Posted on 11/08/2004 2:01:36 PM PST by Republican Radio™
Halo 2, the sequel to the top selling game for Microsoft's Xbox, will be released on November 9th.
Joe Staten, the Microsoft employee and writer responsible for the storyline of both games, will use the new game (targeted at teens) as a political protest against the Bush Administration.
For those who don't know story of the Halo games, it takes place in the future when vicious and radically religious alien forces called "The Covenant" are in a war with the human race and have trapped a lone human warship light years from Earth near the heretofore unknown Halo, a huge ring-like world manufactured and abandoned millennia ago by a powerful race. Unfortunately, Halo is still inhabited and activating its immense power will bring forth "The Flood," a bio-mechanical army that will wipe out all human and Covenant life in the universe. Your mission a genetically-modified human soldier in the game of Halowas to fight the Covenant, the Flood, and destroy Halo before it is activated and all life as we know it ceases to exist.
Halo scribe and Microsoft employee Joe Staten was interviewed in the November 5, 2004 issue of Entertainment Weekly (subscription required) about the new game. In the interview Staten says the Halo 2 story follows the Covenant "holy war" invasion of Earth brought on by the fact that Earth military forces destroyed Halo at the end of the first game. Unlike in the first game where Halo was a life-destroying superweapon, in Halo 2 we are now told that Halo was one of many and are "utopias, safe havens in a universe filled with terror." Halo 2, according to Staten, will show the story from "both the humans and aliens" and makes militant Earthlings into the imperialist bad guys against the religious Covenant aliens who consider Halo as a religous relic. "You could look at it," Staten says of his Halo 2 storyline "as a damning condemnation of the Bush Administrations adventure in the Middle East." Microsoft has taken a straightforward action game classic in the original Halo and decided to make a political statement with Halo 2.
It begs the question: Why would a gamer or the parent of a gamer pay $50 to play a game that will force the player to shoot hundreds of "bad aliens" for hours to advance in the game and then at the end of it admonish the player for shooting the bad aliens? "These aliens werent really badthey were just misunderstood and we awful human beings had no business ever leaving our little corner of the universe. You, and all humans like you, are violent and bad but the aliens are more highly-evolved, peaceful, caring beings that we should have respected and loved rather than murdered."
If Joe Staten and Microsoft want to make a political statement (and as anyone living near Microsoft HQ in Redmond, WA will tell you, the overwhelming majority of their employees in Redmond, WA are violently anti-Republican), they can do it without my money funding their next political statement. It will be a drop in the bucket, of course: Halo 2 has a rabid fanbase clamoring for the product and over $50 million is pre-order sales means the game is already massively profitable prior to its retail release.
To the gamers that will say "Im going to play it because itll be fun and I can see past the politics to enjoy myself"fine, thats their right. However, I urge those concerned about the rot in American pop culture to spread the word about Halo 2 and Microsoft's hateful view of the Bush Administration.
there should be an intergalactic test before violence can be allowed.(/s)
$2000.00 is probably the maximum contribution directly to GWB.
Anything else would have to go through PACs or 527s.
lazy americans.
drive through banks.
drive through pharmacy
drive through food
drive by shooting.
too lazy to stand up.
(/s)
1) Corporations care nothing about people and only about profit
2) No matter what, people cannot be "evil"--it's just a matter of perspective
3) Violence is never the solution
Answer these questions truthfully and you'll find the importance of this post. Please don't fool yourself by saying your kid spends more time with you than with his friends or alone... I was a teenager once and know that's a lie.
Baaaaaahhhh, Shame on Microsoft for their bad behavior. Baaaaahhhh, I don't want to check out the facts and see if what is being said is true or not. Baaaahhhh, I just want to believe the negative and cry Shame, Shame."
It's been done before. Countless RTS games had the player play both sides before completing the game. Some, like Starcraft had the player play 3 or more sides, each one with a different perspective of a conflict.
That's the impression I get. It sounds as if the author expects players to reject the War on Terror just because they play a game that has as part of the plot, "not all foreigners are bad and should be killed, m'kay?".
It doesn't sound as if there's some sort of explicit anti-Bush mesage in the game.
Minor problem. He's not the creator of Halo. He's just one of the grunts on the project. It's like saying that you won't shop at a store because the accountant is a jerk.
Halo is a superweapon designed both to study the Flood and to destroy any 'food' in the Galaxy, to prevent it from spreading.
Guilty Spark: "This installation's blast has a maximum radius of 25,000 lightyears. But once the others follow suit, this galaxy will be quite devoid of sentient life. Or at least any of sufficient biomass to sustain the Flood."
To reiterate the facts:
If you are a fan of the original game, the writer of the sequel (who also wrote the original) is saying: "Forget what you know in Halo, the real story is my thinly veiled slap at Republicans."
In Halo 2 Barbara Streisand turns up as the end-of-level baddie.
If that's the case, do you think if the company doesn't respond to his declarations about this game that they will have essentially endorsed this grunt's views?
Joe Staten: "[Kids] could look at it as a damning condemnation of the Bush Administrations adventure in the Middle East."
Kids: "Wow, that blowed up REAL good!"
It still sounds as if Micro$oft has to provide the narrative for this, to bring out the Kerry/Moore/bin Laden complaint about enforcing the UN resolutions.
It is surprising that guy who made billions in the US would support this. One could expect this of guilty trust-fund babies or actors looking to 'be relevant'. But Gates really did make the money by selling product. Maybe he made way too much, too easily. Or may he doesn't know about this game, and how it's being promoted.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/halo_pr.html
Joe Staten
Cinematics Director
"This is bull****!" barks Staten as he twitches in his chair. He isn't complaining about a bug in the code, he's reciting one of the 17,000 lines of dialog he wrote for Halo 2. (The script is 10 times longer than the first game's.) This particular outburst comes when a player's rocket launcher gets stolen by another player, who swaps it for a far wimpier weapon - a stunt you couldn't pull off in the original game.
Staten has a flair for the dramatic. He majored in theater and briefly did improv after college. But he also knows a thing or two about commando behavior. He got a master's in military history at the University of Chicago and signed on for a two-year recruitment program with the CIA. Staten mined this experience to add secret-agent-ese and authentic spook tactics to the game. As for his flirtation with the government underworld, it didn't last. "The CIA didn't think I was enough of a son of a *****," he says.
Sure...yeah... uh huh.
Listen, the reporter who has an OBVIOUS bias, found someone connected to the game, who ALSO has an obvious bias.
Now, if this reporter was to be a fair and UN-biased reporter, then WHY did he NOT have an opposing view regarding this game??? WHY did he present one 'game developer's' opinion. Is he insinuating that there is only ONE 'game developer'? Or MAYBE he is trying to act like there is only ONE developer who was 'important'?
A person can take ANY video game and put an 'anti-Bush/anti-American' theory on it. And the reverse is also true. It all depends on what the mindset is.
I think the MOST interesting question about this guy/Halo2/ and 'the message' is....how LONG will he continue to be employed by Microsoft, now that he has taken this slam stand?
Give me a frickin' break. Didn't you learn anything from backward masking, smurf and Harry Potter witchcraft, masters of the universe apostasy, what "kiss" stands for, and the hundred other urban legends propagated through pop culture?
The people you are trying to "expose" are laughing at you.
Gee, you're right! I'm all better now. Hey, by the way; there's a guy named Michael Moore that agrees with you and has an enteraining movie he'd like you to buy on DVD for $15. He's also got a movie coming out soon he'd like you to pay $10 to see in the movie theater.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.