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Posted by: CleanCutSoldier
Cortana does become connected to master chief.Their like best friends but if I'm wrong why does captain keys give Cortana to master chief is to guide him on this mission, because theirs a lot more simpler way. Like calling with his headset or what ever you want to call that antenna on the side of his helmet.please tell him cause I GOT NOTHING
You should go back and watch the cutscene. He didn't give Cortana to the Chief to help guide the Chief. He gave Cortana to the Chief because he couldn't allow her to fall into enemy hands, and a 7-foot supersoldier was about the best security measure he had available.
Back on topic...
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It's true that MC arguably doesn't have a particularly complex character. It is, however, also true that this doesn't matter.
Many people have this idea that stories need to be constructed in a way where you need a plot that has a specific amount of complexity and progresses at a certain reasonably snappy rate, and every once in a while you need to make sure to drop some expository direct "character development" content for a protagonist and a modest number of supporting characters. This isn't how stories must be told, it's just how Hollywood blockbusters tends to tell them because it's easy and it's a formula that everyone is already acclimated to and can connect with; it's a simple lowest common denominator mechanism. It's so prevalent that people go as far as to build their rubrics for judging things to cater to it: Plot complicated enough? Characters well enough developed?
Let me go ahead and introduce to you some things about the 1925 Soviet film Battleship Potemkin.
First, its plot:
-During a revolution, rotten meat aboard one of the tsar's ships serves as a catalyst for a successful crew mutiny; one of the mutineers dies.
-The ship heads to Odessa, where the dead mutineer serves as a catalyst for the city to engage in revolution, supporting the ship.
-The tsar's infantry massacre a bunch of the ship's supporters, and the ship fire's on a tsarist headquarters in the city.
-The ship learns that the squadron that it's normally a part of is on its way, so they head out to confront them and ask them to join them in revolution.
-At the last minute as the shots are about to be fired, the battle is called off because the squadron joins them.
Yeah, see that? That's everything that happens.
Now, how about the films characters? How does it do in that department? Well, after the first two 'parts' (out of five), there really aren't any. After the first part of the film, the only named character left living is a thematic figurehead who is almost never called by name and rarely appears on-screen.
So naturally, with the film lacking these basic things, it's pretty obvious that when the critics at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958 rated it, they said it sucked. I mean really. Barely any plot to speak of, and its characters actually decrease in existance as the film progresses? That sounds awful! Oh wait, whoops. No, it looks like they didn't say it sucked. Rather, they named it the best film ever made.
So, what happened? Well, there's a heck of a lot more to storytelling than the straightforward mix of heavy plot drive and modest character drive that people tend to think about. Remember the whole characters ceasing to exist as the film progresses thing? Yeah, that progression from individuals to a unified whole is one major facet of the storytelling. In addition to many other wildly creative things, director Sergei Eisenstein was actually using the existance of individuality in the film as part of his storytelling drive.
The point? What a character should be, how developed they are, or even whether they should exist or not depends entirely on the context and the use of that character. Those rubrics I mentioned? Yeah, they work okay for those Hollywood blockbusters I mentioned, because they cater to each other's expectations. But it's unfortunate that that sort of thinking of what characters have to be has penetrated expectations for all levels of storytelling, because it serious limits creativity and what people can and should do with a story.
Am I saying that Bungie used creative storytelling brilliance on the level of Sergei Eisenstein in the creation of Combat Evolved? Not really, and the comparison is useless because the styles in question are totally different. But I am saying that Master Chief being 'undercharacterized' by many standards and thereby being an unsuited character for a typical Hollywood blockbuster doesn't make him an unsuited character for storytelling in general. Different styles demand different storytelling methods and different kinds of characters in different parts of the storytelling process. Bungie didn't need a heavily characterized character as a protagonist for the style of storytelling they use in Combat Evolved. They didn't need an Atticus Finch or a Michael Corleone or an Andy Dufresne. They needed a character with less individuality that would get between the story being told by the player's actions through the character and the video game world. They needed a character with a convincing enough low speech quantity than when he didn't yap and blabber constantly when you're staring at blue beam towers it would seem perfectly natural. They needed the froodlenutzskying Master Chief. And he serves his duty in this game perfectly.
tl;dr version: MC's lack of heavy characterization isn't a problem because he's not being used in the storytelling process in quite the same manner as many traditional characters which require heavy characterization. Expectations in what a character is should account for the context of how that character is being used.
[Edited on 09.02.2010 11:23 PM PDT]