{{
`${userDetail.user.displayName}${userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode ? `#${standardizeBungieGlobalCode(userDetail.user.cachedBungieGlobalDisplayNameCode)}` : ""}`}}
{{getUserClans()}}
Edited by Dr. Halsey's Left Arm:
9/6/2013 4:08:38 AM
30
Did Halo 4 deconstruct Bungie's Chief?
[quote]Genre Deconstruction: The genre is basically boiled down to a set of tropes, conventions and a typical premise. All of these features are then played straight; without shying away from any unpleasant consequences and/or causes of these features. Basically, the heart of the genre is laid bare, warts and all. It is not solely done to denote how unpleasant a genre or trope is, but to break away from the clichés and stock themes said genre or trope has acquired.
-TV Tropes[/quote]
We all know 343i set out to take Chief in a new direction, but I have to wonder they decided to take the time to deconstruct Bungie's idea of who Chief should be. If so, I have to admit it is remarkably well down. I don't say this as an insult, as much as I loved Bungie's Halo games, they suffered from a lot of the cliches that plague the first person shooter genre and the biggest offender was Chief. Halo 4 seemed to take those cliches and play them straight at first before injecting a bit of realism to them, well, as much realism as can be expected from a science-fiction franchise.
Think about it. The game starts out with Chief waking up and fighting the Covenant again, this time without the motive to start activating the Halos so they can go to heaven. Vaguely motivated aliens are where Halo started out as and for the start, Halo 4 plays it straight. We don't know why the Covies are there, but we are given a gun a nudged along on a killing spree.
Things begin to change when we meet the Ur-Didact. In prior Halos, Chief is kinda a big deal right? He's THE Demon to the Covenant! He's THE Reclaimer to to Guilty Spark. He's THE hero to all of humanity. Yet what happens when he meets the Didact? He pretty much gets tossed away without a second though by the main bad guy. Sure he mocks Chief later on, but it never really seems to dawn on me that the Didact really cares about Chief as a threat even to the end.
I think the biggest shift begins when he meets the UNSC for the first time in 5 years. Sure Lasky is happy to see him and Palmer gives him a playful nod, but when we meet Del Rio, it is definitely not something we would expect from a UNSC officer. Keyes gave Chief the utmost respect in CE and Hood mighlighted Chief's importance in Halo 3 by essentially taking Chief's belief that Cortana was worth rescuing as the reason to join the Arbiter's fleet in attacking the Covenant Loyalists on the Ark. But Del Rio does none of that. he doesn't care for Chief's legend, he doesn't get wowed with a sense of awe, he treats him like any other solider and tries to put Chief in his place. Can you imagine such a character in Bungie's Halo games? I can't.
Another thing to consider is just how fragile Chief is. Besides getting tossed around by the bad guy and not given the hero treatment he's come to expect, Chief isn't the invincible superman WE expect anymore. Before, Chief could just pop off a one-liner and get through most problems. Now, he has to speak up, he has to open up as a character and to be honest, he's not too good at it. Like Cortana said, who is the machine, him or her? His attempts to comfort Cortana when he doesn't even understand the impact of rampancy is painful, but not in a bad way, but a sad way. The dude is out of his element, something that hasn't happened since Halo 3, and even then it was nothing major. Halo 4 also marks the first time Chief really loses and it has far reaching consequences. Ivanoff, New Phoenix, Chief really let people down when he was needed the most.
And the ending, oh man the ending. Like I said, Chief is used to winning, so imagine how absolutely crushing losing Cortana must've felt? If you listen to his voice, he just can't register that fact and is in denial until Cortana fades away to her death.
So now we no longer have the Chief that made famous phrases such as "I need a weapon" to one who is, at his core, broken. And in the end, he is literally deconstructed piece by piece until his armor is peeled away and we finally break the Bungie taboo of not seeing Chief's face.
Pretty amazing when you think about it.
English
#Gaming
-
1 ReplyNo. It is a case of straining and imagining depth that isn't actually there.
-
I sense a change in the winds, Cobra has posted something positive about Halo 4... ;) Fantastic post, man. I definitely agree with you that they examined the things that made the Chief who he was and, through the narrative, gradually peeled away those layers to reveal the man beneath the suit struggling to come to terms with who he is. Halo 4 presents to us a John who is actually changed by his experiences, whereas he was totally unphased by anything in Halo CE-3. It's only in the novels that John divulges his absolute fear of the Flood, but we [i]never[/i] saw anything like that in the games. People will say that they prefered the bland, one-dimensional Chief to the new one with more emotional depth (which is just a bit silly, really) but there's no denying how powerful that final scene of Halo 4 is where the subtext of John's development in the game becomes [i]literal[/i] as the suit falls apart and the helmet reveals the eyes of a broken man.
-
2 RepliesGood post. I was going to reply to it yesterday but I had to GTFO :/ Absolutely. Indeed, the entire point of Halo 4 was to [i]actually define[/i] and provide context for Chief's character, and to set up a framework for his new journey. This quote by Christopher Schlerf from "A Hero Awakens" immediately comes to mind as I say this: "How can you have a Hero's Journey if the character is already a hero?" And that's precisely what Bungie's Chief was from a character standpoint. He was pretty much a walking tank with a voice- just a hero. We're provided barely any context for [i]why[/i] he is the way he is. 343 had to both craft the reasoning for Chief's personality [i]and[/i] develop it at the same time in a natural way. And what better way to do that than to attack the most vulnerable part of Chief- the AI companion that constitutes his humanity? I can't think of one.
-
Nah, 343 just made him into a pansy ass with a virtual girlfriend.
-
1 ReplyEdited by Sandtrap: 1/28/2014 6:12:18 AMWe also can't forget that all the weight of the losses he took in 4 must really be something else. Halsey, Jacob Keyes, Johnson, Lord Hood, and I'm sure somebody all at one time or another told him to protect Cortana and keep her safe. Johnson even took the time to let him know that as he was dying. Chief's a soldier and in his element to follow the chain of command. Cortana's death probably hit all the harder when in essence, he failed every last one of those people who ever told him it was his job and his job alone to keep her safe. Chief was made to win, and surrounded by all these things that allowed him to push that factor as far as it could go. Losing was never in his nature, even as a child. And, after some of his greatest victories, so came some of his greatest defeats. And to make things worse, Chief is a relic from a different age. The lines between everything aren't as clear cut as they used to be. For Chief it was either, A)Kill Insurectionists or B)Kill hostile aliens. As it stands, the post war galaxy is a different world, and every single side and faction now has blurred lines. ONI's douchebaggery. Venezia being an inter-species colony. Arby being all chummy. Jul being not chummy. Moonbaby Lidus being a reasonable Jiralhanae.
-
7 RepliesThe Chief is supposed to be tortured, and recluse. I feel that 343 nailed the Chief's character, making it clear that he's lost so much, and is unwilling to lose the last bit of himself that survived Reach, Cortana. He was stolen from his parents in youth, and they were made to believe that he was dead, he watched friends whom he had grown up with die, in an augmentation process that made him a weapon, he watched most of them burn alive on Reach, helpless to save them, and he was forced to kill the last of them, Linda, when he had to destroy the Autumn. He is so moved by these losses, that he no longer identifies himself as human, and sees himself as having more in common with Cortana, with a machine, than anything else. But, I still feel like 343 should've done better research on what he look like with no helmet.
-
Chief and Cortanna were my favourite parts of this halo game, and chief has really been set up for the rest of the saga. In a sense, he is broken, yet free of the UNSC's command, and as mean as it sounds, free of cortana's instructions. For once, he can do what he wants to do, instead of just following orders. My only worry is that he doesn't end up too angsty and mopey. He should retain some of his wit.
-
Not deconstruct, but redesign.
-
343's story of Halo 4 is very disrespectful for almost everyone…in here. Specially seeing MC and Cortana being not respected for so many years of service like you said.
-
I get what you're saying and I'm pretty sure you're spot on, that's what they were going for. Old relic Master Chief, still fighting on.... I don't feel it though. For me the Chief, in older Bungie games, was a fighter who fought through a lot of bad shit such as the Flood, losing Keyes and Johnson, the loss of PoA and via the books losing pretty much his entire Spartan family. He was already fighting an uphill battle, he made mistakes and he got beaten the hell up. In H4 he is outgunned by Didact and that's fine, I still don't understand Del Rios reaction to him though. It just didn't seem appropriate or realistic. The lack of shock or amazement by the personnel of Infinity was a big weird gap in the storyline, like a void that shouldn't be there. Nothing wrong with looking at the Chief from a different angle, but this was just a bit off. Like 343i don't understand Halo or something and just wanted to mess with stuff..... *looks at FuD, Chiefs armour, jackals, pelican, CTF, game in general* ...yeah.
-
Why do people choose to project their own shit onto things? [spoiler]Oh right cuz it's fun.[/spoiler]
-
3 RepliesWow, further proof that 343 is completely ruining halo's story. If I wanted to deconstruct something, I would build something with legos and take it apart. -blam!- you 343
-
I'm not feeling it. That might have fit nicely if Halo was a movie series and Halo 4 was the turnaround, but it's not. The deconstruction revolves entirely around the cutscenes while the gameplay speaks the contrary. Even though the context of the gameplay and the cutscenes may hint towards a subtle dethroning of an old legend, nothing about the gameplay itself agrees with that. Master Chief is still the one-man wrecking crew. He still feels like an unkillable god stuck in a suit of armor. Even while painted as emotionally fragile and defeated, that's on the back of single handily defeating the Didact. I can see where you're coming from, but I'm not strongly convinced. If you ask me Halo's always been about romanticizing the lone solider. It's about the man empowered by his weapon that always triumphs over by right of merit. It's about the soldier-ideal. Power, respect, independence, and discipline, Master Chief has always been the epitome of that idea. Halo 4 has potential in that two of those four things are called into question: His respect and his discipline. The point raised about Del Rio is valid, but not overly compelling on it's own. He's one man and he's a start, but it's not something I'd get too excited about. The most promising point that supports your argument is Chief's interaction with Cortana. For once Master Chief doesn't have any power. He may have just defeated the Didact, but all the killing-machine in the world isn't going to be able to bring her back. He's finally unable to do anything about something, and [i]that[/i] is compelling, but it's only one point. What I see is a lot of foreshadowing and potential. When stretched, Halo 4 can appear to have some elements of deconstruction. Only a handful of those are very convincing. They're the kinds of things that might be hints. Halo 4 might be the one to introduce the themes, but it's doesn't seem focused on really exploring them. More than anything else, it seems more likely that Halo 4 is setting the groundwork for a fuller deconstruction in Halo 5.
-
So any particular reason people are responding to this thread a few good 5 months after it was made all of the sudden?
-
I loved how for once, everyone wasn't trying to be my best friend. It's like Silva in the Flood. I loved his character because he understood that the Chief was a war hero but didn't give him any special treatment over his ODST's. I feel like Rio was similar, understanding he was a brilliant soldier but still going by the guidebook; a soldier should follow his superior's orders.
-
Aside from some cheesy dialogue and a few too many lines, they did a fine job on the Chief.
-
Much like the recent ironman movie 343 tried to humanise a superhero, both attempts were failures imo.
-
6 Replies343 is going to ruin halo in my opinion. The great thing about chief for me was i never saw his face, so he could be anyone. If 343 was going to show his face, they should wait until the final halo game, whatever that is
-
1 ReplyTL;DR
-
"to war" lulz oh halo 3
-
He has had bitches inside him
-
Well this is new, you posting something good about 343i. Great post, anyway. I completely agree.
-
its obvious they're itching to show chief's face. All through out the marketing you see his entire head, except for his face. Then the legendary ending shows his eyes. I lost it.
-
I hated it when 343i had that semi-face scene. Honestly, we're not supposed to see that face. OT: I thought Halo 4 did a great job of adding personality to a stoic man who's only known war.
-
1 Reply[quote]Things begin to change when we meet the Ur-Didact. In prior Halos, Chief is kinda a big deal right? He's THE Demon to the Covenant! He's THE Reclaimer to to Guilty Spark. He's THE hero to all of humanity. Yet what happens when he meets the Didact? He pretty much gets tossed away without a second though by the main bad guy. Sure he mocks Chief later on, but it never really seems to dawn on me that the Didact really cares about Chief as a threat even to the end. [/quote] Hang on. You've got to remember that this isn't the first time Chief is presented as vulnerable. When he first encountered the Flood, there was a feeling of anxiety and apprehension not often paired with a gung-ho hero type. Also, when he first met the Gravemind, he was quite inferior and insignificant. But other than that, nice post.
-
2 RepliesIf they show his face I'm going to be pissed, I agree with the rest though. However, I think Chief should still make one liners. That's his go to and honestly Chief kinda made most of those tropes.
