue to begin with, they just became more exaggerated after he became a spartan.

No scratch that Bob this isn't you looking "too deeply" into an issue, this is just you scraping the bottom of the barrel for controversy.

 

[wammnebu]

I dont agree with the message about the undertones the Halo games have.

First of the Persians were not a slave empire, they practiced a form of almost confederations with a feudalistic heirarchy, that allowed some cultural freedom within these groups. The armies of immortals cracked down on the greeks because they were burning Zoroastrian temples in Asia minor

secondly, its not purity versus diversity, but independence versus assimilation. Yes the covenants are all different races but they are all slaves under ONE race, and treated accordingly. Thus the covenant battle is like what you and the Greeks thought it was, because you see this army of drones followed by the prophet and the subliminal message of "how would you like humanity to be enslaved and fighting in some class because of being human. All are equally slaves under the covenant, its not even a mixing thing, its a loss. because you are trading one master race for another.

good topic though besides that