Halo 4: Does it deconstruct Bungie's Chief?

Games Other Halo
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> Genre Deconstruction: The genre is basically boiled down to a set of tropes, conventions and a typical premise. All of these features are then played straight; without shying away from any unpleasant consequences and/or causes of these features. Basically, the heart of the genre is laid bare, warts and all. It is not solely done to denote how unpleasant a genre or trope is, but to break away from the clichés and stock themes said genre or trope has acquired.
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> -TV Tropes

After thinking about it, I have to wonder if Halo 4, intentionally or not, is sort of a deconstruction of Bungie’s version of Master Chief. If so, I have to admit it is remarkably well down. I don’t say this as an insult, as much as I loved Bungie’s Halo games, they suffered from a lot of the cliches that plague the first person shooter genre and the biggest offender was Chief. Halo 4 seemed to take those cliches and play them straight at first before injecting a bit of realism to them, well, as much realism as can be expected from a science-fiction franchise.

Think about it. The game starts out with Chief waking up and fighting the Covenant again, this time without the motive to start activating the Halos so they can go to heaven. Vaguely motivated aliens are where Halo started out as and for the start, Halo 4 plays it straight. We don’t know why the Covies are there, but we are given a gun a nudged along on a killing spree.

Things begin to change when we meet the Ur-Didact. In prior Halos, Chief is kinda a big deal right? He’s THE Demon to the Covenant! He’s THE Reclaimer to to Guilty Spark. He’s THE hero to all of humanity. Yet what happens when he meets the Didact? He pretty much gets tossed away without a second though by the main bad guy. Sure he mocks Chief later on, but it never really seems to dawn on me that the Didact really cares about Chief as a threat even to the end.

I think the biggest shift begins when he meets the UNSC for the first time in 5 years. Sure Lasky is happy to see him and Palmer gives him a playful nod, but when we meet Del Rio, it is definitely not something we would expect from a UNSC officer. Keyes gave Chief the utmost respect in CE and Hood mighlighted Chief’s importance in Halo 3 by essentially taking Chief’s belief that Cortana was worth rescuing as the reason to join the Arbiter’s fleet in attacking the Covenant Loyalists on the Ark. But Del Rio does none of that. he doesn’t care for Chief’s legend, he doesn’t get wowed with a sense of awe, he treats him like any other solider and tries to put Chief in his place. Can you imagine such a character in Bungie’s Halo games? I can’t.

Another thing to consider is just how fragile Chief is. Besides getting tossed around by the bad guy and not given the hero treatment he’s come to expect, Chief isn’t the invincible superman WE expect anymore. Before, Chief could just pop off a one-liner and get through most problems. Now, he has to speak up, he has to open up as a character and to be honest, he’s not too good at it. Like Cortana said, who is the machine, him or her? His attempts to comfort Cortana when he doesn’t even understand the impact of rampancy is painful, but not in a bad way, but a sad way. The dude is out of his element, something that hasn’t happened since Halo 3, and even then it was nothing major. Halo 4 also marks the first time Chief really loses and it has far reaching consequences. Ivanoff, New Phoenix, Chief really let people down when he was needed the most.

And the ending, oh man the ending. Like I said, Chief is used to winning, so imagine how absolutely crushing losing Cortana must’ve felt? If you listen to his voice, he just can’t register that fact and is in denial until Cortana fades away to her death.

So now we no longer have the Chief that made famous phrases such as “I need a weapon” to one who is, at his core, broken. And in the end, he is literally deconstructed piece by piece until his armor is peeled away and we finally break the Bungie taboo of not seeing Chief’s face.

Pretty amazing when you think about it.

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The days of having an unstoppable badass character with no depth to them are gone. Examples include: Early Master Chief, Duke Nukem, Marine from Doom series, etc.

Nowadays these kinds of characters can still be badass, but in most cases they need to have depth to them.

I really love how 343i is portraying MC in Halo now. It’s what all the fans deserve and the character himself deserved.

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Naw, I think you’re over examining the story.
The “new” chief if you want to call him that, has a personality which makes him more human, and not some cyborg, which we all know he’s not. He’s now someone we can all relate to, because he has feelings. Before he was just that guy who can kill anything.
Now he’s the guy who can kill anything, yet is just like us.
I personally love the new chief, he’s WAY more interesting as a character. Who doesn’t wan that?

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It could be amazing, if that was their intention. Honestly it doesn’t really come off as such to me and seems more close to poor writing. Can it be possible that you’re reading too much into it? Sometimes I get annoyed by that, like that one time someone I knew told me that the Cole Train from Gears of War was a physical manifestation of humanity…

Some very good points, like with Del Rio. That exactly the reason why <i>I</i> like him, but it’s obvious that 343i wanted to play him up as disrespectful, someone who needed to go away because how dare he!? It’s why I don’t like how he was kicked out so quickly. They just wanted to get rid of someone for not groveling to the feet of the player. Would have been much better if he was around in the final levels, berating you but eventually coming around and gaining a small amount of respect, but still berating Chief for ignoring orders and allowing a rampant A.I. to control his ship.

As for Bungie, they were mainly focused on trying to give a connection between the world and the player much like Link does in Zelda games. They didn’t really fully achieve this until Reach where you could design the Spartan your way, with ODST coming a close second. Halo 2 is the worst as you can’t do that with so many lines in cutscenes and switching to the Arbiter. Also part of the reason why we don’t see Chiefs face, and no matter how well designed he will be, the reveal will never live up to peoples expectations because he is supposed to be hidden for immersion. Same reason for Freeman in Half-Life.

As for the ending. Eh, I think they did a bad job with it. Especially since I predicted the outcome the second Halo 4 was announced. There wasn’t enough time and not enough character development to actually make it a sad scene. It would be like killing Dom the same way he died in Gears 3, but in the first game. I would have felt nothing due to the lack of time and developement. Which is why I was covered in tears in the third game.

Deconstructing the franchise could have been great, but I honestly don’t think 343i was intending for that, and if they were they didn’t have the time or the writing skills to pull it off.

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I think an important point to make is that even if you are trying to deconstruct something, it can still be held back by some piss poor ideas. Anyone who has watched the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and it’s movie The End of Evangelion know that point vividly.

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I appreciate the direction they’re taking Chief’s character.

What I do not appreciate is the negligence of Chief’s gameplay mechanics. They made him a tank, but couldn’t they have taken it further and made him feel like a Spartan? I was getting tired of the stale, underpowered, and sluggish Spartans in Halo 3/Reach, I had hoped Halo 4 would have done something about that. Besides Sprint and faster meleeing, Chief’s pretty much the same.

They were considering parkour elements, I’d have liked to see how that was going to be implemented.

A faster Chief would have made my day. To be able to strafe Needler shards and laser accurate Banshee bolts again would have been so much more immersive. And of course, exiting vehicles without delay, and maintaining your momentum while doing so (see Halo 1).

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Or they could slap a cape on him and make him fly!
I like the character development. He’s always been stoic & tough, but I always assumed he had a side much softer than people would expect. Compassion … etc.

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Don’t forget the voice actors. Without a talented voice cast, most of those feelings would be nonexistent.

Steve Downes and Jen Taylor really gave it their all for Halo 4.

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Brilliant! This needs to be a YouTube video at some point.

More on topic: I never really thought that much about it, but looking strictly at the games, Halo 4 is a deconstruction of the Chief’s character, and done in a brilliant way. I wish I had more to say, but it’s hard to add to what has already been said.

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> Don’t forget the voice actors. Without a talented voice cast, most of those feelings would be nonexistent.
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> Steve Downes and Jen Taylor really gave it their all for Halo 4.

It was the first time they actually did lines together too if I recall, so that is a great point.

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> Or they could slap a cape on him and make him fly!

They already did (not so much the flying as the cloak he was seen wearing in the desert). :stuck_out_tongue:

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The point was he was already a hero so how do you have a david vs goliath story if he is bigger then his threat. The Didact could have easily killed chief when they first encountered but he didn’t. It was about stripping away what made him a hero so he could recognize his mortality

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> Brilliant! This needs to be a YouTube video at some point.
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> More on topic: I never really thought that much about it, but looking strictly at the games, Halo 4 is a deconstruction of the Chief’s character, and done in a brilliant way. I wish I had more to say, but it’s hard to add to what has already been said.

This pretty much sums up what I have to say about this topic. DecepticonCobra you pretty much said exactly what I have been feeling 343i has done to MC and its AWSOME!!!

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Chief lost his immersion even before the first game came out in 2001. The Fall of Reach, we see Chief as a character.

CE comes along and he doesn’t. Halo 2 didn’t. Halo 3 had some tiny parts.

Bungie has always used immersion as an excuse for not developing Chief in games. And yet we’ve already seen how he acts, talks, fights, and even looks like from the books. Chief isn’t supposed to be you, yet the original trilogy suffered in character development because of it.

Wait, what? More than 11 years with Chief and Cortana wasn’t enough development for their parting? With how Chief and Cortana’s relationship was minimally shown before Halo 3, what do you expect? Halo 4 was the only real game to try to connect their relationship the earlier games failed to deliver.

Its not bad writing. Its new writing, and according to the books, true writing. This is what Chief was supposed to be, and they brought it out by using Cortana.

Decepticon, your analysis is spot on.

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> > Don’t forget the voice actors. Without a talented voice cast, most of those feelings would be nonexistent.
> >
> > Steve Downes and Jen Taylor really gave it their all for Halo 4.
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> It was the first time they actually did lines together too if I recall, so that is a great point.

And it really shows. The emotion Jen was able to give off from Steve’s lines were just brilliant.

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Broken, defeated characters are the best. Macho Chief was cool, but human Chief is much better.

The Del Rio scene was very interesting. What I like about the scene was that Del Rio did exactly what I would’ve done in his position, which is attempt to retreat and regroup with friendlies. Master Chief only knows otherwise because he’s been fighting a war centered around Forerunner technology for the past couple of years that he’s been conscious, and he knows how powerful Forerunners are.

Halsey is definitely a cool character. Spartan Ops seemed to make her into some kind of maniacal traitor, but they way she was portrayed in the Halo 4 intro was great.

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Damn, really, really good post Cobra :slight_smile:

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> The Del Rio scene was very interesting. What I like about the scene was that Del Rio did exactly what I would’ve done in his position, which is attempt to retreat and regroup with friendlies. Master Chief only knows otherwise because he’s been fighting a war centered around Forerunner technology for the past couple of years that he’s been conscious, and he knows how powerful Forerunners are.

Yeah, I can’t really blame Del Rio given the circumstances. How would anyone react if a long-lost Spartan said a Forerunner ghost gave you superpowers?

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I can see I’m in the minority here, but I hated what 343i did with Master Chief in Halo 4.

This is a guy who saw some of his closest friends die and just kept on plugging away. Now we’re supposed to believe that he can’t seem to get over a computer program AI going bad? He had those emotions drilled out of him at age 6 and would not suddenly turn into an emotional person in his forties. 343i made these changes to make Master Chief seem more human, to make the storyline more interesting, but it goes against the classic Halo feel.

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> I can see I’m in the minority here, but I hated what 343i did with Master Chief in Halo 4.
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> This is a guy who saw some of his closest friends die and just kept on plugging away. Now we’re supposed to believe that he can’t seem to get over a computer program AI going bad? He had those emotions drilled out of him at age 6 and would not suddenly turn into an emotional person in his forties. 343i made these changes to make Master Chief seem more human, to make the storyline more interesting, but it goes against the classic Halo feel.

The thing about that is that the classic halo feel was bungie purposely giving the chief almost no character so that we could all feel like we were him. But honestly as much as I loved the older games I always thought that was kind of an excuse. At this point in the series they have to present him with challenges he cant just immediately overcome. I mean this is the guy who blew up halo, the arc, almost single handedly destroyed the covenant, etc. At the 4th game in the series it would just not be compelling for him to overcome everything because we would never be on edge playing it. We would just think “Ok he’ll get away perfectly cause he always does”. Its like when the new die hards keep coming out. At this point its not as compelling (though its still badass) because we’ve been convinced that John Mclaine can just never really lose.

I like that they are trying to show he can make mistakes sometimes too. It makes it that much better when he has a couple of flaws and is still able to find a way to win.