Aeneas is a strange hybrid of a Greek hero and a Roman general; the Master Chief is a strange hybrid of a Marine and a battle-robot. Their hybridization presents an interesting correspondence in itself, but more interesting still is the way their mixed mythic provenance affects how we view their struggles with their respective enemies. The Covenant forces in Halo very memorably call the Master Chief "the Demon" in much the same way that Dido, jilted queen of Carthage, demonizes Aeneas as being made of stone when he refuses to show human feeling. In both works, the principal character, with which the audience identifies nearly exclusively, is made semi-human in order to make that character a more perfect defeater of the enemy.
And make no mistake: Both works are about securing the self by defeating the other. Halo is a little more obvious in this regard, as the entire universe is at stake. Even the most cursory glance at the Aeneid and its historical context, however, shows us how similar it is to Bungie's masterpiece: The Rome of Virgil, and of his audience, and in particular of his audience-member- in-chief, Augustus Caesar, would not exist without Aeneas' struggle to figure out where the heck Italy was. Both Halo and the Aeneid tell a story about a more-than-human hero defeating enemies who would be too much for ordinary people like us - enemies who nevertheless bear an important resemblance to the ones we and the Romans face in our respective presents.
Even though Joe Roman (or, if you prefer, Publius Romanus) isn't pushing the thumbsticks to move Aeneas around nor choosing the bits of dialogue to tell Dido that he's skipping town, Publius Romanus interacts with Aeneas in precisely the same way Joe Sixpack interacts with the Master Chief.
The interactivity of the action/adventure game is actually an illusion developers employ to generate a feeling of immersion: You identity yourself within the scene and therefore become a part of the scene mentally. Additionally, Virgil, like every other epic poet, is reshaping the myth he tells in ways that are unfamiliar to his audience, who therefore interact with the work as their ideas of what's going to happen engage with what the epic poet has in store.
Are there any closet-gamers inside the Beltway to compare with Augustus? If so, they should note that modern critics wonder if Virgil really was a huge supporter of Augustus (at the end of the Aeneid Aeneas abandons some of his Roman virtue), and that playing as the Arbiter in Halo 2 tends to make you think that maybe the enemy has a point from time to time.
Roger Travis is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Connecticut.
