Mr Vociferous said:
I guess my point is that Halo's storytelling is the way it is for specifically intentional reasons. Some of the reasons might be fiscal. Others might relate to the larger audience, which can't necessarily be ignored. Some deal specifically with the nature of the actual medium (not gaming in general, but Halo itself) - which is considerably different from the other games being cited here. And I think, for the larger part, Halo's storytelling mirrors the standard fare sci-fi, space opera element (cheesiness repleted and expected) because that is, in fact, what it is. As far as the trilogy, it's just something that can't be told with any real efficacy from an entirely first-person perspective.
I broadly agree with this, actually. Because of the road Bungie went down with these games (and as Vociferous suggests, we could put forward quite a number of competing reasons for that road, and not another one), cutscenes becomes necessary to make sense of things, to move the action along, to cope with the sheer scale of things... everything Voc said. I think my complaint is that these cutscenes are being asked to do too much in too little time, again and again, until the story piles up behind them like the carriages in a train wreck. More than that, while they might serve solid functional purposes, they do nowhere near enough to help the game on an immersive or 'aesthetic' level.
But I do think Bungie at times
tried to tell us more about the universe through other means. The comm chatter often has little asides which are insightful. Marines comment on the world or events occurring around them. There are useful vistas (such as seeing our galaxy in the skybox of 'The Ark') throughout. But in terms of smart bits of in-game storytelling, I always think of the 'crazed' marine during 'Floodgate'. There could be many,
many more (and more fully realised) little scenes/vignettes/moments like this, which are easily skippable (in that the player can just jog away from them) but which easily serve to make the world deeper and, yes, more
immersive.
I'm not sure how many times I've said this by now, but Bungie's use of Earth is so baffling to me, not only because they can't seem to keep the Chief on the surface for more than a few levels before catapulting him across the galaxy again, but because at no point does their Earth actually convey a sense of human life and living, and never does it raise the stakes in the way the ad campaigns (again and
again, for 2 and for 3) tell us it should. You have an ideal opportunity to show homes, places people
live, those lives being destroyed, civilians running through the streets, a mother who's lost her child (even Halo Wars does this better, for Chrissake, from several hundred feet up)... and what you get is a few helmeted industrial workers cowering in factories. These places are under siege, yes, and ravaged, yes... but where are the news broadcasts? Street grafitti? The people who lived here, who you are ostensibly fighting to preserve? Valve's vision in Left 4 Dead's
zombie apocalypse has more life in it. I learn more about life in City 17 in the first two minutes of Half-Life 2 than I ever do about life on the whole of planet Earth over the course of three Halo games. When Lord Hood tells Rtas 'Vadum that he just glassed half a continent, it has no impact, because as far as the player is concerned that continent is just a few abandoned factories sitting on the lip of a dustbowl, right?
I know some people have an aversion to scripted sequences, but you can place scripted sequences in a world and not restrict the player's movement and vision (Halo example: the first appearance of Hunters in 'The Storm'). Replay the first fifteen-to-twenty minutes of Bioshock, and look at how much can be learned about the world of Rapture just by moving through those environments (much of it is on rails, yes, but from behind your eyes; try and imagine how much more dull it would be if it was shown as a minute-or-two-long third-person cutscene). Then replay the first (non-shooting) segment of Half-Life 2 and count the details that inform us about the environment just by walking through it, listening to people talk, taking in the sights, observing the Combine at work, and so on. Even once the guns start firing the game is constantly supplying you with information without you even realising it, and providing many (quite optional) opportunities to learn more. The more you go to the world (in-game storytelling) rather than having the world brought to you (cutscenes dumped on you to keep you clued in), the easier it is to suspend your disbelief. People may complain about Kleiner's lab, but there are so many hints in that room about the story -- through newspaper clippings, through the 'mini-teleporter', through surveillance footage -- that are fascinating to the invested player, and which can be utterly ignored (or not even noticed) by everyone else. I agree that perhaps there should be an option to skip that sequence after the first play... but if all you want to do is get to the next shooting gallery, why are you playing Half-Life in the first place? Why are you playing Bioshock? These games are about instant immersion, intelligent suggestion, and a very particular style and feel. You're either on board for that, or you aren't. The crucial thing is that apart from a very few sections where you are 'locked in' to an environment (and Halo has these too, don't forget; just think of Crow's Nest), most of the story detail in these games is mise-en-scène, like Levine said. You can trample across the stage, kicking over the scenery, guns blazing, and not notice what's going on, and so end up being confused by it... or you can choose to soak it in. In this sense it can be enjoyed on different levels by different players, depending on how considered their approach is, and how deep down the rabbit hole they want to go.
So my real, underlying issue is that Halo, aside from being a great series of games, feels dry and arid, devoid of real life apart from the things you shoot with or at, and that there is no sense of the stakes involved for the player, and so no real investment in the events of the plot (why should we even be bothering to prevent mass extinction at the hands of Covenant or Flood, when all that's going to get wiped out is Miranda Keyes, Sergeant Johnson, and some close-to-identikit marines?). And it's downright upsetting that it's easier to get invested in pre-launch
ads for the game than in the game itself. Cutscenes will get your story from A to B, set up the next shooting gallery, and perhaps show some pretty things along the way. They can serve a functional purpose, in the ways Vociferous detailed. But they can't, by themselves, bring a world fully to life; that comes, at least in part, from the player's being-in-the-world (thanks, Heidegger!). More importantly, cutscenes alone can't convince people to care, unless they're already invested in the wider source material, or really, really like the big green tin man and his busty hologram sidekick.
Bonus wall-of-text edit: I should stress also that I don't mind cheesiness, familiar sci-fi tropes, a certain level of implausability, and so forth. But I don't think the existence of these things allows us to excuse Halo, or any other science-fiction epic, be it a game, movie, or book, of concurrent weak characterisation, ragged plotting, and a general absence of depth or real feeling. You should be striving to get those things right regardless.
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