Halo 1 and Reach are very much like that, but when the elites break off from the covanent in the second game, the humans are far to quick in forming a allince with them, they take literally seconds. By the end of the 3rd game, their isn't much hate towards the elites at all, even though the elites torched most of the humans out of existance. I think they were more gettting at that diversity helps, the bad guys stopped winning when they lost diversity.

Can someone tell me the point of having a volume button on the video but not the mother-fucking advert?! It's doing my fucking head in, having these surprise adverts practically blow out my speakers and my ear-drums. Get it fixed FFS.

Dansrage:

camazotz:

xerounlimited:
Well a new MovieBob show? Sounds good but, we'll have to see where it goes.
From this just this episode I can see the thing I disliked about The Game Overthinker. Which is not that you read in to things to much, it's that you connect dots of things that aren't actually there.
"Okay so covenant diverse... Spartans not... I find the covenant much more interesting." Okay I guess so, I mean you do have a point, I do like learning about different and visually interesting aliens then faceless space marines, I mean thats why I like viewing other cultures then my own, I know about my country and culture already, I want to learn about new, foreign things.

"Spartans are anti diversity" Um, I guess...

"Spartans are shooting for a master race." Wait what? How did we go from diversity of aliens to master race?

I could believe what you were saying if man in the story, wasn't trying protect itself from a crazed alien cult. There aren't any moments in halo where some blonde hair, blue eyed leader of the spartans tells everyone else they must 'purify' the universe of alien lifeforms, but there isn't, this is a story of man protecting himself from a crazed, essentially cult, of aliens.

Anyway, criticism aside congrats on a new show, I'd like to see where this goes. Just please, don't connect ideas that aren't there...

Again I'd like to see where

Think of it this way: what Bob is suggesting (I think) is not that the game is portraying fascists/racists as we tend to imagine them, but rather how fascists/racists see themselves; the minority elite, put upon/threatened by the vast unwashed masses of "Them." The game is basically a sympathetic presentation of how the master race might feel when the barbarians are at the gates, essentially. Also, curiously exactly like that excellent propaganda film about the Spartans in 300, in which the barbarian hordes in that case were the virtually demonic Persians, overwhelming in their number and their endless capacity for evil.....in the eyes of the Spartans, anyway.

It's an interesting and disturbing reversal, and thanks to Bob, I probably will never view Halo the same way again...

A good contrast for a franchise that is in the same vein but which I feel does not do this is Gears of War. Gears reflects a more disturbing conflict, I feel....some sort of vague allegory for the problems between Israel and Palestine, maybe, but with humanity and the Locusts in their stead....a different kind of tragedy in the making.

I get where you're coming from, but i think the point of your opposition is that Bungie didn't sit down one day and say "Lets make a deeply metaphorical and cleverly disguised statement about fascism." They just made a game where you're a cool guy who shoots wierd aliens.
Anything more than that is what people read into it, and lets be honest, you can read whatever you want into anything as complex as the Halo universe.
I could just as easily say halo is sexist because the female protagonist (cortana) is carried everywhere by the stronger male (MC). It doesn't make it any more credible.

Ultimately I agree. One thing I learned in college was just how ridiculously easy it was to read whatever intent you desired to in prose and poetry. I took several writing classes and some poetry classes (yes, I did, great place to meet granola chicks, at least back in the early nineties) and was always amazed at just how much my writing lost in the translation from conception in my head to dramatic reinterpretation by the audience.

Of course, the cool thing about fiction is this exact quality. One could almost say that the highly interpretive nature of a work after its creation says a lot on two levels: the audience's perceptions on the matter, and the sophistication of the work.

Put another way, the mere fact that we can have this conversation about Halo suggests that it is deep enough and/or interesting enough to be worthy of such discussion. If Movie Bob really doesn't like Halo, he should probably just not talk about it, heh!

I mean, we don't hear anyone talking about Fracture or Legendary, do we????? Nope, not unless its the sound of repeated gagging noises and groans of money flushed down the toilet....

Well Bob certainly taught me one thing. If you want your videos to be viewed and talked about alot, just make the fanboys angry.

camazotz:

Iron Mal:
That's one interpriation of it.

Or you could be looking way too much into one tiny detail of the series as a whole.

It must be pointed out that in comparison, the Covenent are more 'faceless' than the marines are in the Halo games, most of them have face obscuring masks or identical faces that lack anything in the way of emotive facial features (they aren't that much better than the bugs from Starship Troopers as far as individuality goes), the marines by contrast all have face exposing helmets or are named characters who are involved in the plot (the only 'faceless' humans charaters are the Spartans and ODST, both of whom are player characters and as such, are blank slates for the player to project upon).

There are more kinds of aliens but this is probably something that was created as a result of considerations being given to gameplay (it would be pretty boring if you just had to fight the same guys over and over again, having a multitude of alien races as enemies gives you a good excuse to mix up the gameplay and be creative with design) rather than as the result of a fear of diversity.

I don't know.... I remember being both disturbed and amused at some of the Covenant dialogue. "It's the demon, get him!" and the at once comical and tragic goofy voices of the little runt guys, right before you blow the hell out of them. In fact, seeing them on Reach speaking their own language....and realizing what that meant, that at a later date they either take the time to learn English or, even worse, Master Chief has a translator and/or understands them (which means his casual annihilation of the little dudes is considerably more callous than I might have imagined, given they are known to be a slave race, and one of the lowest on the totem pole) seemed just sad to me.

I think that their dialogue was translated to English for the sake of players rather than because it's actually what's going on 'in-game' (just like how the announcer in Multiplayer is always speaking in English regardless of what country team he's representing).

A lot of this does seem to be people reading way too much into nothing.

Great episode, I look forward to what else you have to say about other topics. Perhaps you could expand upon why you liked The Watchmen because I can't understand why.

In the games, it is humans versus Covenant. In extended universe, it's the UN versus basically everyone. In the games, they only mention the Resistance at the very very very beginning of Reach. And what do these humans rebel against, the Earth based dominance. It's never truly mentioned in game, but UNSC (United Nations Space Command). Bob could have talked about the whole New World Order conspiracy or something.
And yes, generic space marines are pretty commonplace now, but hey, they are still badasses.
I think that whole "Nazi" thing is overthinking it. You could make the same connection to Gears of War, which comes right out and says that the COG is a socialist totalitarian government (Coalition of Ordered Governments was only a small socialist political party before E-Day, but came to power when the actual government toppled under the pressure from the Locust).

But that's a tangent. Big Picture: All videogames are point-click-repeat.

Uh... no.

You just read way too into it. That wasn't really the BIG picture it was more like notice things that aren't actually there.

Besides, the spartans all being same? Bungie tried to promote diversity, they at the very least attempted to give the spartans in campaign unique personalities, they also gave so many options for customising your armor in game.

Also take a closer look at the covenant, sure there are different races, but within those races can you honestly tell me that you can distinguish one from the other?

Tipsy Giant:
I think it's quite the opposite, we don't notice because we have gotten to a point where the majority are not fearful of difference in race and culture

This. Movie bob I have enjoyed your internet video's since the Game Overthinker but really dude? Bungie are Nazi's? I dunno man you lost me. Win me back next week.

Looking forward to more of these shows. Congratulations.

This first one however...

... I don't care much for Halo either but, I think you went a little off the rails on that one, son. They're just games, man.

I personally don't think Bungie is lacing their products with some kind of fascist agenda. But, I'm can't wait to see what you talk about next.

eh,xenophobia can been seen in all types of media and genres so really this is nothing new and not worth pointing fingers especially at the Halo series when there are plenty of other "liked" series/media that expresses this point even further.

You know, you could look at any zombie movie/game that way. They are different from us. We must kill them all. Zombie genocide. Now just replace the word "zombies" with "jews" or "gays" or "gypsies" and there you go.

Just BTW: I am Jewish myself.

congrats nice show

Wow. Just...wow.

This "Big Picture" for all its size completely and utterly MISSED.

I LOVED the confusion over "The Covenant are bad guys??! WTF?!"

Fail.

Consider the following:

1. We tried peace. They just want to eradicate all traces of mankind
2. They want to kill us
3. They is gunna kill us good
4. The Spartans were created to HELP stop us being wiped out (Evil Spartans)
5. The Military complex presented in its form because....We are in danger of being made extinct
6. State Of Emergency
7. BILLIONS have been killed by the Covenant...Hence military is going all "Fascist?"
8. His eyes went blue BECAUSE....He had dark eyes to begin with. Its opposites of the spectrum. Makes for ease of telling the transformation.
9. We are evil because we don't want to die.
10. Maybe the Aliens in independence day were good guys bob.

I haven't even played anything after Halo 2 and this is just making arguments for the sake of arguments.

"OMG They want me for a new show!". Maybe THEY did. We didn't. The movie ones rile enough.

Great show! Can't wait for more!

Brian Hendershot:
Well Bob certainly taught me one thing. If you want your videos to be viewed and talked about alot, just make the fanboys angry.

Or make misinformed statements that have no real grounding in reality and just shows that your bias is directly affecting how you interpret content. I mean, hell, I'm not even a Halo fan, but I was amazed that he drew such a weird and overthought conclusion. Mario faces off against a large array of enemies with different aspects, while his comrades-in-arms (such as the Toads) are pretty much identical. But of course Mr. Chipman doesn't see closeted racism in that, because he likes Mario. In my field, we have a nickname for what Bob did in this video (i.e. interpret things based off of bias rather then actual content), it's called a 'Virgin Mary Cheese Sandwich'.

camazotz:

I mean, we don't hear anyone talking about Fracture or Legendary, do we????? Nope, not unless its the sound of repeated gagging noises and groans of money flushed down the toilet....

Well Fracture can serve as a biopunk vs. cyberpunk analysis, I haven't really played the game in awhile but that's what I got out of it, I never played Legendary so I can't comment on that though.

Its funny. Reach is the first Halo game I've owned (after playing lots of splitscreen at friends' houses) and they make no effort to explain who/what the Covenant is. So I wasn't like Movie Bob, questioning the fascist motives of Bungie, but I did want to ask, "why are the covenant evil? why should I care?"

Really? He dedicated an entire weekly episode to bash the Halo franchise? Not to mention, he would insult people who do their fucking job? (Bungie)

Moviebob, or Bob Chipman, isn't the intellectual who I actually thought he was. Hating on something just because it exists is a poor example of ones opinion, and to shove it in our faces makes it all worse. Its like he has to be right about everything. I don't hate people for opinions, only for what they do unto me. Movie bob hasn't crossed that boundry but he's lost thousands of points on my scale....

Also, the blue eyes? Whats with that? Lots of people have blue eyes, does that make them part of the "master race" too?
Its called a game, Halo has never been bad, and its campaign, in the way I see it, is a solid story told excellently. Still far from a game like say....Mass Effect, but they way its told is still powerful enough to be that way.

Ok, Bob read deeper into the game than he should have, mostly because it's really just a game that used a faceless protagonist to shove the player into the action more, and a multifaceted enemy to mix up the action.

Now, what's hilarious here, is that the deeper reading that Bob railed about here, is so off base it's hard to believe that someone who's intelligent enough to go searching for the deeper meaning came up so terribly wrong. Most likely this is because from Bob's own admittance he's not a fan of Halo, so he probably hasn't payed any attention to the story line at all if he's even played the other games.

If you draw back and look at the 3 games (reach, wars, and odst don't really count because they added side stories but nothing to the main plot we didn't already know.) the idea that the "pure race" Spartans are the good guys is just plain not there at all. Sure, people assume the Humans are good because we're human and we're playing the humans so obviously we're the good guys. That view doesn't really hold up under scrutiny though. In the course of the 3 primary games the humans let loose the flood into the galaxy and spend 1/2 the time destroying the only tools proven to exterminate the flood. Letting loose the thing that pretty effectively wiped out all life in the galaxy is not exactly what you'd consider a good thing. And while we're at it lets talk about the idea that the writers are supporting the master race Spartan's sameness policy, what is the one thing that rings true for the whole of the series? It doesn't matter what Master Chief is doing, all that spartan gun slinging does nothing to prevent humanity losing every single battle against the covenant. By the end of the second game it's been made clear that Earth is the only remaining human population center. Halo 3's ending leaves an entire continent glassed, people are worried about a little co2 causing global warming, after glassing Africa all of Earth is going to be uninhabitable. So where does that leave humanity? We refused to use the Halo weapon to kill all life in the galaxy, but we also let loose the only reason to use the Halo weapon. The master race Spartans have officially helped the human race survive... not at all, and we have to look to the expanded universe novels to take comfort in the fact that Humans have a couple tiny colonies on Mars and a few moons around Sol to survive on till we can find another habitable world to drop all our refugees on.

Now then, how about the covenant. Obviously they're evil because they're against the humans. Again evidence doesn't really support this. Sure we see some members of the covenant species are evil, the EU novels reveal that the prophets knew fully that humanity was descendant from the forerunners (the covenant's gods) and labeled humans demons because it was more convenient for their religion to survive. But in the games alone we see the elites figure out they've been lied to and switch sides to help the humans hauling along a bunch of grunts who as Bob himself pointed out fight simply because those are the orders and generally in war time disobeying orders tends to get you dead slightly faster than obeying them. And here again we see the issue with the idea that the Halo games are anti diversity, as it's abundantly clear that the Covenant are not only winning, they're winning so hard that their most devoted troops have to flip sides just to stop the humans from going extinct by the end of Halo 3.

The idea that Halo is in anyway promoting the Nazi master race ideals, or is preaching the evils of diversity is the uneducated man's surface reading from the game. The same kind of simplistic insight is what leads people to think Guy Fawkes wanted more freedom in his attempt to blow up Parliament.

First off congrats on the new show, but you missed that the Covenant are "evil" because their prophets are trying to cover up a blemish in their religion. Basically the Forerunners made the Halo rings and stuff and the human race are their decedents and are able to use their technology. The Covenant races can't so the prophets decide to kill humanity in order to cover up this problem. So the Covenant is not a slave army just a religious group that so happens to have Brutes and Elites, two warrior type races that are superior to humans. I see your point but it doesn't match up in context, which is the context of the Halo universe. Still though congrats on the show and I hope I get to watch it each week.

whats the name of the fox pundit who calls people Nazis? Glen Beck=Movie Bob. Gee i guess i didn't realize how easy it is to twist words into the view i want.

Halo 2 made it pretty clear that the Covenant aren't the "bad guys".

I just want to ask what the point is of ripping on a game thats from a previous generation? I personally love the Halo series and I just think its lame that people still make videos that rip on Halo merely for the sake of ripping on Halo. I understand that these are all opinion based (which is why Moviebob does not like Halo and I love it) but this video criticized the Halo games for things that many other "great" games do.

I know its only my opinion but I find it lame that people still hate on Halo for all its cliches. When you play a Halo game you know exactly what you are going to get, it may not have an award winning story, or top of the line graphics, or characters that melt your heart but the games are still fun to play with great fast paced action and incredibly fun online play (but again thats just my opinion).

Well thank you Bob. I watched this video expecting you to rant for 10 minutes about how crap Halo is and I was presently surprised that you did not.

I am blown away.......... In confusion. Did Bob really just make a five minute video about how Bungie is racist because the bad guys are diverse? Really? It was sort of interesting, but very very odd at the same time.

Another Halo rant? Really? Well, I suppose if you're launching a new show, the best way to get it loads of views and comments is to make a flamebait video like this one.

As mentioned, the Covenant are all different because you need to shoot more than one kind of enemy. If all you did was shoot Elites, Halo's famed open-ended strategy system would be dead and it wouldn't have been a success. You can't judge games by the same rules you do films, Bob, because games need to make certain decisions based on their interactivity, and nothing else. If you're going to talk about undertones, a lot of the religious stuff would have been a more interesting point, but I guess going for the more flamewar-enticing option (at least on a gaming forum like this one) of implying "OMG HALO IS RACEIST" (sorry, that's essentially what he did) is pretty much par for the course after the Expendables review taught Bob that controversy = success.

EDIT: Also, I forgot the Flood, and evidently, so did you Bob. Awfully convenient you didn't factor in the entirely uniform hive mind enemy in Halo, especially after praising the same sort of thing in Starship Troopers.

epic debut, i look forward to more,
seriously bob maybe its just me but the way you look at things and explain them is amazing, i loved you as movie bob, i think i'l adore you ask big picture

I think, mostly, the whole Covenant as a group of various species decision was made from the design perspective as a way to vary the enemies and to allow for alternate sizes, shapes, and varying levels of combat prowess without going down the whole Doom "demon undead" mode. Aside from chex quest and halo, most shooters I can think of with widely varied monsters ALWAYS choose the supernatural or fantastic in order to vary their mobs up.

I think if any Covenant-associated message was intended, it was a rather hamfisted jab at organized religion, and perhaps the variety was supposed to enhance that message. The implication being that no matter how varied the practitioners, i.e. the Covenant races from wimpy and stupid grunts, feral jackals, honor-bound hunters, and noble and cunning elites, organized religion can inspire us to terrible decisions and actions we otherwise wouldn't espouse.

And as an added level of irony, the Covenant wage a holy war against the incarnation of their Gods (the forerunners), as the forerunners are humanity.

End point: Religious extremism removes your individuality and leads to the murder of your God.

Mostly, though, it was an excuse to vary the enemies :P

I made three predictions before watching: Bob would show a picture of Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds, Insult the intelegence of people who like the games, and give a spoiler to Halo 3 (which I haven't played)

Glad to see I was wrong.

About this whole Conformity vs. Diversity thing, the Covenent may look different, but they all wear their conformity on the inside. Jeeze Bob, can't you stop with the visual prejudice :Þ

Waittaminute. Bob gets two shows and a column?! Not for nothing, his movie reviews have at least been informative. But I don't think his previous work warrants giving him a new series.

The LRR guys have 4 shows, and it's understandable. Each show is something totally different. You have sketch comedy, news satire, rifftrax, and that slow mo breaky thing. That's 4 different genres.

This new show is what? Bob ranting? Don't we already have that with his movie reviews? I mean, what's the point? If it's a rant on the game industry, I'd watch Extra Credits. If it's a rant on a particular game, I'd watch Yahtzee. This show is kinda superfluous, TBH.

If Russ Pitts wanted a new video series, why not give it to someone who'll bring us something fresh, and not just the same style of ranting, but now on topics other than movies?

gigastrike:

Nautical Honors Society:
That was just really terrible.

Lack of racial and cultural diversity? Are you kidding me?

The Noble team is made up of many people of many different cultural backgrounds.

This is really a matter of you looking too deeply into an issue when it really is just "Humans vs Aliens".

Try to look at the big picture. Yes, Noble team is "culturally diverse", but look at the Covenant. They're made up of mulitple species (not just races) that are just about as different from each other as humans are from slugs; maybe even more so because at least Humans and slugs have a common ancestor (I'd also like to point out that Grunts can't breath the same air as Elites). Yet you insist on lumping all aliens together as if totally original DNA is equivalent to just having a different skin color.

Compared to the Covenent, Humans have no diversity whatsoever.

I was using that as an example of how he is just scraping the bottom of the barrel to find something controversial to talk about.

There is no proof (yet) that Aliens exist, so I can't really judge how diverse they are compared to humans...

Sober Thal:
Yep, there goes what little respect I almost had for the movie guy.

Comparing Starship Troopers to Halo. That's so original and thought provoking.

Spartans are just like Hitlers master race... yeah, I guess that was a joke or something.

Bob is way to much an intellectual for me to even try to understand him. I quit.

He's been comparing Halo to Starship troopers since he's started internet videos. Specifically, he's always held the position that "If you want to know what Halo is, combine Starship troopers with Starship troopers, a little Ringworld, and a lot of "Meh"" (Note that I am paraphrasing quite a bit). He's also said that if you want the tyle of story that Halo has, you should just go read/watch Starship troopers, as it's much better.
But yeah, not the most original thing in the world.

If I was rude, I apologize.

Sweet! A new MovieBob show! =D

I'm looking forward to seeing what the next Big Picture is.

duck-man:
Hehe, >500 comments! (Granted it's the first of a series) I think the extra show will pay off, they're not too crazy :D

I think you can put that down to the fact it's about Halo, something guaranteed to ignite a flamewar on here at the best of times, but since Bob is biased as all hell against Halo, it was going to end up worse than usual. I dunno, I think Bob knew what he was doing when he made this video.

Flamebait topic + stupid, misinformed and downright wrong arguments made = flamewar + views + comments. Big start for your new show. I think, if he makes a video about, say the economy, it won't do nearly as well, even though it's a much more important thing.