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 Administration’s 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 weren’t really ‘bad’—they 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 $50 million is pre-order sales means the game is already massively profitable prior to its retail release.
To the gamers that will say "I’m going to play it because it’ll be fun and I can see past the politics to enjoy myself"—fine, that’s their right. However, I urge those concerned about the rot in American pop culture to spread the word about Halo 2 and Microsoft's hateful view of the Bush Administration.
Bungiefella/Staten is saying that:
Conspiratorial types will view the pronouncements of "bungiefella" at the 11th hour as an attempt to keep controversy from hurting a nascent product's bottom line. Anti-Microsoft types (of which there are many on FreeRepublic) will claim that Micro$oft is trying to force yet another failed ideology upon consumers.
I'd like find out what Mr. Keighley's side of the story is and if both men would be willing to talk about this subject and take calls from FReepers on an upcoming episode of Republican Radio.
Messrs. Staten and Keighley can in touch with our producers by clicking on the "Contact Us" in the upper-left hand corner of the Republican Radio website. The show broadcasts every Saturday from Seattle, WA and we'd like to have Mr. Staten in-studio if possible.
Rumor has it that Halo 3 will be about Bush Sr. and his early years at the CIA. I can't wait!
excellent post RP.
Halo was the best Video game I ever played. I have been counting down the days until this release. I am stoked. Give me the plasma rifle, a couple of fragmentation grenades and the shotgun and I will put the covenant out of their miserable existence. Oh I also may need a banshee!
Stalin? I was thinking Satan.
Geoff is clearly at fault for angling Joe Staten's words to an anti-Bush angle...but frankly, most of you guys jumped the gun.
Even if there was some anti-Bushism in Halo 2 (that has yet to be seen), I'd still play the game. I mean, many games or movies could be interperted in many ways. If, like most games, the story takes a back seat, or is simply to be reason to blow stuff up, that's fine by me.
Excellent, thank you, I'll ask for Combat Mission for Christmas. Did a lot of Squad Leader and a little bit of ASL as a kid before moving on. It'll be nice to try a SL like game on the computer all these years later.
I doubt that the point will get across; besides, Command and Conquer is also known for allowing you to play both sides, it just makes the game more dynamic.
Also, from what I've seen of the game, the aliens aren't quite portrayed as a nice culture, and that they seem very radical.
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Somehow, I think this so-called "damning condemnation" will be lost on most if not all gamers. If your message is so nuanced that you have to explain it to everyone, then it is too nuanced for people who spend hours and hours playing video games, even AFTER you explain it.
Honestly, so called conservatives pushing a game that REQUIRES you to steal, murder, rob, assault, you name it in order to win. What is conservative about that? You guys just LIKE going into blind, stupid rages, don't you? Do you identify with the thugs in GTA:SA more than the Master Chief? I'm conservative, sir, and you are most definitely NOT.
Where do I signup?
You nailed it, same goes for the anti- Harry Potter types and the anti Lord of the Rings. Games and stories are mostly entertainment, and only with a lot of study do they support essays for and against the administration, or whatever other topic sentence one wants to explore.
I have no doubt that lots of microsoft employees are liberals, the company probably seeks to recruit them, but there are doubtless many hard working conservatives employeed as well. They are a business and want to make a profit. Microsoft should remember the party that brought the anti trust suits against them.
Whatever.
The game will rock.
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