I Hate/Love Halo - Part 2

I will be completely clear on something. I am very fuzzy on the plot of Halo 2. I recall the general gist of things and, if I wanted to, could almost certainly lay out a fairly accurate path of the events of the game. But I don't want to.

Because after I beat Halo 2 the first time, I sat through the credits to watch the final post-credits scene. Then I stared at the title screen for about 3 minutes. I then ejected the game, turned off my Xbox and put the game in the shiny plastic-metal case thing (I got the collector's edition. Go me.) and stared at it for a few seconds. I then pointed my finger and glared. "Never. Again." I then put it away and have not played it since.

This game hurt me on levels I did not know I was capable of being hurt. The plot was terrible, the gameplay was tedious and annoying, all the new weapons were TERRIBLE (which I find hilarious in retrospect, because the Spartans in First Strike briefly commented on the superior design of the new weapons), many of the old ones had been removed and the new enemies... the new enemies...

The Brutes were a sign of the end-times of Halo for me. In the original game, there were four basic Covenant enemies. Grunts, Jackals, Elites and Hunters. Grunts are these things that look like bipedal midget dogs wearing portable iron lungs on their backs. They breathe methane. They're hilarious and like to run around and scream. In the original Halo, they spoke English when yelling at humans. My interpretation is that their respirators also had translation devices in them, which the covenant established as having advanced real-time translation... stuff... in Fall of Reach. The Elites yelled in their alien tongue (which was actually just English, sped up and backwards, but it sounded cool) and the Jackals spoke in this high-pitched, bird squawk thing. The Hunters, to my recollection, made no noise besides semi-audible grunts. Now, this I liked. Because Aliens speaking English always irritates me without proper explanation, no matter how stupid. Dammit, I will accept a freaking babelfish, just TELL ME THERE IS ONE! It's like my one button when it comes to Science Fiction. It's that one thing that always pisses me off, which is why despite it being one of my favorite shows, I can never truly enjoy an episode of Stargate (the new one kind of looks like it will be BattleStargate Galactica, by the way. But that's neither here, nor there.)

Which brings me to Halo 2. Of course, ALL the aliens in Halo 2 speak perfect English, including the ones that clearly have nothing covering their mouth or automatically translating. But whatever. I can let little things slide. But you see, the Brutes are not a little thing. They are a big, hairy, smelly thing and they slowly integrate themselves into the Covenant over the course of the game, usurping the position of the Elites and by the end of the game, taking their place and causing an uprising among the Elites. The Elites then join the humans and fight the Prophets of the Covenant, who are basically big floating Space Popes that look sort of like those worms from that one episode of Futurama.


Kind of? A little?

Now this is all well and good. Except that this means that you don't fight Elites anymore. Now, this is a problem for the following reason: The Elites are GREAT enemies. They are tough, they're the right size, they're visually striking and distinctive in their armor (without their armor, they kind of look like big worm-puppy things)and they move in a cool way. They're such a good enemy that I DON'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH THEM! I want to shoot them and I want to feel cool doing it! In the novels, they're all depicted as being on-par with the Spartan IIs and fight hand to hand on a few occasions. They're awesome and they're good enemies. Good enemies are imposing and you feel good about taking them down. When you bring down a cool ba dguy, you feel even cooler. This first becomes a problem when you play as The Arbiter in Halo 2, who is an Elite. You fight alongside other Elites and for his early levels, you fight Elites wearing stupid-looking armor. It's hard to not shoot your allies in these levels, but it's made easier because the Heretic Elites look so ridiculous you really, really want to shoot them. Although honestly, playing as the Arbiter was lame and you didn't really like him that much in Halo 2. Which makes it incredibly weird, because when you can't play as him in any story-relevant way in Halo 3, he's suddenly awesome and you WANT to play as him. I'd call this "Raiden Syndrome," but I really don't think it happens enough in video games to warrant its own name.


This is awesome.

Now, the Brutes. Oh, the Brutes. The Brutes are giant gorillas. Not like giant gorillas, they ARE giant gorillas.


This is not.

Look at that. It's like Mighty Joe Young had sex with a Wookie and beat the child with a bat made of steroids. They don't feel alien, they feel like if there was a dark and edgy 90s version of Donkey Kong, with guns that shoot bullets instead of coconuts. I hate fighting them. I hate them. They are stupid. The only thing that they bring to the table is the gravity hammer in Halo 3, which is quite possibly one of the coolest weapons in video games. But enough good things, I'm still angry. They're just NOT good enemies. I hate fighting them. I LOATHE fighting them. They're stupid and I'm glad they're not in the original game. This is a problem I have with them though.

In First Strike and Halo 2, it is implied that Brutes have never been seen before in the war against the Covenant. They are new players. Eric Nylund makes a note of this by introducing them near the end of First Strike, the Master Chief implying he has never fought them and Cortana saying there is no prior record of them. This makes sense because in Fall of Reach, they list off and show holograms of all known Covenant species to the Spartans, including the Engineers, which never made it into the final version of any of the games (besides Halo Wars, apparently) because they were non-combatants. Which makes me sad because I like them. They're cute.


Oh, the fun we could've had.

I want to make that clear. There are multiple instances that have made it clear that, before the events of Halo 1, Brutes had never been seen by humans and had not been encountered until shortly before Halo 2. Never. So, in Contact Harvest, which is Humanity's first contact with the Covenant, there are Brutes. Not Elites, Brutes.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU, BUNGIE? WHAT THE FUCK?!

Why do you have such problems sticking to your own damn canon? It's YOUR CANON! It's a good one! Stop changing it! Oh, I also discovered while searching Halopedia for images that Brutes are ALSO in Halo Wars, which is set before the events of the first Halo.

GOD DAMMIT, BUNGIE! What the hell is wrong with you? This is my BIGGEST PROBLEM with you. Seriously.

You have writers capable of crafting a fine story. This much is clear. You do this with great frequency in the novels you put out. They craft a great world. Why do you insist on fucking that up? Are you incapable of weaving this story into your games? I think you are. Because of this great, layered plot with events across galaxies, organizations, species, what have you, none of this comes across in your games. I don't get this at all.

I'm actually pretty sure at this point, by the time the time the graphics engines of the games are done and its time to start working on the story, all the writers are too busy playing Capture the Flag and Slayer to do anything. I mean, god dammit, Red vs. Blue has a better plot than Halo 2 and 3. And the ONLY Part of Halo 3 I enjoyed was that little Easter Egg with the Red vs. Blue guys on the second level.

That being said, I'm going to buy Halo 3: ODST when it comes out. And pretty soon, I'll probably buy Halo Wars too. Why? Well, besides the fact that I clearly have no sense of pattern recognition, I still have hope. I will always have hope. I will hope and wish that you can tell your story in a half-way competent way. After playing Half-Life 2 and Bioshock, I now have VERY high regard for storytelling in video games. Games are capable of GREAT things and it pisses me off when people squander that. And I hate you for it, Bungie.