rewatching a playthrough of halo 2 anniversary after. i dont even know how long it's been. and i am once again reminded of how heavily thel being branded (literally) as the arbiter feels so much like a trans allegory.
for the sake of like. clarification. im gonna talk about this whole thing like he's just trans okay. i use neopronouns for arbiter in my headcanons sometimes anyway bc that lizard is not cis because his story is so fucking trans it hurts me [positive]
he does what he can. he does everything in his power to do what is expected of him. but he still fails, and this failure (being something other than "normal") is discovered and broadcasted for everyone around him to see. he's shunned, put down for this failure as it (as he) is outed for what they see him as (a heretic; a freak; something other than worthy of acceptance) in front of a crowd.
he is Marked for this. a symbol called the mark of shame is branded into his flesh. a permanent reminder of his failure to conform.
and his punishment, is to be forced to be something that hurts others and hurts him (conversion therapy; forcibly being detransitioned by family/community) in an attempt to redeem himself and prove he's worth something (a lack of community support is a leading cause in transgender suicides). but even then, acting as they demand - this, too, is a death sentence.
he's told his life does not matter. that he may be the will of those higher above him. but that in the end, those who are useful and not shameful (cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied and neurotypical) matter - but he? he does not matter.
and he agrees.
(alienation from peers feeds into a lack of community. dysphoria, ostracization, isolation, and conversion therapy kill.)
in the end, he survives anyway. not unchanged, but he survives. battle-hardened, watching as his people (the queer community beyond oneself) are replaced by the more favorable option (cishet, patriarchy-confirming folk) and powerless to stop it from happening. he builds his own community, welcomes back people who turned against him at first (transgender community infighting, anyone?) as allies when they see how they were being manipulated by those with more social control than them.
and in the end?
his side wins the war.
(they can't erase us, no matter how hard they try.)
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This ancient Sangheili maritime vessel made use of oars and sails to navigate the treacherous oceans of Sanghelios at some point prior to the species' formation of the Covenant alongside the San'Shyuum.
This unidentified galley was employed by the ancient Sangheili of the Former Age, the era prior to the foundation of the Covenant empire.
H2A Arbiter: BIG OL SHOULDERS, look at how shiny my armor is. I am such a wrinkly old man. You can barely see my eyes unless I REALLY EMOTE. No we will not show you my lower abdomen it does not look very good when we Mocap that part :(
H2 Arbiter: SPRY YOUNG MAN. Just the fuggin noodliest limbs you could ever imagine. Absolutely smooth as a shark. BIG OL DOE EYES THAT LOOK AT EVERYTHING. I will run and kick and jump as fast as can be!
H3 Arbiter: If both my eyes look in one single direction I will implode
H5 Arbiter: I am your dad. I will pick you up and carry you to safety in my large arms. Come in for some bourbon. I am Grace. I am power. There is no stopping my powerfull stomping all over the place.
The Master Chief Collection was probably something that had to exist, considering the Xbox One’s launching completely without backwards compatibility. It wouldn’t be until December 2015 that you could play any of the main series Halo games on the Xbone via your old 360 disc, and the original 2 never came to the console (not including CE anniversary). Of course, at that point, why bother? You could just give Microsoft 80 bucks and play all of them as of the MCC’s 2014 release.
I suppose 343 and Microsoft weren’t confident this was a good enough deal for gamers to fork out the money. After all, the Xbox 360 live services for the Halo franchise are still running at time of recording, over a decade after all of them came online. So they needed a selling point, something that will make people buy their new game.
…hey, Halo CE Anniversary did pretty well, right?
And so Halo 2 Anniversary (H2A) was born, preying on the nostalgia of a 10-year-old game, much like its predecessor 3 years earlier. And how did it shake out?
…I think it’s pretty good? This is H2A through the…uhh…Survivor Shotgun, I guess?
...it looks the same as the regular one.
I guess this is going to be the opposite of [the ODST post], because I’m not planning to spend too long on the campaign. Halo 2’s campaign is as solid as ever, and the updated graphics look crisp as you can imagine. Unfortunately, for whatever reason my PC just cannot run the remastered graphics smoothly, so I can’t really comment that much on them because I kinda played most of the game with its original appearance.
I will, however, credit the new cutscenes. Outsourced to Saber Interactive, who were also around for CE Anniversary, these cinematics are gorgeous, fully showing off the difference 10 years makes. Admiral Hood doesn’t even look like a fucking zombie anymore! Unlike Halo CE, I actually did play Halo 2’s campaign as a kid (albeit the Vista port at a mate’s house), and the cutscenes in this game somehow look even cooler than I thought they did as a kid. I’m admittedly not sure how I feel about the opening cutscene that teases Halo 5- it’s a little weird going from the absurd looking Arbiter design from that game to the classic in its remastered glory- but I’m confident that if we do end up getting a remaster of 3 at some point, it’s going to look amazing, based on this.
But the real meat of H2A is in the multiplayer. Unlike CE:A, the developers didn’t just slap the multiplayer from a different game and some new maps- even though they very much could have considering classic 2’s multiplayer is on the same disc, but rebuilt it from the ground up into its own thing. The new H2A multiplayer clearly took a lot of inspiration from what fans liked about the original, as well as adding on newer ideas and game-modes to shore up its weaknesses and enhance the overall experience. While the mode is built upon the engine from Halo 4, and you can definitely tell that it is(I never really liked the announcer voice in H4, which is reused here), it plays much closer to the franchise’s earlier entries- which I suppose is exactly what they were going for.
A lot of rebalancing was done. Something that the devs felt was missing from H2 was a solid medium-range option, so the Assault Rifle got added back in (meaning there kind of isn’t a Halo game without it now), and the Magnum and Needler were buffed to not be completely irrelevant. ODST’s silenced SMG was added as well, which has actual statistical differences from the regular SMG that are honestly kind of weird in general (it’s faster but weaker, but it still has the scope? Which you can’t use while dual wielding it obviously), but it’s nice to see it get a chance in the sun. The only truly new addition to the franchise is in the form of the Gungoose, a variant of the Mongoose vehicle featured in every game since 3, except it has guns on it. Obviously. This makes it a significantly more useful thing to have around in non-team modes, as well as just overall being stronger than the kinda weak Mongoose, so why the hell not.
But if the Gungoose is the only new thing, then what the fuck is the “Survivor Shotgun” I mentioned 546 words ago? Well, dear viewer, a particular thing that Halo 2 didn’t have that future games would introduce is the Infection mode in multiplayer (later succeeded by 4’s Flood, but the name would come back in 5). For the unfamiliar, Infection is a semi-asymmetrical Spartans vs Zombies gametype where the former would typically start out with Shotguns and Pistols and the latter solely with Energy Swords, with Spartans killed by Zombies switching sides and the game lasting until time runs out or all the Spartans succumb to the horde. It ended up a smash hit, somewhat unsurprisingly, and 4 spent a lot of time working on graphics specifically for this one niche multiplayer game mode.
This is something that H2A would end up repeating, but going even deeper on- seeing as Halo 2 didn’t have Infection, they wound up with an opportunity to tweak a few things in the process. Mostly just a lot of graphical stuff, but this came with three “new” weapons, in the form of the Infected Energy Sword, Survivor Pistol, and Survivor Shotgun. The former is just a graphical change for the regular sword, a wicked-looking blood red that almost makes up for the dogshit sound effect the sword uses in this game, while the latter two do actually have gameplay changes (despite I think looking the same). They’re minor changes, but subtly very important- the Survivor Shotgun/Pistol can carry significantly less rounds in reserve than their standard counterparts.
What this does is limit arguably a major issue with Infection- if the Spartan players are good enough, they can just park themselves in a corner and blast Zombies away with impunity, which the significant cuts to backup ammo heavily limits. As long as the game is progressing and Spartans are dropping, the reserve munitions from the dead should keep the remainder going, but it means that the clock is very much against them, and the games won’t stall out like they potentially could. This is also assisted by the removal of Friendly Fire from this mode- since a Spartan dying from an ally’s means would just respawn them, it was a counterintuitive but effective way to restock, but this is no longer an option in H2A. In essence, the changes made to H2A’s Infection mode were little tweaks that made the whole thing play better, and the Survivor Shotgun is very representative of that.
Unfortunately, little tweaks only carry a game so far, and this is kind of where H2A stumbles for me. There really isn’t a huge amount of content in this game- there are 6 maps total, as well as 3 Forge-exclusive ones (oh yeah there’s Forge in there btw), though since there aren’t custom game lobbies for H2A yet (CE and 3 were only just added like a week ago), those aren’t going to see much use. There’s also an addition of armour customization…with a grand total of three sets for each species. It’s kind of jarring seeing just how much cosmetic stuff has been added to the MCC’s iteration of Halo 3 as compared to H2A still being so lacking. At the end of the day, H2A didn’t need to be that much- it’s quite literally 1/6th of your options of HCC’s multiplayer- but it does sort of leave me wanting more.
Does it play well? I mean, yeah? I actually haven’t gotten to play that much of it, considering the lack of custom game browsing and the matchmaking very much not favouring the game in my experience. But my limited experience has told me it’s pretty freaking good. It does feel somewhere between H2 and its successors, which I guess it very much is, but as a result it isn’t super unique. It’s just a very solid iteration of the formula at this point, when Halo 2 was clear and true innovation.
Frankly, though, it’s a great step in the right direction for 343. Halo 4 had a lot of very serious issues, which H2A, owing to its roots, manages to blow clear past. It’s a promising half-step for games to come, and-
-ah. I have just been informed that H2A’s multiplayer was largely handled by a company called Certain Affinity, made up of ex-Bungie employees who worked on the original Halo 2. And they weren’t involved in Halo 5, so none of this is really relevant to that game. Oh dear.
…join me next week when we see how that turned out. Once I see for myself, because while I’ve managed to find a way to play the game, I’ve only done the first level of the campaign so far. Can’t write a >1000 word blog post just from that.
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Third Wonder, real name Mona Lisa Cheng, is the top hero of The Hero Association of America - H2A - and the #1 hero in the United States, both in terms of popularity and in power.
A rare class of superhuman known as a mimic, Third Wonder’s ability can be most easily explained as the power to mimic other people’s powers. While there are many variations and subsets of mimics in the world, Third Wonder’s is considered to be the most powerful and versatile by far.
Essentially, she can copy any power - real or imaginary - that she sees and has at least a basic understanding of. It doesn’t matter if it came from a movie, an anime, old stock footage, or the news - so long as she’s seen it in action and understands how it works, it’s hers for up to a maximum of 24 hours.
While this alone would make her fairly versatile and dangerous, her mimicry goes even further than this, having the added trait of perfectly replicating the abilities of those she’s made direct, skin-to-skin contact with, regardless of whether or not she’s seen their powers in action or understands how they work. It is a form of genetic malleability that is particularly rare and adaptable.
She can hold up to three mimicked abilities at once - hence her name - but she’s incapable of using two distinct powers simultaneously. She’s also incapable of combining two or more powers into something new. And, if she’s already mimicked three powers, and decides she wants to mimic another one, she’ll have to wait until 3 hours have passed since her last mimicry and then sacrifice her last copied power to make space for it.
What’s more, while she can control whatever powers she mimics when mimicking via sight, she has no innate control over powers picked up via touch. For this reason, she prefers to see a power in action first, and is almost always seen wearing gloves in public, careful to avoid unnecessary contact when on the job and accidentally picking up a less-than-ideal ability or something she doesn’t understand.
Nevertheless, the versatility afforded to her by her powers is nearly limitless. She can tailor herself to any situation and often picks powers she feels will complement and play off of each other well. She rarely jumps into a situation without a plan and some prior research, and she’s widely considered to be the most analytical hero active today. Her strategies are often touted as being foolproof by her colleagues, and nobody is better at dissecting and understanding new or unusual powers than her.
She likes to stay as up-to-date as possible on registered super powers and the abilities of known heroes and villains, and tries to acquire at least a few video recordings of however many of them she can. She has a vast database of archival footage at her disposal so that she can copy the powers of even deceased or retired heroes or criminals on the fly.
Because of the sheer strength and versatility of her mimicry, many have sought to study Mona’s genetics and what it is about her that makes her so special. There’s been more than one request to study her and her powers to see if they can be replicated in any way, but she’s never given any of the offers she’s received any serious consideration.
On a personal level, not too much is known about Mona’s real personality or her personal life. Though she’s one of the biggest stars in the world, hero or otherwise, she does her best to keep her private life private, and whenever she’s on the job, she is by her own admission putting on something of an act. It’s very rare to see her drop her hero persona and make herself completely vulnerable over something.
Nevertheless, she is seen as an inspiration and an idol by many around the country, and around the world. Many people have come to refer to her as ‘The Most Powerful Woman in the World’, referencing legendary hero Takuma Miyamoto, who is commonly referred to as ‘The Most Powerful Man in the World’. She is flattered by this designation, but doesn’t take it terribly seriously, herself.
As of late, rumors have begun to swirl that she has been closely involved in a secret project being developed by Marx Industries, though the exact nature of this project is a mystery. Whatever it is she’s been working on, though, it must be something big - she wouldn’t involve herself in anything less.