Halo and Philosophy

by Cuddy, Luke

  These two playable characters are the primary human instruments by which the player experiences war in the Bungie sandbox. Each represents a differing aspect of that conflict, and by examining both an astute player can glean much about the nature of war itself.

  Knight Errant + Walking Death-mobile = Master Chief

  You are the Master Chief—all that remains of a classified military project to build a series of genetically enhanced super-soldiers. You are humanity’s last and best hope against the Covenant—but you’re woefully outmatched, and survival is not guaranteed.

  —Halo: Combat Evolved Instruction Booklet (emphasis mine)

  While appearing at first to be yet another hot-off-the-shelf character from the Hero Factory, the Chief is much more than one more faceless character waiting to be controlled by the gamer. He carries significant importance to the plot as well as any study of warfare in Bungie’s creation. An in-depth look at his armor, weapon, and voice-acting showcases Bungie’s hero as a moral representative for Just War Theory as much as a hero found in any epic tale.

  Just War Theory, as put forward by philosophers Aristotle and Cicero and later by theologians St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, deals with the justification of how and why wars should be fought. Just War Theory is broken into three areas:1. Jus Ad Bellum—the rules that govern the justice of war

  2. Jus In Bello—the rules that govern just and fair conduct in war, and

  3. Jus Post Bellum—the rules that cover the responsibility and accountability of warring parties after the war.79

  Due to Halo 3 closing with the end of the Human-Covenant War, the final area is problematic to explore in Bungie’s gameworld. The first two, however, prove excellent areas of exploration in regard to the Chief and the conflicts he participates in.

  From the moment that the Master Chief steps out of the cryogenic chamber in Combat Evolved, he is immediately understood to be something more than human. Clad in pearlescent green MJOLNIR armor and gazing out from a golden visor, at first glance he has more in common with the alien foes boarding the Pillar of Autumn or the Scorpion tanks in the cargo bay than the fellow humans desperately defending the ship. The technicians running the diagnostics on his armor chatter nervously in the face of the Chief’s silence, uneasily sharing space with such an imposing figure. Even while the Chief heads toward the bridge unarmed, he still shrugs off plasma bolts from Elites and Grunts that make other soldiers shout out in pain.

  The MJOLNIR armor is one of the most defining markers of the Chief, and calls forth images of both medieval knights and modern machines of war. This mixture is key, as it helps reveal the sterile yet idealized nature of warfare that the Chief represents throughout the Halo games. With the full helmet and armor, comparisons to medieval knights are inevitable.80 Just as with those chivalrous knights of medieval lore, the Chief fights for a just cause: the avoidance of extinction. This ties directly into a key requirement of jus ad bellum, the set of criteria that determine if entering a war is justifiable: the possession of right intent.

  The general concept of right intent is that a nation waging a just war should be waging that war for justice and not for self-interest or warmongering. This raises a potential issue: how would the conflict portrayed in Halo not be based in self-interest, when the whole game is about surviving? This question raises a good point, but once the scale of the conflict is taken into account the point becomes moot. The Covenant has been waging a genocidal campaign against humanity for well over thirty years, and the species’ collective back is against the wall. The Chief, then, is fighting a war where his self-interest cannot overwhelm the larger case of justice—the preservation of the species—due to the intrinsic connection between the two. During the conflicts in the main trilogy, the Chief is central to the climaxing events of a war spanning more than three decades. Given that knowledge, there is little doubt that the war is justified despite the Chief’s self-interest.

  After all, this is the survival of the human race we’re talking about! Even absolutist pacifists would be hard-pressed not to pick up a weapon when faced with utter extinction, and that is the exact fate that the Chief fights to deny.

  Combined with the allusions to medieval knights, the Chief’s MJOLNIR armor represents military technology with an utter lack of subtlety. While lip service may be given to the fact that the Chief’s armor is green and thus based on camouflage on some level, the sheer fact that it is pearlescent negates any real use for that property. As previously mentioned, when the Chief steps out from the cryogenic tube in Combat Evolved or climbs up from the impact crater in Halo 3 he more closely resembles the material of waging war than his fellow soldiers. This difference allows the player to be one step removed from the action at all times, as they experience warfare through the visor of energy-shielded armor as opposed to the helmet of a regular soldier. This is especially notable in Halo 3, as the markings on the glass of the helmet are superimposed on the player’s television HUD.

  Moreover, the sounds and visuals created by the MJOLNIR armor are clear parallels to unmanned military drones and other front-line technology. Much of this information—red arrows depicting the direction of incoming fire, for instance, or the slow whine of recharging shields—is absorbed by the player subconsciously during the game. In practice, the gauges and meters are no different than a fighter pilot’s instruments or the gas gauge on the vehicle parked in the garage. They allow an individual to read information about their surroundings without directly experiencing it, fighting a war without the full tactile force of the conflict. Plasma bolts are absorbed by the armor’s energy shields while the baseline Marines next to the Chief shout in pain when each landed shot burns through skin and body armor.

  The power of the MJOLNIR armor that the player wields as the Chief is an excellent example of another condition of jus ad bellum : the end being proportional to the means used. At the opening of Combat Evolved, the Chief’s goal is simply to survive. As the trilogy moves forward, the end goal continues to rise in importance—not only does the Chief need to ensure humanity’s survival against the religious zealotry of the Covenant, but also has to defend it from the all-consuming Flood parasite recently released. Against enemies such as these, the power unleashed by the MJOLNIR armor against obviously weaker enemies such as Grunts or Jackals ceases to present a moral issue. Indeed, even the similar shielded armor worn by the Elites (and later Brutes) is less effective than the armor worn by the Master Chief. By the end of Halo 3, the only enemies that seem equal to the Chief are the Brute Chieftains and Flood Pure Forms.

  If one invokes the principle of proportionality, however, the perceived inequality of force shows itself as false. The Covenant has razed humanity’s colonies and slaughtered untold billions of souls. Single Covenant carriers decimate entire battle groups of human starships. When inserted into this larger backdrop, the military superiority of the Chief’s MJOLNIR armor shows itself as totally within the bounds of proportional force. The one-on-one inequality tilted in the player’s favor during firefights is vastly outweighed by the larger inequality in manpower and technology tilted in the enemy’s.

  Silence of Master Chief

  Keep your head down! There’s two of us in here now, remember?

  —Cortana to Master Chief, “The Pillar of Autumn”

  Another key component to examine when considering the Master Chief and his role in Bungie’s war-focused sandbox is the element of voice that surrounds him. First and foremost, the Chief is a mixture of a pure silent protagonist and a voiced character. Silent during gameplay sequences, the Chief is fully voiced during the cinematic sequences. Outside of the cinematic sequences, the Chief is the silent straight man to the surrounding characters. Ostensibly done in order to allow the player to more fully immerse themselves into the role of the Chief, it also showcases a principle of jus in bello, the justice of war: the principle of responsibility.

  The best example of this comes in Combat Evolved, during the missions involving the
quite possibly rampant AI Monitor 343 Guilty Spark. Abducted to Halo’s Library, the Chief is told by Spark that the installation must be activated in order to contain the Flood outbreak. Having just experienced the parasite firsthand in the previous mission, the Chief readily agrees to help and proceeds to fight his way through the Flood-infested Library. The Chief reacts to the most visible threat—the Flood—and lacks the knowledge to understand exactly what Spark means by “containment protocols.” By lacking the knowledge that activating Halo’s defenses will result in the mass murder of billions, the Chief stands his moral ground in ignorance instead of knowledge. His silence during gameplay reinforces the Chief’s decision to activate Halo’s defenses. He is totally focused on the task at hand, and believes it to be the correct one.

  Once achieving the Index from the Library, Spark teleports the two of them back to Halo’s Control Center. After being confronted by an irate Cortana and informed of Halo’s true nature, the Master Chief faces another aspect of the principle of responsibility: the morality of obeying orders. He has been ordered to activate Halo by Spark, with the threat of death hovering in front of him in the form of Sentinels. Equally, he has been ordered by Cortana to prevent Spark from firing the ring and slaughtering billions of individuals needlessly. The principle of responsibility asserts upon soldiers that they must remember that they will one day become civilians again, and must be prepared to do so without the guilt of war crimes.

  The Chief sides with Cortana, fending off the Sentinels and instigating the endgame of Combat Evolved. He bears, however, the responsibility of the Flood outbreak on Halo while he attempts to destroy it. The Marine casualties (as well as those of the Covenant) are squarely on his shoulders for deciding not to immediately activate the ring. The Chief is placed in the unenviable position of weighing the cost of those lives against the innocent lives that would be sacrificed to stop the Flood. Again, the moral status of ignorance comes into play. Now that he has been given all of the information regarding Spark’s “containment,” the Chief can no longer claim ignorance. He must knowingly sacrifice those billions in order to contain the Flood, and the Chief chooses to disregard Spark’s order in favor of his own moral compass. By doing so, he reveals even more strongly the idealized warfare that Bungie has crafted around him. He is able to make that decision, as opposed to having a superior simply issuing an order. His internal morality is what drives his decision, reinforcing the sense of an idealized warrior.

  Master Chief’s Weapons

  I need a weapon.

  —Master Chief to Sgt. Johnson, “Cairo Station”

  The final key component to be considered when examining the Master Chief is the weaponry that he is depicted using. While able to wield almost any weapon in the game, the in-game cinematics always depict the Chief armed with a version of the game’s Assault Rifle.81 Even when the player starts with different default weaponry, such as the Combat Evolved level “Truth and Reconciliation,” the cinematic directly before gameplay shows the Master Chief shouldering an Assault Rifle. The Assault Rifle’s single-mindedness—a weapon meant to dominate, not undermine or strike from shadows—mirrors the Chief’s own determination and the gamer’s focus on achieving the objectives of the given mission.

  In terms of gameplay, the Assault Rifle is often eclipsed by other weaponry. Why, then, would Bungie insist on continually depicting the Chief preferring it? First, the Assault Rifle is first and foremost a human weapon. It clearly marks the Chief as a human, when his armor and size differentiate him so much from the other humans encountered in the game. Second, it showcases the abilities that the Chief can bring to bear on the battlefield. An average soldier can be given an outstanding weapon and perform spectacularly, in-game and out-of-game. An outstanding soldier can get the job done with a toothpick, and that is what the Chief represents.

  The Assault Rifle becomes a part of the Chief’s symbol, as synonymous as a lightsaber has become with Luke Skywalker. This matches the Chief’s role in the fight for humankind’s survival, as the player is repeatedly forced into both small-and large-scale battles against enemies. This ties into the idealized symbol the Chief becomes over the development of the trilogy, as the Assault Rifle clearly marks him as a front-line fighter. The Master Chief stands as a bulwark upon which waves of hostile aliens and parasites break. Under the player’s control, the Chief turns into both unstoppable force and immovable object; inspiring tenacity in NPC (Non-Player Characters) cohorts and terrified scampering in enemies in equal doses, he immediately controls whatever battlefield he steps onto. Throughout Bungie’s trilogy, the Master Chief exists as a fundamental example of the strengths of Just War Theory.

  A Less Idealized Soldier for a More Desperate Time

  This Marine was recently transferred from the 26th MEF, part of a Rapid Offensive Picket that suffered near-annihilation at New Jerusalem, Cygnus. Like most ODSTs, his actions speak louder than words.

  —Bungie.net summary of the Rookie (emphasis mine)

  When compared to the Master Chief, the ODST known as the Rookie seems like a young child who is trying to step into his father’s too-big-to-fit boots. Appearing in the expansion Halo 3: ODST, the Rookie seems at first to be a lackluster replacement to the towering figure of the former protagonist. Indeed, on first glance the Rookie shares more in common with the NPC soldiers fighting and dying beside the Master Chief than with the Chief himself! One can easily imagine the Rookie being inserted into the main trilogy only to serve as a tutorial for the danger of the Flood or some other death-causing threat. The decision by Bungie, then, to make him the central protagonist for Halo 3: ODST is a remarkable one on many levels. Not only does the Rookie challenge the validity of the gamer’s conception of a “hero,” he also challenges the representation of Just War Theory that the Chief follows through on in the main trilogy.

  Absolute War and Total War

  A highly-trained but baseline human, he lacks the physical and chemical upgrades that the Chief possesses as a Spartan-II as well as the MJOLNIR shielded power armor. As such, he (and through him, the player) experiences the full tactile experience of war in a way that the Chief cannot. When subjected to an enemy melee attack, for instance, the Rookie goes flying while the Master Chief can typically go toe-to-toe with most enemies. He is also alone for a majority of the game, as gameplay revolves around finding clues to trigger flashbacks in order to establish the fate of your ODST squad. By looking at the Rookie through the same criteria that we used to examine the Chief, it quickly becomes clear that he represents a vastly different conception of war: a mixture of absolute war and total war.

  As put forth in the book On War by Carl Von Clausewitz, absolute war can be defined as the deployment of all a given society’s resources and citizens into the machine of war.82 Clausewitz held that absolute war was caused by three reciprocal actions:1. an utmost use of force, where each State continually upgrades the force used to grasp the advantage over an enemy

  2. the aim to disarm the enemy, so that the defeated enemy will comply with the victor, and

  3. an utmost exertion of powers, where both the strength of available means and the strength of will are measured, compared to the enemy’s, and increased accordingly.

  These three reciprocal actions function as a continuous circle, as each side continues to raise the level in response to the enemy. Clausewitz described this as an unachievable absolute in order to serve as the bedrock for his more nuanced theories. Yet Clausewitz never imagined a war of the likes that humankind has found itself embroiled in during the twenty-sixth century. The Covenant and the United Nations Space Command, with advances such as fasterthan-light space travel and an end goal involving the possible extermination of a species, are at least partially engaging in Clausewitz’s “logical fantasy.”

  Total war, however, is not just a synonym for absolute war. The phrase “total war” simply describes the lack of any restraint when it comes to how a given war is conducted. This lack of restraint is most typica
lly experienced with a war’s noncombatants, as a nation engaging in total war will likely make no distinction between soldier and civilian. Germany’s supreme general during World War I, Erich von Ludendorff, wrote extensively on the topic of total war. He claimed that “War is total; first, because the theater of war extends over the whole territory of the belligerent nations. In addition to this diffusion of risks, total war also involves the active participation of the whole population in the war effort.”83 Humanity has a long history of engaging in “total war” campaigns, and as such the Covenant’s modus operandi isn’t totally new to the humans of that conflict.

  Rookie and Chief

  Course, from what we can tell, the Super isn’t exactly in fighting shape. Seems the Covenant have knocked a few screws loose. Won’t be a problem. ODST’s are used to working in the dark.

  —Gunnery Sgt. Buck, Desperate Measures ViDoc (emphasis mine)

  The first clear example of this new mixture of war that the Rookie represents is his armor. While clearly manufactured by the same military apparatus that crafted the Chief’s MJLONIR armor and bringing to mind the same similarity to machines of war, it altogether lacks the similarities to medieval knights that the Chief carries. The armor is matte black and grey, not pearlescent green. With its harsh angles and dark coloration, the helmet more closely resembles a death’s head than the fighter-pilot-inspired helmet of the MJLONIR armor. Instead, the Rookie’s armor suggests a much more modern parallel—so-called “deniable operations,” such as those performed by special operations teams. This depicts the Rookie as not only obviously human (something the Chief struggles with), but as the type of soldier that is often ordered to do the type of actions that win wars but are morally questionable. The Rookie is fighting for the same end goal that the Chief is, but he is not a shining paragon of military virtue. He is not fighting battles that will shape the face of the galaxy or involved in the breaking of a religious hegemony. The Rookie is simply fighting to survive, to reclaim whatever possible out of a wreck of a mission.