Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Re: Hawaiian Pig's Review | |
| Posted By: 3Suns | Date: 9/18/10 1:20 p.m. |
In Response To: Hawaiian Pig's Fantabulous Story Review *SP* (Hawaiian Pig) Hawaiian Pig, I still remember you from when I was a regular here. Cheers! I will be linking yours and Cody's threads back to my community. Good stuff! Now, what I have to say stands in complete opposition to your thoughts on the game narration. (I admit that I have don't come to this game with the same depth of knowledge of the Halo universe and characters.) This is the first "prequel" that I have played or watched in any medium where knowing the end from the beginning provided a greater emotional impact than had I not known it. The trade off of suspense for drama was worth it. That is not to say that the game was without suspense. Throughout the entire game, I felt a heavy sense of dread and sadness. I knew that my Team was going to die, and as the game progressed, and we got to see the Spartans' faces, and see how good they were at what they did, I felt the impending loss with ever increasing intensity. Part of me almost hoped that they would all make it to the end, and die "off-screen", when the planet was glassed. At the same time, I felt that would be disrespectful. We needed to know each Spartans' personal story. These were heroes from the beginning and we needed to walk with them through to their end, no matter how painful that might be. I found the previous Halo game stories to be pretentious and melodramatic. Reach, on the other hand, was subtle, believable, and far more emotionally moving. The cutscenes didn't annoy me like they did in the other Halo games. I wanted to watch them. Secondly, there weren't as many of them. It worked. The story matched the action and was told in expert fashion. Well done, Bungie! I want to mention one other thing. I was disturbed by the presence of both "suicide bombers" and "suicide missions". I guess the suicide missions bothered me the most. While the suicide bombers were there to demonstrate the "Holy" nature of the war as it was for the Covenant, the suicide missions were done by "our" troops, and I had difficulty separating their actions from those of the kamikaze pilots of WWII. I have never thought of the kamikaze pilots as honorable or even excusable. I look forward to watching the cutscenes again, to make sure I didn't miss anything. Dying in the process of defending or attacking is honorable and of great sacrifice, and sometimes one knows that one's chances of survival are almost none before the mission starts. Knowing for certain that one will die, however, is different. There is a fine line, and I want to know more before I pass judgement. It is interesting. This game is making me wonder if the only reason it is acceptable for a general to order soldiers to battle knowing many will certainly die, is because the General doesn't know who of the many will actually die. Is not knowing who will die, the moral difference? Isn't that what brings games into the realm of art - when they make us contemplate the human condition?
| |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |