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9/15/2011 4:51:36 PM
216
The Importance of Helmets in Halo: Reach. (WALL OF TEXT)
This idea of the Spartan's helmets being the only thing keeping a supersoldier from being a normal human is a prevalent motif in Halo: Reach. This is established early on in the game, in the first mission. When Jorge-052 first discovers the girl at the Visegrad Relay, he has his armor on and tries to do his job. He holds her still, speaks to her in English when she is clearly speaking Hungarian which Jorge also speaks, and his inability to relate to her nearly gets him killed. When she is lifted from her hiding place under the stairs, Jorge-052 ignores her pleas and struggle to get loose, while he attempts to calm her, business as usual. Then she says, "Még... Itt vannak", which translates as "There's more". When Jorge realizes this, he stiffens up, then shields the civilian with his body just in time for the sangheili Zealot to miss it's attack. After the skirmish is over and the Relay is cleared of hostiles, Jorge-052 takes his helmet off, showing his very human (and also father-like) face to the girl, attempting to comfort her. He speaks her language, even recognizes her dialogue, attempting to close the gap between them. The members of Noble Team, excluding Emile-A239, remove their helmets around each other and their superiors. This is to reinforce their bond with one another, that they don't just see each other as a set of armor, and they don't want to be seen as such.
When Jorge stays behind on the Long Night of Solace, he removes his helmet, removing the barrier between him and Noble Six (and the audience). He speaks his piece, and he's gone. Jorge, who is the most "human" member of Noble Team is the first to go. Carter-A259 removes his helmet during his final run on the Pelican. After he does so, when he knows he's going to die, he briefly banishes his attitude as the commanding officer of the team and says that Cortana made the right choice in choosing Noble Six as her momentary protector. He relinquishes his place as the primary member of Noble Team.
Catherine-B320, who shares some similar distance issues with Emile (although for different reasons), dies by a headshot. Why would Bungie choose such a brutal, sudden way to kill off one of their main characters? I've said before that one of the reasons why I liked Kat's death was because instead of falling into the cliche "going out with a bang" death that Bungie likes to employ so often, hers was more realistic of a war scenario. Here one minute, gone the next. That may be one part of it, but just before she dies, she finally opens up to Noble Six on the elevator. Before, she was untrustworthy or cold to Six, because he/she was a replacement for a fallen comrade, but also because Kat is wounded. Kat is insecure because of her robotic prosthetic, and she thinks the other Noble members consider her more as a liability than an asset, and there may be some truth to it. Carter protects her from the Zealot attack in Winter Contigency. Her Firefight voice examples show this, and she comes over as "sassy" in an attempt to be independent, as well as the unsual number of ground engagements she takes part in. For a cryptanalyst, she spends an awful lot of time with her boots in the mud. She may be trying to prove that she is valuable, in spite of her disability and despite her operation as the hacker of the team. After being helped off the floor by Noble Six, in brief moment of vulnerability, she opens to him. She puts her helmet back on, and is cut down by what is probably the same sangheili Zealot that attacked her before, straight through the helmet.
At the end of the game, after the UNSC Pillar of Autumn makes the jump to Halo, Noble Six dies fighting an onslaught of sangheili warriors. He removes his helmet, and brings as many of the aliens with him as he can, signifying that the character of Noble Six is the player, who kills countless enemies. He dies after an elite stabs him, apparently in the face, with an energy blade.
Although Emile dies before Six does, I decided to explain his death last because it is the most interesting to me. In my other thread, I explain my thoughts on Emile, that he embodies what he thinks a Spartan should be. The only emotion he lets himself convey is that of anger or wrath. He doesn't show his face to even his Spartan comrades, instead carving a skull on his helmet's visor. The carving is his face, he is his armor, he is a Spartan. When he is attacked by Zealots on the mass driver, he kills one and asks for more. Another Zealot comes behind him, and interestingly enough, the elite puts its hand over the Spartan's visor and skewers him. Emile's "Spartan face" is removed, and when it is removed, he is killed. Emile, who after living a life of anger and distance, is ready to die, but in typical Emile fashion, goes down fighting the enemy he hated. Emile, who wouldn't remove his helmet and show his human side, (though while "good", is the Spartan's weakness) has his Spartan identity briefly suspended, and that is when he is killed.
When the Spartans' remove their helmets, they were communicating to the people around them, supersoldiers and civilians, that they too are human. Although showing this human side means that they too have the capacity for compassion, it reveals all the weaknesses that are associated with it. It's as if the ONI myth that Spartans are unkillable is true, so long as they remain the faceless defenders of Earth and all her colonies. Maybe this goes to explain why John-117 is such an exceptional survivor, we never see his face.
[Edited on 09.15.2011 12:12 PM PDT]
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Sithslayer50 [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] RKOSNAKE Irrelevant, Chief wasn't a victim of the Doomed By Canon trope.[/quote] I'm not familiar. Does that simply mean that all Spartans introduced must be killed in order for the game to remain canon?[/quote] No, it means that as a prequel, the characters were doomed to die due to them not being present in later works or because they were not mentioned.
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] RKOSNAKE Irrelevant, Chief wasn't a victim of the Doomed By Canon trope.[/quote] I'm not familiar. Does that simply mean that all Spartans introduced must be killed in order for the game to remain canon?
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Sithslayer50 There is a flaw here though, that Chief does remove his helmet. After Halo CE he removed his helmet while in the pelican. I agree with your point though and I think it was an awesome read. But remember, Noble 6 also took HIS helmet off in the beginning of the game while being driven in the warthog. I would say that the similarity between Noble 6's removal of his helmet and MC's removal is close, but then again Master Chief has survived 2 more games since he took off his helmet.[/quote] Irrelevant, Chief wasn't a victim of the Doomed By Canon trope.
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There is a flaw here though, that Chief does remove his helmet. After Halo CE he removed his helmet while in the pelican. I agree with your point though and I think it was an awesome read. But remember, Noble 6 also took HIS helmet off in the beginning of the game while being driven in the warthog. I would say that the similarity between Noble 6's removal of his helmet and MC's removal is close, but then again Master Chief has survived 2 more games since he took off his helmet. [Edited on 07.30.2012 8:57 PM PDT]
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Madmaxepic Honestly, I never want to see the Chief's face, it would ruin everything.[/quote] I agree very much with this, he started as the faceless, personally I think he should stay that way throughout...I'm not adverse to like seeing the back of his head or something at some point though...can't get much more specific than "brown hair", that's something that would affect anyone's vision of what he looks like or anything. He should stay facially unknown, that's one of the reasons I think he's so cool...that we can project ourselves or whoever or whatever we want onto his face. He's just as much a symbol as he is a character.
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] CavemanBCE This idea of the Spartan's helmets being the only thing keeping a supersoldier from being a normal human is a prevalent motif in Halo: Reach. This is established early on in the game, in the first mission. When Jorge-052 first discovers the girl at the Visegrad Relay, he has his armor on and tries to do his job. He holds her still, speaks to her in English when she is clearly speaking Hungarian which Jorge also speaks, and his inability to relate to her nearly gets him killed. When she is lifted from her hiding place under the stairs, Jorge-052 ignores her pleas and struggle to get loose, while he attempts to calm her, business as usual. Then she says, "Még... Itt vannak", which translates as "There's more". When Jorge realizes this, he stiffens up, then shields the civilian with his body just in time for the sangheili Zealot to miss it's attack. After the skirmish is over and the Relay is cleared of hostiles, Jorge-052 takes his helmet off, showing his very human (and also father-like) face to the girl, attempting to comfort her. He speaks her language, even recognizes her dialogue, attempting to close the gap between them. The members of Noble Team, excluding Emile-A239, remove their helmets around each other and their superiors. This is to reinforce their bond with one another, that they don't just see each other as a set of armor, and they don't want to be seen as such. When Jorge stays behind on the Long Night of Solace, he removes his helmet, removing the barrier between him and Noble Six (and the audience). He speaks his piece, and he's gone. Jorge, who is the most "human" member of Noble Team is the first to go. Carter-A259 removes his helmet during his final run on the Pelican. After he does so, when he knows he's going to die, he briefly banishes his attitude as the commanding officer of the team and says that Cortana made the right choice in choosing Noble Six as her momentary protector. He relinquishes his place as the primary member of Noble Team. Catherine-B320, who shares some similar distance issues with Emile (although for different reasons), dies by a headshot. Why would Bungie choose such a brutal, sudden way to kill off one of their main characters? I've said before that one of the reasons why I liked Kat's death was because instead of falling into the cliche "going out with a bang" death that Bungie likes to employ so often, hers was more realistic of a war scenario. Here one minute, gone the next. That may be one part of it, but just before she dies, she finally opens up to Noble Six on the elevator. Before, she was untrustworthy or cold to Six, because he/she was a replacement for a fallen comrade, but also because Kat is wounded. Kat is insecure because of her robotic prosthetic, and she thinks the other Noble members consider her more as a liability than an asset, and there may be some truth to it. Carter protects her from the Zealot attack in Winter Contigency. Her Firefight voice examples show this, and she comes over as "sassy" in an attempt to be independent, as well as the unsual number of ground engagements she takes part in. For a cryptanalyst, she spends an awful lot of time with her boots in the mud. She may be trying to prove that she is valuable, in spite of her disability and despite her operation as the hacker of the team. After being helped off the floor by Noble Six, in brief moment of vulnerability, she opens to him. She puts her helmet back on, and is cut down by what is probably the same sangheili Zealot that attacked her before, straight through the helmet. At the end of the game, after the UNSC Pillar of Autumn makes the jump to Halo, Noble Six dies fighting an onslaught of sangheili warriors. He removes his helmet, and brings as many of the aliens with him as he can, signifying that the character of Noble Six is the player, who kills countless enemies. He dies after an elite stabs him, apparently in the face, with an energy blade. Although Emile dies before Six does, I decided to explain his death last because it is the most interesting to me. In my other thread, I explain my thoughts on Emile, that he embodies what he thinks a Spartan should be. The only emotion he lets himself convey is that of anger or wrath. He doesn't show his face to even his Spartan comrades, instead carving a skull on his helmet's visor. The carving is his face, he is his armor, he is a Spartan. When he is attacked by Zealots on the mass driver, he kills one and asks for more. Another Zealot comes behind him, and interestingly enough, the elite puts its hand over the Spartan's visor and skewers him. Emile's "Spartan face" is removed, and when it is removed, he is killed. Emile, who after living a life of anger and distance, is ready to die, but in typical Emile fashion, goes down fighting the enemy he hated. Emile, who wouldn't remove his helmet and show his human side, (though while "good", is the Spartan's weakness) has his Spartan identity briefly suspended, and that is when he is killed. When the Spartans' remove their helmets, they were communicating to the people around them, supersoldiers and civilians, that they too are human. Although showing this human side means that they too have the capacity for compassion, it reveals all the weaknesses that are associated with it. It's as if the ONI myth that Spartans are unkillable is true, so long as they remain the faceless defenders of Earth and all her colonies. Maybe this goes to explain why John-117 is such an exceptional survivor, we never see his face. [/quote]That was a mouth full.
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Sandtrap [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] CavemanBCE [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Sandtrap Was a good read. Although I have issues with the cannon breaches Halo Reach brought about with the novels, I still enjoyed the reading.[/quote] Yes, I agree, the canon-breaking that Halo: Reach dealt out is very annoying. I just sought to offer a different take on the game's so-called lack of character depth. [quote][b]Posted by:[/b] thebobafettest Good read. Though the part with Carter protecting her may be another hint he and Kat might have had some sort of relationship in the past.[/quote] It is that too, a previous relationship between Carter and Kat was hinted at in the commentary on the Legendary Edition.[/quote] I like to think of Halo Reach like I do with some of the episodes in Halo Legends, an interesting fan story, not cannon, but not entirely meant to be forgotten either.[/quote] I was incredibly pissed off when I finished the Reach campaign and I saw the many inconsistencies within the canon. HOWEVER, as time passed by, I realized what every other person who is pissed off at the "broken canon" should realize. Halo is, or was up to that point, Bungie's baby. And Bungie, perhaps to assert their authority, rightfully retconned a few, almost insignificant, parts about the canon. After all, game canon should reign supreme over all other works pertaining to Halo. But I have digressed too far off topic. On the Spartan's helmets, I find the OP's theory quite awesome. But I do think that, although Jorge showed a more Human side on many instances, all the other Spartan II's are very different to the Spartan III's in this manner. It's a nice detail that Bungie's writers worked in very nicely.
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[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] jonnyandtoby Why did Emile not watch his motion tracker?[/quote] The Elite that killed him dropped down directly below the Phantom. Thus, it would've been completely hidden by the Phantom's large blip on the motion tracker. When it moved in for the kill, it was going slow enough to not appear. Emile could've had a sharp eye on his motion tracker and the squad below him in the structure, and it wouldn't have saved him from that zealot.
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Actually I think Emile does have more emotions than you seem to have put in... While Emile is shooting the Banshees and Phantoms in the MAC gun, he calls out Noble team members, I've heard the following from him: "That was for Kat!" "That ones for Jorge!" "This is for Carter!" (I believe its Carter, I cant really understand if he was saying his name or not) Overall though, great job on everything here.
