Hello friends!
Welcome to another edition of The Partisan. I am your host, Phisto Sobanii. Today we’re trying something a little different. We’re going to make myth.
Some caveats: I’m going to talk a lot about a video game series called Halo. If you’re still with me at this stage, know the material will only include the first three games made by Bungie Studios. People of all ages, but especially my fellow Millennials, will have played the original games and likely remember them with great affection.
This piece is for you. I’m hammering that nostalgia, but for good reason. If at this stage you want off the ride, now’s the time. Otherwise…
“Wouldn’t you rather take a seat?”
Halo: Combat Evolved was released November 15th, 2001 by Bungie Studios. In the history of video games, it stands for better or worse in the pantheon of the gods. One of the reasons is the time and place in history. Video game consoles were becoming ubiquitous. The “first person shooter” genre was already popular thanks to titles like Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and Half-Life. Halo helped consoles break into the shooter genre by being fun, and most importantly, fun with friends.
The story in the game itself wasn’t anything too revolutionary. Humanity had spread to the stars and some angry aliens wanted to kill them for offending their alien gods. As the player character Master Chief, you find a giant ring world full of nasty surprises, blow shit up, and save the day. It’s a combination of Alien, Starship Troopers, and Larry Niven’s Ringworld slammed together in a box that you can, again most importantly, play with your friends.
That said, Bungie was very good at hinting beneath the surface at greater worlds yet to be known. Pages and pages of words were spent at places like bungie.halo.org and other fan sites, discussing the ins and outs of this amazing thing we all played.
For those that did, remember the first time you stepped out of that life pod onto the surface of Halo?
“Chief? Chief! Can you hear me?”
There was something there. I know this because my best friend recently introduced his son to Halo. His son saw it too. Felt it too. But what?
The main character isn’t much to write home about. It’s a soldier conscripted into the space marines and given fancy toys to kill aliens. Thing is, as one played the game and became immersed in the epic the stoic tones of this faceless, nameless soldier tugged at your heart strings. He was doing something important. He was helping people. He was a hero.
You were a hero. The hero. You were doing something important.
Fans of the games know what I’m talking about. Remember this?
Stop the destruction of the human race: in progress.
Here’s the thing: this game series was so beloved not because it said anything interesting, because it did anything interesting, or that it was great art in some universal sense. It’s remembered because it took a universal human myth, the lone hero standing against the apocalypse, and put it in a form a bunch of kids and young adults in 2001 could understand instinctually.
And it was fun to play with your friends. Did I mentioned that?
These days, with the rise of the internet and all games being played across that grand series of tubes, it’s hard to explain just how much fun a Halo LAN party was. If you’re unfamiliar, LAN stands for “local area network” where people could directly connect their video game consoles together and play. I attended and hosted many of these, but my favorite was a trip to New York City, where I got to finally meet folks from my online community.
Jesus, were we a motley crew. People of every age, sex, and creed slammed into a duplex in Brooklyn playing Halo. It was just so… good, human, loving, and peaceful. OK, maybe not the last part, because it was loud as hell with 16 screens and a bunch of snack-fueled nerds screaming “ROCKETS ON MY X” and other such madness.
But the point is, you feel the myth, don’t you? The hero, their friends, and the slaying of giants in joyous chorus. If you ever got to do something like this, take a moment and remember it. Remember your friends, their faces, and the fun you shared.
Because I must return to the present and address the current crisis.
The world is fucked up in ways that overwhelm us, that demoralize us, and inspire us to quit. What do we need? If you’re among the hopeless, what’s the first step?
“Folks need heroes, Chief. To give ‘em hope.”
The hour is late and our enemy threatens all of Earth, the only home we’ve ever known. In the real world, I wish I had the answer to everything. I wish I could tell you it’ll be OK, that we’ll all make it through unscathed. But I can’t, so I won’t.
However, I can point you in the right direction. If the best I can do is with a stupid video game we played as kids, fine. So be it.
You see, there are better heroes than Master Chief. They’re right there, in history. Not just the story of our species, our countries, or even the countless tribes we split ourselves into, but in each of our individual families.
They are there, waiting for you to discover them and find your courage.
So go do that. I don’t care what you think, what you conclude, or what you end up believing. The hour is late and you have to get moving. Like the good shepherd from the classic sci-fi film Serenity told us once:
“I don’t care what you believe in, just believe it.”
Find the history. Find the myths. Find the heroes.
If we do this, we will be prepared for what comes, no matter what it is. We will have the answers we need for ourselves, our families, and our communities.
And by the gods, will it be fun. Like, Halo 3 fun.
“THIS is the way the world ends.”
If you’ve followed me this far, thank you for doing so. This is probably the silliest, most overwrought, and hopelessly self-indulgent thing I’ve ever written but it came from the heart. I hope that’s obvious, especially if you enjoyed these games like I did.
Finally, with whatever the future holds, remember that one question. You know the one.
“What if you miss?”
“I won’t.”
Except Halo 3 was a lot like The Dark Knight Rises. Too much of some things and not enough of others. 4 was pretty good, though. 5 was meh. Infinite is really good.
I quit games years ago because I realized the addictive nature of them. Seems the things we love in life can and will become addictive. At least to some of us. I find because of my impulsive behavior and my dislike for one thing I will find myself engaging almost everything into one project. I'm also a 99% person who finishes most projects 99%. It's my way subconscious way of refusing to be a perfectionist. I can't stand the fact that federal reserve notes loose value as fast as they do so I find myself getting rid of them as fast as I can by exchanging them for something that maintains its value. Like silver. Did you know that gasoline in 1964 costs about .20 cents in silver and today it is the same price if you take two dimes and exchange them for Fed notes? So if you had saved silver, you would be way ahead of the game today. That's another story and now I'm rambling...Substack is addicting! LOL!