Welcome to the inaugural post of Reclaimer 105. This first game-related post is focusing on the Halo series because they are my favorite series of games and they are a big reason why I love video games. The very name for this blog is inspired by the concept of a “reclaimer” which appears often in the Halo games. For more about why this blog is named Reclaimer 105, check out the About section.
Like most people at the time, I got an Xbox just to play Halo. I’m a sucker for all things sci-fi. I tend to geek out when a spaceship or some cool technology or explosions come into play. So right off the bat in Halo, there’s a giant ring-shaped space station which Sergeant Johnson calls both “God’s own anti-son-of-a-bitch machine” and a “giant hula hoop.” This iconic setting is one of many reasons Halo is set apart as a great game. It’s a “natural” planet with landscape and wildlife, yet it’s obviously something that is artificially constructed. The great mystery of this ring is a primary driver for the rest of the story.
After crashing, it doesn’t take long to realize that Halo (or Alpha Halo, or Installation 04, for you fanboys/girls) is an intelligently designed structure, built for a specific purpose. Of course who can forget Cortana’s statement of the obvious, “This cave is not a natural formation.” That’s a pretty popular line, but what I missed at first is what she says right after that, “Someone built it, so it must lead somewhere.” Again, Cortana’s not exactly digging deep on the insights with these comments. However, these first interactions with Halo is meant to show that it is not just some random freak cosmic accident of dust and rock, it was built. By someone.
Now, I don’t know how you were struck by the revelations about the purpose of Halo and it’s origins as a Forerunner artifact, but it was clear to me that the game designers were going for a sense of awe that something so advanced and complex could be constructed and not just exist by chance. It seems quite easy to accept that a massive and complex structure like Halo could be built by an advanced group of people, but yet some have a hard time believing that our world could possibly be made by an intelligent designer. Why is it easy to accept that someone could advance themselves towards building something so great, and yet believe that we, in all our complexity, somehow occurred by cosmic accident? It seems to only make sense that the intricacy of our world points to an even greater designer of all things.
The question I have is this, why does this concept of an intelligent designer (even though that designer is not God in Halo) appeal to our interest and curiosity? I believe it is because we long to be part of something larger, to know that we’re in the middle of larger events that have meaning. Even the gameplay in Halo was groundbreaking in this regard since it featured many large-scale battles that were less common back then.
This idea of being a smaller player in a larger universe is what draws us into the story. No one would care as much about Frodo if the story was only about him and a piece of jewelry all the while knowing nothing else about what was going on in Middle Earth. And it’s not just one whiny moisture farmer on Tatooine that we care about, it’s the entire grand backdrop of the Empire, the Rebellion, and the universe that fascinates and draws us in.
Halo’s music composer was given three words to describe the tone and feel of the game: “ancient, epic, alien.” This game conveyed that feeling perfectly, and isn’t that what fascinates all of us? The reason we play these games is because we feel small and insignificant and we want to be part of something greater. We want to interact and be a part of the divine and the epic. We have this sense of something greater than us, some inner longing for a deeper mystery beyond just what we see in this world. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has “put eternity in man’s heart.” This longing for the epic, grander narrative has been built into us by the Creator so that we would seek Him who is ancient, epic, and altogether alien from us mere human mortals.
Things to think about:
Have there been times in your life that have felt like small events within a larger story?
What have you observed or experienced that has caused you to question the greater meaning of life?
What mysteries or questions about life, existence, or the supernatural have you wrestled with?
Use these questions or any other thoughts to discuss in the comments! Check back next week for part 2 of the Halo review where we’ll talk about our favorite space zombies, the Flood.
