Remember back in mid 2000’s when Halo was the ultimate juggernaut of video games, getting the highest praises for its gameplay, graphics, and story. Well those days have been gone for awhile, as gamers moved on to other games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Uncharted, and Crysis. Gamers were not the only people to begin to look down at Halo, but many people in the gaming industry look down at Halo’s previous installments as inferior creativity and gameplay wise.
Now the well known science fiction writer and lead writer of Crysis 2 Richard Morgan, is slamming the Halo story down to the ground. In an interview with NowGamer, Morgan describes Halo’s story as “bullshit”. He goes into more detail about his call out on the Halo story.
“The reason that its fiction doesn’t work has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t get to see Master Chief’s face, it’s because of lines like ‘Okay … I’m gonna get up there and kill those guys’”
“Halo is full of these bullshit archetypal characters”
I give Richard Morgan credit, because he is a professional in this area. However people need to keep in mind that the Halo franchise not only sold successfully well worldwide, but also inspired many books, comic series, a series of short anime films, and countless amounts of machinimas.
You can read the full interview with Richard Morgan at NewGamer
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he is right, just cause sheeple bought it means nothing.
the man is correct.
the game was boring, the story didn’t exist, it was crap.
Yeah, because clearly these ‘sheeple’ are wrong and you are right.
When talking about a comerical product, more sales ALWAYS equals better. You can’t argue it. Whether it’s because of marketting, gameplay, story, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day people chose it because it’s what THEY enjoy.
So yeah, you’re a fucking idiot.
Cos your right and he’s wrong. Listen to your own arguement pal.
so twilight must be amazing right? remember: sometimes the majority only means all the idiots are on the same side.
All of you guys are relying on the fact that you guys know what is quality and what is not. However, the definition varies from person to person so you can’t really argue this if you have deferring definitions of what is a quality storyline.
Wow, man, you are just so edgy and cool..you know…casue you used the word “sheeple”, right? Oh, wait, my bad- that actually just means your a Dane Cook watching, sadly derivative chucklehead who has hopes and aspirations of one day being actually “cool” for like a split second. Common mistake- stay chill, you rebel, you.
But on the topic at hand, drop me a note when you create something that makes more money or is in any way more artistic, k there cupcake?
Missing in action: any mention of http://marathon.bungie.org/story/
You are kidding right? Marathon had less back-story than Halo does.
Look, I love Halo and have every title. BUT, the story is not tight, the characters are cookie cutter. About the only thing missing is starting the story off with, “It was a cold and story night. Master Chief looked up cursing the rain, and pulled out a smoke to take the edge off…”
Naw mang, Marathon is the bees knees!
And seriously, it has a fantastic story told in a fantastic way.
I’ve never played any of the Halo games, because it looks too lame.
Crysis, although beautiful, it is bullshit, for its replay value is close to zero.
Unreal Tournament ’99 puts all of those games to shame.
I find crysis funner to replay than halo. simply because of the fun you can have with the nanosuit. Halo can really only be played one way.
funner isn’t a word.
Fuck this guy, I am so sick of everyone jumping on halo bashing band wagon! I don’t exactly remember crisis as being famous for its story, what a prick.
You should go and read his books before saying that hes an author of one of my favorite series go read the Takeshi Kovacs Novels then come back and say that again
if this guy is writing the Crysis 2 story I’m in, lets just hope that he can make a big enough influence and push the development of the Altered Carbon movie, when it hits big. I cant wait to see a Cry Engine 3 mod based on that universe now that the engine will be free and all, if i had the talents id do it myself sheeeeyit
I don’t remember the first Crysis having as good a writer as Richard Morgan.
I think this falls under the ‘Hatting something popular is cool!’ category.
Someone like Richard Morgan should be smarter than to make comments like that. To say that a game with a multi-media existence, millions of followers, several games, and game variants (FPS,RTS,etc) is “Bullshit” because of a few bad lines in the game comes of as ignorant. It’s like saying Nintendo is crap because of a bad game released on their system.
I find it hard to believe that all the “Halo-haters” out there didn’t enjoy themselves while playing Halo at one point. Yes, I realize that there are better games out there, and that people are entitled to their critiques, but to brush the whole game aside as “Bullshit” is pretty foolish.
At what point does he call Halo bullshit? To quote him correctly, “Halo is full of these bullshit archetypal characters.” He didn’t say the game was bullshit, just the characters… There’s a difference.
Halo compared to Crysis?
Most people haven’t played Crysis because their pc can’t run it, Crysis when first released, to me, had the best graphics, physics, and definite re-playability. Crysis was pretty ingenius. It was something different. Halo 1 was good and revolutionary I guess… But the next two installments were not great at all. Re-playability was not so fun. I congratulate Richard and cannot wait for the next in the series.
Halo looks exciting, like a Ford Taurus looks exciting.
The people who like Halo, they only like it because they’ve never played Unreal Tournament ’99.
The people who like Halo, they don’t know what a real game is.
Dude, I love Halo! And i will be one of the first to admit that the story is a little (if not severely) lacking… But
FUCK!!! You don’t buy Halo for the story!!! The Multi-player is Fun as Shit! I’ve put days, possibly months more time in on online Halo than I ever could on a shitty 8 hour campaign. Fuckin do what’s fun and get your money’s worth.
Crysis blew, and this is just a sad attempt to bring attention to a less fun, and therefore less popular title.
Gamers were not the only people to begin to look down at Halo, but many people in the gaming industry look down at Halo’s previous installments as inferior, creativity and gameplay wise.
Wow, people hating on crysis are actually fucking retarded. The only reason why you don’t like crysis is because your shitty 400$ computer can’t run it properly. Crysis tops halo in every aspect. Multiplayer for crysis is intense. Once Crysis 2 comes out for the consoles it will slay.
Halo is old, boring and over-rated but thats just my opinion and in no way makes the game suck. I just won’t play it because “I” think it’s not worth my money. I’d rather just download Halo 1 for pc crack and play multiplayer online for maybe like 15 min before I get bored out of my mind because the only level any one ever plays is freakin blood gulch.
Anyone dissing Crysis that has played the game obviously sucks at the game, or sucks at multiplayer so they then pass blame on the game and not their own incompetence. Then they go back to their halo because its the only FPS they can fucking play without whining like a little bitch. Or maybe they still whine like little bitches.
I’m gonna halo hump your fucking heads.
Jealous much?
Let’s see, Halo is really popular and made buckets of money (and I for one am not a fan) and Crysis…um…looked pretty? I don’t know, I couldn’t afford a computer good enough to play it, so I played Halo instead.
crysis had a pretty cool story imho.
Just because a game makes a bunch of money or is really popular doesn’t mean its a good game.
Look at the lego anything games…
Mass Effect crushes with story, gameplay, and replay value.
I’m well known for not being a Halo fan, but ODST was the best since Combat Evolved. There is a story, yes it’s thin, but so is gears and it’s still a good game.
Crysis may be the best physically and visually, but the plot was 100% unoriginal and for the lead to put down Halo for the same things is overly hypocritical. High Tech military find aliens while fighting a human foe? OH NOES!
Produce an intresting story and narrative from Crysis 2 and we’ll talk.
Crysis didn’t have a good writer and it was obvious they didn’t focus on story.
Instead, compare Halo to richard morgan’s books.
Im a huge Halo fan but that doesnt mean im not going to tell the truth here. Halo outsells all the Call of Dutys which is really only its real competitor. Crysis? is that a joke. That game compared to any of the Halos is terrible. Richard Morgan would be lucky to be the man that brings the people in Bungie doughnuts. No one cares about crysis.
and just a quick fact for you. no game in 2009 was played online as much as Halo 3 was. Not MW not MW2 (i know it was released really late) Not GoW not Crysis. This is including games that arent shooters too.
If you take this into consideration and Halos “bullshit” then bullshit seems pretty good to me
you use IE your argument is invalid. jk(kinda) Halo’s story was interesting but i see no reason why the aliens would have built Halo unless their whole race was contemplating suicide. The crysis story reads like a good scifi novel. Alien ship discovered in archeological dig, snooping government wakes them up. humans have to fight them off. But then you add a nanosuit and it twist the perspective significantly in a very fun way.
(no I’m not using netscape that’s just the google bot’s browser profile)
Did you read the article at all? He said Halo’s story is bullshit, which it is. Richard Morgan’s books > Halo’s story.
You’re kidding right? Not that sales determine a game’s quality necessarily but Modern Warfare, World at War, and Modern Wafare 2 have outsold every Halo game to date (I don’t know about the earlier Call of Duty titles), and either of the Modern Warfare games have outsold Halo 1 and 2 combined, let alone both Modern Warfare games combined outselling the entire Halo series. So yeah, Halo is the one competing for sales with Call of Duty, and losing at that
Halo is a good game. Most people who say its not have either
1)Never heard of Custom Games infection with friends
2)Never play matchmaking with friends
3)Don’t have any friends, and have never played Halo
Halo is okay when you’re by yourself… but when you bring a couple friends into the mix, other than Borderlands and Smash Brothers (any installment, really), I can’t recall a multiplayer game that brought me so much fun.
Crysis’ story wasn’t any better. Both are mediocre shooters with mediocre story.
Rob, your statement about commercial products is completely false. To quote a part of your message, “When talking about a comerical product, more sales ALWAYS equals better. You can’t argue it”(3rd comment). To say that a commercial product that recieves higher sales than another is better is ridiculous. Things like advertisements, price, quality, target audience, etc, ALL affect the revenue of a product whether it be a commercial pop star’s ticket sales ( Justin Bieber…lol) or the Shamwow. With these in mind, I stay true to my statement, you have no idea what you are talking about.
Opinions are like assh…err..wait.. Oh ok so, I think it’s shit and you like it. Lets argue something that is un-winnable. The halo series has ALWAYS been about merging 2 or 3 really great sci-fi genres of science fiction. The main stories that are mixed that come to mind would be Aliens and Predator, along with zombie’s thrown into the mix. The Reason halo was so successful? It was a blast to play, it looked great. Now if your comparing the writing skills of a “prestigeous” writer over that of a game companies who cares. Games have always been cheesy in their attempts at humor. They also dont age well when going back and listening to the voice work. I would caution the post that said go read xxxx and then come back and say it’s not good. What if we just dont get that big of a boner of books? I’d say from a halo fanboy side of the house go read the eric nylund series of halo books. They’re actually very good. Also, to those that have the ultimate 2000-4000 dollar rig to play crysis part 1, congrats, your a man now. We’re talking about VIDEO GAMES – there are more important things out there folks. And on that subject of video games… what part of that deals with the writing games…??? I want to be oohed and ahhhed not have to read the subtitles to get a whimsical laugh every now and then!
Fellas, seriously, the writer of this article was just trying to get comments by his title. Richard Morgan even backpedals in the actual interview and admits that Halo is ok. Halo was great! and if Crisis 2 is better, then great! That way we all get two great games.
What was said was said, just because he later said halo is ok, it does not make his Halo is Bullshit statement disappear and make him better.
You guys do realize this isn’t the same writer as the first Crysis. Maybe Crysis 2 will have a pretty cool storyline.
That being said, Crysis has never been a series where I needed a good storyline to warrant my playing it. Yeah the graphics are incredible and that seems to be the only thing anyone ever talks about but what people overlook is how good all the mechanics are in those games.
Driving, sneaking, shooting, everything is rock solid and seamless. The gameplay experience just feels so polished. It’s exactly what Far Cry was. Far Cry was ahead of it’s time for FPS. You could play it however you wanted and enjoy yourself. You could use stealth very proficiently and it gave you all the tools you would need. Like using Binoculars to spot targets from afar and then when you’re in their proximity they are displayed on your map. You had a sound sensor so you knew how loud you were being or where other sounds were coming from. It was just awesome stuff and I imagine your average gamer didn’t even realize all of that was there to use at your disposal, because you could also just run and gun and create total chaos and that was a blast too. Crysis is exactly the same in that respect and even more highly refined.
Crysis is so pretty most people overlook everything else.
‘Okay … I’m gonna get up there and kill those guys’” is actually an anagram that spells out “suck it, Morgan!” How’s that for archetypal?
So the STORY is bullshit? Thats like saying a car sucks because its got ugly floormats. Who gives a damn about the story. Through all three Halos I never once passed up an opportunity to skip the movie/story scenes – and its still my favorite game ever. I NEVER pay ANY attention to the story of a game. If you want a story read a book. If you want to shoot whiny 10 year olds in the head play Halo.
And thats the the thing, Whiny 10 year olds make up 90% of the halo community.
FUN!
51 years old and play Halo franchise.
Go play COD if your unhappy, Timmy.
Crysis vs Halo side by side. Halo wins. I’m sorry folks, the Crysis games (or story), is the same shit over and over and over again, with just pimped up graphics. They literally release these games ahead of their time…
Star Wars is pretty thin also. So are most SciFi movies, as you have a lot of action to fill the voids.
If you can get your hands on a 1977 paperback of Star Wars its about one hundred pages (maybe) set it 12pt type.
I disagree on both those accounts. I’m not going to get into depth about Star Wars, but the storyline of the original is most certainly not thin. It’s does have some thinner elements and it’s not as complex as Episode V, sure, but it shouldn’t be called “thin” (or at least not the series as a whole). Also, I wouldn’t judge its thinness by the length of its novelization. There are plenty of deep short stories that are less than 100 pages, and movies don’t have 500 pages like books to expand their plot. Give Star Wars 40 hours and not 2.5 and you get KOTOR, and there are plenty of good Star Wars books that are of substantial size
As for sci-fi in general, trying telling me with a straight face that a movie like 2001 or Blade Runner has a thin story and uses action to fill the voids. Pretty much any sci-fi movie through the 60s relied on complex storytelling and not the blockbuster action that you’re implying. Even if not, action sequences don’t make a movie bad if they’re done right. If they’re cliche, that’s another thing, but a good action sequence can liven up the pace of a movie and keep the audience’s attention for the often lengthy sci-fi film. Besides, the point of action is to fill voids in the movie and force endless amounts of dialogue or slow plot developments on the viewer, and get from one point of the movie to the next in a quick and entertaining (exhilarating at its peak) manner
For the record though, I’m assuming that by a “thin” plot, you mean a story that lacks depth, basic character archtypes with little development, a barren setting, and generally, no well thought out ideas or deeper meanings. If you meant something else, then nevermind
In another issue, I haven’t played Crysis, but I was a Halo fan for a while before I grew out of it. From what I’ve read about Crysis, I’d say the story there is pretty on par with the one in the original Halo. Halo 2 was kind of meh with the story, and Halo 3 was sub-par at best, but I still think the original Halo had something going with the story, despite the various flaws it had (like taking the Colonial Marines from Aliens and making a lesser version of them). It wasn’t fantastic by any means, but it was good in the plainest, most basic meaning of the word
Regardless, this guy should compare his story for Crysis 2 with the story in Bioshock, the Half Life series, and Call of Duty 4. I still wouldn’t exactly call Halo the benchmark of FPS storytelling, so if you’re trying to prove the worth of your story, I wouldn’t put it up against something mediocre because all that says is that your story isn’t good enough to be compared to the pinnacles of the genre. I’m not criticizing Morgan’s comment, nor am I judging whatever work he’s done so far on Crysis 2, but Halo isn’t exactly the best comparison to go by, despite its popularity. And yeah, I know he’s a big sci-fi writer, but still
Crysis was terrible. Crysis 2 will probably also be terrible. That’s my personal opinion. I know tons of people like the game.
This guy might wanna pick up the halo books. They’re much better than anything he’s written.
“The reason that its fiction doesn’t work has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t get to see Master Chief’s face, it’s because of lines like ‘Okay … I’m gonna get up there and kill those guys’”
Total bullshit. Why? Half-Life. I loved it’s story, but if you analyze its story, it’s kinda lame. I mean, Freeman is an MIT graduate and he is a marksman with every kind of weapon. Sure, there are some puzzles in it, while Halo has none, but it’s also a sort of guns blazing game, just like Halo. Also, you never get to see Freeman’s face and was that an issue? Absolutely not. Also, you never hear his voice, while we at least heard a bit of MC’s voice. However, was any of the Half-Lifes’ games shitty? No. None of them. Everyone knows and loves Half-Life. So why people don’t like the Halo franchise, while it is very similar in some aspects to Half-Life?
“I mean, Freeman is an MIT graduate and he is a marksman with every kind of weapon” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-crCgDbf6Y
“Also, you never get to see Freeman’s face and was that an issue? Absolutely not” – That’s not what he was talking about and you know it. Gordon Freeman’s face is on the box art for the record
IT is true that many games just use the same old type of characters over and over
i don’t even know the storyline behind halo and i’ve played all of them and still like it. if i did know it, i don’t think i’d stop playing.
Best quote Halo is full of these archetypal characters, I loled at that!