In Response To: My Comprehensive-ish Argument With Narcogen (Quirel)
: Mind if I go off on a tangent?
: I'm from the Halo Wars Forums. Spent two or three years there, had fun. And
: towards the end, when it became clear that ES had lied about working with
: Bungie, there were all sorts of threads asking why the Cyclops, the Flood,
: Brutes, whatever, had to make it in.
: And inevitably, there was going to be someone who would reply with "Who
: cares, so long as it's fun?"
: I hated those nattering nabobs of narcissism. Hated them. How dare they
: insist that we be as apathetic as they. How. Dare. They.
: And it got worse. There were people who openly recommended that ES dispense
: with prior canon to make a 'better' story. There were people who insisted
: that continuity only got in the way of telling a good story.
: And that's how I see you. You're an exclusionist. You're someone who doesn't
: care about the backstory to Halo. You're like the people who've only
: played the games, only know the games, and insist that the games are all
: there is to Halo.
: But you're smart. I know that. You offer thoughtful arguments. You
: (Typically) don't flamebait. Hell, unlike 99% of the people hooked into
: the internet, you actually use proper spelling and grammar in your posts.
: You're a smart person, yet you hold an opinion that is not only the polar
: opposite of my own, but you have a view of fiction that I find
: particularly odious. Just try and imagine how frustrating that is for me.
: Not a good metric, I'd say.
: The two franchises that have been brought up are Star Trek and Star Wars.
: Star Trek... well, lets just say that my opinion of Roddenberry is not very
: high. It also started out as a television series, which I believe to be
: the worst of medias to develop a sprawling, internally-consistent story.
: Too much executive meddling, too much jockeying for ratings, and the time
: constraints are too hard.
: Star Wars? Lucas. That's the beginning and end of the argument.
: I'll argue that Star Wars is actually a good argument for a collaborative
: effort between different creators. In the beginning, when Lucas had less
: control and more people were working to make up for his shortcomings, we
: had three very good movies. When one guy was calling the shots, we got
: Jar-Jar, midichlorians, and contrived coincidences ahoy.
: Not to say that multiple creators is foolproof. I mean, look at the Ewoks.
: The EU is... well, a mess. The best items come from the authors who actually
: read each other's work, talk to each other, and even ask if they can use
: certain characters. I'm thinking of Zahn, Stackpole, and (Squints at
: bookshelf) Stover.
: Fairly low, I'd say.
: Halo has everything going for it to make an expanded universe actually work.
: It was a multi-media franchise from release (Since tFoR came out a month
: before Halo: CE) where the creators had the clout to make sure that the
: expanded content fit with their vision of Halo. They got some of the best
: and brightest to do the Expanded Universe (I stand by Dietz. At the time,
: his writing was pretty good, though I am not a fan of his more recent
: books. Quite the opposite, in fact)
: For your reading pleasure,
: http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive12.pl?read=362177
: http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive12.pl?read=362323
: http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive12.pl?read=362884
: As per a Bungie employee, one of the original writers , Bungie participated
: with the writers in creating the product. OF course, they're only human,
: and tFoR was made on a short deadline, so mistakes are understandable. But
: before Reach, I have only observed three instances of friction between
: Bungie and the writers.
: -"Please direct all questions about time-traveling Forerunner crystals
: to Nylund, please."
: Let's admit, it was an interesting concept to begin with. If I understand
: correctly, the shards of the crystal were supposed to figure into the plot
: of Halo 3. But, after reading First Strike, one realizes that it's a plot
: device that's just too contrived.
: I mean, the reality-warping properties of the crystal were fascinating. After
: reading Cryptum, one can imagine the Forerunners taking a few tentative
: steps into the brave new science of Slipspace Engineering before the
: floodgates burst. But as far as muddying with the timeline, that sank the
: concept, and it's a problem that probably would not have been realized
: until the final stages of writing.
: -"Boren's Syndrome vs Spartan I"
: So, yeah, Bungie retconned Johnson's immunity to the Flood. And yet, it was
: so artfully done.
: Think about it. Given the love Bungie had for mysteries back then, I'm not
: even sure it's a retcon. They knew that Johnson would be back for Halo 2.
: Nylund had one idea for why he avoided infection, Bungie had another,
: maybe Staten had a third, fourth, and fifth. When discussing it, they find
: a way to put together different ideas and make it work organically.
: My point is, the perfect retcon is one indistinguishable from something that
: had been planned all along. And if this is a retcon, it was a pretty good
: one.
: -"Halo Wars"
: OK, Bungie and Microsoft were having separation anxieties, ES wasn't sure if
: it could legally access the Halo Bible or old concept art. It was produced
: without any input from Bungie.
: And ES really didn't give a crap in the first place.
: Have you seen more? I'm not terribly concerned with the appearance dates of
: the Elites/Hunters/Engineers/Human gravity plating, because tFoR was
: written in such a short time. Mistakes were made, and my only regret was
: that they weren't taken care of sooner. That, and Eric Nylund has a
: terrible habit of introducing a new element to increase tension or
: conflict, when it occasionally doesn't quite make sense. It's a writing
: flaw, kinda like M. Night Shyamalan and his twist endings or Frankie and
: his love for ONI.
: It's a bad habit, but one that's terribly hard to break.
: Your entire view of fiction, unfortunately, is alien to me. Not just alien.
: It's like an Eldritch Abomination, from which I can only flee.
: From what I can understand of your approach to dates, appearances, and such,
: you view fiction in a bare-bones, Gilgamesh-level of detail. The whole of
: Halo: CE is boiled down to
: "John 117 fighting Covenant on a giant ringworld made by Forerunner. In
: the first level, he woke up, retrieved Cortana, and made his way to the
: lifeboats. In the second level, he fought off Covenant strike teams and
: regrouped with a bunch of Marines, with help from Foehammer. In the next
: level, he fought his way onto a Covenant capital ship with Johnson and a
: group of Marines, rescued Keyes, and escaped. Here, he learned about
: Halo."
: And so on. You reduce the story down to the bare details, when those details
: are what make Halo into Halo.
: What makes this patently absurd is your insistence that a model of the PoA is
: just a representation, with no details that can be derived from it. A
: model or a picture of something in a story is used because that is what
: the object is supposed to be. That's what the readers or players are
: supposed to latch onto and say "Yeah, that's the Pillar of
: Autumn" or "That's the X-Wing".
I'm a fan of this post. :)
Thank you for articulating what I may not have.
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