With Halo 4 out this month, now is as good a time as any to mention the Forward Unto Dawn... part of the rather considerable pre-release hype... it's somewhere between a mini-series and a short film, covering events preceding any of the games right at the start of the human-covenant war with short interludes that show the increasingly rampant Cortana (stuck on the eponymous ship - or rather, half ship - with Master Chief following the end of Halo 3) at the start of each episode.
It does start out feeling a little bit generic but given the time they have, they actually do a pretty decent job with the characters and this definitely has the feel of the Halo universe. Also, for a fairly small production it's actually quite impressive. Not only do we get to see Elites and Hunters but also Master Chief himself in an actual Warthog.
This does somewhat highlight that it would be difficult to build a film around Master Chief - what makes him work as a protagonist of an FPS (being a bad ass of few words), makes him rather uninteresting as a character. There's no doubting his bad ass credentials here but as usual, he's just a big ol' power armour wearing glass of water, all of the interest really coming from the students.
A must for any Halo or sci-fi fan.
Showing posts with label Halo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halo. Show all posts
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Halo: Legends is to Halo what the Animatrix is to the Matrix and what Gotham Knight was to the Chris Nolan Batman films, a series of animated shorts by different Japanese directors, mostly in a standard sort of anime style.
It's - as with the aforementioned similar ventures - a mixed bag of seven different tales.
Origins is pretty good but really, it's not a story. It's essentially an excuse for Cortana to retell the Halo universe's backstory. Nice art and action but it's really not a story, per se - it just feels as though someone wanted to do a lot of explosions and stuff with The Floor... or that someone felt a person buying Halo: Legends might not have the first clue about the series, so decides to fill them in. Regardless, it's enjoyable but by its nature - is kind of shallow.
The Duel... apparently Elites are Japanese. Down to living in pagodas (seriously) and wearing samurai armour. Maybe that's part of the lesser known canon... regardless, this is something of a disconnect from the rest of the stories as it's about an Elite - apparently the first Arbiter - defying the Prophets. For this heresy, he LITERALLY fights an army. There isn't a lot of sense to this story and it has a weird, kind of blurry almost... sticky animation. Clearly done for stylistic reasons but it doesn't really do much. It's OK for the background and establishing shots but for for action... less so, although the action is kinda cool... but the trite story and the fact you don't really have any time to get to know the character... it's really just action cheesecake with no substance.
Homecoming - pretty standard anime style here. Girl SPARTAN on a planet, has flashbacks to how she escaped from SPARTAN training... again, there is a feeling they're trying to tug on the heart strings when they've just tossed a character at you. The intercutting of the stories - ticking and tocking back and forth between the past and present - is a little jarring too and... doesn't really add much.
Odd One Out - you could be forgiven for thinking that this was someone trying to pitch a Halo Saturday morning cartoon... but basically, SPARTAN 1337 is a gag character and this whole thing is a joke... not a very funny one though. There is the odd titter but really, if they wanted to do a parody of the Halo universe there is so much to do with the existing stuff you don't need to create a deliberately over the top goofy/wacky character who keeps getting punched into the ground etc. So, really - not that interesting.
Prototype - they seem to like their trite messages in this package... I suppose it's hard to get something deep and meaningful into twenty or so minutes... but still.
The Babysitter - this probably comes level with "The Package" as the best of the bunch and really, they're both in a different league to the others. We get some feel for the characters and the animation is good, with some good action and the general awesomeness that goes with having a SPARTAN involved. It even includes one of the characters from ODST... yeah, who cares about that? Still overall, a good effort... again, the Covenant seem to be living in distinctly Far Eastern style housing for no reason but it works.
The Package - naturally, anything involving the ubiquitous Master Chief from the franchise itself is going to get extra points almost as a matter of course... quite WHY the original voice actor wasn't used (it kind of detracts... he did three games just to get shoved aside here?) is a mystery and the guy sounds more like he's trying to do a Batman impression than anything - though, fortunately NOT a Christian Bale Batman. The fact this is a CGI affair may lead some people to think that in some ways, it's more like a cutscene than anything else but that's at least a mite unfair and it's not as if the Halo cutscenes weren't suitably awesome. It's really what a Halo feature should be, people running at Covenant forces and shooting the hell out of them. Also some nice space battles and just general awesomeness. It ties with "The Babysitter"... mostly because it was pretty to look at but invested nothing in the characters.
So, there you have it... really, this is only something a big Halo fan should go out of their way for. Still, at least you get almost two hours of actual material - which is more than you can say for Marvel or DC animated features that struggle to make it past an hour (excluding credits). So, make of that what you will.
It's - as with the aforementioned similar ventures - a mixed bag of seven different tales.
Origins is pretty good but really, it's not a story. It's essentially an excuse for Cortana to retell the Halo universe's backstory. Nice art and action but it's really not a story, per se - it just feels as though someone wanted to do a lot of explosions and stuff with The Floor... or that someone felt a person buying Halo: Legends might not have the first clue about the series, so decides to fill them in. Regardless, it's enjoyable but by its nature - is kind of shallow.
The Duel... apparently Elites are Japanese. Down to living in pagodas (seriously) and wearing samurai armour. Maybe that's part of the lesser known canon... regardless, this is something of a disconnect from the rest of the stories as it's about an Elite - apparently the first Arbiter - defying the Prophets. For this heresy, he LITERALLY fights an army. There isn't a lot of sense to this story and it has a weird, kind of blurry almost... sticky animation. Clearly done for stylistic reasons but it doesn't really do much. It's OK for the background and establishing shots but for for action... less so, although the action is kinda cool... but the trite story and the fact you don't really have any time to get to know the character... it's really just action cheesecake with no substance.
Homecoming - pretty standard anime style here. Girl SPARTAN on a planet, has flashbacks to how she escaped from SPARTAN training... again, there is a feeling they're trying to tug on the heart strings when they've just tossed a character at you. The intercutting of the stories - ticking and tocking back and forth between the past and present - is a little jarring too and... doesn't really add much.
Odd One Out - you could be forgiven for thinking that this was someone trying to pitch a Halo Saturday morning cartoon... but basically, SPARTAN 1337 is a gag character and this whole thing is a joke... not a very funny one though. There is the odd titter but really, if they wanted to do a parody of the Halo universe there is so much to do with the existing stuff you don't need to create a deliberately over the top goofy/wacky character who keeps getting punched into the ground etc. So, really - not that interesting.
Prototype - they seem to like their trite messages in this package... I suppose it's hard to get something deep and meaningful into twenty or so minutes... but still.
The Babysitter - this probably comes level with "The Package" as the best of the bunch and really, they're both in a different league to the others. We get some feel for the characters and the animation is good, with some good action and the general awesomeness that goes with having a SPARTAN involved. It even includes one of the characters from ODST... yeah, who cares about that? Still overall, a good effort... again, the Covenant seem to be living in distinctly Far Eastern style housing for no reason but it works.
The Package - naturally, anything involving the ubiquitous Master Chief from the franchise itself is going to get extra points almost as a matter of course... quite WHY the original voice actor wasn't used (it kind of detracts... he did three games just to get shoved aside here?) is a mystery and the guy sounds more like he's trying to do a Batman impression than anything - though, fortunately NOT a Christian Bale Batman. The fact this is a CGI affair may lead some people to think that in some ways, it's more like a cutscene than anything else but that's at least a mite unfair and it's not as if the Halo cutscenes weren't suitably awesome. It's really what a Halo feature should be, people running at Covenant forces and shooting the hell out of them. Also some nice space battles and just general awesomeness. It ties with "The Babysitter"... mostly because it was pretty to look at but invested nothing in the characters.
So, there you have it... really, this is only something a big Halo fan should go out of their way for. Still, at least you get almost two hours of actual material - which is more than you can say for Marvel or DC animated features that struggle to make it past an hour (excluding credits). So, make of that what you will.
Friday, November 20, 2009
There is something called an idiot franchise - that is to say, a franchise which has fanboys (or girls) so loyal and unthinking that anything with the right name on it will inspire the easiest of all partings, a fool and their money. There are some obvious candidates for this... EA games and horror films. EA has been pumping out various slightly different iterations of sports games for over a decade now - to the point one starts to feel less contempt for the company and more for the fans... although, as it's EA... there's still a lot of contempt to be felt for them.
Microsoft seem fairly intent on making Halo their torch blazing idiot franchise. Now, some are going to immediately say that Halo was great etc. The first was certainly something that made the X-box a player in the console market - and let's face it, Halo is really much, much more about the multiplayer than the single player, regardless of the orders of magnitude more that was put into that in the second two games...
So, why say this is the dawn of an idiot franchise? First off, Halo Wars... ok, you might say - RTS games on consoles... those are never really going to be great. Some types of game favour a mouse and keyboard, some a controller - and hey, it had some pretty cutscenes and it wasn't actually MADE by Bungie. Sure but it was just a cash-in... and of course, now Halo: ODST has been done... Bungie have bailed, well almost. They're signing off with Halo: Reach - which they've said little about but will presumably be a Halo prequel and FPS.
Bungie can't really be blamed for what went down with Halo - Microsoft bought them and the game concept changed radically and it became the X-box's messiah, very much the Alpha and Omega. ODST was not a high note to finish on - it's a bunch of characters you don't know, doing stuff you don't care about and really, the ODST boys are pussies compared to Master Chief. The chorus of voices on this game echoes much what the developers said - it's not worth full price. It's just an expansion, pretending to be a game... But... in short order, all these sins will be forgotten.
Why? Because... THERE'S A NEW HALO GAME! Which will be the last one to have anything to do with Bungie - all Halo properties henceforth shall be dealt with by a Microsoft subsidiary. Yes. Microsoft want to milk this cow dry enough that they not only bought the intellectual property from Bungie, they're actually making a company to exploit it. A company PURELY to develop Halo titles... the power of fanboys is as awesome as their ability to let fanaticism override intellect time and again... After all, if Halo: ODST being a full priced release when the game amounted to a fairly limited add-on for Halo 3... then it's fair to say the shark has been jumped.
Microsoft seem fairly intent on making Halo their torch blazing idiot franchise. Now, some are going to immediately say that Halo was great etc. The first was certainly something that made the X-box a player in the console market - and let's face it, Halo is really much, much more about the multiplayer than the single player, regardless of the orders of magnitude more that was put into that in the second two games...
So, why say this is the dawn of an idiot franchise? First off, Halo Wars... ok, you might say - RTS games on consoles... those are never really going to be great. Some types of game favour a mouse and keyboard, some a controller - and hey, it had some pretty cutscenes and it wasn't actually MADE by Bungie. Sure but it was just a cash-in... and of course, now Halo: ODST has been done... Bungie have bailed, well almost. They're signing off with Halo: Reach - which they've said little about but will presumably be a Halo prequel and FPS.
Bungie can't really be blamed for what went down with Halo - Microsoft bought them and the game concept changed radically and it became the X-box's messiah, very much the Alpha and Omega. ODST was not a high note to finish on - it's a bunch of characters you don't know, doing stuff you don't care about and really, the ODST boys are pussies compared to Master Chief. The chorus of voices on this game echoes much what the developers said - it's not worth full price. It's just an expansion, pretending to be a game... But... in short order, all these sins will be forgotten.
Why? Because... THERE'S A NEW HALO GAME! Which will be the last one to have anything to do with Bungie - all Halo properties henceforth shall be dealt with by a Microsoft subsidiary. Yes. Microsoft want to milk this cow dry enough that they not only bought the intellectual property from Bungie, they're actually making a company to exploit it. A company PURELY to develop Halo titles... the power of fanboys is as awesome as their ability to let fanaticism override intellect time and again... After all, if Halo: ODST being a full priced release when the game amounted to a fairly limited add-on for Halo 3... then it's fair to say the shark has been jumped.
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