: People who come up with allegories based on incomplete theories piss me off.
: Halo is not a political allegory -- from experience in a certain other
: game, we can deduce that Bungie is better at making underhanded
: comparisons than this suggestion, well, suggests. What evidence is there
: that the Covenant are supposed to represent any government on Earth?
: "Oh man, they're expansionist, just like medieval Japan" or
: "LOL, they're bound by the thought of a religious prize, just like
: 16th century Spain!!!" Yeah, right.
: The attitude of the Covenant is pretty vague. Despite what you may think, the
: entirety of the United States' government is not fanatically religious, so
: your whole theory just fell to shit. I don't think our fearless leader
: is looking for some mysterious item of prophecy in Iraq anywhere. So, even
: from a literal sense, the Covenant can't be the US, but even without that,
: it's stupid to try and come up with BS theories about allegories in a
: stupid video game. It's rather similar to the people -- and they do exist
: -- who took the "analysis" of the Marathon terminal text way,
: way too far. Yes, the text is loaded, but I find it very unlikely that
: Bungie had really created that many layers, so it's just idiots trying to
: reach conclusions from indecisive evidence.
: My point is, shut up about political stuff and play the game. Even if you
: were right, and the Covenant are supposed to play as the US (and I'd
: sure like to hear a second opinion about that theory), all it would lead
: to is a torrent of bogus political "allegories." What's next,
: anyway? "The Flood represents Mexico because there's so many of them
: and they're invading LOL XD RACISM LOL"
I think it's pretty clear that Halo isn't an allegory, from Staten's comment that "you'd be wrong" if you thought it was a commentary on Iraq. The Halo story, like any other good story, suggests certain propositions about broad topics, and can therefore be considered relevant to different situations. Likewise, there's really no "you're wrong if you think Halo says this about topic X, because this is the only right interpretation", because that's not how the interpretation of literary texts happens. It's a combination of the creator's intention, and the end user's own point of view, and literary interpretation is more or less one of the only fields where there are multiple different points of view that are equally valid. This is pretty basic literary theory here, folks.
