Why Halo's Story is Still So Relevant 20 Years Later

it's important to remember halo's initial success was not mostly owed to its multiplayer because online play at the time was still in almost niche activity exclusive to pcs and even then only pc is good enough to run the ship which in 2001 required a fairly high end rig it was the era of neckbeards and lan parties a simpler time a more elegant time the masses of harebrained 10 year olds talking about your mom abusing exploits and screaming into the mic would come later when halo 2 made online play a big [ __ ] deal making xbox live the household name that it is and spurring sony to catch the hell up in the beginning the story by itself was enough to have such an impact that it shapes many of us to this day a big part of who any of us is is determined by the environment we inhabit so it's important to understand the context of western imperialism so many of us were growing up in at the time halo was first released we were number one we were the most powerful empire in all of human history we were heroes who had defeated the most evil villains the world could come up with and we celebrated our military dominance with reckless abandon i remember my favorite christmas present before halo was a giant toy replica of an aircraft carrier complete with a set of toy replica planes that i would fly around in my fingers bombing the [ __ ] [ __ ] out of vaguely defined enemies pilots getting shot down ejecting tell my wife i love her the heroic sacrifice the good guys always winning in the end playing out whatever cliches i'd picked up from top gun or whatever other gnostic high octane war movie i was re-watching every day that week we were the good guys the strongest guys and the guys who always won america [ __ ] yeah but halo was a game that had you simulate some very different kind of scenarios i'm older now so it's easier to maintain a cool detachment from what's going on on any screen but back then the existential dread of humanity's struggle against the genocidal onslaught of an alien race who they could barely put up a fight against haunted me can you imagine what that would be like i would think to myself having the whole species wiped out having the world end knowing these are end days the mere simulation of these feelings was so intense so alarming that it made everything going on in my eight-year-old real world feel trivial the concept of extraterrestrial invaders was first introduced to us by h.g wells war of the worlds in 1898 halo has done a better job than any other fiction to date of capturing the existential horror that wells originally sought to portray when he first invented the genre in well's view the superior technology and intellect of the martian invaders and their subsequent extermination of most of the human race was really not so different from the atrocities western imperialists had commit against the indigenous populations of the various populations they had colonized wells specifically mentioned the tasmanians who britain had conquered and killed the [ __ ] out of but the analogy is of course apt for any number of the british empire's ventures into africa southeast asia australia and the western hemisphere generally it is likewise a fine analogy for cortez in south america or of course the united states genocide of native americans in a passage of the book's first chapter he would write before we judge the martians too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has rot not only upon animals such as the vanished bison and the dodo but upon its own inferior races the tasmanians in spite of their human likeness were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by european immigrants in the space of fifty years are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the martians ward in the same spirit by depicting great britain the ultimate imperialist power completely at the mercy of an invading army whose powers it could barely comprehend much less counter wells exposed western audiences to a feeling they had never known a century later halo accomplished something similar such feelings of terror and despair are all too familiar in many other nations history books around the world but not ours our history books told tales of the plucky underdogs who rebelled against an empire of the heroes who reluctantly entered world wars that would be finished shortly after of the shrewd tacticians who outwit yet another menace in the cold war at worst we studied vietnam not exactly as a loss but simply as a venture we decided was no longer worth the effort did we learn of the native genocide as well of course but we did not identify with the natives we identified with the american government and felt remorse over what we had done with our immense unmatched power and resolve to use that immense unmatched power more carefully in the future watching a fictionalized mankind at a technological peak 500 years in the future get absolutely pwned its planets glassed its ships wiped out even the in-game combat of marines getting cut down like paper mache by active camo plasma sword wielding ultra elites introduced the youth of america to a concept that was markedly and deliberately absent from any media we had consumed until then the idea that there could be something more powerful than we were the idea that we could lose not only lose but lose everything our world our way of life our species it was fascinating it was exhilarating i couldn't put the controller down and when i did beat the campaign i binge read every book because i was afraid of this feeling but entirely captivated by it i had to know how it ended i had to know what the [ __ ] was going on and what was there in the end not a decisive triumph of good over evil instead all life itself just barely holding on not a victory parade with trumpets but a quiet memorial and a solemn handshake humanity owing its survival to the very genocidal maniacs that it had almost been destroyed by and vice versa the human covenant alliance had been foreshadowed almost from the beginning with a significant portion of halo 1 taking place aboard the covenant ccs class battle cruiser truth and reconciliation whose name was a clear reference to the truth and reconciliation committees usually set up in the aftermath of civil war or authoritarian regimes to help nations heal through justice and forgiveness the most notorious of such commissions was set up in south africa after the cartoonishly racist apartheid system was finally brought down in 95. some say we need such a commission for black and white here in the states others say we need it for left versus right i remember that rush when humans first team up with elites and hunters at the end of halo 2 just thinking of our enemies like damn y'all [ __ ] up now i think about the vicious civil war that's been waged in this country over the last decade wage in every way just short of violence our battlefields so many courtrooms newsrooms boardrooms cyberspheres comment sections our parliamentary and legislative systems stressed to their limit hacking cheating stealing line all the clever ways we found to screw one another over protesting striking donating voting each side pushing the other towards mastery of combat through non-violent means it's the kind of combat that will define the 21st century i look back on the epic battles we've fought and i pity the fool who should ever have to face us together the elite's change of heart was of course precipitated by the realization that their cause the covenant itself was fraudulent it was halo's boldest and most consequential message the elites had fought a vicious war for decades they had killed billions lost billions more of their own and dedicated the entirety of their lives to this single purpose convinced that it would bring them life after death how can something be untrue when every single person you know believes it too when a belief system is so completely internalized by a society that even the wisest fairest and most talented individuals don't bother questioning it can we imagine what it would feel like to have such a belief system obliterated practically in an instant to look back on everything you had lost the atrocities you would commit and realize it was all for nothing more than a fairy tale with no more legitimacy than the monsters under your bed of course we can imagine that because though it was an alien plotline in halo any reader of history knows such a phenomenon is all too human in the real world the elite experience was not so different from what nazi germany went through in the aftermath of world war ii not so different from the soviets after the cold war to a lesser degree it's the kind of thing experienced by members fleeing religious cults like scientology here in the states many of us felt the dose of it after vietnam or iraq the gulf of tonkin and wmd's being lies so big that it was unfathomable that they were lies at all until it wasn't it is that sinking pit in the american stomach when we reflect on how much of our present-day comfort and wealth is not owed to our being heroes but is owed to the exceptionally profitable genocide in slavery we practiced in our earliest years that pit in the stomach which would lead even thomas jefferson the slave rapist to darkly warn that he trembles for his country because god is just and his justice cannot sleep forever do such fears also haunt the english and the spanish and every other colonial empire that waged a centuries-long war against technologically inferior races with different languages different cultures different skin colors only to in the end be faced with the brutal realities of empathy and equality and to thus have no choice but to confront their own profound sin and what would god's justice look like perhaps a disease that spread throughout all the land consuming and destroying everything it could a merciless enemy that could not be reasoned or bargained with covid no i speak of the flood the flood where halo's most brutal plot twist in the span of a single level the player is made to realize this isn't a game about saving humans from aliens this is a game about saving life itself from space zombies creepy crawly squirmy little hive mind spore spawn that impregnate the walls and any hosts they can find with their slimy green seed the player's introduction to the flood was a masterclass in horror and suspense marines who had lost their marbles grainy footage of catastrophe the dread of seeing captain keys face consumed in the belly of some hellspawn zombie potato and imagining the terror of what he went through mowing down creatures that are still so reminiscent of the marines you had come to love and would revert to checkpoints over and over and over again just to save a few levels before having to turn on your own for the sake of necessity of seeing humans robbed of every last shred of their humanity living in fear of things that on their surface look so much like you and knowing that should they catch you a fate worse than death awaits these kinds of experiences are a part of every zombie story and they are what make the zombie genre so fascinating indeed it's clear that man's obsession with the concept of zombies measured in movies books television whatever other media is unmatched by our interest in things like vampires werewolves mutants cyborgs or any other number of threatening creatures in the sci-fi fantasy universe what is it about zombies that we find so uniquely compelling many may be tempted to draw parallel to man's understandable fixation on real-world diseases which have played such a significant role in our species history like the bubonic plague the spanish flu or coven but i think this misses the mark because there are much worse things than disease out there and they're much more contagious a growing body of research has found that things like narcissism trauma and loneliness are just as transmissible as any bacteria or virus that the more time we spend around someone afflicted by these conditions the more likely we are to develop such conditions ourselves i believe our collective fascination with zombies is in fact a subconscious reflection of this because these kinds of mental afflictions align more with our characterization of zombies than traditional physical illnesses do for a few reasons first being the active role the infected play and spreading their infection a chronically lonely person feeling generally rejected by their peers in fear and the pain of further rejection will then themselves reject any overtures from friends or family who do reach out this rejection will in turn hurt said friend or family causing them to feel lonely and now more likely to repeat the cycle themselves the narcissist seeks victims to obtain narcissistic supply from pity admiration obedience their victims will internalize the narc's world view of hierarchy and emotional blackmail as normal acceptable even necessary and in turn seek to replicate it with their own victims a traumatized person will freak out over small things crumbs on the counter sounds in the distance unexpected company unexpected events so much so that anyone who spends too much time around them will have to learn to freak out over the same trivial [ __ ] at first only to prevent a meltdown on the part of their traumatized peer but after long enough the habits will become so ingrained they rule you even when you're by yourself these kinds of contagion spread are much different from the passive nature of how flu or covet spreads where no direct action on the part of the infected is necessary someone with the flu will typically be aware they are sick and seek to minimize exposure to others whereas those suffering from the kind of mental illnesses i've described will spread their infection wantonly do they know they are spreading the disease any more than a zombie knows it's replicating when it seeks to eat brains does it matter someone with the flu will retain their humanity they are still themselves the lonely the traumatized the narcs just like zombies these are people who look just like us who all too often were at one point are close friends and family but who are in fact dead inside and who will destroy us all the same if we do not run don't you get it the zombie apocalypse already happened we've been living in its aftermath for some time the flood the walking dead 28 days later this [ __ ] is interesting for the same reason any youtube tutorial is the information is relevant is there a cure maybe but it's not one the layman on the street can administer for now all we can do is survive such a cure did exist in halo the halo ring itself was a solution left to us by an ancient civilization that had long ago struggled against the same demons we do at the root of halo's lore were the forerunners mysterious ancient aliens who had all but disappeared leaving behind ruins remnants clues as to who they were and to what went so terribly wrong there was always something endlessly fascinating about slowly uncovering the forerunner secrets echoes of a story that took place long ago you see the same kind of theme play a heavy role in many video game stories like mass effects reapers or the vaults and borderlands the idea that a civilization clearly more advanced than our own could be wiped out was fascinating much for the same reasons as the idea of an alien invasion it was humbling forcing us to re-examine our role in the galaxy in time perhaps praying on that hunter-gatherer instinct in all of us that wishes to protect our people to understand what happened to those before so that we can prevent for ourselves whatever catastrophe befell them in real life we devote considerable amounts of time and energy to understanding the past we've argued for centuries over what really caused the fall of rome so many tomes written entire professions and fields of research dedicated to that one cause still no single thesis agreed on rome fascinates us because rome scares us they had it all figured out they had democracy and republics ideas that were lost after they fell and would be only reintroduced as revolutionary concepts nearly 1500 years later they were masters of math science and philosophy they understood the earth was round they knew about other planets in the solar system they had heating and plumbing currency and banks and on the inside they were just the same as us a few thousand years is nothing from an evolutionary perspective they have the same jealousies lust ambitions the same unanswerable questions and existential crises we have uncovered their graffiti they joked about people being [ __ ] and [ __ ] each other's moms they were the most powerful empire in human history until over time they were no more and everything they had learned was forgotten and for more than a thousand years during what we call the dark ages mankind regressed we forgot democracy we forgot science and math we forgot plumbing and [ __ ] in the streets with the horses it's been documented that during this time citizens of their respective feudal nations would stumble on roman ruins and marvel at their superior building techniques techniques which let stone structures survive in perpetuity while said citizens own buildings would rapidly decay within a decade they would stumble on bath houses and time diocese and great halls of oratory and debate they would find scrolls and languages they couldn't comprehend with pictures documenting concepts beyond their imagination i imagine the feelings of awe of mystery and wonder of grim concern they experienced in those times is almost exactly like the feeling we had as children uncovering the forerunner ruins the 400 technologies and terminals in halo indeed what i felt uncovering the forerunners mysteries is not so different from what i feel reading about the ancient aztecs celtics the ruins they all left behind stonehedge how did they build it why was it aligned with the setting sun there are ancient ruins even here in north america where we can only guess as to who inhabited them but we know they had government great meeting halls sports and economies that they were around for hundreds maybe even thousands of years and then they vanish leaving behind only ancient cities leaving us to wonder about all the stories that must have taken place there love and betrayal debate and war families and friends and rivals all lost to time like sand in our fingers like tear drops in the rain halo a master story that again and again and again simulated feelings and experiences that are all too real that have all played such a significant role in our species history and our collective human experience like the forerunners many of civilization has done its best to leave behind its advice to pass on what they figured out during their time here on earth to pass along the torch to those that follow and will we listen in my time on earth i've made mistakes and i've suffered and i trace those mistakes and that suffering back to its roots and i say well i could save everyone a whole lot of trouble if i could just warn them about this or explain to them why such and such is a bad idea but it's harder than you think at first because at the end of the day you're trying to describe things that are sometimes almost indescribable mental processes feelings how do you tell someone what the color green is without pointing out an object that is green because what if the color you perceive is green is what they perceive as red so you say oh well green is the color of grass and they say oh okay but really you're seeing two completely different colors because words are crude tools what if we have this same problem anytime we talk about jealousy hatred ambition confidence i've learned some lessons be yourself believe in yourself important lessons that i had to learn the hard way and much later than i would have liked but why weren't these pity little catch phrases pounded into me over and over and over again by every disney channel original series and random motivational poster in the locker room why didn't it click because words are crude tools and catchy quotes and episodes of rocket power can't get across the deeper emotions and mental realizations that have to take place on the inside i realize now some lessons cannot be taught but only learned otherwise man would have solved all its problems long ago i see everyone making the same mistakes as i do and didn't they see the same damn posters and watch that so raven too language can't do the job for you but i think it can be used to point people in the right direction rungs on a ladder they still have to climb breadcrumbs showing the way back home so i try to explain things through video games because games are the special language we all speak made of feelings memories emotions that sinking pit in your stomach when you realize you're spawn trapped you cannot in words make someone understand how shitty being spawn trapped is if they've never played the game and cared enough about it to feel the pain themselves when they are spawn trapped but for those who have it's an effective language so i think well what if this was thousands of years ago and i was trying to explain lessons i learned to masses of people who were completely illiterate what would i do then well i guess i would use simplistic universal concepts in my stories that everyone could understand like snakes trees apples murder the bible told us the story of eve who eats from the tree of knowledge a story of how man's cleverness cannot solve the knots of human nature the internet was supposed to save us the internet has destroyed us our ability to produce capital can provide us tools it cannot instruct us in the morality of their uses it cannot make wicked men good the world will not be saved by some new invention some clever trick from musk or gates some complex policy from the harvard grads running the country only love and empathy can save america and bring this nation and the world to the promised land that awaits what are love and empathy well viewer that is a lesson only you can learn for yourself and for all our sakes i suggest you get started

Channel: BDobbinsFTW

Views: 52,751

Keywords:

Id: u7D6JLgZneU

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021