Master Chief

Master Chief Campaign spoilers, particularly Halo 2 and Halo 4. All right, Master Chief. There’s so much you can say about this character, and the problem is deciding where to even start. The obvious answer is Halo 2 and that bomb. Because how do you have a conversation about Chief and leave that out? The Covenant bring a bomb onto the station, and he decides he’s going to take it back to them. The way he says it, you’d think somebody had left something behind and he was just being helpful. That’s Chief. Something completely ridiculous is about to happen, and he sounds like he’s already worked out the next few steps. Everyone else can worry about how impossible it is. He’s busy doing it. There’s so much confidence in that presentation. He doesn’t need to spend five minutes telling everybody how good he is. You see what he can do. You see the situations he’s willing to walk into, and you see why people react the way they do when he shows up. And the design is so good. The armor, the visor, that entire look. You can recognize him immediately. There are a lot of armored characters in games, but Chief has such a specific presence. You don’t need to see his face to know who you’re looking at. Of course, the games have to make a character work underneath all of that. And this is where I end up back at Cortana, because I love the two of them together so much. She can get more out of him than most people. Sometimes it’s just a short answer. Sometimes she gives him a hard time and he gives her something back. But there’s familiarity there. You can tell that these two have been through things together. They know each other. With Chief, those small exchanges go a long way. He doesn’t explain everything he’s feeling. He doesn’t suddenly stop being himself so the game can give you a long emotional speech. You have to pay attention to what he does, what he’s trying to do, and who he’s doing it for. Halo 4 puts him in such a difficult position. Cortana is dealing with rampancy. He wants to get her help. He keeps trying to find a way to get her through it because, as far as he’s concerned, there has to be something he can do. That makes sense for him. His entire life is built around dealing with things that should be impossible. So what happens when the problem is someone he cares about deteriorating in front of him? What happens when being stronger, being faster, or surviving one more fight doesn’t give him the answer? You can understand why he keeps going. You can also understand Cortana wanting him to listen to what she’s telling him. Neither of them is in an easy position, and everything that’s happened between them makes it worse. That’s why I don’t want a conversation about Chief to turn into a list of enemies he’s killed and explosions he’s survived. Those things are absolutely part of the appeal. I’m never going to pretend the bomb scene isn’t amazing. But there’s a person who has to come out the other side of all those events and deal with what happened. You see that in how he treats other people too. The care he shows Cortana, his relationships with the other Spartans, the respect he shows fallen Marines in Infinite. Those moments belong in the same conversation as the enormous battles. They tell you something about him that another explosion wouldn’t. There’s a lot more of his life in the books, and I want to keep that clear when I get into it. If something comes from a novel, I’ll say that. Nobody should have to wonder whether they missed an entire section of a game because a character breakdown quietly wandered into another medium. For now, I just wanted to give Chief some attention of his own. The image is iconic. The action is incredible. And then you put him next to Cortana and give them a chance to talk, and there’s a whole other side of him to get into. I love that relationship. The games would lose so much without it.