Games

Halo is kinda tragic to me because unlike CoD it at least has good gameplay & writing in it, even if it is pretty much just USMC recruitment propaganda.

Which is part of why Reach is my favorite installment because it doesn't do that "RAH RAH MARINES" bullshit like the Master Chief Trilogy or ODST do. It's got a darker, less hopeful atmosphere with a more neutral depiction of the military - which I appreciate. My favorite mission is actually the one where you're isolated from your squad and have no real objective and are just trying to support the Army in whatever way you can to try and get as many civilians out of the city as possible in the face of the Covenant's genocidal attack. It really establishes the stakes as you stomp through a ruined city littered with corpses literally watching innocent people being slaughtered for no reason as the local soldiers struggle against an overwhelming onslaught. You actually forget for a minute that you're playing a super-soldier because you end up feeling like just another grunt, no longer on some super special secret mission but instead just trying to survive and save lives in a devastating war you know you're losing. It hits in a way that no other Halo mission has ever done before or since, especially when you finish the mission and get the relieved thanks of the people you managed to save and know that even though you couldn't save everyone you still managed to make your efforts count for something.

Reach is ultimately what convinced me that Military Science Fiction as a genre doesn't necessarily have to be "RAH RAH MARINES" bullshit, like it often is. It can tell genuinely compelling stories from the perspectives of soldiers in combat that aren't just fascist propaganda and the only thing it's missing is writers willing and able to tell those stories.

Honestly now I want to write an article about Reach lol.