Let's Appreciate Halo: Combat Evolved

[anthony]

One of the key reasons I post here is to contribute my own thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on things that I care about. I'm very grateful to Chud for maintaining this place. It gives me a place to do a lot. Now and then I post about how I like moderate to long form (by internet standards) text discourse as I believe it's an approach that's generally far better suited to exploring what I care about than the more common options generally taken online. I like writing, but it's not all that interests me, and I don't think it's the best approach for everything.

I have a new idea now. You've all probably noticed I love video games. I write about them a lot. But I want to share more. I believe that there are ideas on my mind and perspectives I would like to share with you that I might struggle to get across in writing. And it seems obvious to me that the best way to bring my thoughts and experiences closer to you all is through a shared experience. So for a little while now I've been creating this. A kind of Let's Play of Halo: Combat Evolved.

The idea is explained as best as I'm able off the cuff within the first video. I intend to put together something casual, personal, sort of halfway between a conventional let's play and a walking tour of a virtual space. Treating the game by turns as a game and a museum. I have many thoughts on Halo which are very idiosyncratic, which I have often not expressed before. And rather than stumbling through the abstraction of writing while thinking about the game in my head, I am experimenting with describing the thing as it is immediately in front of me. This allows me to point at details, demonstrate phenomena, be reminded of and even forced to consider every part of it at least somewhat as I go.

Again, I say all of this in the video in an attempt to be thorough, I tried to make these before it occurred to me to post them here. They're meant to stand alone. Not really a scheme to take over youtube. At this point more like mental exercise and something to show friends. So far feedback has been positive and I enjoy making them so I think I'll keep sharing them and keep doing them. I have a lot to say about Halo and video games in general. I wasn't sure before starting but I know for sure now, I can speak over video games indefinitely. The issue is not finding things to say. It's finding space and structure to say it all.

I've gotten lots of feedback already, mostly personal from people I've been sharing these with. Please share any thoughts you have on these here. I greatly enjoy hearing peoples' thoughts.

[Video: https://youtu.be/UYWjn-4GpVA]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL...UvVRcSI5QV

The videos should be in the playlist. The first video is embedded alone. If youtube doesn't suggest the full playlist to you you should be able to find it by clicking my channel.

And I think I'm going to keep doing these with different games just for the fun of it. It feels like getting stuff done and I have many more thoughts on so much more than Halo. Might be a very fun excuse to start more video game threads.

[Handi]

I didn't expect you to have such a silky smooth voice, Anthony

[anthony]

I didn't expect you to have such a silky smooth voice, Anthony

I sound awful tonight, throat got all closed up. Hopefully the videos from other sessions are a bit better, and I'll try to present a bit cleaner in the future. It's something I'm very conscious of and unhappy with at present.

edit: Thank you if you are being serious, but either way this is still kind of a sore spot for me and something I want to improve at.

[Handi]

I sound awful tonight, throat got all closed up. Hopefully the videos from other sessions are a bit better, and I'll try to present a bit cleaner in the future. It's something I'm very conscious of and unhappy with at present.

edit: Thank you if you are being serious, but either way this is still kind of a sore spot for me and something I want to improve at.

I was! I may be listening with "accent goggles" but you have a strong voice and an even, controlled delivery. Better than many who do this sort of thing for a living even.

---

If you make it big on YT, I'll give Amarna a couple of months until it receives the Nic treatment (complete nuking of the forum)

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

I knew nothing about Halo and don't play this sort of game but this was still surprisingly entertaining and insightful, watched the first 5 videos and will hopefully finish it later.
Discussing your surroundings as you walk around in the game is more comfy and engaging than the standard video essay style of gameplay footage arbitrarily pasted over the top to stimulate the viewer. Switching between old/new graphics also worked well for this format.
I do think the first video is going to turn people off and it almost turned me off. I understand if you don't want to edit or script any of it but that could help a lot for the intro. Maybe I should have skipped through it.

[anthony]

I was! I may be listening with "accent goggles" but you have a strong voice and an even, controlled delivery. Better than many who do this sort of thing for a living even.

---

If you make it big on YT, I'll give Amarna a couple of months until it receives the Nic treatment (complete nuking of the forum)

Well, thank you. Very pleased to hear that. I've never put much thought or practice into this, still kind of surprised when people tell me they like how I speak since I'm just trying to casually be myself. 

I knew nothing about Halo and don't play this sort of game but this was still surprisingly entertaining and insightful, watched the first 5 videos and will hopefully finish it later.
Discussing your surroundings as you walk around in the game is more comfy and engaging than the standard video essay style of gameplay footage arbitrarily pasted over the top to stimulate the viewer. Switching between old/new graphics also worked well for this format.
I do think the first video is going to turn people off and it almost turned me off. I understand if you don't want to edit or script any of it but that could help a lot for the intro. Maybe I should have skipped through it.

Pleased to hear. The idea is to be pleasant and interesting. And I really don't think it should take too much to be so. I am still kind of bothered by the state of the first video. Maybe I should even create an introduction, I don't know. I'll think about it.

[asdf1234]

Watched the videos in one go - very interesting. The contrast between old and new graphics on the level prior to the ascension into the alien ship was stunning. The fact that said alien battleship is called "Truth and Reconciliation" can be positioned so neatly in a racialist reading of the game, it's astounding nobody has commented on it (at least Google gives me no relevant results).

[anthony]

Watched the videos in one go - very interesting. The contrast between old and new graphics on the level prior to the ascension into the alien ship was stunning. The fact that said alien battleship is called "Truth and Reconciliation" can be positioned so neatly in a racialist reading of the game, it's astounding nobody has commented on it (at least Google gives me no relevant results).

An idea I've had if I were to ever make edited videos in which I formally present my views on games would be calling them "I am the only one who understands...", or in the case of Japanese games "I am the only white man who understands..."

I genuinely believe this about a lot of video games. It's a complete market void. If anything the more video essays take off the dumber and more complacent everyone gets. I have never seen anybody talk about Pikmin as a clever and thoughtful meta-commentary on the nature of work and adventure. I have never seen anybody talk at length about Silent Hill and Stephen King/Brian De Palma. If you actually think seriously about any particular video game you like there is a very real possibility that you will be the first one to do so.

I may have mentioned that I have tried watching a "Halo Guy's" let's play before and found it completely pointless. He had evidently thought of nothing in that 20 odd years. I have also watched videos "explaining" Silent Hill. When I learned these exist I thought "damn, beaten to it by years". Then I saw them... these people are retarded. The average person's idea of "explaining" a thing is to just build a kind of mental encylopedia/history of things which aren't real with no insight into how it came into being or why it is what it is. The idea of a creative will behind the nature of the thing is not considered. Media just kind of falls from the sky in a complete form. Is what it is and could only be what it is. Knowing the thing means chronology of events and the names of the various fictional parts. And I'm pretty sure they couldn't even get that right. These guys seem confused by the basic chronology of Silent Hill 1's very simple plot. Not even getting into the meaning of the story, which is very Western inspired, and very Japanese. And paralleled in many other famous works of Japanese popular culture. It's really incredible how much there is to talk about when you seriously get going on any video game and how much of it is completely pristine intellectual territory. Most video games have simply never been thought about. Never appreciated.

I think I'm going to have to keep doing these. It all comes so easily. And if I don't do it who will? Plenty more games I'd like to talk about, and plenty of different ways I could augment my presentation.

Thank you for your attention and comment. Every time I see someone seriously engaging with these thoughts and ideas I feel great. I'm so glad to see that I can share what Halo is to me. That others can see what I see. Are willing and able to take these things seriously. Thank you, it really means a lot.

[anthony]

Consider this an extension of me playing Halo rather than its own thing. I only intend to talk about general details in relation to other Bungie games and get lost in a series of tangents and thoughts which I find myself more interested in exploring than the game itself. This may bore you, or you may be into that. I don't know, but either way, here's me actually playing Myth. While kind of talking about it but more around it.


[Video: https://youtu.be/K_Yd0vTpA_s]

The tangents I think work a lot better in Halo. This got out of hand frankly.

---

I was just thinking and I decided what I want to do next. I'll make an episode zero, and an interlude episode before the next one of me playing Halo. The intentions of both being to talk in a slightly more formal way over external visuals to speak through a couple of key concepts which I think frankly won't get out as well as I'm talking over the game. Episode Zero will be a cleaner introduction to the intentions behind an appreciation run of Halo, and will probably serve as the home video for the channel, and I'll make a kind of theory recap video for where I'm at in the game in which I'll give a clean overview of what I see as key expressive elements seen in the game so far to begin to formally reveal my impressions of what Bungie were getting at with Halo.

These light-shedding non-gameplay videos I think will be good for me to push myself to do more than record and upload and link raw footage and try a bit harder to express myself in more ways. Develop more skills. etc. By incorporating these sort of light video essays into what is ostensibly a let's play, I'll use the same playlist, I'll create more of a hybrid media final project which I hope will be more interesting. As I probably said at some point, I don't consider methods of presentation other than the raw game bad. Just I think there are strengths and weaknesses to all approaches. I use plenty of text here, I use plenty of raw game on youtube. I think that if I force myself to talk over images and videos I could make it work. My appreciation of the thing is sufficiently grounded for it to not be a waste of time to thinking people. And I hope that by talking in abstract and then showing in concrete I can achieve a kind of reinforcement which will make certain more outlandish claims more plausible and better conveyed than purely through one approach or the other.

And of course like everything I'm doing, the mean reason I want to do this is because the idea genuinely feels interesting to me right now. I'm doing it because I want to. I'll start writing this now and tomorrow and hopefully have some more stuff up soon. And while I'm doing this I might record other stuff like Boltgun or some other stuff I have lying around to keep myself interested and busy. Keep videos moving onto the channel. You know.

[anthony]

All right, some very interesting Halo news. Some guys working with the people at 343 dug up and recreated an old internal Bungie build of Halo. Early days of development before a lot of things were finalised. They put it up as a playable mod. Very damn cool. If you like Halo yourself I strongly recommend taking a look. And if you like listening to me I'll have a quick video exploring it up in about 30 minutes.

[Image: https://i.ibb.co/tbwK36T/image.png]

Here it is, right under the other extremely important Halo news.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/digsite-discoveries

Allegedly they're going to do more of these, like the more famous Halo 2 E3 trailer level. Very interesting stuff. But for my interests in Halo this level is kind of the peak. I talk a bit in this first video but am kind of scatterbrained. Honestly, I'm so fascinated by it I'm probably going to do at least one more. This thing really vindicates a lot of stuff I think Bungie were going for in Halo.

[anthony]

[Video: https://youtu.be/HFV5RMPB1-c]

Here we go. A questionably coherent playthrough of some fascinating game history.