So because I don’t actually own an Xbox 360 (nor an Xbox, for that matter), I’ve always had to find other ways to play the (very few) exclusive games in their libraries that I cared about. So it was that I find myself blitzing through Halo: Reach on my brother’s console during a recent trip home. Because, seriously: Halo.
What began rolling around in my brain as a review of Reach quickly turned into something else. Reflection. A look back. A requiem.
As long as you haven’t been living under a rock for the last decade, you know that the Halo series has received gobs of praise from critics and players alike. Some would say more than it deserves. Hell, I would say that, and have. Yet, when I look back on my experience with these games, and this universe, it’s a little unlike anything else I’ve played for, well, ages. And I’m of the rare breed that hates online multiplayer and seldom cares for shooters in general.
So here we are, nearly ten years after Halo: Combat Evolved hit shelves for the first time. And here I am, far from Halo‘s target audience, a vocal detractor, and I’m wringing my hands over the future of the series. Here’s why.
Truth and Reconciliation
Before you skip the rest of this as yet another instance of Halo fanboyism, let me be blunt: I do think, by and large, that the Halo series is overrated, at least as regards the things people really point out about them. What made Halo: Combat Evolved as popular as it was, aside from being an early entry in its generation, was that it did a lot of old shooter things very capably. It, and its sequels, demonstrate a greater proficiency than the majority of games in the genre across the board.
But few of Halo‘s features are truly outstanding. The weapons are satisfying but not terribly interesting. The vehicle controls are a bit floaty. The level design can sometimes be bland and repetitive, especially in Halo 2. The multiplayer works well but doesn’t offer up any real surprises. (The exception to that last point, I should note, is Halo 3‘s Forge.)
I’m not accusing any of the Halo games of being bad. Far from it. They are remarkably adequate. And when you consider how many games don’t even get that right, it still leaves Halo as a solid achievement of craftsmanship and design. What the Halo games aren’t, generally, are the incredible landmarks of gaming that legions of fans make them out to be, and will often argue that they are to the bitter end.
Well, at least, they aren’t for the reasons most believe.
The Long Run
What always really got me about the Halo series, and still does, is the storytelling. Now more than ever, I think. On the surface I can see why: for the most part the games are paced pretty well, the characters are entertaining, if not deep, the situation is appropriately dramatic. But the plot is also one hundred percent sci-fi cliches: the super soldier, the alien threat, the super weapon, the space zombies, the ancient advanced civilization. I could honestly care less about the Flood and the Forerunners, which might be why I probably enjoyed the campaign of Halo: Reach the most. The conflict against the Covenant has always been the most interesting part.
But lots of other games have the same pieces and I don’t care nearly as much. The Resistance series, for instance, has an interesting arsenal of weapons, the mystery of the Chimera, and the whole alternate history thing going for it – but once I’ve played them, because they are very good, I move on and don’t worry about the series until the next installment. I care even less about Gears of War, whose engaging combat and design gives me reason to play them for a weekend but not really spare them any more thought.
But Halo. Halo…
The thing of it is, the universe Bungie created is somehow vibrant and compelling. I adore it. I always want to know more about the Covenant and human civilization at the time. I want to know what else is out there.
There’s certainly plenty of material for checking that out. I’ve devoured a few Halo novels over the years, and the Halo comics that I’ve read have been cool, too. Halo Legends, the DVD of animated shorts in the vein of The Animatrix, is lots of fun. Lots of game series these days get novels, at least, to tie-in, but few interest me. But Halo did. And I’ve never been disappointed by that.
What Once Was Lost
I can practically hear the protests already: “Surely you should be talking about Mass Effect instead!” So yes. Let’s talk about Mass Effect.
I find the universe of Mass Effect very dull.
Let me qualify that statement a little. My favorite hobby on this earth is tabletop roleplaying. This involves, amongst other things, hours of reading big hardcover books about the setting of these games, and I love that. So you’d think that BioWare’s encyclopedic additions to their universe would be right up my alley. I’d think that too. And to some degree you’d be right.
But they leave few unanswered questions. And the problem that arises with that, and with the expansiveness of most RPGs, really, but especially Mass Effect, is that it can be very hard to make the universe feel like it wasn’t conceived for that particular adventure. And the fact is, Mass Effect‘s does. Over the course of the games Shepard & Co. engage themselves in so many random side quests that everything feels nice and tidy. And the world isn’t like that.
The thing Halo gets right that Mass Effect does not is that Halo‘s world feels bigger than Master Chief, even before there were games without him in them. Mass Effect has never, and may never, felt bigger than Shepard. Sometimes less is a lot more.
The thing is, the universe of a game like Mass Effect (or, to be fair, Dragon Age, or most JRPGs, or whatever else) feels milked for all it’s worth already. But the Halo games focus on one corner of the universe – the war with the Covenant and, mostly, the part of that war that centers around the Halo weapons, which when you think about it is relatively minor in the larger conflict, probably. But there’s loads of little hints to more depth. I’ve always thought that the Halo games have magnificently interesting names for things: what has caused human civilization to name ships things like Pillar of Autumn? Or Truth and Reconciliation? And things like 343 Guilty Spark or 2401 Penitent Tangent – I mean, maybe someone at Bungie just started bashing words together, but I’m not sure I care. Either way, that’s fertile ground. And that’s just with the names.
Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe
So to prevent more vaguely coherent rambling, I’ll just get to the point. The Halo series has one of the best game universes of this generation. Maybe the best. And I wish I could rightly express why that is. But good world-building is like that: you don’t really notice it until you look. But I think that’s a big reason that the series has remained so popular, even though people rarely cite that as why.
It’s safe to say that the Halo series will be here for a long time. Even with Bungie moving on to other projects, Microsoft Game Studios and 343 Industries will continue to build up this mythology, no doubt. But because of this shift in who’s doing the creating (despite many 343 personnel being Bungie vets), I think I’m right in being worried that this game universe, so well-served up to now, might be squandered in successive sequels and such that just try to cash in on the popularity. Nevermind whether they’re good games; I want them to be part of this world.
Part of what prompted me to write this little thing was a quote I ran across from comics scribe Brian Michael Bendis, perhaps best known for his work on Ultimate Spider-Man but really one of the best comic writers in action today. He says:
“I think Halo is our generation’s Star Wars. It’s got a rich and untapped back story and world view that completely inspires me and millions of others. That’s why the game is such a hit, that’s why it raises past being a game into a cultural phenomenon, because it has richness to it that other games, and frankly, a lot of movies and television shows simply do not have.”
The first thing I thought was, “Seriously? Star Wars?” Then I thought, “Well…maybe.” I think it isn’t there yet, to be sure. Having not been around for the original release of Star Wars I can’t really compare the two in the moment. But I think Halo does things that Star Wars also does, and that both do very well. And Halo does smack distinctly of its time in history, right down to the eerily pertinent themes of religious warfare. (It’s easy to forget, actually, that Halo‘s development predates the “war on terror.”)
I guess the key thing to latch unto in Bendis’s quote is “untapped.” Halo gives the sense that there is so much left unsaid, undone, unexplored, that the urge to dive back in is inexorable for someone like me who likes to explore those frontiers. Frankly, it doesn’t matter if Bungie designed it this way, or knows these answers, or didn’t even intend for the questions – sometimes that’s what the best world-building is. And Halo is some of the best world-building there is.
So I know 343 Industries is probably mostly concerned with delivering on the multiplayer expectations and so forth. A lot of people want that Halo brand of action. Hell, I do too. But it is in 343’s hands to make or break this “cultural phenomenon”. Because there’s lots of us unsung fans who want that, and that’s, I think, where gaming’s battle for proper recognition will be won or lost – not on the battlefields of Xbox Live, but of hearts and minds.
They’ve got a tough act to follow, but maybe, just maybe, Halo can continue to be a franchise that gaming can be glad to call its own. Let’s hope they’re up to the challenge. (PS: Call me.)
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Like you Brandon I don’t have an Xbox and never have done so my experience with the Halo franchise is limited to the PC port many years ago, of which I didn’t play much. I very dearly would love to give the series the time that I’m led to believe it deserves — most notably round these parts from Jakkar (expect him to drop by soon ;-))
I wonder what Xbox emulation is like…
Great essay, Brandon. I have always been hard on Halo, maybe unfairly so, because it does have a lot of positive aspects. People who are hard on it tend to disregard the good stuff – I’m guilty, for sure. While it adheres to a lot of traditional sci-fi tropes, so do plenty of other stories. And I know exactly what you mean about the universe of Mass Effect, for all its enormity and lore, feeling “built” for Mass Effect rather than built as a universe.
You make a very intriguing point about how the imperfections of Halo are part of what bring you back. Resistance, Gears – great games, play for a weekend, got your money’s worth, never look back. But some games call you back even if they’re riddled with imperfections. Maybe we like imagining the parts that aren’t there, so the very incompleteness makes it work.
Honestly I’ve played little Halo – through most of the first two in various split-screen co-ops, but not in order and not in anything remotely like an ordered playthrough where I could keep track of what’s going on.
Great read!
I loved the original Halo. I first played it at a friends house where we sunk.. oh, I dunno, 7 or 8 hours into multiplayer on Blood Gulch? The next day I went out and bought an Xbox. That’s how much I enjoyed Halo. That’s never happened before with any other game or any other system. I think the Xbox might be the only system where one of it’s launch games was never succeeded as it’s killer app throughout it’s shelf life.
Everything since then has always felt abit off to me though, and I can never truly put my finger on why. Generally I like the story, I like the characters and I like the games mechanics. The Halo games are damn fine games to sit and play. There’s nothing wrong with them technically (apart from The Flood, which can go suck an egg). There’s something about the Halo universe that has just never resonated with me.. clearly certainly not as much as it has done with yourself. There’s obviously a lot to explore there, given the rabid enthusiasm the series still holds for thousands of people and the diversity with which that world is explored, from games to books to anime and back to games again, but I just can’t interested in the series anymore. By the time Reach rolled around, I honestly felt like I was done with the franchise.
I will agree with you however regarding Mass Effect. I’ve just started a play through of the first game after picking it up in the Steam sale, and I’m having a really hard time connecting with anything that’s going on infront of me.
@MatC, I totally hear what you’re saying. Both Halo 2 and 3 disappointed me immensely because I think it was sort of obvious that the campaign was not getting the sort of attention it should have in favor of the multiplayer. I especially dislike the fact that the Arbiter got shoved to the side because Halo fans didn’t know what to do without their dear Master Chief in a level. Seriously. So bitter about that. The Arbiter is the most compelling character in the trilogy.
Great article Brandon. I myself am a pretty big Halo fan. I’ve played and beaten all the Halo games on Legendary difficulty (except Halo: Wars, not an RTS fan) and like many I picked up an original Xbox specifically to play Halo: Combat Evolved (after being blown away playing it co-op with a buddy at his place).
What drew me in was the perfect feel of the controls (no other console FPS felt as smooth and “right” as Halo), the unique mechanic of having just two weapons (most FPS’ back then still let you carry all weapons in the game as you found them), the ease (and importance) or using grenades as part of combat (all with a simple button press, not having to “switch” to grenades) and the effectiveness (and satisfaction) of melee combat. That formula came together perfectly to give the game (and series) its own unique feel.
Throw in the pretty fantastic enemy A.I. which made combat encounters play out completely differently every time you played them and the large environments and I was hooked. I always hated the Flood for this very reason. I very much enjoyed how they were introduced in the original game. It was unexpected and it turned that level from a sci-fi shooter into almost a survival horror game. It was different and fun. That one time. But every time the Flood becomes your main enemy, it completely negates what I love about Halo’s combat, which his the aforementioned enemy A.I. and unpredictability. Instead of hiding behind cover and planning your attacks against enemies who are doing that same thing to you, you are faced with a mindless enemy that just rushes you at all times, forcing you to just react (and flee) as opposed to ambush and attack. So yeah, if the Flood never make another appearance in a Halo game, I won’t be mourning their loss.
I am also a big fan of the Halo fiction, clichéd as it is. Since I am such a fan of the games, I delved deeper into the game’s universe than your average player, reading novels and online materials, which translated to me enjoying the game’s even more since I knew so much about it. I do, however, feel that Bungie always did a fairly poor job in conveying that story and history into the games themselves. It is there if you pay really close attention, but it still does not come across as effective as I think it could have. A great example is Halo: Reach, which I think is the best game in the series overall. The fall of Reach was a pretty devastating loss in the Halo fiction, a turning point in the war. It was supposed to be one of the darkest days for the humans. Yet I never fully got that sense in the game. I wanted to feel that total desperation and sense of overwhelming loss come through, but it never really did (aside from that fantastic scene at the end). Maybe I wanted a much darker game than Bungie was willing to make.
Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. Great article.
The comments about Halo could certainly go on forever. I don’t have much productive to add. I missed the first two Halos on Xbox because I was knee-deep in the ultra realism of one-shot-kill games like Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon at the time. As primarily a PC gamer it was easy to pass by Halo in 2001, not thinking much of it.
After a couple years of TFC, various other Half-Life mods, and especially Unreal Tournament, I was tired of science fiction games with hard-to-kill enemies.
So Halo never appealed to me at the time. I’ve detailed (much to Jakkar’s chagrin) a few times around here how I could never latch onto Halo’s campaign. I still haven’t to this day. I’ve never tried Halo 2 or 3, but have given ODST a shot. A bit of multiplayer here and there, which was okay, but the campaign slayed me, which proves that I’m awful at console shooters (except slow, lumbering ones like Bioshock and Gears of War). I tried the ODST campaign on the recommended setting and have never passed the first or second level.
The best looking game in the series is definitely Reach, which is also in my pile of games to play. Maybe I’ll give it a whirl soon.
For great names you should check Iain Banks books on the Culture… ships are called Problem Child, Honest Mistake, Space Monster, God Told Me To Do It, Inappropriate Response… Wikipedia has a long list…
And if there´s a game with a mountain of untapped story behind it that would be Thief… if one game made you believe there was a whole universe behind the little portion of it that you were able to experience that´s Thief and The City.
@Leo: I have heard that the Culture series was one of the inspirations for the Halo universe, so the nomenclature may not be an accident.
And I’ve tried to play Thief a few times, but could never get it to run at the proper speed on my computer. Alas.
Leo, I was about to say the same thing about Iain M Banks’ Culture books! (He’s my favourite author, with ‘Use of Weapons’ being my favourite book.)
Brandon, spot on with your article – I only played the first and second Halos, and as you say, they are very competent, solid games without blowing your mind too much. The one thing they seem to have done well is flesh out the universe, funnily enough be leaving some of it unformed and fertile for use.
To say that it’s the next Star Wars might be a bit indulgent – certainly when you compare it to the release of the original movies and their impact on society… Maybe more like the original Battlestar Galactica series in comparison. Oh, and the other thing that helped it be such a huge sticky grenade of success was the marketing engine that pretty much ensured it would be successful, and drove people into becoming rabies-laden fans.
Slightly tangentially (after watching a little of Battle Los Angeles this morning), why are alien invaders always portrayed as being technologically so closely advanced to us? Just sets people up with a false expectation that we’ll be able to eventually defend ourselves and overcome all adversaries, when the likely outcome of a real alien invasion would be pretty total and one-sided (hell, just remote/interstellar bombardment would screw us).
And, gods I miss table top RPGing.
I figured you were probably one of them RPGers, Jarrod, what with your SR3 avatar…
To enter into Halo geek mode for a minute (I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to be in this mode before!), one thing that the games don’t really get across (excepting maybe Reach) that the novels, etc., fill in is the fact that the Covenant is significantly more advanced than the UNSC and the war is going very, very badly for humanity throughout the series. I mean, if you think about it, Master Chief and one or two other characters are basically the only friendly survivors in many of the games – they might save the universe from the Halo installations, but in the grand scheme they don’t put much of a dent in the Covenant war effort.
But your point about technology is well-taken. Most sci-fi universes just brush it under the rug. A few engage it very passively. And obviously there are a handful where we are dramatically outgunned, especially in things where aliens come to Earth rather than us going to them.
Actually, what I think is a lot more rare in the big picture is alien races that are LESS advanced. Big universes like Star Trek‘s have some off in the corners, but I can’t think of anything off-hand that really centers on a less advanced race than our own – though sometimes a less fortunate one.
I was really into it in the lead up to Halo2 (I Love Bees) and played that quite a bit, even got a Live subscription for a year, but in the end lost interest since I could only afford a PS3 or 360 and that was no contest. Japanese game machine for me. I still followed it a little precisely for the reason. I watched the animations and the webseries with the girl from the Narnia movies on Netflix and it’s still entertaining.
I think Bungie has a talent for this. I’ve neither played not want to play Pathways Into Darkness or Marathon, but I’ve devoured the main fan sites for both because of the fascinating story telling.
But after the revelations of Halo Cryptum soured me on the entire thing. I’m done.
And let me recommend Dark Souls and Demon’s Souls (not so much Dark Souls 2) for some good world creation. Miyazaki has a talent too.