Also, believe it or not, I’ve been anticipating this episode in particular. Why? I’ll explain 2 paragraphs below.

IN THE DARK REACHES OF SPACE!

After the events of Halo 3 (wherein (*ahem* Spoiler alert!(?)) the Master Chief and Cortana end up lost in deep space in a half-destroyed warship), Cortana finds herself with nothing better to do than to contemplate her virtual navel (and perhaps the Master Chief’s cryogenetically-frozen navel, as well). She claims that upon her creation, it took her 2 hours to absorb the data pertaining to all of human history, knowledge, and understanding. Well, thanks for being such a cocky cunt, Cortana. Maybe you should take up being a schoolteacher… Actually holy shit that should totally happen. A.I. teachers? No, not that! Cortana in a teacher’s–

I mean … Anyway, so this is when the flashbacks begin. Oh boy, the flashback of all flashbacks. The flashback that retells the entire Halo timeline, from 100,000 BC to 2553 AD. Not that this is a bad thing, as this episode can be compared to The Animatrix’s The Second Renaissance, and everybody knows that was the best short of the Animatrix anthology. But then again, most people watching these should already know the history, so you would think they make up for it in pretty cinematics and finally showing us a glimpse of what really happened back then, of Forerunner civilization, right? Right, so I won’t bother with a synopsis as there isn’t much to say. As I mentioned before, I’ll make it up to you with what everyone loves: Pretty pictures!

Cortana proves she was behind it all by showing us her All-Seeing Eye...

100,000 years ago, the Forerunners ruled the galaxy.
Until a bunch of extragalactic space zombies knocked on their door and, ahem, flooded their worlds and colonies.

The Flood, to those who don’t know, is an Eldritch abomination that feeds on intelligent life, sucks their brains and bones dry, and uses them as space marine zombies from then on to kick your ass. They put a new meaning to, “stop hitting yourself!” Except in a species sense. Or something.

"They waited too long to see the threat," says Cortana as millions of Flood organisms descend upon Forerunner worlds and overrun them. And yes, every dot is one, and every frame has like, even more coming down. Seriously, how in the hell did these guys rule the galaxy and have god-like technology, when they couldn't stop what amounts as a bunch of space poo coming down meteor-like on your planet? Oh, no wait... I see the problem now.

ZE GOGGLES! THEY DO NOTHINGZ!

So the highly-intelligent Forerunners fought a millennial war against the Flood. But they had royally fucked up the beginning, so like pretty much every RTS in existence (including Halo Wars! *gets chased by PCfag mob*), once you screw up the beginning, chances are you’re fighting a losing battle.

"I can only guess this, fill the gaps." That's OK, Cortana, the cinematic does the job for ya!

Not shown: Energy swords FIRING THEIR LAZERZ HOREE SHIIET

So um, yeah. They fought, and they fought, but the Forerunners were no match for… The Flood’s tentacles.

It's okay to fantasize there's a hot, starved chick underneath all that sleek armor... You freak.

Rule 34 in the making

Who animated these, again?

Right, the story. So as you may or may not know, the Forerunners were screwed, so they decided to nuke all life in the galaxy with the Halo array they built. Yes, you got it. They said, “well, we tried, guys. Time to nuke everything because we fucked up.” At least Cortana lampshades the irony, and brings up a valid point, for anyone going “WTF?” by now.

Vore not included. Tentacles but no vore? Son, I am disappoint.

So they show the Halo rings over the homeworlds of several Covenant species, and the gateway to the Ark on Earth. At this point in time I am uncertain if this doesn’t contradict other established canon of where the other rings are, but what the hell. So they fetch up the DNA of some evolving species, like us humans, and several Covenant species. So, yay, we’re all clones, apparently. Unfortunately, said species would worship the very beacon of their salvation to a fanatic level, live off their technology and use it to bring holy war and genocide throughout the galaxy. Neglectful precursors: More common than you may think.

TL;DR: Lost in deep space, a crazy A.I. woman rambles to herself because she has nothing better to do, because her cyborg super-soldier space marine boyfriend’s junk is going to be frozen solid for a long, long time. (Not like she can touch it, anyway, the holographic bitch.) Also, space zombies tentacle-raping a highly advanced humanoid species to death. Goddamn you, Japan.

Conclusion: As usual, not much to say here about the episode itself. It wasn’t really as good as the Second Renaissance, for starters — That one actually gave more answers than questions. This one gave more questions then answers.

Sure, we know what the Forerunner may have looked like (and I say may seeing how unreliable the other Japanese studios were in appearances), and that is like Clone (clones from clones?) troopers from the Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon. The one where General Grievous is a badass, not the one he’s as wimpy as George Lucas makes him out to be to compensate for his lack of a–GIGANTIC TAGER!

But as I said, it doesn’t answer some things, namely why the hell the Forerunner were unable to save themselves, when it is shown they survived not only the Halo blast long enough to repopulate every damn planet with primitive, suspiciously bipedal monkeys, lizards and what-have-you, but you would think they’d put their own survival before that of the funny primitive creatures they saved. And why is humanity special compared to the other species they saved? Besides building the gateway to the Ark on Earth, there’s not much difference. Hell, they got Halo rings over their homeworlds, which led to their worship (great going, highly-advanced god-like species! Oh…wait.)

Meanwhile, WE get an ancient colossal megastructure buried for a hundred-thousand years beneath the continent thoroughly explored most by archaeologists, and that’s that.

But enough rambling; to put it simply, it was decent, but I’d expect better. And seeing part 1 of Origins covered the most riddling aspect of the Halo timeline, I’d say part 2 will dick around just as much, maybe even more so. Or maybe they’ll asspull the Emperor of Japan being descended from the Forerunners and having migrated from the planet Venus, where Japanese Covenant live in Japanese castles and worship Buddha before he even existed. Who knows?

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… Pun intended.

After some 300-styled slow-motion dashing, Frederic blasts through a sealed door and the trio blitzkrieg across the ship, gunning down hordes and hordes of Covies. During this, there’s several clips from the first-person view, showing the familiar HUD found in the video games. I thought it was nice, if a bit tacky. They didn’t try to depict the realistic movement of arms aiming firearms around, for instance, and the crosshairs always remained stuck in the center of the screen. Guess they didn’t really care for extra details there.

Eventually, the unnamed Elite Major and his guard intercept the Spartans. Frederic blocks an energy sword with his Spartan laser (lolwut? Shouldn’t it cut through it?) and then knives the fucker in the eye (which I’ll admit, was badass). Then he holds off the Major and his remaining lackey so John and Kelly can go on ahead.

Desperate as the Spartans come closer to their objective, the Commander/Shipmaster/Fleet Admiral/Thel(?) accesses the bridge controls and starts detaching parts of his flagship and letting the hull pieces fly off to space in an attempt to impede the Spartans’ advance. As for the poor bastards still occupying those sectors, the Commander claims that he’s “letting them die with honor.”

After frolicking their way through Dead Space (*rimshot*), Kelly grabs Chief and tosses him through the vacuum so he goes ahead to “go get her.”

The Package turns out to be Dr. Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, founder of the Spartan-II project, in cryogenic stasis. Worth it? I s’pose. She’s important, and stuff. If it wasn’t for an unnamed female at the beginning of part 1, I would’ve wagered that Halsey or Cortana was the titular package. Speaking of Cortana, the design team lets us know they know Cortana’s based on Halsey, which allows them to get lazy and recycle nostalgic Cortana lines from Halo 1 & 2… except in a British accent. They hurry up and scoot, but their escape is blocked.

The Major shows up (Frederic’s nowhere to be found). Chief unloads a full magazine on him, only for the Major to casually block it with his sword. He’s like “lol wtf was that n00b fgt” and throws a sword hilt to Chief a la Meta-Knight from the Kirby games. In fact, that’s his new name: Meta-Knight. In fact, he proves he’s god-tier.

Unnamed Elite Major MetaGame-Knight made “the Master Chief” John-117, iconic protagonist/unbeaten one-man army of the Halo trilogy, his bitch. In 15 seconds flat. Before delivering the deathblow, however, alarms sound off; the fleet’s left the “magnetic interference” distortion field it was in, so the Covenant are abandoning the system. The section they’re in is promptly scuttled by the Commander, which mocks Meta-Knight claiming all he would make a good Arbiter (+prequel irony). Meta-Knight is beamed up to the working remnants of the flagship, nastily cursing the Commander a thousand hells or something fierce. Makes me wonder why the Commander saved the guy; he’d already sacrificed thousands of poor bastards under his command. Why not some prick he hates?

Knowing they’re seconds away from being blown up to the other side of the galaxy (hopefully, somewhere friendly with sunny beaches and without dogmatic aliens), Chief and Halsey hijack an escape pod and GTFO the scuttled flagship as it blows to bits. They’re chased by even more poor bastards that were ditched by Commander Jackass. They don’t have to for long, though, as Frederic and Kelly come to the rescue along with the UNSC stealth ship they deployed from.

What the fuck, Frederic? How did you make it out? Did you run away like a pussy from Meta-Knight, or something? Seeing he totally owned Master motherfucking Chief in 15 seconds flat, I wouldn’t doubt it.

In the end, they are united in the ship, where Halsey congratulates them. But because they lost two Spartans, the Chief gives off some forced speech about how he wasn’t “strong enough” and that he “needs to get stronger.” You know the one. Remember who makes these?

TL;DR: Spartans plow thrugh clusterfuck, get package (Spoilers HOLY SHIT IT’S DR. HALSEY), ironic events surrounding future Arbiter Thel, Spartans and Halsey ride into the sunset … go home?

Conclusion: Nothing much to say here. There’s little to poke fun of. Not a very thrilling conclusion, either. Surprisingly, though, the short is 14:08 long, total. So I guess I was off by 4 minutes in that aspect.

Something struck me, and it’s related to the Arbiter. If you couldn’t tell from the summary, he used to be a major dick. At this point, I’m starting to think they’re putting in a bit of prequel irony to ensure us that yes, Thel is a jackass and his conversion to Arbiter was deserved…

This, after two games of making us sympathetize for him getting ostracized by the fanatical religious empire he swore to serve for the destruction of Installation 04 (the first Halo) and his entire armada. So first, they make us sympathetize him in the games (where it’s implied he wasn’t incompetent, and that he wasn’t to blame) and now he’s portrayed as an overzealous asshole. I haven’t read the novels, I’ll admit, so I’m not sure if this is news, but he’s never portrayed that way in the games, so it came as a bit of a surprise. I’d call his case (as well as the other characters) “character derailment”, but I would just be assuming there.

Alternatively, I might have been misinformed and it turns out the Major is the future Arbiter, not the Commander. If that’s the case, it explains why he kicked John’s ass so easily, and it might explain his personality and the sympathy we’re supposed to have for him (which makes the above paragraph invalid). The irony loses its sting, though, as it was the Commander which jested about the Major being Arbiter one day. 

As of this point, I’m not sure anymore and, frankly, I don’t give a damn. The events are still ironic, no matter which one’s Thel.

If I’d read the novels, I could probably form a better opinion, but I haven’t. Something tells me they messed with the characters a bit too much, though, and I’d be able to pick that apart rather easily. Though not as easily as how the anime companies seem to like picking apart decades of progress from the U.S. civil rights movement. No wait, mainstream rap music already did that first… Never mind.

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Microsoft is indeed making a Halo anime DVD for release early next year, recruiting five Japanese animation studios: Production I.G., Toei Animation, BONES, Casio Entertainment, and Studio 4°C. It’s being made in the same vein as the Animatrix, or Batman: Gotham Knight.

You can see the trailer here at Gametrailers.

For one, I’m quite shocked. This was the last thing I would’ve ever expected Microsoft to do. I’ve personally never played a Halo game for more than a couple of matches when I’m with friends, and that’s merely because I’m bad at shooters and so I rarely buy/play them. But maybe this is Microsoft’s way of reaching out to guys like me.

Guys who… sit around playing Japanese RPGs all day, or who sit around watching anime all day. Maybe this is Microsoft’s way of opening their arms to anime fans all around. There’s no need to be afraid anymore. I think… I think this will be the bridge to unite anime fans and Halo fans, from all over.

Just kidding.

That said, it looks pretty cool from most of the little previews they gave for each animation studio. Toei Animation’s rendition of the Halo universe looks hilarious, so I’m looking forward to that. Production I.G.’s I’m also interested to see. Looks like they’ll be using a lot of their CG, and it looks like they’re going full-on anime route, judging by the characters shown. BONES’s seems kinda interesting, with their whole Master Chief mecha suit things. Casio Entertainment’s full-on CG thing they’ve got going on looks pretty sweet as well.

Then again, I know almost nothing about the Halo story, so I could be bored stiff, or I could be pissed, or anything can happen, really. All I know is going to happen, is that the Toei animation one is gonna be funny. Most likely hilariously bad kind of funny, which is good for me.

I don’t know. Halo fans seem to be crying, but I find it kinda cool. Microsoft definitely seems pretty serious about this, so I’m going to expect some good things to come out of it.

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All right, as promised, I’ve forsaken sleep and offline activities to watch the E3 conference live at 1 PM. In any case, I will type this as I see it, so please note that this will be mostly free-written and it may come off as very, very informal (or maybe even wrong). But who cares about formality, we’re not doing an essay here. We’re here to find out about our games, yo. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you…

SPOTLIGHT: MICROSOFT
So it starts with some dumbass, boring, 2-minute-long video playing 60s rock and roll, announcing… Beatles Rock Band? Really? We’re releasing an installment to the virtual band genre based around one band? Well, I’m not a Rock Band or a Guitar Hero fan, so I don’t really care. Also, Beatles, big whoop. What’s next? Jonas Brothers Guitar Hero? Okay, so as I write this, they’ve been singing gay-ass Beatles song for the past 4 minutes; yes, they’ve been covering a game based on one rock band for over 5 minutes now. Why are you still talking about it? Beatles meets Rock Band, we fucking get it. You could be using this time to cover more goddamn games, but I guess milking it for all it’s worth, and even more is part of making up for actual good stuff. Know what? I’m just gonna stop typing now, wait for this shit to end.

7 minutes of insufferable songs later…

Ok, it’s over– No wait, they– YES, finally. Some guy said “Welcome to E3.” Now begins the long-winded monologue bullshit philosophy about playing games, connecting with the world, the comfort in the living room, BLAH BLAH BLAH. Oh, what’s this? No charts about game sales and other rates? And 10 new unannounced releases? Already I wonder what the catch is.

Down comes Tony Hawk, announcing his newest skateboard game, Tony Hawk Ride. It would seem they’ve finally made a “skateboard pad” for you to actually get on a virtual skateboard a la DDR. It sounds interesting, but how it’ll be practical is beyond me, as I don’t see how you can duplicate going airborne when you never really do (or can, even) in your living room.

Thankfully, that was a short announcement, and now we’re moving on to better things: The FPSes. There is a very visually appealing trailer playing now about… Oh yes, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2. And there’s a very, very sweet release date: 10/11/09. Very nice; that sparked my interest. Oh! And a showcased demo, even! All right, so your character and his partner are slowly edging themselves over some icy cliffs all mountaineer-style. Seems you control your climb the icy cliff, or it could just be a semi-interactive cutscene, who knows. The screen goes black and “In the interest of time…” appears on the screen; the character is now holding an assault rifle and is stealthily making his way through what appears to be an enemy outpost, though the radio chatter’s unintelligible to me right now. After starting a huge gunfight and running around an airstrip, the screen goes black again, but I couldn’t make out what the text said this time. Now he’s fighting dozens of baddies, and they don’t seem to be terrorists, unless you think terrorists have their own air force. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell what the jet fighter was, but it might have been a MiG. I wouldn’t be surprised if the setting was Russia, snow and all. And the player gets on a snowmobile, drives down the mountain while shooting enemies with his machine pistol, and it ends. Cue crowd cheer. I can’t wait for more on that. (The snow mobile part later did remind me of James Bond, something I have to critisize.)

Ah, Cliffy of Epic Games walks on to the stage with… some other guy. I laugh a little bit to myself because his MICROPHONE’S BROKEN! It keeps going static and going from very low to very high volume, and he lampshades it and the crowd laughs. Oh you’re so clever, person whose name I’ll never know. Anyway, seems Epic Fail Games is showcasing a new shoot-em-up for the Live Arcade. I missed the title, but oh well, nothing much there. I honestly thought we were going to hear about Gears of War this early. (It later turns out we didn’t hear anything about Gears at all, unsurprisingly enough.)

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