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Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story
Posted By: Riceatron <riceatron@hotmail.com>	Date: 9/26/10 4:49 p.m.
In Response To: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story (General Battuta) : I want to make it clear right up front that I am not a big fan of Reach's : dialogue, character or story writing, and that I consider Reach to be : Bungie's weakest story effort because of these factors, not because it : differs from Nylund's The Fall of Reach. I fully expect Riceatron to miss : this paragraph. Hurr durr porp a worpa dorp. That is for you, sir. : LE DIALOGUE! : Reach's dialogue has its moments. Its absolute best moments are when the : characters don't speak English. When Jorge speaks with the civilians in : Winter Contingency, the dialogue gets out of the way and allows the superb : animation and body acting to speak. There was nothing more touching in the : campaign than Jorge comforting the civilian girl. This, when people aren't speaking English, everything seems to go fine. Maybe the whole game should have been translated into Hungarian. Seriously, though. The two moments Jorge had in the game, aside from his death, were probably the most appealing pieces of dialogue Reach had to offer, and its sad considering Halo has always been chock full of interesting dialogue "Listen up, Noble Team. We have a downed relay outpost fifty kliks from Visegrad" Yeah, Carter. We know. It was in the damned opening cutscene. : It has many more bad moments. Definately. : Reach dialogue is redundant. "It's the Covenant, sir!" "Yeah, : we realized that about forty Covenant kills ago." >Find the marines >Kill covenant >Marine goes "Sir. It's the Covenant. They're on Reach" "OH SHIT THE COVENANT IS THAT WHAT WE JUST FOUGHT!? OH FUCK I COULDN'T TELL" : Reach dialogue clumsily deploys military terminology. "We're being : pursued by enemy tangoes!" O RLY? "ENEMY BAD GUYS OVER THERE!" Halo is nothing if not optimistic, and the dialogue has always reflected that. We've always had groups of marines filled with smartasses who run at the mouth and say hilarious things like "are you made of leprechauns, cause that was awesome!" Reach failed to deliver in a lot of places when it came to dialogue : My biggest issue with the Reach dialogue is that it's not dense with : information about character relationships. Emile and Jorge set up a nice : dynamic in Winter Contingency, one that never pays off or goes anywhere. : Kat and Carter have a good interaction in the cave before LNoS. Yet most : of Noble's dialogue consists of brief meaningless snippets of jargon. Jorge "Three, Zealot class. Armor configuration matched" Six "Shield strength too!" Oh haha, Six thinks he's a people. I can't even remember anyone saying anything besides Jorge, and the occasional Jun 'OH LOOK AT ME I'M A BADASS NINJA' line of dialogue. : Reach's plot is a mess. I'm gonna keep this simple and distilled. : The story opens with an opportunity for an Insurrectionist encounter that : examines the ambiguity and dark side of the UNSC. This opportunity is : dropped after one line of dialogue. "Something in the fields.. Killed his son" "Something" OOOoooOooOOoooOOH. [snip] You know my opinion on these matters, no need in repeating them. I've voiced them enough in HP's thread and the Teleporter thread : And wait, hold on. Vast swathes of Halo 3 contain VERBATIM QUOTES of The Fall : of Reach. Verbatim! How can you pretend The Fall of Reach never happened : when the climax of your own trilogy acknowledges and uses it? Well, most of those quotes happened at the BEGINNING of FoR... So... All clear? I dunno. I'm with you on the who contradiction/inconsistency thing to a degree. : This contradiction does something dangerous, which is establish that all the : peripheral investment we Halo fans makes - our books, comics, Waypoint : articles - could be tossed aside at a whim. That's a bad precedent. And : that's the only reason I worry about these contradictions. : Oh, and the fact that they SUCK. :D : Halo: CE implies that Cortana and the Chief know each other well and are sort : of flirtatious buddies. : Halo: The Fall of Reach implies that Cortana and the Chief only met days ago, : and are mutually suspicious. Contradiction. : Halo: Reach introduces a THIRD contradiction by suggesting that Cortana was : only shipped to the Pillar of Autumn moments before it departed. And don't : tell me that Cortana was splintered! That's all well and good, but it's : from a Halsey Journal included in the Legendary addition, rather than : being explained in the game where it would _actually matter to players_. It just occured to me the players who don't care for Halo's story at all are gonna be like "Wait, Cortana chose Six? Is that what she was talking about in Halo 3's opening cutscene?" :

Message Index

A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	General Battuta	9/26/10 1:25 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	General Battuta	9/26/10 1:29 p.m.
Fall of Reach Canon	Cody Miller	9/26/10 1:45 p.m.
Officially Licensed...	Riceatron	9/26/10 1:53 p.m.
Re: Officially Licensed...	Gordon Freeman	9/26/10 2:16 p.m.
Re: Officially Licensed...	General Battuta	9/26/10 3:20 p.m.
Re: Officially Licensed...	Tex	9/26/10 3:25 p.m.
Oh don't even.	Riceatron	9/26/10 4:30 p.m.
Re: Oh don't even.	DHalo	9/26/10 4:46 p.m.
;3 *NM*	Tex	9/26/10 6:08 p.m.
: | *NM*	Riceatron	9/26/10 6:17 p.m.
HBO: : | *NM*	SonofMacPhisto	9/26/10 6:42 p.m.
HBO: Riceatron is a faggot *NM*	Gordon Freeman	9/26/10 8:13 p.m.
Absolutely uncalled for *NM*	vlad3163	9/26/10 10:23 p.m.
Agreed *NM*	Avateur	9/26/10 11:07 p.m.
Re: Absolutely uncalled for	Gordon Freeman	9/26/10 11:13 p.m.
Re: Absolutely uncalled for	vlad3163	9/26/10 11:26 p.m.
Re: Absolutely uncalled for	Gordon Freeman	9/26/10 11:31 p.m.
Re: Absolutely uncalled for	vlad3163	9/26/10 11:42 p.m.
Oh, you're one of those guys...	Jordan117	9/27/10 3:08 p.m.
Dude, I love Louis CK. *NM*	Tex	9/27/10 3:34 p.m.
Re: Oh, you're one of those guys...	Spartan Jag	9/27/10 4:36 p.m.
Wait, what?	Jordan117	9/27/10 5:06 p.m.
Re: Wait, what?	General Vagueness	9/27/10 5:44 p.m.
Re: Wait, what?	Spartan Jag	9/27/10 11:20 p.m.
Re: Wait, what?	gunluva	9/27/10 11:29 p.m.
Me neither.	Jordan117	9/28/10 2:23 a.m.
And here I thot this thread was relevant to the OP *NM*	thebruce0	9/28/10 10:43 a.m.
It's the Internet	Hawaiian Pig	9/27/10 5:22 p.m.
Re: Absolutely uncalled for	Avateur	9/26/10 11:33 p.m.
HBO: Absolutely uncalled for *NM*	reprobate	9/27/10 1:35 a.m.
This is what I wake up to?	Riceatron	9/27/10 6:59 a.m.
Re: This is what I wake up to?	Wayward Spleen™	9/27/10 2:13 p.m.
Re: This is what I wake up to?	Crab	9/30/10 10:55 a.m.
HBO : Gordon Freeman is a dick.	Riceatron	9/27/10 7:11 a.m.
Re: HBO : Gordon Freeman is a dick.	RyanTheHeretic	9/27/10 7:17 a.m.
Re: HBO : Gordon Freeman is a dick.	Spartan Jag	9/27/10 1:56 p.m.
Re: HBO: Riceatron is a faggot	Frankie	9/27/10 1:40 p.m.
HBO: Makes Frankie ask "wtf"? *NM*	Wayward Spleen™	9/27/10 2:08 p.m.
Re: HBO: Riceatron is a faggot	Quirel	9/27/10 3:21 p.m.
Re: Fall of Reach Canon	furiocity	9/26/10 3:00 p.m.
Re: Fall of Reach Canon	The BS Police	9/26/10 3:04 p.m.
Re: Fall of Reach Canon	Stephen L. (SoundEffect)	9/26/10 3:12 p.m.
Seriously, people!	General Battuta	9/26/10 3:19 p.m.
Upboated	kapowaz	9/26/10 3:38 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	Avateur	9/26/10 3:38 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	General Battuta	9/26/10 3:59 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	Hawaiian Pig	9/26/10 4:37 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	Riceatron	9/26/10 4:49 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	BlueNinja	9/26/10 5:30 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	Silent Knight	9/26/10 6:45 p.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	thebruce0	9/28/10 10:51 a.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	General Vagueness	9/27/10 12:28 a.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	Kermit	9/27/10 11:55 a.m.
Re: A Tiered Critique of Reach's Story	Wayward Spleen™	9/27/10 12:54 p.m.