About SV
Posted by: III Kirby III
Most talented Halo player: Riot, Dominator, Louie, Cell & Cooper
Best forum debater: Cooper
Posted by: Th3 Gunsling3r
Posted by: SV Cooper
Posted by: Th3 Gunsling3r
Posted by: SV Cooper
Games, and especially first person games have been using blank slate characters forever.
And it is quite the shame.
Not at all.
Video games are interactive. A blank character allows the player to assume the role as the character.
There's no such thing as a story that can't be made better if that story is focused around an individual who never speaks. I could take hours naming particular cinematics within all 3 halo games where the Master Chief could have spoken.
Stoicism behind a mask does not emphasize seriousness. It does not emphasize sadness or loss. It doesn't emphasize anything at all. It's a blank slate that for whatever reason, Bungie chose not to deal with. You'd think for someone in a suit all the time where his face is notoriously never shown that he'd at least have some type of body language - but he doesn't.
And there are better ways to assume the role of a character besides making him not talk. And you don't exactly need KOTOR/ME decisions to do that, either. The Master Chief is an established person with books behind his history and what he's like as a person. However, all of that is completely lost and brought to nothing come the Halo games because the games don't even TOUCH what he's like in the books. Why didn't they use the character he was from those into the HALO games?
You've got a good point on the "Blank Slate" allowing the player to more easily decide who the person is, though. If the HALO series had an ambiguous, unknown beginning where the Master Chief was a brand new figure, you'd certainly have a point. But while it is unfair to bring involve the books into this entire discussion and then say "But the books don't count because the game's what is important" - it's true nonetheless that the MC is already an established person.
Had he been a never-been-known figure, though, I'd agree entirely. But then I'd also have to say that if that were the case, the game should allow the player to at least partly emphasize the type of protagonist they want to see in the blank-slate.
Well the books came after HCE and it would have been really weird if all of a sudden in H2 he was a completely different character.
People just need to come to gripes with the fact that the books are just a cash grab.