Tag: Xbox Game Studios

Twenty Years of Halo: Red vs Blue Season 1

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment
Artwork by Usbaia

The Halo franchise is owned by Xbox Game Studios

Today we’ll be taking our first detour into non-official fan works as opposed to licensed material, though Red vs Blue is definitely something that fits in the gray area of which we’ll see more of the further we get into this retrospective.  In any case, it’s no surprise that Halo generated a lot of fan made content considering how successful it was at release and how much Microsoft and Bungie pushed it as THE NEXT BIG THING, and Red vs Blue in particular is inalterably tied into the franchise and I’d say is more than a little responsible for having such an enduring presence in the industry.  Its place in entertainment history is definitely secured, but does the show itself still hold up to this day?  Let’s find out as we look at the first season!!

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Red vs Blue and all the images you see in this retrospective are owned by Rooster Teeth

Red vs Blue is a Machinima series (i.e. a narrative show using gameplay footage) created by Rooster Teeth depicting two teams who are fighting for control of a dirt canyon of no particular significance and was created using the Halo games.  On Red Team we have the delusional yet slightly competent Sarge, the lazy yet somewhat sensible Griff, the genuinely smart Simmons who’s also a total brown nose for Sarge, and the new recruit Donut who ends up getting pink armor because this was made back when something like that was considered hilarious.  On Blue Team we have interim team leader Church who’s a HUGE jerk but kind of the main character of the series, the fun yet ALSO lazy Tucker, and the very ignorant Caboose who’d be like if Ed from Ed, Edd, n Eddy grew up to join Space Force.  Throughout the first season we learn more about the teams as well as get introduced to secondary characters like Lopez the Red team’s robot mechanic, Sheila the Blue Team’s talking tank, and Tex the freelancer hired by the Blue Team with a checkered past that ties directly to Church’s.  Compared to where the series will end up going on later seasons, the first is fairly self-contained and can be broken down into three primary arcs; Donut getting the Blue Team’s flag, Tex getting Blue Team’s flag back, and Tex going after Red Team’s flag, but for the most part the actual plot is secondary to the characters’ personalities bouncing off of each other in a ludicrous combat situation; kind of like what Archer would eventually do with the spy genre a decade later.  Needless to say that with all the silly situations, potty mouths, and it being a cool VIDEO GAME thing, I was pretty obsessed with this show when I was a teenager, but there were a lot of things I liked when I was a teenager that don’t hold up now, so is this one of them?

EVERYTHING’S FINE! NO PROBLEMS HERE!!
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Twenty Years of Halo: The Flood & First Strike

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment
Artwork by Usbaia

The Halo franchise is owned by Xbox Game Studios

With the first Halo game in our rearview mirror, we return to the novels with the first one (The Flood) being a novelization of the game.  Okay, by “rearview mirror” I meant “firmly still in the middle of”, but a book is a great chance to expand upon the universe and fill in the cracks of the game’s narrative which certainly has a few spots that could be improved with some character development.  Not only that, but we’ll be looking at First Strike which will be the bridge between Combat Evolved and Halo 2; a game I still haven’t played yet am and very much looking forward to experiencing for the first time!  Speaking of time, let’s not waste anymore and get started on these books!!

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Halo: The Flood (Novel) – 2003

Written by William C Dietz

What makes this book unique in the series is that it’s based on one of the games as opposed to all the other books which are stories taking place in-between them.  Because of this, half of the novel is just straight up adapting the campaign which means we go through each of the levels and get to have all of the familiar set pieces described to us; something that would have been fine if these sequences were written with any particular flair, but much like the last book the writing is too utilitarian to add much flavor to the proceedings and it feels like I’m reading the novelization of someone’s Let’s Play.  Having just played the game right before picking up the book, it makes all these scenes feel redundant, and I’m not sure who would be buying these books other than those who have already played the campaign.  This is most prominent in the Flood containment facility (mission 343 Guilty Spark) where Keyes and his men were overrun by The Flood and where Master Chief encounters them for the first time.  That would have been a PERFECT point in the book to keep things quiet and not indulge in action scenes to build the mood, but because there were Covenant troops there in the campaign they HAVE to be there in the novel as well.  I understand needing to have some enemies milling about for you to fight in the game, but in the book it undercuts the severity of the Flood and it would have been way more haunting if there were NO Covenant there to kill.  Heck, even better you could have a few Covenant there scared out of their minds and not even fighting back to further cement the horror that we’re about to run into; just liked the crazed marine in the game itself.  On that note, I will say that the adaptation DOES work in regards to adding story to the already established story bits.  Master Chief is mostly silent throughout the game, so adding dialogue to certain scenes like when he meets the terrified marine or during the Library chapter where he’s trying to talk to 343 Guilty Spark (The Monitor) are definitely moments where they added something to the material, but for the most part his story contains rather rote action set pieces.

Nothing gets the blood pumping like watching someone have to trudge back because they got a crappy loadout!
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Twenty Years of Halo: Halo Combat Evolved

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment
Artwork by Usbaia

The Halo franchise is owned by Xbox Game Studios
Halo: Combat Evolved was developed by Bungie and ported by Gearbox and 343 Studios
Destiny 2 was developed by Bungie

I don’t remember what year I got this game, but it was the PC version that I played back in the day and I loved every second of it!  Well… at least every second that I could remember.  The first couple of stages of this game are etched into my memory clear as day, but there’s a general fuzziness around this game outside of the top notch moment to moment action.  The whole point of me doing this series is that I clearly remember having a GREAT time with this game and the third one, but so much of it is hazy and without context so now’s the time to really sink my teeth into this game and try to understand I found so engaging about it all those years ago!

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We’ll get into how it connects to The Fall of Reach soon enough, but narratively the game does a great job of getting you right into the action and not fussing too much with the details.  Without knowing the first thing about the Spartan project, MJOLNIR armor, or even the name of the enemy, it’s almost second nature to put yourself into the main character and start playing the role of the unflappable badass who can fire big guns and punch alien baddies with the force of a jackhammer!  Perhaps you may not have seen Aliens or Starship Troopers when you first played this game, but the whole idea of SPACE MARINES and wars with aliens is deeply ingrained in popular culture (at least here in the US) and creates a great foundation to build a franchise off of; allowing the overly familiar setup to do much of the heavy lifting while also providing more than enough context of the much bigger world we’re in and the stakes going forward.  Master Chief as well works on this level of rehashing old tropes to build something new.  His design is instantly iconic with the metallic green armor and the reflective faceplate who still conveys personality through body language and the performance of Steve Downes without giving us TOO much detail that you can’t easily slip into his character.  What do you know about the Chief going into this game?  Absolutely nothing, and yet more than enough.  He’s the hero who’s there to kick butt and take names.  His job is to protect his fellow soldiers and to fight the bad guys which makes him a useful blunt object that the UNSC relies on, but also one that is nearly manipulated into unspeakable evil by the eventual antagonist of the story.

“So we get the Index, activate Halo, and then we all get cake?”     “Sure, buddy!  Sounds like a plan to me!”
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Twenty Years of Halo: The Cortana Letters & The Fall of Reach

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment
Artwork by Usbaia

The Halo franchise is owned by Xbox Game Studios

Our long journey to explore the Halo series begins well before the first game even came out as Bungie was building its universe and teasing their fans long before they even knew what the game was going to be!  The seemingly haphazard nature of the production of Halo: Combat Evolved which went through name changes and story changes all the way down to switching the genre at something approaching the last minute can certainly be reflected in these two early works which are interesting time capsules of that period of the development, but beyond their places as being the earlies entries on the timeline, do they hold up as genuinely interesting pieces of media in their own right?  Let’s find out!!

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The Cortana Letters – 1999

Having read these letters, I’m starting to remember why I didn’t bother diving deep into this stuff back when I was playing it!  As far as I can tell, the Cortana letters are the first things Halo related that was released to the public; in this case being eight cryptic e-mails sent from someone at Bungie claiming to be Cortana that were sent to a Marathon fan page; Marathon, in case you were wondering, being a game series that Bungie had worked on in the nineties that may or may not connect to Halo in some tangential way.  I guess I’ll learn more about any implicit or explicit connections the further I get into the lore of this, but needless to say that these letters are not the ideal way to START your Halo journey if you wish to experience the series from the beginning.  They are intentionally vague and full of cryptic language, and their status as canonical is dubious at best; especially since Halo was still in the conceptual stages in 1999 and was MASSIVELY overhauled when Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000.

Follow the white rabbit!  Save the cheerleader, save the world!  WHO ARE THE PATRIOTS!?
Continue reading “Twenty Years of Halo: The Cortana Letters & The Fall of Reach” →

Twenty Years of Halo: Where To Even Start?

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment
Artwork by Usbaia

The Halo franchise is owned by Xbox Game Studios

It’s finally 2021 which means it’s time for trying new things and making new goals for ourselves, and coincidentally this is ALSO the 20th anniversary of one of gaming’s most iconic franchises; Halo!  The series has always been something of interest to me as it was one of the big NEW franchises to come up during my generation, though my relationship with it has been off and on to say the least.  I am aware of certain things in the Halo universe and the first and third games are two of my favorite shooters of all time, but honestly that was about it.  I never played the second game, I didn’t get far in ODST, and I remember buying Halo 4 for about five bucks yet never got around to playing it so the whole series just kind of faded to the background despite how much I enjoyed the parts of it I played.  I was mostly content to leave it at that but a little over a year ago I managed to pick up a few of the novels on a whim without even any real plans to read them anytime soon, and it dawned on me at that moment just how much Halo stuff there is out there, and looking into it further revealed an astonishing amount of books, comics, lore guides, and even a few movies that slipped under my radar!  So with all that and the 20th anniversary being right around the corner, I figure it’d be fun and interesting to try and unravel this franchise that has always been at arms-length, and perhaps it will give me a renewed appreciation for the games that I already enjoyed!

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Halo Is About Rings, Right?

The biggest hurdle for me has always been the narrative which never stuck for me.  I always found the story to be confusing and I completely ignored it whenever I played the games, which is weird because I’m usually the last person to do something like that as I tend to follow things in order and dread the idea of getting lost in an ongoing story, but with Halo that just never was a problem.  To this day, I’ve never played the second Halo game, and yet it didn’t stop me from playing Halo 3 because the gameplay and moment to moment action was so perfect that I could just roll with it; ignoring the story beats and just assume that I was kicking butt and winning the war!  To that point though, this is definitely going to be a “Newcomer” perspective to the series as I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who’ve followed this franchise from the beginning and can give you a more comprehensive and detailed examination; and will probably be doing so for the twentieth anniversary as well.  It’s also going to be a bit new for me to be reviewing straight up books as my closest experience has been reviewing comics, but I relish the challenge and frankly I could do with a bit more reading on books without pictures in them; even if they are sci-fi pulp novels. 

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The Mission Objective!

For this series I’ll be covering as much official (and a few unofficial) pieces of media in the franchise, from the games and books all the way to some of its more esoteric entries like the podcasts and augmented reality games.  The list, frankly, is daunting as I will pretty much have to cover two to three entries every week if I want this to be a twentieth anniversary retrospective and not bleed into a twenty-first anniversary as well, but hopefully it will all be worth it and I can at least make this strange little journey a little bit entertaining!  The first post will be out next Saturday and I hope you all will follow me on this journey!

Next: The Cortana Letters & The Fall of Reach