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CzarChasm
Mar 14, 2009

I don't like it when you're watching me eat.
FWIW, the prophets in the Heretic/Arbiter storyline mention the Taming of the Hunters and the Grunt Rebellion, which would be games that I want to play.

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The Door Frame
Dec 5, 2011

I don't know man everytime I go to the gym here there are like two huge dudes with raging high and tights snorting Nitro-tech off of each other's rock hard abs.

Deformed Church posted:

My assumption is that the ruins aren't forerunner ruins, since they're very obviously different to the forerunner architecture we see close by. Some other civilisation who were there at some point built around the existing forerunner stuff.

Doesn't really explain the bridge, maybe the designer was just feeling a bit arsey while doing that piece.

I never really thought about it, but an unnamed civilization discovering this Halo and setting up shop seems to be the only logical explanation for spoilers. It also explains why this ring's surface seems to be less advanced than the last one or the other Forerunner structures that the Arbiter fought on

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle

AradoBalanga posted:

Add me to the list of people who never stopped to listen to Regret's sermons. It is interesting that those sermons actually function as (almost certainly heavily biased) backstory to the Covenant, but you can easily miss them because it takes a while before Cortana's translation kicks in and lets the player hear the dialogue.

Ablative posted:

I never listened to the sermons because I swear, I would sit there for like five minutes and he never said anything.

I don't know if there's like, a trigger to it or something, but I could never get them to play.

The triggers are weird and seem to all be slightly different. Some of them only care about all the enemies being dead and not the player's proximity so they will play "off screen" unless you're trying to hear them.

Cythereal posted:

I get that the game is called Halo, but I can't help but feel disappointed that the game is now back to the setting of the first game.

I don't mind that there is a Halo involved because as Loxbourne said, they do enough to make the levels different. I've said it before but I'm just annoyed that we spend such little time on Earth. Most of the advertising for the game made it sound like it would be all about defending Earth from invasion, but it's really only a couple levels. I get that it's a "twist" that we discover another Halo, but it's not a very satisfying one.

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle


07 - Regret


After a scenic tour, the Chief finally catches up to his target.

AradoBalanga
Jan 3, 2013

So, relocating large structures in their entirety is a thing that has happened in the real world. There's Abu Simbel, an ancient Egyptian temple complex that had to be moved in the 1960s because the construction of a dam in the region would have both flooded the temples and submerged them beneath the new reservoir that would result from the dam. I would not be surprised if that was some inspiration for Bungie in creating these Forerunner structures, given that it is a fusion of ancient stone and Forerunner technology. Much like how the present-day Abu Simbel is ancient stone held together by modern reinforcing.

Unfortunately, now we reach the low point of Halo 2, the Library complex. I will not blame you if you take a page out of Cooked Auto's book and wedge a boulder on the fast forward button for most of the level.

Ablative
Nov 9, 2012

Someone is getting this as an avatar. I don't know who, but it's gonna happen.
You know, I never bothered to look up after that cutscene with the fleet dropping out of Slipspace.

Jesus gently caress, that's scary.

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


My understanding is the covenant view the Flood as an obstacle on the way to activating the rings, rather than the whole point. The primary purpose of the ring was to allow the Forerunners to become gods ~somehow~. The first actual meeting we know about is in Halo Wars (set near the beginning of the Human-Covenant war) where they find a Forerunner world where they've broken containment, but aside from that and Halo 1 they're basically just a thing they've read about. There's absolutely propaganda involved to keep the other races in line, and to keep stomping on the Humans, but the Prophets totally believe their own bullshit about the Great Journey.

Carbon dioxide
Oct 9, 2012

Re: meteorite chat

Have you ever read Ringworld by Niven?

The Ringworld is similar to a Halo but to a much, much larger scale. It is comparable in size to the entire orbit of the Earth around the sun, and it does in fact have a star in the middle. You could think of it as a slice of a Dyson Sphere. The ring is about 1.6 million km wide and several hundred million km in circumference, making the surface area of the Ringworld something like 3 million times the size of Earth's surface.

If you think constructing a stable Halo is a tough challenge, well, it's nothing compared to making a Ringworld.

Anyway, here's some Ringworld book spoilers:

A large part about the book is that the ring is somewhat deprecit and the people living on it forgot the history and engineering capabilities of their ancestors. The inner side of the ring, the one facing the sun, has ecosystems and everything, while the outer side is made of an extremely strong - but not quite unbreakable - material. The explorers find several places where the ring is broken.

One is a place where the ring was punctured by a meteorite, causing the air there to drain out through centrifugal force, making a gigantic cyclone storm like a bathtub draining. The storm is dangerous, but there is so much atmosphere on the entire ring that it'd still take ages to drain it to dangerously low levels.

The second is a place where the ring was punctured by a meteorite, but this time from "below", so from the outside. This caused an enormous mountain, with the ring's underside material jutting out of the rocks at some places. The top of the mountain, which is way above the atmosphere, has a hole through to the outside of the ring.

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
We finished this level yesterday in Legendary co-op. And let me tell you: it is an absolute gently caress. All these rooms you walked into where you instantly ate poo poo and saw three sniper shots pass you by? Yeah, all of those would instantly and perfectly hit on Legendary. We had to very carefully lure sword Elites out, memorize every single sniper position, have a terrible time with Drones...

And that wasn't even the worst part. No, either:
- being stuck on the second gondola with four shots on the rocket launcher, as two Banshees spawn that can shred you within a second of plasma barrage, and you have about 30 seconds to not miss a single shot (they take two rockets each!) before the other gondola shows up and flying Elites spawn on there that are at least as damaging as the Banshees. And you have to kill the Banshees - perfectly - every time you try to attempt surviving that. or:
- the Regret fight, where he takes at least four full punch cycles to finally go down, his blasts can instant-kill, the sword honor guards ofc as well, but sometimes plasma gunners spawn who can do almost the same (but ranged), and infinite of them spawn and Grunts swarm you...we died probably 30 times until we decided to just run in circles and hope that one of us would get a chance to safely jump on Regret, upon which the other did his best to make sure the puncher wouldn't land amongst three sword dudes when Regret teleported

But no, the ACTUAL worst part was when I discovered the Lore Terminal in the second big room, activated it, saw a cutscene but my buddy got killed during it (because I was just standing there slack-jawed, and the game doesn't pause for both people), and then I respawned without being able to control Master Chief, nothing worked, so we had to abandon that whole run and do it all over again.

Those Terminals are absolute shits of coding anyway. Often, he couldn't even see them despite me activating them - and I'm always playing second fiddle, so I'm invited to his game-world, in a sense. He doesn't get informed that I found one, the game doesn't pause, we both can be killed while the cutscene plays...frankly, they should just be disabled in Multiplayer.

SteelMentor
Oct 15, 2012

TOXIC
I always remembered Halo 2's levels being a lot lot longer than how fast you're going through them here. Probably partly because they've smartly cut each story section into 2 levels per so far instead of one giant level per like OG Halo, but also just... in general, like those Gondolas lasted forever back in the depths of my mind.

Kibayasu
Mar 28, 2010

Obviously the reason halo 2 (the halo structure, not the video game) looks a bit different from halo 1 (again, the structure) is that the forerunners commissioned the Magratheans who just had to throw in their own little twists and quirks.

Regret is still one of the goofiest boss fights in a video game. Right up there with fist fighting the pope at the end of Assassin's Creed 2. Something about punching otherwise fairly defenseless old men and/or beings.

White Coke
May 29, 2015
Does any of the expanded universe material expand upon Covenant theology? I’m curious about their soteriology and cosmology.

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


White Coke posted:

Does any of the expanded universe material expand upon Covenant theology? I’m curious about their soteriology and cosmology.

The basic gist is that the Forerunners, already an incredibly powerful race in total control of the galaxy, built and activated the sacred rings which unleased a divine wind which transforms the worthy into gods and carried them to the divine beyond, leaving the lesser races and non-believers behind. The Covenant believe themselves to be the rightful heirs, their destiny being to rule the galaxy and eventually activate the rings themselves and take the Great Journey to join their predecessors in heaven.

The Halo EU is much more concerned with history and fact than the series' religious themes, there's as much about the story if it's founding as there is about the actual beliefs. It's more like listening to a preacher than reading the bible.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Speaking as a highly religious person versed in religious history, the Covenant do seem like a reasonably realistic (given what you have to work with, and with those caveats) depiction of a multi-ethnic nation held together in large part by religious faith and politics. The comparison that comes to mind for me, from what we've seen so far in the LP, is something on the order of the Holy Roman Empire: a dysfunctional, divided mess whose unity is more theoretical than real, but shared religion gives all the different ethnic groups something of a common ground to work with.

Or, for a fantastical example, the Covenant remind me of nothing so much as a budget version of the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k: a pack of howling idiots worshiping a false religion created simply to unite them against an outside threat who use scavenged precursor technology they don't understand.

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle

Carbon dioxide posted:

Re: meteorite chat

Have you ever read Ringworld by Niven?


I've never read Ringworld, but I really should because every time I hear about it it sounds right up my alley.

Also worth noting that Halos are not the only thing the Forerunners built. They were quite the busy bees.

Kibayasu posted:

Regret is still one of the goofiest boss fights in a video game. Right up there with fist fighting the pope at the end of Assassin's Creed 2. Something about punching otherwise fairly defenseless old men and/or beings.

Hahahaha that's a great comparison. I always forget that game ends with you beating the poo poo out of the pope. It kinda gets overshadowed by the other twist for me, because I'm one of the weirdos who enjoyed the Desmond Miles stuff more than the historical references.

White Coke posted:

Does any of the expanded universe material expand upon Covenant theology? I’m curious about their soteriology and cosmology.

It's mostly just bits and pieces here and there as far as I know. Contact Harvest does however include a whole storyline about Truth, Regret, and Mercy and how they took power. The Covenant changes leadership when significant events dictate the start of a new "age" and that coincides with the start of their campaign against humanity. Since that storyline is about political maneuvering at the highest levels of the Covenant, you do get a fair bit of insight into their beliefs and the information they're working with. Deformed Church is also dead on about the general thrust of it, and you don't really need to dig into it more than that.

Cythereal posted:

Speaking as a highly religious person versed in religious history, the Covenant do seem like a reasonably realistic (given what you have to work with, and with those caveats) depiction of a multi-ethnic nation held together in large part by religious faith and politics. The comparison that comes to mind for me, from what we've seen so far in the LP, is something on the order of the Holy Roman Empire: a dysfunctional, divided mess whose unity is more theoretical than real, but shared religion gives all the different ethnic groups something of a common ground to work with.

This is also a great comparison. The more you see of the Covenant the more obvious it is how far from an enlightened utopia they are (much like humanity), but the concept of The Great Journey is enough to keep them working towards the same goal and has allowed them to build to the powerful empire they are now. It's basically "behave yourselves or I swear I'll turn this holy city around!"

White Coke
May 29, 2015
So is it ever explained what the Covenant thinks happens to those who die before the Great Journey? I assume some kind of Purgatory/Sheol or reincarnation . And do they think some other God created the universe, or are they materialists who think the Forerunners figured out immortality?

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


White Coke posted:

So is it ever explained what the Covenant thinks happens to those who die before the Great Journey? I assume some kind of Purgatory/Sheol or reincarnation . And do they think some other God created the universe, or are they materialists who think the Forerunners figured out immortality?

Unfortunately it's not really discussed. Their interpretation of the Great Journey is that it's an ascension to a higher form of being on another plane of existence (hence the total absence of any actual Forerunners), so it follows they believe in some kind of soul, and therefore spirituality. I think it's a fair assumption that they expect to be rewarded in death, and there's no mention of any other afterlife so I'd guess some kind of limbo state until the rings are activated and the divine winds carry them onwards. As for the wider cosmology, there's not much to even speculate on. There just is no mention of where the Forerunners came from, nor what will happen after the Covenant undertake the Great Journey themselves, beyond that everyone else will be stuck here.

Considering how significant it is, it's pretty disappointing how little discussion of the religion there is. Halo very much focuses on history and politics. We could talk all day about how the religion evolved, but there's just not much about what it actually is.

Deformed Church fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Jun 13, 2021

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Deformed Church posted:

Considering how significant it is, it's pretty disappointing how little discussion of the religion there is. Halo very much focuses on history and politics. We could talk all day about how the religion evolved, but there's just not much about what it actually is.

I think the absence of any humans converted to the Covenant is a big part of it. With the Covenant, they're all aliens so the Covenant religion kind of gets conflated (so far as I've seen) with their alien psychology and history and politics. I think the big avenue to explore what the Covenant actually believe would be to have humans who are a part of it - why they've sided with the Covenant and why they oppose the UNSC.

Outpost22
Oct 11, 2012

RIP Screamy You were too good for this world.
Don't want to get too much into the future games in the series, but I though Covenant species were incapable of operating Forerunner tech?

Ikasuhito
Sep 29, 2013

Haram as Fuck.

Cythereal posted:

I think the absence of any humans converted to the Covenant is a big part of it. With the Covenant, they're all aliens so the Covenant religion kind of gets conflated (so far as I've seen) with their alien psychology and history and politics. I think the big avenue to explore what the Covenant actually believe would be to have humans who are a part of it - why they've sided with the Covenant and why they oppose the UNSC.

Funnily enough there are a couple of books that have human rebels side with the Covenant. Though it's only as an attempt to form an alliance rather than outright join them.

McTimmy
Feb 29, 2008
Covenant can't operate Foreunner tech in the biocode sense, but they can still crack and decrypt it if the need is greater than their preservation of sanctity.

Ablative
Nov 9, 2012

Someone is getting this as an avatar. I don't know who, but it's gonna happen.

Ikasuhito posted:

Funnily enough there are a couple of books that have human rebels side with the Covenant. Though it's only as an attempt to form an alliance rather than outright join them.

It's also predicated on an assumption that the Covenant are fighting the UNSC rather than humanity as a whole.

Somehow this is an assumption made by people who survived a glassing.

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


Yeah generally the issue is that the Covenant are specifically fighting humanity as a whole. The very existence of humanity is an affront to them. I think they would need to explore it from the Covenant perspective, which they could totally do by writing about the Arbiter.

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle

Outpost22 posted:

Don't want to get too much into the future games in the series, but I though Covenant species were incapable of operating Forerunner tech?

McTimmy posted:

Covenant can't operate Foreunner tech in the biocode sense, but they can still crack and decrypt it if the need is greater than their preservation of sanctity.

I think this only applies to certain tech. Some of their stuff is essentially password locked and the Covenant are not authorized users, but a lot of it is just "dumb" tech that anybody can use as long as they can figure out how.

Ikasuhito posted:

Funnily enough there are a couple of books that have human rebels side with the Covenant. Though it's only as an attempt to form an alliance rather than outright join them.

Ablative posted:

It's also predicated on an assumption that the Covenant are fighting the UNSC rather than humanity as a whole.

Somehow this is an assumption made by people who survived a glassing.

The stuff with humans joining the Covenant won't happen for a while and is dependent on some big changes in the current status quo. At the moment, the Covenant considers humanity basically a "pest" in their god's eyes and are literally trying to exterminate us.

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle


XX - Humanity, the UNSC, and Spartans


Before you can know your enemy, you must know yourself. Let's take a look at humanity in the Halo universe and the origins of the Master Chief.

Halo 2 is very much about expanding our understanding of the Covenant and the nature of humanity's war against them, but we haven't really been given that much information about humanity's side of things. They're humans and they wear green, so they're the good guys, but surely there must be more to it than that...

Carbon dioxide
Oct 9, 2012

Hm, the start of human solar system colonization and the resulting war sounds quite similar to the events in The Expanse.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Carbon dioxide posted:

Hm, the start of human solar system colonization and the resulting war sounds quite similar to the events in The Expanse.

Or Supreme Commander or Starcraft etc. It's a very standard sci-fi thing: Earth unites under an authoritarian government, starts to colonize other worlds, the colonies begin to rebel.

Halo presents a common version of that where the civil war is halted by the discover of genocidal aliens.

SteelMentor
Oct 15, 2012

TOXIC
Gears of War did the same thing as well. By all accounts the COG government were loving monsters committing to a vicious resource war against their neighbours, and when the chips were down the highest echelons ditched the last remnants of the nation/military to the mercy of the Locust and then Lambent.

Hell it continued into the second half of the franchise, the reformed COG almost immediately started falling back into authoritarian tendencies with the forceful annexation of independent settlements and fostering a culture of paranoia and mistrust that let the evolved Locust threat grow right under their nose.

Man, Sci-Fi games love them some authoritarianism loving everything up, in one form or the other.

SteelMentor fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jun 18, 2021

HereticMIND
Nov 4, 2012

If people are interested in diving deeper into the lore surrounding Halo, I strongly suggest that you guys check out this YouTube channel called Halo Canon. From theorycrafting to lore breakdowns to everything in between, this guy is your guy.

No. Seriously. This guy married events of the Battle of Reach from the books to the comics and the game itself and had it make sense.

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

SteelMentor posted:

Man, Sci-Fi games love them some authoritarianism loving everything up, in one form or the other.

People are vaguely aware that many of MilSF's tropes have an uncomfortable history, or often turn up in the hands of chuds because big tanks and lasers = cool, dudes being raised in SF versions of Spartan training creches = cool, and so on. Then they realise the awkward implications of all these tropes they tossed in, and that they've basically created Space Nazis.

The better writers handle that moment well and learn about nuance; the bad ones fall into "we're not Nazis honest we just think the weak need to be culled and genocide is totally necessary". Halo mostly stays in the former but wobbles from time to time.

Deformed Church
May 12, 2012

5'5", IQ 81


It's really weird how hard the tonal whiplash is, both in terms of it's magnitude and speed. Fall of Reach apparently came out before CE was even released, and was immediately incredibly hosed up. None of this is in the games. I have a friend who's just finished CE and has found the audiobook and I'm really looking forward to the "Are we the baddies?" moment :allears:.

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle

Carbon dioxide posted:

Hm, the start of human solar system colonization and the resulting war sounds quite similar to the events in The Expanse.

Cythereal posted:

Or Supreme Commander or Starcraft etc. It's a very standard sci-fi thing: Earth unites under an authoritarian government, starts to colonize other worlds, the colonies begin to rebel.

SteelMentor posted:

Gears of War did the same thing as well.

I never realized it was that wide-spread, but I guess colonization is inherently empire-building, and being an empire generally comes with some, uh, "baggage".

Loxbourne posted:

People are vaguely aware that many of MilSF's tropes have an uncomfortable history, or often turn up in the hands of chuds because big tanks and lasers = cool, dudes being raised in SF versions of Spartan training creches = cool, and so on. Then they realise the awkward implications of all these tropes they tossed in, and that they've basically created Space Nazis.

The better writers handle that moment well and learn about nuance; the bad ones fall into "we're not Nazis honest we just think the weak need to be culled and genocide is totally necessary". Halo mostly stays in the former but wobbles from time to time.

It's kind of the same thing as the idea that you can't make an anti-war movie. Directors try and show the horrors of war with people getting shot, or stabbed, or blown up and the audience goes "whoa, badass!"

BlazetheInferno
Jun 6, 2015

Cythereal posted:

Or Supreme Commander or Starcraft etc. It's a very standard sci-fi thing: Earth unites under an authoritarian government, starts to colonize other worlds, the colonies begin to rebel.

Halo presents a common version of that where the civil war is halted by the discover of genocidal aliens.

To be fair to Starcraft, it wasn't so much "the colonies rebel", as much as "by the time Earth's Government showed up to say 'hey, we're taking over' after leaving them to fend for themselves for a few hundred years, they had already established a government of their own that was less than inclined to immediately submit to these... invaders."

The Door Frame
Dec 5, 2011

I don't know man everytime I go to the gym here there are like two huge dudes with raging high and tights snorting Nitro-tech off of each other's rock hard abs.

BlazetheInferno posted:

To be fair to Starcraft, it wasn't so much "the colonies rebel", as much as "by the time Earth's Government showed up to say 'hey, we're taking over' after leaving them to fend for themselves for a few hundred years, they had already established a government of their own that was less than inclined to immediately submit to these... invaders."

Yeah, it seemed to be much closer to the 40k situation of "these colony ships launched so long ago that when the empire finally shows up to see the colony, the occupants of these planets think about Earth so little that there's big problems trying to incorporate them into the empire"

FrenzyTheKillbot posted:

I never realized it was that wide-spread, but I guess colonization is inherently empire-building, and being an empire generally comes with some, uh, "baggage".

It's kind of the same thing as the idea that you can't make an anti-war movie. Directors try and show the horrors of war with people getting shot, or stabbed, or blown up and the audience goes "whoa, badass!"

I didn't believe that people couldn't see how horrible war movies are (usually) supposed to be until I heard a couple of veterans talk about how badass Generation Kill was. It dawned on me that people could be immune to irony if they saw "Oops, All Warcrimes" and walked away feeling good.
I think the only person to successfully lampoon fascism and the glorification of war without it being able to ever be viewed as cool is Mel Brooks. Because despite using camera work and choreography straight out of Nazi propaganda reels and showing how devoted Hitler's followers were, no one ever thinks "Springtime for Hitler" is cool or that Franz Liebkind should be admired. I've actually heard similar things about Jojo Rabbit, so maybe Taika Waititi pulled it off too, but I've been kind of burnt out on Nazis...

Loxbourne posted:

People are vaguely aware that many of MilSF's tropes have an uncomfortable history, or often turn up in the hands of chuds because big tanks and lasers = cool, dudes being raised in SF versions of Spartan training creches = cool, and so on. Then they realise the awkward implications of all these tropes they tossed in, and that they've basically created Space Nazis.

The better writers handle that moment well and learn about nuance; the bad ones fall into "we're not Nazis honest we just think the weak need to be culled and genocide is totally necessary". Halo mostly stays in the former but wobbles from time to time.

Or you could go full Star Wars, completely ignore the shots stolen from WWII film reels, ignore all of the fascism, and forget that you shouldn't like Space Nazis. And also turn Stormtroopers into fun, marketable things; have your SS officer analog, Darth Vader, do fun dances with his lockstep squad of Stormtroopers at Disney parks for kids and families to enjoy :bang:

Broken Box
Jan 29, 2009

Fortunately Mel Brooks successfully lampooned that as well.

Kibayasu
Mar 28, 2010

The best case for sci-fi fascism being the quasi-standard in video games is that it makes it easier to just focus on the shooting and not have to worry about anything too complicated.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻



Kibayasu posted:

The best case for sci-fi fascism being the quasi-standard in video games is that it makes it easier to just focus on the shooting and not have to worry about anything too complicated.

Hence the whole thing with that fake sci-fi trilogy being written by Adolf Hitler.

Lemniscate Blue
Apr 21, 2006

Here we go again.

Samovar posted:

Hence the whole thing with that fake sci-fi trilogy being written by Adolf Hitler.

Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, if anyone is curious. A pretty decent criticism of the racist/fascist undertones of a lot of scifi/fantasy in the early to mid 2Oth century, set up as an alternate history "what if Hitler emigrated to the US after the Great War and became a sf/f writer?"

Lemniscate Blue fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Jun 23, 2021

FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle

The Door Frame posted:

I think the only person to successfully lampoon fascism and the glorification of war without it being able to ever be viewed as cool is Mel Brooks. Because despite using camera work and choreography straight out of Nazi propaganda reels and showing how devoted Hitler's followers were, no one ever thinks "Springtime for Hitler" is cool or that Franz Liebkind should be admired. I've actually heard similar things about Jojo Rabbit, so maybe Taika Waititi pulled it off too, but I've been kind of burnt out on Nazis...

Jojo Rabbit is good about not glorifying war, but it's also not trying to be an anti-war movie exactly. It's pretty specifically about deprogramming a kid taken in by propaganda and fanaticism. Its real problem is that it takes these bad Nazis and makes them funny, but not in a way that lampoons fascism, in a way that makes the characters likeable. Or characters are given redemption arcs without focusing on them enough to show why they might "deserve" it (other than the literal children). You might say it's not anti-Nazi enough except that feels weird to say about a movie where the main character yells "gently caress off, Hitler!" and defenestrates him, gaping self-inflicted head wound and all.

This is already a lot of words about a movie completely unrelated to the game, but it's my thread and Jojo Rabbit was absolutely my favourite film of 2019. I drove my girlfriend an hour and a half away from where we live on a date to see it because it wasn't playing in our city yet. It manages to walk an extremely fine line in being a comedy about antisemetism, the actors all thrive in their roles, and it has some absolutely amazing cinematography. It will make you feel all sorts of different things all the way through. Taika Watiti deserves the Oscar he won, and I wouldn't have been surprised if it had won Best Picture as well. Do yourself a favor and take the time to see it.

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FrenzyTheKillbot
Jan 31, 2008

Good Hustle


08 - Sacred Icon


With the Covenant leadership now at Delta Halo, the Arbiter is sent to retrieve a very important artifact: the Sacred Icon.

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