Cortana: “The second we enter that planets event horizon, its atmosphere is gonna tear us apart”
I remember how the first halo novel was written by a physicist. Having then to sit through this campaign was painful as seven hells.
Of course everything that happens in the game doesn’t have to follow the current scientific belief about how the laws of physics act, but the quote from Cortana above is not a violation of the laws of physics as we know them, it is nonsensical.
I could write several pages about what role science should play in a science fiction story to create that special fell only the best of science fiction stories have. This is not the medium for that but I will hint it: It has something to do with the way you work in math. You make one assumption(math)/statement about the world(science fiction) where you are not restricted by anything. And then you explore the consequences (here you are of course restricted by your start assumption, otherwise the story would become inconsistent).
And just to make my point clear:
Commander Palmer: “This place is still not safe for science types”
I’m not sure that’s exactly how she worded it, but what I took from that part is that you were being pulled by the gravity well, essentially a black hole, and when you cross the event horizon of that, you’d also be subjected to whatever rigors the atmosphere of a giant metal planet will subject you to.
> care to give some examples of scientific inconsistencies?
In Halo 4 the inconsistency is not so much a problem as the nonsensical quotes. The first quote in the OP is a good example because it illustrates that the story writers are not actually thinking about what’s going on in the story. What do you think Cortana is trying to communicate? The word “event horizon” is used here only because it sounds sciency, not because it actually caries any meaning.
This is a problem for me. Instead of exploring the halo universe in the dialogue what is actually being said by Cortana is: “I’m thinking about some weird science stuff, you just focus on running.”
Of course Halo 4 isn’t inconsistent in this regard because there is not being said that can be inconsistent. There is nothing being said at all.
To compare it with earlier halo games take the example of slip space. The properties of slip space have been very precisely defined early on and when used late in the games it obeys those properties to hold consistence. The properties of the weird forerunner planet on the other hand have never been defied at all.
> You are seriously complaining about the scientific inaccuracies detailing a giant, metal planet? Yoink!
Nope. I’ll try to explain my problem but it might be a little hard to follow.
When you make a science fiction game you start off with some basic properties that characterize the universe. In the case of halo this list would be very long.
However I can list two things that ARE on the list:
Most physics in the halo universe are similar to the physics of the real world.(This is a classic one for science fiction stories and usually it is the case that the more similar the two physical systems are, the more interesting the universe is to explore.)
The humans in the halo universe speak english, and when we hear them say something what they are actually trying to communicate is the same that we understand.
The first dialogue is in direct violation of rule number two, and the writers of the halo story aren’t that interested in number one anymore as they used to be.
The reason why nr. 1 is so often used in science fiction texts and why it is true that universes that satisfy it to a greater extend are more interesting than universes that don’t is very complicated. Anyone want to discuss this then I’ll more than happy to meet on xbl sometime and discuss that.