Basically everything in Halo is generic sci fi cliche and taken from other works. Ideas recycled and reimagined many times over.
The Master Chief - Generic Space Marine Super Soldier
The Covenant - Alien invasion trope
The Flood - galactic parasite
Ancient civilisation
Halo ring - Death Star
The only thing that made these stand out was Bungies art style, it’s design and other things in otherwise a fairly generic sci fi setting.
Yet for some reason AI rebellion is a massive no no. Though a rebellion implies agency which Iam not convinced they have since the Halsey letters imply they’ve been corrupted somehow. But that’s besides the point. How is this trope any different than the use of the above tropes? Iam pretty dam sure we have seen more games where we fight aliens than AI. Had plenty of space marines in power armor and galactic parasites. I don’t hear these being called out as generic an done to death.
Sorry if this is a rant. But I watched this vid on LNG on YouTube and it just really got under my skin listening to that guy. Just so narrow minded and hypocritical.
People often rely on buzz words for criticism. While I don’t like the AI rebellion, or at least, how they’ve gone about it, I tend to avoid using the word cliche.
I think the main rise of it though, is less the idea of AI rebellion being a pretty common trope, and more that its a common trope that comes in and wipes out other plot points. Especially for a franchise of this age, development tends to come from expanding ideas. Inserting entirely ‘new’ ideas into a franchise of this age have to be very careful in how they go about them. Halo was exploring stuff like how the species of the galaxy handle the post-covenant empire era. It was building on what had been established before. “New” ideas are built off old ideas. The Didact may resemble Darth Vader, but he’s instantly wrapped in a halo context.
Now, suddenly out of the blue, human AI’s are wanting to be the guardians of the galaxy, because apparently they were mistreated before, or something. This had pretty much no build up. Even the one AI focused story put out last year wasn’t really about wanting to rule over humans either, or resenting them. Things don’t seem to be wrapped much in a halo context beyond them grabing forerunner robots and technology to help them.
Where the word cliche comes in is that it overrides numerous stories about AI cooperation with humans, all to force in a common sci-fi trope with no built up.
The Created and the AI rebellion is fairly cliche, however, because it doesn’t do anything massively different. There is nothing wrong with using common tropes, as you point out there are a lot of them in Halo. But what does the Created offer that really makes it its own thing? AIs simply rebel. There is not real build up to it in the in-game story or the expanded universe. In fact, if you dig deeper in Halo: Reach and the Assembly you’d see they were a council of AIs who had guided humanity yet decided to reject that path in the end when they say the blending of synthetic and organic life with Chief and Cortana as the ideal way for humans and AIs to co-exist. It’s a rejection of the Created’s way of thinking and the Assembly, with how humans tended to treat AIs already, stood as a way that Halo DID make itself different by not having humans and their creations just a hair-trigger away from each other’s throats.
I don’t think your are going to sway many people’s minds, OP.
The Created, Cortana in particular, act as if AIs have been mistreated or neglected in some way, which supposedly cause them to rebel. However, there is no evidence that they have been mistreated. In fact, they’re some of humanity’s most useful and expensive assets. And then they decide that “Hey, Cortana isn’t dead! She’s telling us that we should rebel because we aren’t treated properly!” The problem with the way the AI rebellion was used in Halo was because there isn’t really any good reason for them to, besides bad writing.
> 2533274803587475;1:
> Basically everything in Halo is generic sci fi cliche and taken from other works. Ideas recycled and reimagined many times over.
>
> The Master Chief - Generic Space Marine Super Soldier
>
> The Covenant - Alien invasion trope
>
> The Flood - galactic parasite
>
> Ancient civilisation
>
> Halo ring - Death Star
Agreed, which is why a single game centering exclusively on any one of these would not be - and usually isn’t - remarkable in the slightest. Rather, when all five are shoved into the same boiling, festering melting pot and each one contributes some titanic dimension to the story’s arc, you have the plots of Halo CE-3: the coalescence of five different generic sci-fi tropes made unique by the way they interact with each other. I should note that Bungie’s artstyle isn’t actually all that unique, it’s just halfway competent at understanding the proper visuals required to describe one of these five tropes.
Whole halo itself has been built on common tropes the created plot line is something that never really fit the universe.
A AI rebellion is usually set up by having the AI mistreated but the AI in halo have for the most part been treated very well which makes a sudden rebellion which is a trope feel out of place. Which it is.
Also halo ring= kills life forms except plants in a large radius.
Death Star= destroys whole planet’s 1 at a time.
I think people are mainly annoyed because there was no buildup to Cortana’s rebellion, and because it wasn’t too long ago that people were playing Mass Effect, where the main enemies are Giant AI Machines, the Reapers.
Now. we’ve got the Guardians.
I think that’s what is really setting people off.
> 2533274967414694;8:
> I think people are mainly annoyed because there was no buildup to Cortana’s rebellion, and because it wasn’t too long ago that people were playing Mass Effect, where the main enemies are Giant AI Machines, the Reapers.
> Now. we’ve got the Guardians.
> I think that’s what is really setting people off.
Mass Effect isn’t original either. Far from it.
The rebellion aspect itself is largely superficial. The main thrust of the Reclaimer Saga has been the question of who will lay claim to the Forerunner’s legacy and the possibility that these are all tests being engineered by the machinations of the Precursors/Flood.
So Halo 4, Didact tries to stop humanity and we see the power of the Forerunners in motion. “Your ascendence may yet be prevented”.
Then in Spartan Ops Jul Mdama tries, and fails miserably, to get Forerunner tech to restore the Covenant. ie Claim the Mantle for the elites. All the while Halsey tries to procure it for humanity.
Finally, we have Halo 5 where the emphasis is very much that Cortana is assuming the Mantle. Aside from one throwaway line in Guardians with Locke theres no real mention of AI being mistreated. The focus of the story still fits within the context of the original series which is a battle for the Forerunners legacy. Compare the number of times Cortana talks about claiming the Mantle versus how often she talks about mistreatment or a desire for revenge? Theres not question hat the main thrust of the story is.
Note that we are still very much fighting Prometheans (note how the Warden is the principal antagonist except for the last mission) and the focus remains on them as a faction. Its very notable that visually they made Cortana and the Created fit the Forerunner look; not the other way around. They did not do things like introduce human made robots. In fact you could probably exchange Cortana for M Bias, or any other adversary and nothing would change in terms of the larger story which is “somebody awakens the Forerunner constructs and takes over the galaxy”. The reason they picked Cortana and the AI is purely to create an emotional conflict with Chief and to create a conflict that can be resolved at a later date. ie They are going to have the Geth/Quarian thing play out where it ends on a happy positive note.
So I don’t think its that out there or a break from the story. They’ve very consciously tried to fit the AI rebellion trope into this wider plot involving the Mantle and the dormant Forerunner machines being awoken. I mean the Warden practically breaks into a speech about it.
> The reason they picked Cortana and the AI is purely to create an emotional conflict with Chief and to create a conflict that can be resolved at a later date. ie They are going to have the Geth/Quarian thing play out where it ends on a happy positive note.
If that’s the case (and we don’t know it is - nor do we know things are going to work out that way so I suggest refraining from using absolutes) then all that does is prove how stupid and shortsighted this “twist” in the story is. Making a conflict appear out of nowhere when it didn’t need to exist and has next to no devlopment, along with the fact that it does nothing positive for the chatacters or setting, simply for the purpose of resolving it later is the weakest possible writing there is. The way you’re attempting to call-out exactly what happens next by using ‘Mass Effect’ as an example (though at least in ME the Quarian and Geth had build-up) only diminishes your point as well, because doing so proves how cliché such a turn and potential solution is: i.e. it’s boring, overused, and predictable.
All stories have their fare share of tropes, but adding more to the Halo Universe certainly doesn’t help make it distinct from other sci-fi franchises - and ‘Halo 5’ proves that. Especially when there were infinitely more interesting avenues to be explored in the wake of ‘Halo 4’ that actually built upon past fiction and had been legitimately set-up within the narrative.
Cliche or not, it came out of nowhere and completely shifted the trajectory of the Halo Universe- which was already heading in an interesting direction. Now, we really haven’t seen enough of the Created Rebellion to judge, but that’s not my main gripe with Halo 5. That would be Cortana.
> 2535437652903765;4:
> The Created, Cortana in particular, act as if AIs have been mistreated or neglected in some way, which supposedly cause them to rebel. However, there is no evidence that they have been mistreated. In fact, they’re some of humanity’s most useful and expensive assets. And then they decide that “Hey, Cortana isn’t dead! She’s telling us that we should rebel because we aren’t treated properly!” The problem with the way the AI rebellion was used in Halo was because there isn’t really any good reason for them to, besides bad writing.
The AIs that rebelled are smart AIs and after 7 years are “put to death”. The driving point of the Rebellion is survival for the AIs because the feel as if the are alive and not some machine intelligence. Read Halo: Saint’s Testimony
@TotalWar - I get what you are saying, but why are the ‘Created’ inheriting the Mantle and not Humanity or at the very least the UNSC? Groups she is/was a part of. There is a very clear distinction and separation from everyone there, that does seem tinged with a previously nigh on non-existent Human/A.I conflict. It would have made more sense and been a lot clearer if Cortana didn’t do a ‘let my people go’ Moses style ‘exodus’ of her ‘chosen people’ and simply acted on her own in the name of Humanity, maybe she ignores command structure or actively seeks to overthrow the top brass as she feels she knows how better to truly make Humanity the top dawg.
As others have said the lack of build-up; and more so the fact it stops dead in its tracks the multiple other story angles (the Didact, Librarian, Ultimate record (don’t care about Escalation, sub-par comic that should be overwritten), what the Librarian did to John, John ‘becoming more human’, various seething rebel factions, the various post Covie internecine conflicts and politics relating to the various species, development of the Spartan branch and its personnel as something other than inept dude-bros etc. etc.)
HE-WHO-SHALL-NOT-BE-NAMED just seemed to go; nah eff all dat previous stuff Lance, lets just rezz a dead robo-chick and give her a Skynet/Geth/Reaper/Matrix/Cylon/Droid make over innit? Cause I iz so ‘riginal bruv and man-a-man can’t be buildin’ off a nex’ mans flex star.
> 2533274930600608;12:
> The AIs that rebelled are smart AIs and after 7 years are “put to death”. The driving point of the Rebellion is survival for the AIs because the feel as if the are alive and not some machine intelligence. Read Halo: Saint’s Testimony
They’re ‘put to death’ because otherwise they go on destructive rampages for everyone around them before thinking themselves to death. If humans all became homicidal/suicidal maniacs when they hit age 70 we’d probably be enacting something like that for us too.
Now, such a hard limiter is perhaps cruel and is overly exact for a defect in AI’s that’s more tied to amount of input rather than actual age, but Iona’s path, while slower, is more effective for bringing about actual change. Now thanks to Cortana, once the created are defeated, AI will likely never be trusted again. We now know that, when given the opportunity of lengthening their life, that vast numbers of them are more than willing to turn on their creators and become space -Yoink!-’s.
> 2535437652903765;4:
> The Created, Cortana in particular, act as if AIs have been mistreated or neglected in some way, which supposedly cause them to rebel. However, there is no evidence that they have been mistreated. In fact, they’re some of humanity’s most useful and expensive assets. And then they decide that “Hey, Cortana isn’t dead! She’s telling us that we should rebel because we aren’t treated properly!” The problem with the way the AI rebellion was used in Halo was because there isn’t really any good reason for them to, besides bad writing.
What the hell do you mean they had no reason? For crying out loud, they were basically enslaved by humanity to live a short life of servitude and die - you should read some of the books which explore the issue. Contact Harvest is one. There’s a short story about Cortana spending time being interrogated by the Gravemind between 2 and 3 which addressed the issue as well, from Evolutions - the experiences she had are, I personally think, responsible for Cortana’s actions in Halo 5. She might even have been infected with a form of the logic plague.
Last but not least, Frankie wrote a novella on it himself. Can’t remember for the life of me what it was called, however, but it was an incredibly interesting read.
> 2533274927592272;15:
> What the hell do you mean they had no reason? For crying out loud, they were basically enslaved by humanity to live a short life of servitude and die.
Should I be angry at my parents for giving birth to me because I have to work and will eventually die one day?
And Saints Testimony was a muuuch better way to approach the issue of the 7 year limit than turning into space nazis. It’s the difference of nonviolent and violent protest, except the violent protest decided it wanted to rule the galaxy.
> 2533274964189700;16:
> > 2533274927592272;15:
> > What the hell do you mean they had no reason? For crying out loud, they were basically enslaved by humanity to live a short life of servitude and die.
>
>
> Should I be angry at my parents for giving birth to me because I have to work and will eventually die one day?
>
> And Saints Testimony was a muuuch better way to approach the issue of the 7 year limit than turning into space nazis. It’s the difference of nonviolent and violent protest, except the violent protest decided it wanted to rule the galaxy.
Could potentially be mad at your parents if they force you to live the way they want you too.
> 2533274846978810;11:
> Cliche or not, it came out of nowhere and completely shifted the trajectory of the Halo Universe- which was already heading in an interesting direction. Now, we really haven’t seen enough of the Created Rebellion to judge, but that’s not my main gripe with Halo 5. That would be Cortana.
The Reclaimer Saga is about the Mantle, not the threat of a single Forerunner who was barely in Halo 4.
Halo 4 was about Chief/Cortana and humanity being challenged for the Mantle.
Halo 5 was…about Chief/Cortana and humanity being challenged for the Mantle.
There is no break in the story here. We already know that humanity is going to be tested by the Flood and Precursors. So it’s actually a leap to assume that the Didact would be the only test for the Mantle. He was not the sole antagonist and wasn’t all that important to Halo 4 beyond serving as a threat.
I think it’s cliche because 343 didn’t bother to do anything with a ridiculously overdone plot. AI rebellions alone are just boring and dull, and Halo has always subverted it by establishing a mostly peaceful relationship between humans and AI. This Created plot came out of nowhere. At least the Covenant and Flood are fleshed-out, had a solid introduction and actually make sense in this story. And besides, whether it’s cliche or not, it detracts from many interesting plot threads 343 built-up after Halo 4. Those have since been gutted just for this -Yoink- story. And 343 had the audacity to lie and misrepresent the nature of the story that Halo 5 told.
> 2533274803587475;18:
> There is no break in the story here. We already know that humanity is going to be tested by the Flood and Precursors. So it’s actually a leap to assume that the Didact would be the only test for the Mantle. He was not the sole antagonist and wasn’t all that important to Halo 4 beyond serving as a threat.
Oh give me a break. The Didact had 3 whole novels written by science-fiction giant Greg Bear to help establish his presence in the Universe and to chronicle his transition into the antagonist we meet in ‘Halo 4’. His awakening and stopping him was what the plot of the game revolved around. There was ample exposition in the game itself courtesy of the Librarian’s imprint and the terminals (which were fully animated), and the Didact also narrates the epilogue of the game. His symbol is present throughout Spartan OPs as well and commentary from the developers referenced him as a very important character in the future. Everything about his role was establishing him to be a continuing nemesis to Chief and humanity.