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| Finally Reached *SP* | |
| Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net> | Date: 9/23/10 5:46 a.m. |
In Response To: Hawaiian Pig's Fantabulous Story Review *SP* (Hawaiian Pig) Ok, so I've finished Reach once (partially solo, partially coop) and now I'm finishing up a second solo run. This seems to be the "master thread" for responses about story so I thought I'd drop in a few quick responses (relatively speaking). : Yes, like ODST, Reach has many missions where "nothing actually
True-- but to be honest it's largely true of all five games. What it may be possible to say here is that the gap between gameplay action and story action is the greatest in Reach. Nearly every mission is a fancy version of "go there, press button, kill things in between", disguised just enough to give the actions urgency and context. In some cases, there is less context, in others, more. For my money there's no level in Reach as pointless and arbitrary as "Uprising" but that's just me. : I mean, did you really need to wander around the hub world piecing together
I suppose not. Dare calls when she needs to and I suppose you hearing her depends on being close enough. It seems communications are not working everywhere as expected, otherwise the entire group would have just met up after drop. So given that there's no one to give the Rookie orders until that time, the question is what does he do. He explores as he can and fights if he can, and does find some pretty questionable clues to the team's daytime activities that trigger a gameplay flashback for the player. My issue with them is that they have a lot more meaning for the player than for the character, since there's no way the Rookie can derive the events that led Romeo and the others to the top of the NMPD HQ building just from a bent sniper rifle-- it's hardly an object of interest on its own. I suppose we're just led to believe it's not in the nature of an ODST to sit in his pod all night-- as Dare notes upon your arrival. In the realm of weak excuses for gameplay mechanics, ODST's hub world isn't anywhere near the top list of offenders, to my way of thinking. Or did you really need to turn on this comms array, or shut
By that logic we could have gone straight from the crashed pod on Halo to the wreck of the PoA, grabbed a Longsword and escaped, no? Each act performed seemed necessary at the time. We rescue Keyes even though later he is recaptured and Flood infected. The Chief and Cortana didn't know that would happen. Rescuing him seemed like the right thing to do, just like all the other actions the characters take. (It's worth noting, though, that the comm array you're talking about doesn't actually get repaired or activated, as Kat says it needs weeks of work. Their orders presumed actions by rebels, which apparently wouldn't have involved plasma damage. Kat instead just connects Carter to a hard line to speak with Holland to inform him of the Covenant's presence on Reach. It's easy to call every action in the game pointless and futile because we know it's a losing effort-- but the characters don't, at least not at first. : There's a downed comms array, we need to check what's up. Oh crap, it's
: When it comes down to it, not a whole lot happens in any coherent manner.
My initial reaction was somewhat similar-- perhaps because while cutscene dialogue has subtitles, the rest doesn't, even some of the bits that fill in the gaps around what you're supposed to be up to. On the second playthrough things seem slightly more coherent (although there is a lot of silly military jargon). Yes, we take out one ship-- and a bigger one shows up. Yes, we take out THAT ship-- and a lot more show up. I'd say your reaction is an indication of success. These characters are faced with futility, and Bungie has made you feel it. The Package mission is to provide one mission that can have a more lasting effect, but I think like the secret mission in ODST, Bungie may have oversold it a bit, which is a problem inherent in a story of Halo's scope, I think. : Let's take the Arbiter for example. How do I know that the Arbiter is a proud
: Do I know he's a skilled warrior because someone told me they read his
: Or is it because we see him fall from the highest ranks of the Covenant
Agreed! So all Team Noble really needed was a series of cutscenes each dedicated to showing what happened before the game opens (like the Arbiter gets) and then a personal story arc that shows how and why they are fighting. It's worth noting that even with the care Bungie put into the Arbiter, lots of fans are still ambivalent about him because they didn't want to empathize with the enemy, and because they really just wanted to see a bunch of Spartans. So, you can't please everyone all the time. Some people can't be pleased at all :) : In fact, there was a meaningful event that could have certainly provided our
[...] : The sound of scampering feet on the steel roof over my head? : What is this, Left4Dead? : And what's the reaction of our characters to Covenant invading our most
: Jorge : It's the damned covenant. Emile : Cheer up big man, this whole
I actually don't see the first level as a missed opportunity. Again, the problem is that the player knows it is the Covenant-- the characters don't (although perhaps they should). I thought that level does a decent job of creating some tension even though you KNOW what is coming. The problem is that the above line is there to develop Emile's character, but not Jorge's, and Emile is deliberately not likable. Bungie succeeded in making you not like him. They may not have succeeded in making you appreciate the degree to which you don't like him. It's not an easy job, and I think Bungie was only partially successful. : Carter : Me, I'm just happy to have Noble back up to full strength. Just
: This line basically reads like: Hey man, woah, woah, woah! I know you're
I didn't see it that way at all. You're assuming that "lone wolf stuff" means "being awesome". It can also mean, within the context of group tasks, being insubordinate, selfish, inattentive-- in other words, a danger to your comrades. So perhaps Carter is asking Six, "please don't be so awesome all by yourself that you get us all killed". Of course some of them do get killed, although it's not Six's fault. Maybe Bungie should have made the player more culpable in those deaths-- try pushing guilt onto the fans, instead of just futility? : Oh? Some technobabble? Did we mention Kat is real techy? How interesting
: Obviously, this doesn't advance the plot; instead, it's clear that it's meant
: Because nothing really happens to them, we don't learn much about the main
If one accepts Bungie's design document for Reach-- a story not involving the Chief or Cortana, and taking place during the invasion of Reach, with a small group of Spartans-- you're stuck with this problem. Reach has 8-10 hours to introduce you to five new Spartans, a new commanding officer, and Halsey, not to mention Six him (or her)self. That's eight characters-- one per hour of gameplay, most of which will be spent doing just that: playing. In comparison, the cast of Halo 1-3 is larger but still gets more time per character. Over three games you've got a lot of time, both in cutscenes, gameplay, and other scenic moments, with the Chief, Cortana, 343 Guilty Spark, the Arbiter, and to a lesser extent both Keyes and the other Covenant characters (Half Jaw, the Prophets, Tartarus). A lot of the secondary characters are themselves no less caricatures than Noble Team. Heck, the prophets are even named after their characteristics (or rather the inversions of them): Regret, Mercy, Truth. : I mean, what else do we really know about Kat? A pretty good test of
: Rest assured, I've got a lot more to say about Cortana or the Arbiter than I
[snip] : Halsey : Are you a puppet or a SPARTAN? : You said it, babe. : What can you honestly say changed about each character from the beginning of
I guess all I can say about that is that they don't. Noble Team are symbolic, not real characters. They don't develop. They can't develop. They are real only in the sense that they symbolize something that we're told Six didn't have before now: a team, a family. The player, and Six, experience loss by seeing how the members of Noble Team react to each other, more than from their own reactions. Again I won't say that Bungie was entirely successful in achieving this, but I think given the size of the cast of characters and some of the narrative challenges presented by the constraints of the design document for Reach, some of the problems are inevitable. Just to explain that, I'll say that it suffers from some of the epicness of Halo 1-3. Look at what happens there. We go from a desperate situation on the losing side of a war against the Covenant, who seem bent on destroying humanity, and then we find out things are actually much worse: the Flood are an even more implacable threat. Beyond that, things get even worse: the only known weapon against the Flood is a last resort that kills everything. Then things get even worse again: the Covenant's actual objective is to activate this weapon, and exterminating humanity is just a rewarding hobby. Against the backdrop of this struggle, which puts the fate of 'all life in the galaxy' at risk, as Cmdr. Keyes puts it, the problems of two people in this world don't amount to a hill of beans. This is why ODST uses more human characters to tell a more human story against that backdrop. It's somewhat believable that for people who don't truly know what is at stake (beyond the base fact that war is hell) a personal relationship can be just as, if not more, important than the war itself. The Spartans of Noble Team don't have that luxury. There's no light tone here, no humor. Although they are unaware of the Flood threat, the threat to Reach is more clear and present to them, and against that, it's the job of a Spartan to not have any other priorities. I think Bungie may have succeeded in telling a story that, because of its very nature, is less emotionally compelling, because it's about people who are less emotionally compelled. : There are countless examples of this. Helping civilians on Exodus and New
: A cohesive story aside, these missions stand out the most in terms of setting
I'm not sure exactly why-- maybe just because I find the environments less interesting-- but Exodus I think is probably going to become my Reach 'skip' level. New Alexandria will escape this fate because the Falcon is awesome. Instant death on killing a civilian... yeah, that's as fun as it sounds. : I mean, I don't think Reach is gonna be turning Roger Ebert's head. : Atmospheric "asides," are great, but two full missions of them?
That I can agree with. There's no arc here. The story, like Noble Team itself, takes one step forward and two steps back, but I'm convinced that's by design. I think Bungie finished the story it had to tell with Halo 3. ODST came together as a more personal story with a different tone, and gameplay stripped down back to the basics (no equipment, no dual wielding) with hub exploration thrown in (VISR mode, map). Reach's gameplay is so highly polished I swear I'm watching the new Star Trek film because of all the glare. Bungie says they designed the missions first, and then the story around them, which was a first for them, and it shows. Reach takes no big risks, but does throw in a bunch of small experiments: space combat, two rail shooter segments, two new vehicles, armor abilities, and a modified night vision mode. The 'story' of Reach only takes up about 3 levels, because it's the story of how, in the midst of the invasion, the missing piece of the puzzle of Reach's Forerunner artifacts falls into place, and somehow enables Halsey to send Cortana on her way to Halo. Halsey, like Keyes, no doubt thinks Halo is a weapon to be used against the Covenant. (This knowledge renders the scene in the brig of the Truth & Reconciliation, a cutscene Bungie added to cover for a missing level, moot, because Keyes should probably already know this, either told by Halsey or Cortana.) : Seriously, the only death that was at all significant was Jorge's. He
Fair enough, although it seemed to me a waste of an S II. If anything, what struck me is that it was too soon to lose Jorge. It certainly wasn't clear to me that Six was a more valuable member of the team at that point. : A close second is Kat's death, which was actually refreshingly abrupt. It
Well those are the two main deaths. : Now I'm paraphrasing, but: Carter : Guys, oh crap a Scarab? You just booked
Any death would have been OK. I was waiting for him to bite it. (Others feel the same about Kat.) : Or how about Emile having Elites dropped on him only just as you're about to
I honestly don't remember this, but consider that Bungie kills off the members of Noble Team explicitly in reverse order of likeableness. Sweethearted Jorge goes first. Businesslike Kat goes next. Last (aside from Six) goes Emile, the unabashed jerk. Coming back to the Lone Wolf remark, I think Carter said that because Bungie intended to undermine that statement from the very start. Teamwork might be the essential element to success, but when you're fated to fail it may be unable to make a difference. So Carter urges you to leave your lone wolf stuff out, but by the end, that's all that's left-- and it's still unable to save you. Noble Team gives their lives to accomplishing their tasks, but ultimately if you weren't able to work alone, the final task would have been left undone-- and as you've pointed out, that's the only task that mattered. After my first playthrough I felt a bit like you do after you've eaten a whole bag of potato chips: full and yet empty at the same time. However, on reflection I think there's a bit (perhaps not a whole lot) more going on in Reach than is apparent on first glance, but I think it is admitted that there are some emotional storytelling techniques that Bungie chose not to use for this final installment, where the focus is on gameplay, and others that perhaps don't work as intended.
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