Have we hit peak Halo 5 yet? No? Well, brace up, because Microsoft seems poised to ensure its upcoming Xbox One headliner's tsunami will crest before the game's just-unveiled launch date, October 27.
Consider last night’s double-header bolt from the blue. Shrewdly timed to The Walking Dead's fifth-season finale, Microsoft surprised fans of the show (a demographic presumably simpatico with the history and plight of a certain be-helmeted space warrior) with not one but two brand new live action spots.
The hook: developer 343 studios is going all The Dark Knight Rises, pitting the series' iconic protagonist, Master Chief, against Halo 5's new mystery lead, a manhunter named Spartan Locke.
In the first trailer, Locke's sneering platitudes through that Cylonesque visor, threatening an apparently wounded Master Chief with his sidearm. In the second trailer, the scenery---an apocalyptic vista with a blatant Ozymandias vibe---is unchanged, except it's Master Chief doing the speechifying, less sardonically, as he strides with pistol in hand toward Locke, who's now the one lying in the smoldering dust-wracked ruin.
Microsoft seems to be spooling Halo 5 up as Master Chief's Spider-Man 3 turn---the old good-guy-goes-loopy trope. Or maybe that's the ruse, because that's partly how the company's pitching this: as a mystery designed to keep tongues wagging for the next seven months, replete with teasing Twitter hashtag (#HunttheTruth), an ongoing audio saga designed to deconstruct our understanding of the Chief, and of course the game's official debut at E3 in a few months.
The chances 343 Studios plans to sully Halo's do-gooder protagonist permanently? I say less than zero. But when you've exhausted the whole you-versus-the-other trope across half a dozen games over the course of a decade, I suppose the inward introspective turn is inevitable---though the whole "Whoops, reevaluate what you thought you knew!" creative approach feels less like bold storytelling than another contrivance to extend the life of a corporate mascot through another gazillion prettified shooting galleries.
Is this 343 Industries cheating its way to something approximating meaningful character development by way of ret-conning Master Chief's dossier (like the comic book industry, when it needs to gin up superhero sales)?
Or will it be more like that Star Trek episode where Spock sports a Van Dyke and Kirk's an assassin, the status quo's upended, and everything's back to normal after a sufficient amount of emotional bloodletting?
One thing's for sure: Microsoft wants you to talk about it for the next six months.
