GDC Rant: "The medium is not adolescent, you're ****ing adolescent"

[Reasonable]

Khuutra said:

Reasonable said:

 

Actually, while its good for a videogame, Halo I would argue that its characters and situations are typically oversimplistic (even allowing for Cortana and Captain Keyes). In truth they are more standard plot points that anything of a truly narrative nature.

I think the points made were fair enough - even if the Hero who makes a mistake is a cliche that's still a heck of a lot more of a character than the eternally calm Master Chief.

The truth is that most games like Halo, Gears, etc. do play to certain very rigid and adolescent archetypes. The young guys who love MC do so becuase he's cool, wins and never makes a mistake as such.

Almost no videogame I can think of have characters with true arcs and narrative discovery. I believe this is possible, if only based on a title like Silent Hill 2 which does take the lead character through one heck of a voyage of self discovery, to some very unpleasant places.

But while I would rate Halo very highly as a game, as a narrative it is a set of elements taken from other works (both film and literature) to provide a strong background to an extremely simple plot in the service of a lot of cool videogame mayhem.

I agree that Halo is lacking as a narrative, I was referring specifically to how gender roles functioned in the game (the entire Halo universe is like that - it's not an inherently male fantasy unless you believe that war is inherently male). Gamerace was referring to the role of women in the game.

For the record - I recommend the Mother games, the work of Fumito Ueda, and certain Zelda titles.

 

Sorry, missed that connection.  Yes, Halo is definately goot from a gender perspective (even multi-cultural in the end).

Sadly, as with other industries videogames skew to certain demographics.  Of course not all titles are aimed at men (dare I say boys?) but clearly a majority of certain genres are.  But then you know, I'm a big believer in the 'get out and change it' mentality - i.e. while I sympathise to an extent with the rant in the OP, just shouting doesn't help.  Do something yourself to change it.

I mean on current form CliffyB (sorry dude, can't be bother with all the name change stuff) isn't going to decide that Gears needs a huge injection of compassion and introspection.  Someone else if going to have to stand up and deliver that if they want to.

Totally agree on Ueda, Ico and SOTC are two of my absolute favourite games ever.