Used to think the overarching plot of halo - how a handful of select leaders would rather perpetuate a meaningless war that ends with everyone else dying than admit to the lie that holds their leadership in power - was a bit cartoonishly evil and unrealistic to ever happen irl

Yeah...

April 06, 2026 - 06:37 UTC

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Dawntrail (trying not to post spoilers). Is based on a real tech obsessed faction. With Musk being the most prominent. So yeah no story comes out of nowhere.
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I don't like life imitating art :C
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We always underestimate, pride, stupidity and greed
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Also fear and hatred.
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It’s specifically a pseudo-religious crusade waged with the end goal of ushering in the end of days and killing everybody, everywhere, including themselves

So yeah, I think there’s parallels to be made considering the trajectory we’re on with all this
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The Arbiter was in the right to leave the Covenant knowing what they did to him.
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Did the prophets even know what the end goal of the Halo tech was? I thought the entire point was they were expecting god-hood because they misunderstood what the forerunner had actually built. & lied about that as part of the conversion strat of those they conquered & enslaved, promising salvation.
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Halo had a really good story that, with hindsight, was really some true to life writing, which some were able to pinpoint in advance, due to the already existing track record of it in certain parts of the world. It sucks
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the spartan selection team choosing the whitest John you know for the program sadly also true to life
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I hadn’t quite viewed it at that angle before. Yikes you’re right
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It did coincide with the Iraq War.
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It happened 3 times as many years
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Every unrealistic evil deed we saw in fiction growing up turned out to be tame compared to real life.
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You understood the overarching plot and theme of Halo better than alot of people Ive heard speak on it.

Also.

Yeah.
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Fiction is always held to higher standards than reality.
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I remember when I thought some of the Leverage villains were exaggerated lol
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I mean the writers and production staff were pretty up-front in behind-the-scenes stuff that they had to downplay a lot of the villainy they were lifting from the headlines.
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honestly, any plot in sci-fi that feels cartoonishly evil is barely even a reflection of how even more fucked the reality it's based on really is. Used to be when I was watching gundam I thought to myself "there's no way that people en masse would just be in full support of a nepo baby 4th reich"...
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...Then the NERD Reich happened in 2014, GamerGate.

Yeah.
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Even the goal of SEELE in Neon Genesis Evangelion is too good for real life. Everyone dies but at least we're all together in a state of Zen, purposeless as it may be.

Evangelistic Christians? Oh Everyone dies and the vast number of non true believers experience untold suffering for eternity! 🫠
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If we start talking about Halo lore it's gonna end in my "the rebels had a lot of valid points, and ONI is the devil" rant.
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The UNSC being US coded is in fact unintentionally phenomenal satire written by people who write their human rebels kicking puppies lest you forget the colonial violence state with a shadow government are the good guys.
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Thinking about how the SPARTAN-II program was initiated in 2510 and first contact at Harvest didn't occur until 2525. The UNSC made superpowered child soldiers for the sole purpose of murdering other humans for standing up for themselves
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I knew that aspect was realistic, but I'd hoped that it had been relegated to cautionary stories in history books...
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Armored Core 4 was a documentary.
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Yeah. :(

We've become the Parody Timeline that all the other ones look at go "That's unrealistic what the hells".

I'm not fully sure how we course-correct back to one that makes sense, not without things getting way worse first.
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So many video game plots that seemed laughable are now uncomfortably real. Horizon Zero Dawn, for instance.
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I assume we're talking about Ted Faro accidentally the robopocalypse and the other plot thread about how the survivors couldn't read*. what was the most silly part there?

*i may be lying slightly about plot points so other blueskies that want to play hzd don't get catastrophic spoilers
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games are supposed to be an escape from reality. Not a prediction of the future!
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Now you know why I say GoonerGate is going Just Great
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I still can't get over how when I first watched the east wing get torn down, all I could think was

"If, in one of my shitty stories, I wrote a mad president tearing apart the white house to build a ball (throne?) room for himself as he tears apart the country to benefit his billionaire buddies, 1/2
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I'd be called a fucking hack and that includes was being wildly and unrealistically unsubtle."

AND HERE WE ARE.

So many times I got told "your villain needs a reason to be evil, they can't just BE evil!"

Between Ol' Puddin' Brain and the Epstein list, I never want to hear that again. 2/2
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The best thing about fiction is that it's actually a stark reflection of reality, and always has been. Villains exist, heroes exist, pointless wars exist, and eventually someone will be inspired by those things to make a story that seems original but ends up becoming reality later.
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There have been a number of shows/stories with that kind of plot that have been popping back in my memory, too.

*sigh*
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Haha, yeah…

Totally would never happen in real life.

…

…

When you look at reality and go “I literally couldn’t write a Dr. Eggman plot that is more evil than this…”

Not a real good look.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2sDx0Y_I-k
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Games are a powerful medium of story telling
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We've never been on the receiving end of such evil but now that we are it's bizarre. But there are dozen of experiments and cases that we have here that trump those outside of our country we were curiously evil now we just are that. (Not us we but ya know...?)
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"You tellin' me..." ~ Speedy Gonzales, Looney Tunes: Back in Action
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does this mean an green soldier soldier is gonna punch the old man leader in the face a few times or are we not that lucky
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No.

I’m pretty sure that one was with a sword from a fired commissioned officer. You’re thinking of the younger military focused leader.
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we have yet to reach Warhammer levels of Everything Sucks™, there is still hope for better times
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Fantasy, or 40K?
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Well we're not at the everyone else dying part... yet...
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I thought cartoonish evil villains were unrealistic and extremely exaggerated, but nope people like that exist.
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So, how soon until we can silence some prophets?
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Life mimics art. 8V
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Yeaaaah... Having been replaying the Halo games recently... Yeaaaaaaaaaahhhh...
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