SPOILER WARNING: the following article contains spoilers. If you haven’t played the game and don’t want to have the story spoiled for you, please do not read this article.
Maybe the Holiday Season got to me, but I’m feeling rather sentimental lately. In fact, I’ve discovered that right next to the space reserved for dude-bro shoot ‘em ups, there’s just enough room in my gaming soul for some touchy-feely story-telling.
On one hand, there’s too much teeth-clenched, white-knuckled, whiz bang action in Black Ops II to describe it as emotional. It doesn’t so much tug at the heart strings as it yanks them out and tea bags them. On the other hand, I just finished the campaign of a game that surprisingly left me a little verklempt.
That game? Halo 4.
No, dear reader, no mistake here. I said Halo 4. You know, the game with the larger than life genetically enhanced space marine who fights off waves of alien enemies and whose main interaction with the game world is to shoot things. There are no less than 18 types of guns, not to mention grenades and other such implements of destruction and mayhem. Yet, amid the pulling of triggers, 343 Industries was able to sneak in a story that gives the Master Chief more depth than I anticipated.
“Wake me when you need me” were Master Chief’s last words in Halo 3 before he entered cryo-sleep.
At the opening of Halo 4, Cortana, just before she re-activates him, speaks to the Chief, fast asleep in a frosted cryo tube. She does not say “we” (humanity) needs you to save us again. The plea is a more personal, “I need you.”
At the climax of this adventure, when the Master Chief is helpless in the main antagonist’s telekinetic grip, Cortana attacks. “Your affection for mankind is misplaced,” the Didact says.
“I’m not doing this for mankind,” is Cortana’s reply. This is another example of her motivations being more selfish, more focused on John, the man behind Master Chief’s helmet.
Master Chief voices his mutual sentiment each time he insists that getting back to Dr. Halsey will cure Cortana of her rampancy and prevent her digital death. When he eventually fails this most critical mission, he laments, “It was my job to take care of you.”
“We were supposed to take care of each other. And we did” is her reply before she bids him a final farewell.
Why the attachment? Why does the hero of humanity need someone at all?
The game’s opening scene with Dr. Catherine Halsey’s interrogation hints that Master Chief’s emotional development is stunted, possibly leaving him emotionally immature compared to the average male. This is important because he is, after all, human, and not a cyborg.
“Records show,” Dr. Halsey’s interrogator reads from a prepared statement, “that Spartans routinely exhibited mildly sociopathic tendencies: difficulty with socialization…”
“…do you believe,” he continues, “the Master Chief succeeded because he was, at his core, broken?”
These are condemnations of us as much as they are of our protagonist. Exposing these flaws exposes the flaws in everyone’s inner adolescent. Who hasn’t felt a bit isolated and weird at times? Who hasn’t felt anonymous and emotionally awkward? Who hasn’t wanted to put on armor to protect themselves from the world? Not only does Cortana give him a purpose with moment-to-moment objectives, she also eases any sense of isolation and the awkwardness.
As the the Master Chief looks out into space in the final cutscene, he comments to Commander Lasky that “Our duty as soldiers is to protect humanity, at any cost.” It’s a statement that almost sounds scripted. A line I would think typical of someone indoctrinated by the military since the age of six.
“You say that like soldiers and humanity are two different things,” the Commander replies. “Soldiers aren’t machines. We’re just people.” John turns his head toward Lasky as if coming to a small revelation.
Perhaps it was a realization that no matter how many genetic and behavioral modifications he’s been through, he still craves a human connection. As odd as it sounds, perhaps it’s this connection with Cortana that gives the Master Chief something that ONI’s Section III couldn’t train him for: an emotional context as to why humankind is worth saving.
Cortana gives the Chief purpose and shows him a humanity that he wouldn’t know otherwise. Since his experience with other humans is so regimented and limited, she is the only example of a non-military relationship that he knows. For these reasons, the love story between the John 117 and Cortana isn’t the typical romantic type. It’s a more pure bond that stems from years of shared experiences and the resulting development of trust and loyalty.
When Cortana presumably blinks out of existence, John’s loss mirrors our own. He wasn’t the only one that spent over ten years with her, so she is as much a part of my history with Halo as she is a part of his. Even with that connection, the re-introduction of the Master Chief needed more than a new setting, new enemies and new weapons. A new narrative approach to our hero was needed as well.
Throughout the first Halo trilogy, the Master Chief was little more than a cypher, an empty cup into which the player poured his or her own personality. And why not? The formula worked for characters like J.C. Denton, Dr. Gordon Freeman and a certain vault dweller in Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic Earth. Part of the design philosophy is that the character is relateable because he/she is defined by the player’s actions and choices in the game.
In Halo 4, the approach to the Master Chief’s story arc is notably different. By giving him more personal motivations, I developed a connection with him that I didn’t have in any of the previous Halo video games.
I cared more about Cortana than I did about the demise of the human race. I imagine that John struggled with the same idea. I imagine that if he were forced to pick one or the other, he may have considered breaking from his dogmatic adherence to the “mission”. Luckily for the human race, the fate of both were at the end of the same path.
Let’s not make any presumptions here. Even if the Holidays have made me more sentimental, there were no tears that I would care to admit shedding. I still enjoy my fair share of the blasting of baddies. In the very least with Halo 4, I can say “shooter” and “tragic love story” in the same sentence and feel perfectly fine about it.
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