Letter to the editor: Halo reaches a new audience

 

 

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With the recent release of the Halo Reach Noble Map Pack on Xbox Live, I found myself revisiting the video game Halo Reach.

Once again assuming the role of Noble 6, the game’s lead character, was a stellar experience. Every mission in the game did an excellent job immersing me in the dramatic story line of this somber tale, but having said that I did have a minor critique with Halo on my second play-through.

I found myself noticing a queer commonality in the game’s cut scenes. It seemed to me that there were an exsorbinate amount of low angle, over-the-shoulder camera shots. I wouldn’t have normally questioned such a odd choice in direction, but it made me feel as though in each of the cut scenes there contained a shot that fixated on the male characters’ bums.

It seemed as if after every mission I completed, I was rewarded with video clips that featured a decent helping of space marine booty. At the first instance I thought nothing of it, but as they became more frequent I began to sense that I was playing a very different video game than I had before.

There was a general feeling of uneasiness after about the 10th set of cheeks I was caught off-guard looking at. Time and time again I was brought into the action sequences not by emotion expressed on character’s faces, but rather with the “junk in their trunk.” The cinematics got to the point where if the editors wanted to throw in a landscape scene, we the audience got more than our fair share of moons (pun intended).

I asked myself, am I the only one seeing this? Heck, I was still under the impression that to get to know characters you needed to walk a mile in their shoes, not stare directly into their armor-clad buttocks. I wonder, does Halo Reach feature the male posterior too prominently, or are these manifestations of my own subconscious coming out of the closet?

Drew Littrell

Mechanical engineering senior