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This topic has moved here: Subject: Standing on the Threshold: A thematic evaluation of the trailer.
  • Subject: Standing on the Threshold: A thematic evaluation of the trailer.
Subject: Standing on the Threshold: A thematic evaluation of the trailer.
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(Also at The Marty Army- is reposting accepatble?)

Salutations, one and all - it's good to be back! I originally enrolled in Bungie's community a little more than a year ago, although I must confess to allowing my account fall into disuse. With the irrefutably spectacular Halo 3 trailer gracing our computer monitors, though, I felt that it was high time to dust off my MSN Passport and begin arranging all of the books and games on my shelves in multiples of seven. :)

I originally conjured up this litle dissertation over at Relicnews, when I was confronted by a self-righteous peon who roundly panned the HALO 3 trailer as "boring" (I'm convinced he spouts such things just to be 'radical' and 'independent' by decrying anything that might be popular - he utilises a userbar to advertise an "Anti-Userbar" slogan, for Heaven's sake!), I began composing my thoughts on the trailer's positive aspects. Ideas began spooling out, and this was the result...

...Some long, rambling, pretentiously overly-analytical thoughts follow. Read at your own risk!
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I can only reiterate that the HALO 3 trailer was genuinely impressive. Bungie's obvious talent for graphics-sculpting and game-fashioning is only further ratified by its release, but there is a small, transcendental quality to such things which infuses them with a peculiar quality of grace which lifts their games above the level of merely 'proficient' and into the arms of 'captivating' - the developers' ability to imbue their games with, for want of a better term, a soul. Graphical frippery is par for the course these days, as all of the relentless competitive -blam!-ion over system-specs between the X-Box 360 and the Playstation 3 in last year's various gaming fairs demonstrates all too well. Yet no matter how many bumps you map and how many lights you source, this cannot create an attractive game - you can have lots of sheets and panes of stained glass, but it requires an artistic mind to place them into a beautiful window. Where Bungie pulls itself free of the graphical mud that a sizeable number of other developers can become all too easily bemired in is in injecting a bright verve and a proud spirit into their games - whether it's the amusing quips and backchat of soldiers or the knowingly self-referential names of their characters, there's a rich undercurrent which suggests to the player that there's more to what he's playing than tapping buttons and waiting for the credits sequence. The HALO 3 trailer reinforces this admirable quality by including its own subtle monologue hidden behind the "OMGWTF in-game engine in use with BBQ sauce!!!!111oneeleventy1!shiftone!!" captions.

I thought that where it succeeded most was conceiving an awesomely impressive sense of scale. The first section with Cortana's commentary was delightfully understated - it possessed a distant, mournful, sombrely subdued quality which succeeded excellently in conveying the rout of mankind.

It did not display acres of land fused into horrifically twisted forests of glass by the incalculable force of orbital bombardment or the flayed shells of plasma-scoured cities, but it didn't need to - the desolation is conveyed in a different manner which, while not sensationalist, is no less effective. The only fire man is now able to produce not to found in the boiling infernos of a reactor's heart or the stinging flames gouting from a weapon's muzzle, but the pathetic, limp smoulder of a shard of wreckage. Seeing wrecked cities, the atmosphere tinged scarlet with the steel rain of battleship wreckage, and columns of refugees trudging from death on the battlefield to death in the wilderness would at least have a sense of dignity and enduring pride about them. They'd enjoy the implication that men created something great and mighty in their time, something of importance by the very fact that a rival deemed that it warranted destruction, and create the aura of the Worthy Challenger that the victor had to struggle against, and whose memory he honoured, rather than the Insignificant Ant he just crushed underfoot and immediately forgot about, if he even knew that he was there at all. Yet here, Man doesn't even have monuments to the race's own defeat - just a few shattered and battered splinters of anonymous metal, dotted across the empty landscape like dirt scattered on a coffin before it is lowered into the grave. A glimmering sun perversely shining on them with summer brightness to convey how the cosmos rolls on, uncaring about how the environment rides roughshod over annihilation of the lives and ambitions of millions.

And throughout all of this crushing disaster, the Master Chief strides; he even emerges through the smoke to indicate that he's struggled through it. He's walking through the ashes of an empire - his own empire! - how must a ghost feel when he floats over his own corpse? The Master Chief carries a weapon, but the war is over - the single, solitary clack as he slaps the foregrip into his palm only emphasises the harrowing isolation the Master Chief is enduring. There's none of the usual accompaniment to the gesture of arms - there's no gravelly-toned cigar-chomping Johnson to bark out defiant quips, nor is there the typical entourage of determined Marines who, while they lack the superhuman strength of Man's great champion, nonetheless have the undaunted spirit to follow him into the very maw of Satan in the name of victory.

Now, they're gone. All of them. Each one as insubstantial as the grains of dirt the breeze is pattering against the Master Chief's armour. Even Cortana has deserted him, with her warm, familiar, supporting prescence now withdrawn to some unreachable, far-off, cryptic omniscience. The Master Chief is now the Last Human... and he was never even human to begin with.

Yet despite this drawn-out doleful diatribe of death and devastation, the music maintains a noble, upright quality. The Master Chief glances upwards, considering the heavens and the mysteries above the clouds - not something we'd expect a man raised from birth to be naught but a soldier to do - and we sense that there's something tangible stirring through the air and behind that inscurtable visor...

...then the Banshee sweeps through the air, and the coda from the Truth and Reconciliation Suite's iconic battle movement strikes up its stirring, rousing tones. Once the Covenant ships hoved into view during the trailer, and leaving aside this post's rambling pseudo-intellectual conceited tripe for the moment, I was promptly grinning like the Cheshire Cat - this moment encapsulates that there's little doubt that while you can argue over whether Halo is a proficient or a dire franchise unti lthe cows come home, it has undeniably stamped its distinctive mark upon gaming.

The contrast between the quiet, personal and moving former section to the loud, bombastic and tremendous scene that begins now couldn't be starker and more extreme, and that only emphasises its stunning impact... and that impact is to reinforce the monolithic extent of the Covenant's unassailable domincance. The Master Chief would normally have an entire horde of relentless crusaders crashing down upon him like a tsunami - yet from this perspective, he is little more than a speck, almost completely obscured by light and lensflare. The hero of humanity is of no more concern - he is neutered, insignificant, impotent to do more than watch the pivotal events unfolding around him. Seeing the great, mysterious array hauling itself from the oceans also deals a shocking blow to the solar plexus of Man's pride. We have laboured millenia to dominate Earth - republics and kingdoms, races and ideologies, have all risen, endured and fallen in the continual effort to establish themselves on this planet's soil - yet in one single frame, the Covenant have smashed apart any sense of achievement we might have believed we earned from all of this labour and struggle - in one instant, dredging forth a gargantuan relic from beneath the waves, they've revealed that they know more about this world than those who claim it as their own home! One might find a parallel with the infamously enigmatic Monoliths of Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey books - is humankind no more than transient tenants, squatters to be evicted when it pleases the landlond?

For all of its luscious graphical ostentation, then, the trailer to Halo 3 is actually one spirit-hammering visual allegory that explores the nature of crushing defeat, and how it is represented with the immolation of civilisation, the doom of men, and the disintegration of his works. "The Way the World Ends", indeed.

We should be lapsing into some bleak, miserable reverie - so why does the music, then, insist on beating a pacy martial theme that causes your blood to stir with a thrill of passion and expectation? The cliff that the Master Chief is standing on may be crumbling away, but he hasn't been sent cascading down with it yet. The triumph and dominance of the Covenant may be of monolithic proportions, true, but is it unassailable? The eldritch brilliance of the array's summoned energies - the cusp of alien success - is reflected in the Master Chief's visor, bestowing on him a bright, shining quality too... and then the notions hinted at in the end of the first half of the trailer suddenly erupt out in an explosively compelling epiphany. While there's still a pair of hands left, you can build anything from a mud hut to a great cathedral given the effort and dedication - something the Master Chief certainly doesn't lack. He is a man. He has a weapon. And that's all he needs.

"There is one certain means by which I can be sure never to see my country's ruin: I will die in the last ditch."
-Prince William of Orange.

There's a fight to finish!

[Edited on 5/17/2006]

  • 05.17.2006 4:47 PM PDT
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i agree with pretty much everything but u really took ur time with this great detail good job

  • 05.17.2006 5:00 PM PDT
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Excellent job! Honestly, that was just too good to be posted on a forum! Kudos!

  • 05.17.2006 5:01 PM PDT
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Wow!
That's all I have to say...wow.

  • 05.17.2006 5:13 PM PDT
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I'm most obliged for the positive comments, everyone. The veritable torrent of threads on this forum only serves to emphasise the great appeal of the series - whether it's gawping at the graphics, chuckling at easter-eggs, relentlessly combing over every last pixel in search of signs and portents, or immersing their titles in an arresting atmosphere as I believe I've shown here, it genuinely does demonstrate both the strength of the Halo concept, and reflects brilliantly on Bungie too. :)

  • 05.18.2006 6:52 AM PDT
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Wow pleas kill me that was good lol great job with it

  • 05.18.2006 7:42 AM PDT
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I completely agree with your analysis of the trailer. With two paltry bits I would add that the music inspires both hope and heroism. Particularly after Cortana states "This is how the world ends". The music gives the trailer an Epic feel, a larger then life feel. Which I suppose is appropriate given this is the end of the trilogy. .

Lastly the entire trailer was pretentious. But I mean that in a good way. This is Halo we are talking about and this will leave its permanent mark on the gaming world.

Bungie take your time....get it done right....and make something that will leave us breathless.

  • 05.18.2006 8:53 AM PDT