- Old Salty27
- |
- Noble Member
Anton1792 I agree on all points. I appreciate 343 going in their own direction with the series, but re-writing and flat out ignoring certain themes, characters and plot points to add drama and make the series "grittier" and more "realistic" has gotten a little annoying. I know they are trying to make the series their own, but the level of retcons seems unnecessary; re-writing Halsey as a cold monster, Infinity inexplicably coming out of nowhere, the Ancient Human-Forerunner back story, ONI becoming pants on head retarded/insane and the Elites sudden abject hatred of Humanity.
343 has injected a lot of good ideas in the series, but the implementation of those ideas haven't been exactly smooth. Enough people have voiced their complaints about how Halsey has been portrayed in the Kilo Five Trilogy so far so I'll skip that and go to Infinity. The idea of an advanced UNSC ship being fielded after the war is no brainer as a logical follow on to Humanities tech progression, but a 3 mile long super ship with loads of Forerunner tech that was being built for over 20 years, never mentioned until now and didn't take place in the battle for Earth? Come on. It would have been more believable if Infinity was an upgraded Trafalgar Class Carrier with energy shields and advanced Covie slip space tech. She wouldn't be as big as a Assault Carrier, but probably give one a run for it's money using hit and run tactics or in a confrontation with a battle group escort. Humanity suddenly having this massive super ship than can wipe the floor with any Covie ship just seems lame.
As for the new Human-Forerunner lore, there are a lot of things I like about; specifically the characters(Didact, Bornstellar and Chakas) and the Precursor lore. But Humanity and the Forerunners being Ancient enemies competing for the Mantle and being completely different species goes against everything in the original trilogy. Bungie hinted several times through out the Trilogy that Forerunners and Humans were essentially one and the same, at the end of Halo-3 Spark flat out says it, the Prophets knew it and tried to destroy Humanity to preserve the Covenant in Contact Harvest(written by Halo-3 lead story writer Joe Staten). Now Spark's comment and MB's are written off as them just being crazy in the new canon. 343 could have kept most of there new plot points with the Forerunner novels by simply making the Human-Forerunner rivalry Human/Forerunner-Precursor rivalry.As for Didact/Forerunners being the new threat in the new trilogy it could have easily been the Precursors. With all the new Forerunner tech being so different and alien from what we've seen in the previous trilogy(Promethean Knights, dis-intergation, using " the force") making them Precursor would easily explain away the inconsistencies.
Then there is ONI. Good lord, they make the old school CIA look saintly and level headed. Of all the brilliant ideas they can hatch after having Humanity just barely survive extinction they try go after the closest thing to an ally Humanity has, the Elites. Granted the Human Elite Alliance in Halo-3 was out of necessity, but as many posters have mention Elites always had a fair level of respect of Humanity and questioned the Prophets over their need to be destroyed. The sudden 180 to all humans must die is a bit jarring, to be fair not all Elites probably want to be BFFs with Humans considering they spent 25 years ruthlessly hunting them down and others would certainly be suspicious and worried that Humanity would try and inflict revenge for an attempted genocide.
There's been a trend going on ever since BSG came out of making everyone in Sci-Fi unlikable A-holes who rarely do the right thing or do the right ting for the wrong reasons and often have a wildly warped view of things. Paragnosky condemming Halsey and making her a scapegoat for all the evil deeds ONI has done over the course of the war, while Maggy herself authorized every single step of the the Spartan program. Kilo 5 being up in arms over what Halsey did, but they seem to be totally okay with Maggy's Spartan 3-s, which by many accounts was a much crueler endeavour than the s-2 program. S-3 may have been willingly conscripted, but they were also traumatized children turned into expendable super-soldiers, the last batch being psychopathic ticking time bombs because of their illegal augmentations. Mendez's sudden hate for Halsey and feeling of moral superiority over here is just dumb. He knew what he was doing when he trained the Spartans; he knew how terrible it was, but also realized it's unfortunate necessity to fight the Covenant. All of this crap feels like un-needed drama to an already dramatic story.
Like I said before, 343 has come up with a lot of great ideas, but their implementation and need re-write much of the back story to make those ideas fit feels totally unnecessary. There was no reason they couldn't have used the pre-established lore as a starting point and gradually implemented their own ideas to make the series their own. It almost feels like an un-intentional kick in the nuts to the story Bungie crafted.
[Edited on 10.25.2012 9:56 PM PDT]