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Halo 2
Christopher G. Ellis
Game Analysis
Halo 2
Since its release on November 04, 2004, Halo 2 swept the video gaming world by storm. With more copies sold than any other XBOX game and more than 50 million online matches on XBOX Live, this game us undoubtedly Bungie’s “golden child”.
When Bungie had created Halo 2, they did so following the same “set of elements vital to avatarial operations” described by Bob Rehak (Pg. 110). Anyone playing Halo 2 will switch between playing as Master Chief, the last known SPARTAN-117 biologically-enhanced and cybernetically-augmented commando super soldier with advanced military armor, or the Arbiter, a ceremonial and politically ranked covenant alien with ancient armor. These characters serve as the player’s “identification with an onscreen avatar.”
Halo 2 takes place throughout the fictional Halo universe with most levels on Earth or fictional planets. Each planet has different gravities and landscapes, with a variety of vehicles and weapons. These levels, along with the vehicles and weapons, serve as the “physical interface” that the avatar engages in and that the player controls.
Halo 2’s campaign missions take place in a variety of different levels with a variety of different physical constraints (i.e. gravity) that the creators of the game used to engage the player’s avatar to real, life-like environment. In Halo 2, vehicles can be blown up by shooting the gas tank, glass will break, water will splash, and falling objects will bounce when they first hit the ground. All these physical constraints serve as the game’s “physical laws and semiotic content”.
There are only two ways for a level in Halo 2 to end; through completion of all the required missions/reaching the desired location or dying. When the avatar is killed, the game will automatically revert you back to the last “checkpoint”, are where a certain mission is completed and the game will automatically save. These checkpoints and the program that reverts the player back to the last checkpoint reached when the avatar dies are both examples of “imposition of extradiegetic constraints [which] shape play].
Finally, the “frequent breakdown and reestablishment of avatarial identification through destruction of avatar” is best exemplified by is at the end of each level. After the last mission is completed the level will be completed and the game will automatically save. At this point the game stops for a moment before it moves on to the next level. This is a temporary “breakdown” and the loading of the next level would be the “reestablishment”. While playing Halo 2 online on XBOX Live, the “breakdown” will be the end of each individual game when either the red team or blue team is defeated. Each game will end either when one team reaches a certain score or the time limit runs out (there are only time limits on multiplayer levels). When the player decides to leave the game, they are not forced to restart the entire campaign but can load the game they last played and continue from where they left off. It is the ability to leave and come back to the game at the same point which defines the “repetition” the player controls, as Bob Rehak would state.
Because Halo 2 accurately portrays all five of the elements vital to avatarial operations, it highlights this concept extremely well. Through the single-player’s campaign mode, and multiplayer capabilities of Halo 2, this game is played continuously with new and exciting maps, rules, and game types which allow it to be played over and over again. It is because every experience playing Halo 2 is new and exciting regardless of how many times it has been played (or repeated) that makes this game so successful.
By knowing and applying Rehak’s schema to Halo 2, one can better fit themselves into the game. It would be impossible to play the game without awareness of the “physical constraints” the developers placed upon each scenario. By paying attention to these constraints and taking them into consideration when deciding where to move the character, however, gameplay can be a lot more interactive/realistic and therefore, easier to play. The reason, I believe, that players new to video games (a.k.a. “newbs”) have so much trouble moving around and getting kills is because they are unable to become involved in the game. By getting involved and paying attention to the different aspects of Rehak’s schema, one can become better involved, making it easier to accomplish the game’s objectives. The reason that experienced gameplayers are able to move around with such ease is because their experience and familiarity of the game is not only of a physical nature (time spent playing) but an emotional attachment to the game.
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