November 17, 2004
An alien's-eye view of the world: My latest Slate gaming column
Spoiler alert! This entry contains a few plot points to the game Halo 2 -- so stop reading now if you don't want to have any surprises ruined.
Slate has published my latest video-game column -- and this one is about the curiously nuanced politics of Halo 2. In the original Halo, you played as a human fighting The Covenant, an alien army. In the new one, you do pretty much the same thing ... until about two hours into the game, where you suddenly find yourself playing as an alien. The perspective flips back and forth throughout the game, and it neatly queers the usual black-and-white simplicity of the average first-person shooter. As I note:
This inverted perspective extends, brilliantly, to the manual that comes along with the game's "Limited Collector's Edition." While the game's plain-jane $45 version comes with a guide written from the human perspective, the bulked-up $55 edition (it also comes with a DVD) has the exact same handbook written from the alien perspective. Both books cover the same material—the weapons, the combatants, the Byzantine back story—but with hilariously different interpretations. The human guide calls the littlest aliens "Grunts" and says that "they will often panic when faced with superior forces." The alien guide calls them by their actual name, Unggoy, and purrs that they "will as ever fight well with their comrades." More pointedly yet, the aliens refer to their defeat in the first game as "The Atrocity at Halo." Who wrote this thing, Noam Chomsky?
Of course, you could argue just as easily that Paul Wolfowitz wrote the humans' guide. The narrative seems awfully familiar: a "good" force, convinced of its moral superiority, hacking through a faceless, undeterred horde that's driven by religious fervor. Ahem.
You can read the rest of the review for free online at Slate! And, as always, if you have any thoughts to share on the subject, feel free to post 'em in The Fray, Slate's discussion area, where intelligent comments are always welcome.
Posted by Clive Thompson at November 17, 2004 03:03 AM
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i remember being intrigued when Blizzard did the multiple-perspective storyline thing in Starcraft (they might have done it in previously in Warcraft as well, but i can't remember - it's been a long time since i played W II, and W III was such ass i never got very far).
now if somebody would just do a videogame version of As I Lay Dying...
For one of the best ever "inversion of typical good-evil roles" ploy in a game, check LucasArt's 1994 space sim TIE Fighter, in which the Empire is cast very persuasively as a rational, stabilizing force in the galaxy. The traditional opening crawl reads something like "After the destruction of the Imperial battle station Death Star by Rebel terrorists...". The Empire is shown doing things like quelling a bloody and useless civil war (mainly by threatening to destroy / conquer both factions) and fighting sedition from within.
Crono Cross was another game with a good-evil switch... partway through the game, after you've built up you characters and everything, you switch with your arch-ememy, and you have to start working on him..
i havent actually gotten to play it but my boyfriend has and told me about it.
Not on the good/evil tip, but a mind-blowing POV switch nonetheless was John Varley's novel Steel Beach. Halfway though the main character changes sex. An incredible moment in the life of a smalltown redneck scifi geek. Someone should turn THAT into a video game. But then Texas's head might es-plode.
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Cool comments all around! Now I really wanna check out all these games and books. Yes, JP, I'd forgotten about the play-as-the-Imperial-army aspect of the early star wars games ...
You had to include the biggest surprise of Halo 2 in the Slate article without thinking some haven't gotten that far, huh? My nephew is pissed. I've been there but wanted it to be a cool little surprise. He follows Slate and of course found your article.
Surprise over. Thanks.
Well, I admit it's too bad if the column spoiled some of the surprise. But the fact is, there's no way to write about this aspect of the game without discussing that plot point, I'm afraid -- and unfortunately, it's also the most saliently interesting thing about the game, from my perspective!
Also, I seriously doubt knowing that plot point would "ruin" the game. Indeed, it would be a poor game that could be ruined by having the player know any single plot point. In fact, it points to the absurdity of even referring to plot-based entertainment properties as "games". If they're so reliant upon a sequence of pre-determined events, that's not a game -- that's a movie, and, if it's being played upon an Xbox or a Playstation, a bad one. Thankfully, Halo 2 is a superb game -- by which I mean, within the limits of the predetermined narrative, virtually anything can and does happen, allowing for terrific replayability.
In regards to your above comment: Even so, it doesn't hurt to alert the reader that a review contains plot spoilers. There's no denying that the switch in question would have been a novel surprise for those not expecting it.
It's clear that you gave no thought to the possibility that some readers might prefer to discover such things themselves. You basically gave away the plot twist in the byline for the review!
Also, Jon did not say your revelation ruined the game, so why did you include the word ruin in quote marks in your response? His point was simply that you killed a significant surprise in the game. It seems your only purpose for using the word ruin was to misrepresent his complaint so you could mount a straw man argument in reply.
Also, "Well, I admit it's too bad if the column spoiled some of the surprise."
What kind of admission is that? "Well I admit that it's TOO BAD SUCKAH!"
