- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
well, you'll find terms like prophet and heresy in most religions. the reference to the ark - noah's ark, is found in islam, judaism and christianity too. but ideas like the oracle (anyone heard of the oracle of delphi?) and forerunners - which is akin to ancestor worship, is found in other religions, e.g. of the type that the ancient romans and greeks used. i don't know much about other religions, but i think that the chinese also have some ancestor worship. the idea of a religious superweapon reminds me of the 'ark of the covenant' (the 'covenant' was an agreement between God and the Jews - covenant, did i just say covenant?) in indiana jones. but the roman and greek gods were always giving weapons to human heroes.
the thing is, religions have common elements, so if you're going to talk about a fictional religion, you have milenia of material to draw on. but there are elements of the game which are not so obviously connected to religious that we're used to seeing, like the fact of the covenant caste system - to be found Indian (not north american indian, but rather Hindu) society.
what is quite cool though - and pretty obvious if you want to make something seem mysterious but coherent - is the way bungie used large chunks of the past to paint a future, which seems understandable to us (because it's built out of ideas from world history) and yet mysterious to us, because the vocabulary and ideas are just distant enough from our daily lives for us to see them as alien.
personally i thought that it was a little startling for bungie to have a fervent religious group coming to destroy the earth - and please note that the earth forces presented by bungie are all western in culture (all the commanders have american accents, and the soldiers are all american, australian or mexican). it's not startling of itself, just considered against the backdrop of world events as of 11th september. anyone see any parallels? of course, the parallel is limited once you get into the intricacies of the halo plot. but it is there. still, the best fiction is based on fact! and ok, it's translated into other languages, but really - anywhere in the world where halo 2 is popular enough to warrant its own language version is going to be a rich country which is also part of the 'west', in terms of free market democracies, so i think that parallel still holds.
[Edited on 12/6/2004 4:31:44 PM]