JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
Formerly "SandwichWarrior" and "The Upright Man", may or may not be feral, is most certainly quixotic.
User ID: 4009
I disagree, that this is "unambiguously an overall negative"
There are geo-political considerations that go beyond just "make number go up"
I would counter by observing that the things you hate about the Flood is a large part of what makes them work narratively and thematically. Again, the experience of playing the game reinforces its narrative themes and vice-a-versa.
As much as I adore the '97 movie, I really wish someone would do a proper adaption. Yes I'm aware that Roughnecks exists, but what I want is a serious character piece that grapples with the emotional and philosophical themes of Heinlein's novel.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
Speak plainly, What are you saying?
Many moons ago when SlateStarCodex.com still hosted weekly discussion threads, and before Trump became the GOP nominee, the author of Hillbilly Elegy (or at least some who claimed to be writing a book by that name) was a semi-regular contributor who would pop in to talk about old movies, recent SCOTUS cases, and their trials and tribulations involved in trying to get their book published.
Halo does NOT depict a racial struggle at all, it is portrays a religious struggle. The Covenant are very notably not only a multi-racial but a multi-species empire. They are multiple species/tribes united by a shared belief, a shared covenant, that is why they are called "The Covenant". (Again, I told you that names in the Halo series tend to be a bit "on the nose"). Frankly, you should know this given that you brough up the definition of Covenant in your OP.
Furthermore our hero, the Master Chief, is neither pagan-coded (see @RandomRanger's comment below), nor does he "save the world". He destroys the Ring, and while he does manage to save mankind from extinction, he doesn't do so through force of arms but rather by exposing the malicious forces acting behind the scenes and convincing his counterpart on the opposing side that he is amongst the righteous.
Straight question, have you even played the campaign?
I was consciously trying to avoid spoilers and specific plot/character-beats to focus on broader themes, and as I said I have opinions on how the franchise has been handled since Howard and Griesemer (the original project leads) stepped down.
That said, I agree with everything you've said. I almost feel like Halo: Reach was an attempt to go back and say, if we were were setting out to make the original Halo today with all the knowledge, skills, and resources we've accumulated over the last decade what would that game look like?
...and as you say, it is "the Apotheosis", the core appeal and themes of the entire franchise distilled down into their purest form.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
correction made, I am glad that you enjoyed the post.
You left out one of my favorites. Forward Unto Dawn
Halo 1 (don't remember the sequels as much) is also a fundamentally fascist story.
I would argue that Halo (the first game) is only "Fascist" and "White-coded" insofar as those who have succumbed to the woke mind-virus will label anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders "a Fascist" and anything resembling traditional western virtues as "Whiteness". The Master Chief may not be a silent protagonist, but he is very explicitly a faceless one. Fact is that we don't know anything about his race beyond that he is human, and I feel like that is intentional. I also do not believe that historical Fascists would have been very comfortable with the positions that Halo seems to take on questions of agency and free-will. Their whole thing was about the state being the ultimate sovereign and Halo basically says "Fuck That. We don't follow orders we do what is right!". It would seem to me that Halo is more "Stoic" or "Early-Christian" coded than anything else.
As I have argued before, if your model of "Fascism" ends up lumping men like Truman and Churchill in with Hitler and Mussolini your model is not fit for purpose and if you think that Clarence Thomas is "white" I think we need to take a step back and discuss WTF we are even talking about.
Furthermore I do not believe that xenophobia factors into the game's appeal as much as you seem to think it does. The Humans in Halo are not at war with The Covenant because they wanted to "Purge The Xenos!" they are at war because the The Covenant attacked them first. Now if you were talking about the Helldivers or Space Marine franchises you might have a point but the original Halo trilogy is a different beast.
A true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, he fights because he loves what is behind.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
I agree that it FEELS like one of those stories and because our heroes, the Master Chief, Sgt Johnson, the Arbiter, Et Al are all unambiguously heroic.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
I had a bunch of additional stuff that I would have liked to have mentioned, but I also wanted to get the post done in a reasonable amount of time.
Its funny you should mention that because ironically I feel like the original Halo trilogy has one of the better executed "are the baddies really the baddies?" twists in recent memory.
Spoilers for a 20-year-old game & tie-in novel, but you spend a decent portion of Halo 2 playing from the Covenant's perspective, and it was a complete blindside. That said, the reveal that that the two sides have been manipulated into fighting each other by malicious (some might say daemonic) forces allows the real "baddies" to be be "the baddies", and the individual characters who valued life and fought with honor to still be "the goodies" of a sort even if circumstances had placed them on opposing teams.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
I really wanted to work Macaulay's poem into the post somewhere but in the end I elected to call it and just ship what I had in the interests of getting something out.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
I brought up Ludonarrative Dissonance specifically for the purpose of positing an opposite "Ludonarrative Harmony" which is an idea that as far as I tell is far less accepted but the phenomena is no less real.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
I am familiar with Mandalore's work and I am a fan.
The Culture War thread has been heavy on War and light on Culture of late so I thought I might offer this as something of palette cleanser.
I've been playing through the original Halo trilogy in split-screen co-op mode with my kids and while I hesitate to call one of the most successful franchises in video game history "underrated", I do feel like people sleep on just how tight and well executed the story-telling in it was.
Clint Hocking, whose work on the Far Cry franchise probably deserves its own essay, is credited with coining the term "Ludonarrative Dissonance" to describe a situation where in a video game's narrative elements are contradicted by the game's ludic elements IE the player experience. What Halo has is the opposite of this. A "Ludonarrative Harmony" if you will, where in the experience of playing the game reinforces its narrative themes and vice-a-versa. So lets talk about those themes...
The Year is 2552 and humanity is at war with an interstellar empire calling itself "The Covenant", a war that humanity is loosing. (Gamers of a certain age, please stand for your national anthem)
Our story begins with a lone starship, the Pillar of Autumn, fleeing a terrible battle and choosing to strike out into deep space rather than risk leading the foe back to Earth. The first lines of dialogue we hear in the entire franchise is our captain asking, "Did we lose them?" only to receive a negative response. In their flight our unwilling Argonauts have come upon the titular Halo, a Bishop Ring with a suspiciously Earth-like environment complete with California Redwoods and 9.81 ms^2 gravity. The ring was built by an extinct race known as "the Forerunners" (names in the Halo series tend to be a bit "on the nose") who the Covenant worship as divine beings. Mankind's Science and Intel officers believe that the ring might hold some secret that could change the course of the war and given that this is a war that humanity is not only losing but losing badly anything that might change the course of the war is naturally a top priority. And thus, we are introduced to our player character...
"Spartans" are surgically enhanced super-soldiers who are apparently kept on in suspended animation until they are needed. A "break glass in case of emergency" type deal. You, the player character, are woken to act as vessel/avatar for the Pillar of Autumn's resident AGI Cortana. Cortana being entirely software, cannot leave the ship or even press a physical button without someone to carry her and act on her behalf, and so she needs your help to investigate the ring, and by extension, hopefully save humanity.
Ultimately, Halo is "a big dumb shooter" in the same way that Gladiator is "a big dumb action movie". That is to say that, yes, it is big, it is dumb, but above all it is fun. and yet there's also a lot more going on under the surface for those inclined to dig which is where I feel the idea of "Ludonarrative Harmony" comes in.
One of fundamental problems that games like Wolfenstein and Call of Duty have is that it's very difficult to provide a narrative justification for why the player, an ostensibly base-model homo sapien, should be able to mow down multiple battalions worth of Nazis without getting mowed down in turn, or why some basic-bitch E-5 is constantly being offered the chance to shoot the cool gun or drive the fancy tank like they're some kind of make-a-wish kid. Halo neatly sidesteps this issue by giving a clear narrative reason for why you, the player, are so much more capable than the NPCs around you. You're a 6.8' hyper-athlete in power armor who has a benevolent super-intelligence riding shotgun in your head. This is sense of capability is further reinforced by how NPCs, both human and alien, react to you. Weaker enemies flee at your approach while friendly NPCs will cheer you on and will freak out if you die. Combine this with Jaime Griesemer's now famous "30 seconds of fun every 3 minutes" principle and what you get is a power fantasy that is not only exceptionally well executed but fully justified within the context of the narrative.
While this power fantasy is what makes Halo work so well as a "big dumb shooter" it exists in tension with the broader text of the narrative. Throughout the game, we are repeatedly reminded that humanity is on the back foot, that the Covenant are both more technologically advanced than humanity and more numerous. We do not know why they seem to be intent on eradicating us, only that they are. The human forces that we encounter during the campaign are almost always outnumbered. Covenant enemies and weapons, especially on higher difficulty settings, are almost always more deadly. Musical cues are either mournful or strident and desperate. There is this subtext to much of the dialogue that the ultimate fate of our intrepid crew will not be a triumphant homecoming. We are Spartans and the ring is to be our Thermopylae (I told you that names in the Halo series tend to be a bit "on the nose").
On its face value Halo is remarkably bleak and yet it also has something that I feel is sorely lacking in a lot of modern media. Sincerity.
As I've gotten older, and especially since having kids, I have found that I have less and less patience for deconstructionist takes, and subversion for subversion's sake. I don't want nihilism and moral ambiguity from my fiction. I get enough of that from studying history. What I want from my fiction is something to inspire and/or aspire to. Yes Halo is bleak, but it is also hopeful. And yes, I recognize that this sounds like a contradiction but it's not because what Halo's story is ultimately about is what do you do when faced with frightful odds or a seemingly hopeless situation? It's about what do you when your faith is shattered, and you find out that much of what you thought you knew about how the universe worked is revealed to have been a carefully crafted lie? It's about duty and loyalty. It's about the relationship between created and creator. It's that meme about "the masculine desire to perish in a heroic last stand" in video game form. It is all of these things, and I think that is why fans keep coming back to it.
I also don't think I properly appreciated any of this until I had the opportunity to experience it again through fresh eyes.
PS: As you might imagine I have opinions about the Paramount+ adaptation and subsequent games released after Howard and Griesemer stepped down, but that's material for a follow on post
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
She would provide shameful services without the slightest hesitation and was of such a sort that if someone slapped her or even punched her full in the face she would crack a joke about it and then burst out laughing.
Given this, is it any surprise then that she became the wife of a man who came up through the legions?
20th century US Marines marrying stripper who has a sense of humor. 4th century Roman Legionaries marrying the actress who can take a punch. You know The Office meme.
It's kind of funny, a few days ago @VoxelVexillologist made a comment about smug Europeans being a core part of JD Vance's origin story, and I replied to them via DM that if Scott Alexander hadn't purged the discussion threads from his blog when he felt the Eye of Sauron Upon Him, I was pretty sure I could've pointed to the specific discussion.
The discussion I had in mind was a review of "the Top Ten War Movies" that turned into a sub-discussion about the movie Blackhawk Down directed by Ridley Scott. The general consensus was that it was a bad movie that perpetuated "unrealistic expectations" and "anti-utilitarian ideals" by suggesting the US military was right to "waste" 94 lives trying rescue a handful of men. Our future VP came back with the argument that this alleged flaw was exactly why it should be regarded as peak cinema and one of the greatest war movies of all time, only for some of the regular Euros to shout him down and demand that Scott ban him.
I'm getting a similar vibe off of recent discussions about the F-15E Weapons Officer's rescue. The Fact that we we'll go to absurd and irrational lengths to retrieve our guys is being painted by some as a flaw when I (and others) see it as a virtue.
This but without the hint of irony.
They like Fighter Jets Barbeque and Baseball I like Fighter Jets Barbeque and Baseball now we can all talk about Fighter Jets Barbeque and Baseball.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
and this introduces all sorts of questions about conflict of interest, perverse incentives, and whether "more information" is necessarily something we want to enable? which in turn leads back to @Jiro's point.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
7mo ago
I would like to push back against the idea that the problem is with Women specifically.
If "Toxic Masculinity" is something like hyper-agency plus callous disregard for anyone else. It stands to reason that "Toxic Femininity" would resemble the inverse. A sort of anti-agency plus an over-active empathic response.
I feel like the latter kind of describes what we are seeing here. It seems to me that an individual made a decision and the consequences of that decision had a negative effect on their well-being, but both we (as the observers) and the individual are being discouraged by society from acknowledging this fact because that would be "mean", "cruel", or otherwise anti-social somehow. We don't want to be seen as lacking empathy, or blaming the victim, and so it almost feels transgressive to say "Yes, I should have seen the red flags and ran" or "You fucked up and should have known better".
I don't think that this has anything to do with whether or not someone has a Y chromosome. I think the issue is that as a society becomes more traditionally "feminine" the failure modes of femininity will become more prevalent. I am increasingly of the opinion that that the values and beliefs of modern cosmopolitan liberalism are simply not compatible with developing healthy interpersonal relationships and I feel like this seeming off-shoring of personal culpability and agency that we see here is a big part of why. You cannot act to correct a problem that you refuse to acknowledge. And even after you have acknowledged it you still need to make a commitment to behave differently in the future if you want to improve your situation.
You aren't going to be running an aluminum plant or uranium enrichment facility on portable diesel generators and rooftop solar.
"Iraq didn't have WMDs, and neither does Iran" is one of those "big lies" that your civics teacher should have warned you about.
Saddam Hussein's Regime had extensive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and expended a fair bit of effort to maintain at least the appearance of a limited nuclear capability (remember "dirty bombs"?). Furthermore, they actually deployed some of those chemical and biological weapons in the early phases of the invasion only for it to backfire badly on them because coalition forces were universally issued protective equipment while Iraqi soldiers and civilians were not.
Finally, while Iran may not currently have nuclear weapons, preventing them from getting them is fundamentally what this current conflict is all about. Both the US and the Saudis have ample geopolitical reasons for wanting to maintain the norm of "non-proliferation", while Israel and the UAE (quite reasonably in my opinion) regard the prospect of a nuclear-armed IRGC as an existential threat.
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