Never having played Halo, I have no comment. I think it's mostly over-reacting on his part, but the blue eyes thing was a little wierd. What do you guys think? Not trying to start a flame war here, just trying to see your opinions on the matter.    

its an interpretation. any interpretation is valid as long the person gives support. 
 
the eyes turning blue made me say "wtf" too. not a good choice. 

He should go outside sometimes.
 
Conspiracies everywhere kiddo's, watch out!

No he's overreacting.

If the diverse country of the United States of America attacked a small near defenseless country that posed no immediate threat...
 
Wait nevermind.

Someone made a thread about this video not too long ago.

I feel confident saying this guy is an idiot.

No, the Xbox represents Fascism.  The PC represents Liberty... or maybe Anarchy...

"Someone made a thread about this video not too long ago. "

Yes.  Also, Harry Potter is an allegory for homosexuality, Elvis is still alive, and 9/11 was an inside job, in collaboration with aliens associated with the illuminati.

Though he tries to handwave it off towards the end with an aside about the pure state being afraid of being overridden by the diverse one, his argument collapses because the Covenent were not the villains because of their politics, social policy, or culture.  It is because they started a genocidal war against humans. 
 
And when the avatars of pureblood fascism had the opportunity to ally with the dissident factions of the mongrel alien horde, they of course turned them down in a display of racial solidarity and pride before they-
 
Oh wait, they actually did the opposite of that, and formed an alliance with them.  In fact, they only won their war because of that alliance with the other species.  Ummm... yay?
 
But, of course, accusing a story with a soldier protagonist of having fascist themes is just about the most timeworn and kneejerk trope there is out there for armchair literary critics, and I bet this will boost their web traffic, so mission accomplished.  

He really should play the other Halo games, particularly Halo 2. That way he'll know that the Covenant are the bad guys not because they are multi-national but because they struck Humanity first due to their Religious dogma perpetrated by the Prophets that have no idea what they are doing. He's the one that needs the context, not us.

" @shivermetimbers:   I dont understand what the topic is about?  Halo the game itself isnt facist, because its a game and thats impossible.  But the human government represented in the Halo universe is facist.  The guy isnt saying anything radical other then just commenting on the differences between the humans and the covenant (he forgets the part where the covenenant are brainwashed and bent on destroying the universe though and trys to paint them as the "good guys" some how.)  The blue eyes thing is strange and unnecessary though, I don't know why Bungie would include that in the add, its probably unintentional on their part but the point that the guy in the video was making was that Hitler's Aryan Race was blue eyed and Hitler was text book facist. "

do conspiracy's Exist?  

...I don't think the Halo community even knows what fascism means.

The Escapist is a terrible site filled with terrible people. This video is irrelevant.

I think it's an interesting point. Do I think it's at all valid? No.

It's an interesting perspective, but I think MovieBob reads too far into why Halo's characters are what they are. To make an interesting FPS, you need different enemies to fight. What's the easiest way to make visually and behaviorally unique enemies? Make them different kinds of aliens/robots, and Halo did both. Meanwhile, this isn't necessary for allies because they're not really relevant to the gameplay so you don't need to pay much attention to them. It seems much more likely the design of the covenant was pragmaitic, not representative of some deep-seated hatred of the different.
 
Case in point: If Halo is all about humans versus "the other", then why is half the damn plot spent making elites into good guys?

I sort of hate Halo but that doesn't change the fact that this guy's argument was shit.

" @SeriouslyNow said:

" @WateryPhoenix:   I see.  This is you not trying to shut a legitimate discussion down isn't it?  It's interesting how you'll promote discussion in one thread and then post this shit in this one.  "

You have to be fucking kidding me! You really think I could seriously to provide legitimate arguments against an EXTREMELY inane rant? That would be the equivalent of arguing the mentally insane. You actually believe this guy's "conspiracy theories" against Halo have any weight or truth to them? 
 
@FreakAche said:

" The Escapist is a terrible site filled with terrible people. This video is irrelevant. "

This! "

" No, the Xbox represents Fascism.  The PC represents Liberty... or maybe Anarchy... "

ITT: People unable to distinguish interpretations and conspiracies. He's not saying the game is directly Fascist in its ideology or intent, he's pointing out that it's positing a distinction between a militaristic monoculture (good) against diverse races of religious fanatics (bad). The fear of diversity, of 'mixing,' implicitly underlies this representation and is analogous to racism, that fear is what underlies it after all. He should've used the term racism instead of Fascism, which I think was hyperbole meant to attract attention no doubt.
Anyway, he might be drawing a long bow, but it's an interesting argument, worth more consideration than outright dismissal. It doesn't make you a Nazi if you like Halo, so there's no need to be so defensive :\

No matter what this guy says, he shoots himself in the foot by sounding like a snarky douche. 
The idea that there is some veiled sub-conscious promotion of a master race vs. multi-culturism is a big reach (pun not intended, but welcome anyway). A story about an alien invasion of earth obviously requires aliens invading earth which is only populated by humans. What's more interesting as a story, a single invading species or an enormous planet conquering empire bent on dominating the galaxy? The reason that there are so many species in the Covenant is that they are all conquered species. When you get down to it fighting one kind of enemy it is just boring. Yeah, remember how in Halo 3 you spent so much time fighting brutes and how tiring it got? 
Yes, it is true that many stories with space marines have militaristic governments, but so what? It doesn't necessarily mean that the writer is promoting that type of government, they are merely seeing it as a very likely outcome (which it is).

" Yes.  Also, Harry Potter is an allegory for homosexuality, Elvis is still alive, and 9/11 was an inside job, in collaboration with aliens associated with the illuminati. "

He actually makes some damn fine points. The militaristic nature of shooter games should not be lost just because they're videogames. Games do not create themselves. It takes years of work with large dedicated teams of individuals. To somehow think that all these things just coincidentally happens is to be naive. When certain ideas are pushed forward it's no less intentional than it was for Ken Levine to push forward his critique of modern day capitalism and Ayn Rand Objectivism in Bioshock.  

Saying this, you really have to be a bit simple not to see the overt themes games like Halo, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor etc push on the consumers. 

If you find the notion that artistic creation by and large does not have political agendas associated with it, then please take a while to read the fascinating recent disclosure that Modern Art was used as  CIA "weapon" against the Soviet Union. A lot of the modern art in the 1950's and 60's was directly CIA funded. Funny how reality is stranger than fiction. Read the article if you find this assumption preposterous, I'm sure it's all just a conspiracy theory though....

@Bones8677 said:

" He really should play the other Halo games, particularly Halo 2. That way he'll know that the Covenant are the bad guys not because they are multi-national but because they struck Humanity first due to their Religious dogma perpetrated by the Prophets that have no idea what they are doing. He's the one that needs the context, not us. "

Your post sounds like Bungie directly copied the events and "story" of 9/11 and created Halo 2 with it. Considering Halo 2 was being worked on between late 2001 and late 2004, correlates directly with that time period. 

So are you saying that Bungie consciously or subconsciously alluded to 9/11 in their story, which would be pushing forth an "agenda" would it not? 

" @FourWude: You can find correlation anywhere if you look for it.  "

Well only in so far as we're all in some way, shape or form all connected anyway. 

But when correlation becomes strong enough, and has enough validity to back it up, one has to ask whether the correlation is just a natural phenomena, or whether it was consciously created to be made so. So my question is, did Bungie directly consciously make the story of Halo be the way it is, with certain allusions to modern events and an emphasis on overt militarization. Was there then an agenda. 

The only thing with Halo 2's story which gets me, is that by and large Halo 1 was a more simplified marine vs aliens storyline. It wasn't really fleshed out. Post Halo 1 was when the Halo universe really began to be expanded, and Bungie did take some weird directions with the storyline, fleshing out the covenant to be more than just faceless aliens. This was at the very least a conscious decision to craft a universe, and thus a deliberate attempt to take the Halo universe where it is today. None of this is coincidental, it does not just happen.

Apparently this guy does a "Game Overthinker" series where it's no secret that he's a Nintendo fanboy and a FPS hater. He's not a critical thinker, he uses fallacies and tries to make out his opinions to be fact. I still have no comment on this. For all I know, he might have a few good points. However, I think he overuses the word fascism to make himself look smart. He uses the context of Greek history to compare a video game that's influenced by Greek history and then calls the idea fascist. I think his bias shined through here.   

Why is he comparing alien races with human races, they are more comparable to creatures and saying oh noe, blue eyes equals nazis? Sometimes we interpret things that reveals our subconcious interpretations and maybe this guy is a sort of a racist. That's not comparable to nazis just because they mentioned blue eyes and spartans looks the same. That was five minutes of my life I won't be getting back.

This guy is the worst and I can't believe he get's paid for this now.  The Escapist just can't stop sucking.

You can tell when you watch this that his top priority was more about "being clever" than it was about "critical thinking". I enjoy stuff that challenges me regardless of whether I agree with it or not, but this just isn't challenging - it's on the intellectual level of ICP's Miracles.
 
On the brightside, he seems very impressed with himself, so he's got that goin for him I suppose.

Honestly I thought this was a weak video for the start of his series, it was a video about Halo from a guy who doesn't like or fully understand Halo. Firstly, let's get the stupid eyes turning blue bit out of the way. The Halo: Reach live-action promotional videos were not made by Bungie, they were made by Microsoft Game Studios, they weren't canon, and even then I think it's ridiculous to assume that Microsoft were trying to draw comparisons between the Spartans and the Nazis. Secondly, I don't believe Halo is supposed to have purely fascist undertones, but the UNSC themselves are definitely fascists but the Halo writers know it. The exact reason the Human Civil War started was because the Insurrectionists felt the government were too imperialistic and oppressive, and the only reason all the humans banded together under the imperialistic government to fight the diverse alien force was because they had to.
 
In the end though, both sides come to take part of the positive from the other sides' beliefs. After the Great Schism many of the Covenant see the error of them blindly following religion, and the UNSC are forced to accept many of the aliens into their midst so that they can stop the Flood and the Prophet of Truth once and for all. The way the Human-Covenant War ends is with the Chief (representing the UNSC) and the Arbiter (representing the Covenant Separatists) fighting alongside each other against a common evil. As a whole Halo isn't about fascism, it's about races coming together for the force of good.

this guy is just trolling, obviously.

I haven't played a Halo game, but i'm pretty sure the Covenant is considered evil cause they invade other planets, right?
 
This guy is trying to be funny or he's trying to make an actual point, he doesn't succeed at either.

" The Escapist is a terrible site filled with terrible people. This video is irrelevant. "

Seems to be some slight confusion between Fascism and Nazism...
 
and do you know why the Spartans seem Fascist? It's because they're a military, and Human militaries are almost inherently Fascist right across the board.

Yeah, this guy's argument falls flat due to the fact that the covenant drew first blood. The world is more accepting of diversity than ever, it seems this guy is living in the past.