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| If Noble Six is a Mary Sue... | |
| Posted By: Train Dodger <tmesisrevenge@gmail.com> | Date: 9/19/10 3:41 a.m. |
In Response To: Hawaiian Pig's Fantabulous Story Review *SP* (Hawaiian Pig) ... then everyone is. Seriously. I've gotten so sick of that label over the years. People basically apply it to anything and everything. Its definition has become all-inclusive and watered-down. A Mary Sue - by the strictest definition - is a self-insert in a work of fan fiction that serves as a romantic interest for a main character that the author takes a liking to, all at the exclusion of existing characterization and plot. That's it. Nowadays, it's a catch-all for any plot-monopolizing character that nobody likes or empathizes with, whether canonical or found in a work of fan fiction. The term has become so diluted it's repulsive. I resent the notion that such things as "Canon Sues" can actually exist. If it's a canonical work, then a character in it cannot be a Sue. They can be badly-written, but that still doesn't make them a Sue. As for how the plot in Reach moves - or doesn't move, naturally - I am offended by the rather stolid idea that every single work of fiction out there must follow a rigid act structure in order to achieve mainstream acceptance. The way people talk about act structures, you'd think that combining the major events of a plot into large, well-defined chunks was the answer to every single author or screenwriter's storytelling woes. Believe it or not, war does not follow an act structure. There are lulls and frenzied action followed by lulls again. Just look at the leaked Afghanistan War Diary. I'm pretty sure that if they made a game that followed the course of the recent war in Afghanistan down to every last detail, people would certainly have every right to complain about the "plot not moving forward". "Some farmers told us there was a weapons cache hidden in a nearby building. Found some machine guns and explosives. Called in EOD." "Flew over an area in an OH-58D Kiowa where Taliban activity was reported. Nothing sighted. Nothing to report. Returned to base." "Compound attacked by mortar fire." "Ambushed in a valley. Retreated, and then counter-attacked." With a few exceptions, real-life wars are full of "blah blah blah action" and surprisingly little plot. Halo: Reach should get points for realism in that regard. I mean, honestly. You're defending a planet from an alien invasion. There's only so much that you can do, and you're in the process of doing it throughout the game. They wanted to keep the Covenant mysterious, too. That limits the amount of plot you can have given the framework in which the game is set. I mean, they could have just come out and told us that there were high-priority targets aboard either the Corvette or the Assault Carrier you help take out in LNoS, but that would have shattered the element of mystery they were trying to achieve. They wanted the Covenant to look like a faceless, implacable horde rather than a small handful of figureheads. In that, they succeeded. The viewer is left to fill in the blanks. "It's an Assault Carrier; of course there were VIPs aboard, and they died gruesomely." What makes it even worse is that Bungie was trying to balance two opposing goals; to tell a story to the uninitiated who never read the books, and to avoid retconning everything from the books in order to do so. That's one of the reasons why they went with S-IIIs instead of S-IIs. Halo: Reach is the "untold story" of the ground and spatial conflict in the months leading up to the final assault. While this initially irritated me some, I realized that there were some advantages to it. First off, it lets us create our own custom S-IIIs for use in co-op rather than going with a predefined S-II. Second, it allows Bungie to set varied goals for cooperative play in the campaign without overriding the events of the books that took place on the planet's surface. Covenant on Reach before the first contact in the books? Stealth Assault Carrier, Teleporters, and ONI cover-ups. Handwave complete. There are some recurrent plot threads to keep stock of, though: - The Datapads tell a sinister tale about a commune of Smart AIs that have been shaping human civilization to suit their own needs over the course of the past half a century. - The Elite Zealots are hunting for Forerunner artifacts on Reach. While they're doing that, they're also hunting you and your team. - Kat and Carter have a problem with teammates who go off on their own because they just lost a Spartan that way. - Halsey at first has an intense dislike for the S-IIIs, who are part of a program that was in direct competition with her S-IIs. Despite her hatred for Ackerson and his schemes, she later comes to respect the S-IIIs as soldiers who fought in the desperate struggle to defend Reach. - Cortana - or perhaps a part of Cortana, if you go by Halsey's Journal - was studying some sort of artifact on Reach. Perhaps the knowledge she obtained was essential in order to unlock the secrets of the Cote d'Azur artifact? There's a lot there, if one cares to examine the plot with a magnifying glass and fill in some of the blanks for themselves. I suppose that's part of the problem, but they're still under a lot of pressure to keep everything in the plot consistent without stepping on too many toes. As far as Bungie's future projects go, I would hope that their ten-year publishing deal with Activision gives them a fresh start on the storytelling front without too much executive meddling. In fact, that contract had better have a clause that basically says "Hands off, Kotick". Bungie is like the proverbial golden goose here. I mean, they're like family to us, but that's not how these industry execs see it. I don't want to see Bungie getting pushed around and their creative vision stomped on by intellectual property law and industry wheeling and dealing.
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