It’s not just about what one is saying but how one says it that matters.


When keeping it real in Middle Earth goes wrong

For those of you just joining us, I’ve been slowly peeling back the rind of the recently released Halo 1 “remake”, Halo: Campaign Evolved (H:CEv), in an attempt to see whether or not what’s on offer is something seriously sweet or sickly sour. As always, I enjoy taking the long way around, and going into somewhat perverted levels of detail, in parsing the differences of merit and folly involved, in an authentic effort to provide more than just a canned response of overly zealous critic or annoyingly ardent fanboy, as I think there is a lot going on in-between those two camps that represent a more worthy approach and much needed nuance of perspective when assessing these kinds of situations.



As you may have noticed in the last paragraph, I did put remake in quotations, as putting aside whether or not H:CEv ends up being an entity of mostly positive value or not, the game feels so much different from the first Halo game, I do have a strong disagreeance in calling the game a remake, as it does feel so fundamentally different than the property it is based on. I was only partially joking when in my first article in this series, I referred to this being the first remake I’ve ever played that feels more like one that has a disclaimer in the trailer *based on a true story attached to it, as it truly does feel like a somewhat inaccurate retelling of Halo 1, with the myriad of details involved so misremembered and embellished, it almost acts as something else entirely.



That might seem like such a pedantically petty point of perfunctory perniciousness, but much of the every day is all about phrasing and perspective taking. When I think of H:CEv as a retelling vs a remake, I feel my shoulders slowly lower, my muscles relax, and a slackening in my tightened jaw, as I exhale air in a moment of relief, cause congruency remains within the realm, rational continuity intact. At least, that’s what seems to happen to me when I think about the game referred to as a retelling, as it makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than remake, which just creates this immediate tension within me for all that is different about what’s on offer. A lot of the time, in approaching a market with an idea or product, depending on whether or not you view games more as a business or an art, this stuff really boils down to marketing (and presentation), to help establish an appropriate value proposition; communicating the essence of what’s on hand, the message inherent within, and knowing how to pitch it, and what demographic of people will go for it. Strangely enough, I just reminded myself of another Halo example where such a context was pertinent, and no one was worse for the weary when all was said and done.



Back when Bungie/MS was attempting to drum up hype for the Halo 3 launch, they did bundle a Halo 3 beta invite with a copy of Crackdown, which was kind of like a GTA style co-op super hero game. While I have nothing against Crackdown, it certainly didn’t light the world on fire, and the most exciting thing about its release was indeed the Halo 3 beta invite inclusion, so much so, that when I was working at Gamestop as a third key circa 2007, I sold a ton of preorders based on some version of the phrasing “You’ll get access to the Halo 3 beta when you preorder, plus it comes with a free game.”…and god damn that is how you leverage value.



A lot of the give and take of my critiques of the retelling that is H:CEv, may more or less boil down to lingualism and commercial standards, as I think there is a far greater metaphysical backdrop of interest to just the gameplay itself, you need to go beyond the dimensions of the virtual standard to truly understand exactly where boundaries start to breakdown and hard limitations unyieldingly stand firm.



At the very least, and to use the parlance of our time, Halo is not the current hotness, and the conversation surrounding the retelling is indicative of this, as even just ten years ago, I think you still had a slow simmering of excitement for Halo related activities that awaited us. Sadly, Halo 5 ended up being such a misstep people lost a lot of faith in the powers that be’s ability to deliver worth tied to the Halo name, and even the follow up Halo: Infinite was so poorly mismanaged, their road map plan of improvement completely shit the bed with such an overwhelming lack of immediate post launch planning, they took off from port with a weak ship, and it just took on too much water before they could even make it seaworthy, and when you can’t even get the mainline games in your flagship franchise right, what can you actually do worth a damn?



That’s where I think H:CEv kind of plays a dangerously arrogant game, one where they may have taken a lot for granted and played fast and loose with a lot of outdated assumptions based on the goodwill of the Halo name alone, only, I think its been a longtime since that name has carried that kind of heft behind it, so they have a lot less wiggle room to experiment or drag ass then they think they do. Another citation I’ve made in dressing down such a rambunctious editorial process with repackaged material of celebrated renown is comparing the retelling in much the same way the original Star Wars Trilogy Special Editions came out, and completely pissed off hardcore fans cause of all the changes involved. As uninspired as the execution might be, if your focus isn’t in attempting to service the nostalgia in a meaningful way, it feels like you’re kind of just using the staying power of the name to test out some new tech in a financially safe way and taking advantage of fans expectations while you do it.



Much like the Halo name doesn’t mean as much as it use to these days, I think the release of H:CEv is kind of a painful reminder, to both the developers, publisher, and fans involved that times have also changed, and the way things use to go down are ancient history. When considering that the game, at least through the means of having a subscription to Gamepass, a Halo game, mind you, is completely free at launch beyond that caveat, once upon a time you’d have screams across the Xbox globe how awesome that was, and those who were multiplatform gamers would be equally super psyched as well that they could get some quality entertainment for no money down….but that is definitely not the vibe this release has had packaged in with it, this much feels true.

That feels like a good stopping for for now. Next time, I’ll attempt to focus more on the minute to minute gameplay of what H:CEv has to offer.

~Pashford