Elitist Attitudes
Master Chief and friends on their "where are they now?" photoshoot.
ODST troops are, if the official fiction is anything to go by, complete and utter headcases. They all read like Cole from Gears on steroids, and love throwing themselves through the atmosphere into a hostile planet, with nothing but a thin shell of metal between them and the outside (often hot or airless) void. This instantly makes me want to play them more than Master Chief, but not for the classic “insecure male” reasons that most people take to Marcus Fenix, for example. It’s because they’ve got nothing to lose. They’re rank and file, small cog in a big machine kinda fellas, and it makes you take to them, or rather your specific one, more simply because they’re okay with failure, falling back and not demolishing everything inside before tebagging a brute while laughing over Xbox Live.
So as for why Bungie have gotten rid of Elites baffles, surprises and disappoints me a bit. Baffles, mainly because the Elite race are fantastically well designed, well spoken, indifferent to gender, and most of all, are the most imposing physically due to their two sets of jaws. I’m surprised because they’re a cornerstone of Halo, but then again, they are the only combat equivalent (or the Arbiter is, anyway) to a Spartan of the second generation, and as he’s not in this particular title, it makes sense that they’d either be redundant or overpowered. Disappointed, because brutes are really, really boring enemies. If you want to make my blood pound in my head, face me off against a cloaked team of Elite commando troops with energy swords, and have me as an ODST marine with only a silenced battle rifle and no shields. Brutes look like Donkey Kong first thing in the morning, and it’s just not intimidating. They’re stupid, and I know the only way you’re going to get a mere human past ten of them is to make them stupid, but this feels excessive. Oh, well. Halo Wars it is, then. Not that I won’t be playing ODST, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.
Midway are gearing up for another Mortal Kombat title, which is shocking considering how close they are to really falling down the financial rabbit hole as it is. That said, their last title sold over a million units, it seems, and that’s good enough funding for another title regardless of risk. I remember interviewing Hans Lo, MK Vs. DC’s producer, and thinking about how nervous him and his coworkers seemed. They loved their franchise, that was clear, but if it failed to deliver they knew they weren’t going to bounce back. But if the new title lacks any innovation (once again, I’m talking game-changing innovation here), I think it’ll be both the finance and design departments thinking along the lines of Sub Zero figures.
I’m beginning to get depressed by the sheer volume of game industry layoffs this year so far. It’s not like fledgling writers, programmers and game designers don’t have it made difficult enough for them by it being one of the most popular and competitive industries in the world, but now almost entire staffs on websites, Windows Live and many, many developers are being laid off, in the name of what exactly I’m not sure. Microsoft just fired the head of Games for Windows Live. I can count the amount of titles in that category without running out of fingers and toes. This would seem, to me, to be a new business venture for the software/OS giant. So why damage it by firing your leading man? If he was doing that badly industry journalists would have picked up on it by now, me included. Oh well, it’s all contributing to the rise of indie companies regardless, and eventually, Braid II will be released and people will be able to go back in time and assassinate Bill Gates anyway. Not that you can kill an advanced holographic AI entity someone so important to the industry. Oops.
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