Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Re: If Noble Six is a Mary Sue... | |
| Posted By: Hawaiian Pig | Date: 9/19/10 5:03 a.m. |
In Response To: If Noble Six is a Mary Sue... (Train Dodger) : 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. Fine. Substitute the words Mary Sue with "a character whose characterization is being told at me, with nothing but glowing praise." : As for how the plot in Reach moves - or doesn't move, naturally - I am
I'm not watching the news. Mission briefings are boring. Mundane operations carried out in wars are boring. Real war is tragic and senseless, and on occasion, interesting and compelling things can happen to people. Sometimes, enough to warrant reproduction in the narrative format. I'm not asking for act structure, I'm asking for a story. If you're not telling a story, then you're not being entertaining. And as far as I can tell, video games like Halo are trying to tell a story. If you want to debate that point then I think you'll need to address that whole cinematic trend of every game in the past decade or more. There are lots of interesting movies, books and plays about war that tell a story. Whether it's Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan, or any other highly acclaimed work of fiction about war, the aim is not to randomly throw war related things at the viewer and claim it to be interesting. Appealing to the notion that the game doesn't adhere to a rigid act structure because it's trying to be progressive is a complete load. The game has no structure at all and doesn't tell any real story. Dressing it up on the notion that it's being "realistic" about war is ignoring the fact that the things that occur are simply not interesting. We don't see a Batman take a dump or go to sleep in The Dark Knight. We don't see Luke and company knock down a set of generators to blow up some random Imperial Cruiser which they stumble upon on their way to the Death Star. Hell, Noble Team's escapades are basically just that, except without a Death Star. There's no apparent driving force behind their actions. Honestly, all that could be changed to make this work is if the characters actually believed their actions could save the planet. Instead they're just mindless drones wandering from mission to mission at the beck and call of the Colonels and ONI spooks who are actually trying to save the planet. No one wants to hear a story about a grunt soldier who carries out his commands on various objectives and then dies. This is mundane... it's not really engaging, inspiring, intriguing or anything interesting at all. Maybe it's realistic, but so is Batman taking a dump. Who cares? : "Some farmers told us there was a weapons cache hidden in a nearby
: "Flew over an area in an OH-58D Kiowa where Taliban activity was
: "Compound attacked by mortar fire." : "Ambushed in a valley. Retreated, and then counter-attacked." Blah blah blah. No one cares about these things. : With a few exceptions, real-life wars are full of "blah blah blah
Realism? So should we just drop the notion that video games are trying to tell stories at all? Given the very clear attempts to mimic modern cinema, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say video games have been striving to do this for years. Bungie clearly wanted us to feel for the characters here, and you usually do that when telling a story. : I mean, honestly. You're defending a planet
I sat down for ten minutes in an attempt make things flow here. Obviously it's not perfect, but is it really that hard to link up a series of events meaningfully? In all honesty, word on the street has it that they designed the missions first and applied the story after. If that's true, the end result makes a heck of a lot more sense. It certainly feels tacked on. : I mean, they could have just come out and told us that there were
As it's handled, this is plain lazy. To expect your audience to infer stuff like this is asking too much. They don't even allude to this sense of mystery you're inferring. Mere omission doesn't generate mystery, small glimpses of possibilities do. Sherlock Holmes finds clues. : What makes it even worse is that Bungie was trying to balance two opposing
I have a hard time believing retconning on the level that they did wasn't avoidable. Some of the more drastic changes can be avoided by different wording. Why couldn't the Spartans have been IIs? That would have fixed the Halsey discrepancy, and we all know IIs were all over Reach; we can spare 6 of the 33 for a special op. : As far as Bungie's future projects go, I would hope that their ten-year
I really don't feel executive meddling had anything to do with this story's outcome.
| |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |