Do you remember the writer,Richard Morgan, from the recent Crysis 2 interview Brad did ? Well, he's been saying some not-so-nice things about the Halo franchise. According to him, Halo is full of "bullshit archetypal characters" [Link]. Quite an inflammatory comment and I won't be surprised if he did it as part of a deliberate marketing strategy of some sort to attract interest towards his own product. Anyway, he does raise a valid point that Halo's storyline is very played out.
In first person shooters, this is usually accomplished by giving the players a rich environment to explore and filling it with clues or interesting objects with narrative value. Combat Evolved does this well. I haven't touched the game since 2003 or so and I still distinctly remember the first time I crash landed on Installation 04 and stumbled into this vast ecosystem. It's a very cliched scene with the mountain cliff and the waterfall. But since it was a game and I had the chance to explore this surrounding myself, I remember it more than any movie's watefall/cliff scene. In cases like this, there is no need for clever words or witty writing when the environment itself can make such an impact.
Anyway, my closing thought is that labeling Halo's entire cast as "bullshit" is just extreme and unwarranted. They are archetypes but they are well executed archetypes. If Morgan truly believes what he said, then Crysis 2 better set a new standard for shooter storytelling. Nothing against CryTek (I love their games) but he is just setting himself up for a hard knock back to reality here.
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