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| posts about #neilblomkamp more → |
Blomkamp: Master Chief Is A Victim Of The Military-Industrial Complex |
Halo Movie: "Entirely Dead*" |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Kotaku 
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I still enjoy the games from a gameplay standpoint, it's just that they could have be so much more.
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Halo isn't the only FPS with a rich backstory, why, just look at DOOM!
Epic storyline. Truly epic.
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They've been out for years, friend-o. Your loss.
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I remember reading the Halo books, and there were a few hints at Master Chief or other spartans being baffled by doing regular things in regular clothes, but nothing as direct as the RC books.
They never really dwell much on the fact he was essentially kidnapped, drugged, and forced to fight. It was just drilled into him so hard to fight, that he doesn't know anything else. They cover it in the RC book a little, that if that's all they know, and if you take them out of that setting, they're going to feel miserable. Fish out of water and all that.
09/21/09
I've read about some female spartan who got an honorable discharge from the UNSCDF, and went and had a child on Earth.
I can't imagine what man would father a child with an 8 foot tall behemoth like that.
09/21/09
While I'm sure the novels are a good read and add a lot of depth and story to the Halo Universe, inculding them as outright canon to the games seems wrong even though I'm aware that Bungie compiled a story bible for the authors to keep things in line with canon.
Here's my point. Bungie revived Marathon with Halo:CE on the orignal Xbox and the game itself while containing many innovations that would be copied throughout the genre, contained a thin cliche story with practically no characterization of any of the characters, including MC. Halo 2 took some influence from the novels and was more story heavy but the only character with any real depth was the Arbiter. Halo 3 went lighter on the story than 2 and still contained little to no fleshing out of characters.
Bungie developed 3 Halo games, each with very, very little characterization and to me, and many others, the cliche of 'Space Marine with a mission' is the only characterization and backstory we have for Master Chief.
To be positive for a moment though, Blomkamp seems to have a good idea of what could be a great movie.
09/21/09
the fact that Halo 3:ODST is coming out and they are making Halo:Reach are perfect examples of how the story in the books really show why master chief is so important to the human race in the Halo universe.
While I cannot argue with the fact that Halo:CE was released as a revived Marathon, I can argue that Halo:CE had a storyline that kept people interested. Just this last month I finished all of the Halo novels and then played the games over again and realized that the story of Halo:CE is much more complicated than you might think.
My suggestion to you is to read the Novels then re-think about how they apply to the character of Master Chief (John, Spartan 117)
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I can tell you the backstory of alien named Billy in Space Invaders, the second from left on the third row in first screen, remember him? He had really tragic traffic accident when hi was young and can't comprehend letters due brain damage. Can you imagine all the hardships he has been through to get the he military with such disadvantage? Yet he managed to get all the way to the third row in the invasion, such persistance!
...Yeah. Absolutely pointless.
09/21/09
i think the books add more depth to characters and just various things such as technology, location, and motives. in my opinion, the story the games present isn't "weak" or "uninteresting." just very very thin. the bare bones basics of what goes on.
if they focused on the story more in the games, who knows what they might have to slack on in other parts of the games? of course, i play it mainl for the multiplayer, and the campaign, along with the books, is more than good enough for me.
i completely agree with people that think it needs more story to be classified as "great" or even "decent," but since it is what it is, i just live with it :p
09/21/09
Also at the end of Halo 2 Cortana mentions an AI presence on the Covenant homeworld when she's trying to stop the Forerunner dreadnaught from taking off that is "stronger than any covenant AI she's encountered before"(or something close to that). That is actually a fragmented Forerunner AI that you find out a fair bit more about in the book Contact Harvest (written by Joe Staten of Bungie himself) and goes on to be the AI who talks to you/helps you out a bit through the terminals in Halo 3.
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Halo III, over the course of the game, does feature a super-super-subtle (but definitely there) growth of mutual respect between the Master Chief and the Arbiter.
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Anyway, I can understand why it would seem odd that the characterisation is so different between the games and the books. There is a 'bible' that the writers go by (you already know the Marathon universe was already planned out anyway) so it's easy enough to claim things are canon. But also a game is a very different thing to a regular story (I attended a talk with some industry figures which I really should finish typing and uploading to this new blog I've got. Some very interesting stuff indeed!) in that it needs to drive the action. It would be nice to have a bit more depth there but if you consider the audience for a shooter they may not want to hear about the tortured soul that is Spartan 117; they just want to have fun jumping about and shooting things.
And, personally, I like that approach. I like just having a 'story' but if you really want to, you can go out and read up more on it; which obviously the novels do, but you've also got Halopedia and such too. It's quite interesting to see that the COGs are pretty much the 'bad guys' in the Gears of War games but that doesn't stop you having a good time blasting through the campaigns. Starship Troopers was actually a satire too, but still appealed to teenage boys wanting bug-sploding war hero action.
I would say more on this but I've lost my train of thought (and probably said too much anyway) =p. Maybe I will write a piece on this in the future.
09/21/09
For all I care, the Chief is a Molnir military cyborg (ie. a revived corpse) without any prior memory of his previous deeds in the Marathon universe, and as such, I indeed consider him as a puppet of the military-industrial complex.
09/21/09
After playing the game and realising that he is the only one, it kind of took a little away from me.
I've always been more impressed by the average guy doing extraordinary things, not, guy in much better armour and equipment doing better things than the grunts.
I don't think Master Chief is all that awesome. You would expect him to be better given his better armour and stuff.
09/21/09
As a kid he was taken to this camp for the SPARTAN program and pretty much left in the woods to survive and fend for themselves. After this they were conditioned until they threw up and fell over for pretty much their whole childhood. I think it's a few hundred of them at this point.
Then, they went through this procedure which attempted to alter their bodies to become stronger and better reflexes, etc. half of the spartans who did it got horribly disfigured or died - the other half made it with the 'bonuses'. After this they are furter equipped with the suit and go out on a mission that pretty much = them supposed to be dying, in which case all 99 of his allies who are his only friends anyway die, and he's left as the last spartan.
09/21/09
There were 75 SPARTAN-II's that survived or made it through the augmentation procedure.
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Your proof. Show me it.
09/21/09
i thought there were 100 that were brought into the program, but halopedia said 75 (which isn't hard proof i realise) anyways, not trying to be antagonistic, ill look tonite so we'll know for sure. cheers
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Seriously. The Halo series does a lot of things well, but characterization? The "deepest" character in the entire franchise is a walking parody of every drill sergeant cliche ever written. Characterization is not Halo's strong point.
09/21/09
His story is absolutely tragic, as are most of the stories for the characters in the universe.
09/21/09
Master Chief is a incredibly well-developed character in TFOR. If you did read it you would have known how MC is just a shell of a human being, emotions destroyed by a crooked military program, his only true friends killed or put in a horrible condition.
09/21/09
I would love it if the games actually showed John's internal conflict and his full awareness that he is literally a war machine. But I don't think that's ever going to happen. =/
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The one scene that really SHOULD have defined him as a character, his rescue of Cortana in Halo 3, was so short, badly written, and rushed it made me angry. They build up for an entire game that Cortana's going nuts due to her proximity to Gravemind, and as SOON as you find her, she's instantly fine. Like Master Chief is so badass, that his badassery CURES AI rampancy.
I don't know. I like the Halo games, but storytelling and characterization aren't why I like 'em.
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If they can pull that off, then the Halo games may finally have a story that lives up to the setting's potential as shown in the books and comics. And I'll be happy.
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