Halo is such a special franchise for me. Specifically 1, 2, & 3. After that I don't really care, but I care tremendously about the first three. Something about the art and aesthetic of the first one still impresses me greatly. It has such a great sense of scale and it uses skyboxes so perfectly. The campaign was fun to replay over and over and the music and characters were fantastic. I think the Xbox Original is one of the most gorgeous games graphically to ever come out. I think the style and aesthetic of the remake pale in comparison. Great video though. I like the music you used a lot and how you were altering the volume and cutting to yourself more. Also even for screenshots there's just lots of great movement and effects. Such a pleasing editing style. It's easy on the eyes and thoughtful.
Great breakdown. I read all these novels growing up and could see the influences they had on Halo and Science Fiction in general. I think a deeper appreciation and understanding of art/entertainment comes from studying what inspired them. Also just wanted to add in that I'm glad to see Armor get it's due! I feel like it's really underappreciated.
Thank you for this high effort, insightful comment. You are right, nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything is inspired by something and it was really great to lift the lid on this. There's a bit of conjecture here and there, but I don't mind if you don't 😉
Robert Heinlein was a former Military. He was a veteran of the National Guard and a graduate of the US Naval academy class of 1929 and served in the peace time Navy from 1929 to 34. So thats why he has praise for the military.
Nothing to do with Halo but if you like science fiction Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels are a must read. I also love anything by Greg Egan, though his early novels are very hard SF. Diaspora and Permutation City blew my mind.
Matty this video is bananas good. Captivating and informative throughout. The production value has gone through the roof. Be careful as I’m unsure of your roofing budget.
Oh my gosh thank you. This was SO much work. Between this and the ID4 floppy disks, I don't have any more energy for "big" videos for a while. They're loads of fun but my God, the work!
I thought that, too. Once I started reading it though, I couldn't tell if it was satire or not. It's an interesting read and it's pretty rad that it still generates discussion ☺️
This is great - I've been playing through Halo for the first time and was curious about this exact topic. I hadn't heard of some of these so I'm definitely gonna have to check them out. Great video!
Regardless of everything else I learned in this video, the big one's really how to pronounce "Phlebas" Great video, Matty. Lots of stuff in here that I've wanted to read for a long time and hearing you basically confirm my suspicions about a handful of them, is enough for me to narrow my to-be-read list down a little bit!
Thanks you so much. I am no authority on that pronunciation, that is a guess on my part! I'm glad to help curate the old to-read pile. I know mine is enormous. I _really_ wish I had the patience (and frankly the comprehension) to enjoy the Iain M. Banks books. But I'm too dumb for it, and that's that!
As someone who grew up reading SF and who also loves video games, I have to say this video was a breath of fresh air. It’s so nice to see something that isn’t the usual, brainless fanboy “my black box is better than your black box” bullshit.
Well thank you very much! If you're after positive takes and an attitude of spreading joy, hopefully you'll find more of that on this channel. Thanks for the comment!
whats extremely surprising, heinlin said in a mail and message to joe haldeman that the forever war was the very best book he has ever read?! which is weird because he supposedly hates hippies and loves war, whats even more insane, is he talks about stuff like starting the 6th international in his moon is a harsh mistress theme on some weird anti imperialist rant perspective, which is extremely odd considering his political views. stranger in a strange land also has a weird theme as well that seems to dwell in hedonism and liberalism
Yeah he's a complex author. It's hard at times to get a handle on the man himself. As you said, he seems to show some anti-expansionist sentiment in his writing, but also talks a lot about _might is right_. Interesting guy, for sure.
Thank you so much. This took nearly a year, so is one of my longest productions. Sharing the video helps immensely. I implore you to help the video get seen 😊
This is great! Really thought provoking and interesting. The Forever War is one of my favourites. Probably the best example of how punchy Sci-Fi can be at conveying real world ideas by a capable author. The feeling of disconnection the soldiers felt from their own society I found really thought provoking. Great stuff - it's a real treat to find your channel and having all these videos to check out!
One thing I feel like Halo took from The Culture as well was the ship naming scheme. All the major ships in both series have ship very flowery sounding names or really cheeky, kinda sarcastic names.
This was a great video. Ender’s Game is one, if not my favorite book, and I actually just happened to finish Armor. Was hoping to see it talked about, because when I read the title of the video Armor was my first guess.
wait also why didn't you mention the fact that the covenant is literally just based on the idrians from the culture series. like in consider phlebas, they are literally a religion fanatic group that literally hosts a bunch of servile species just like the covient and talk about immortal soul and reincarnation like what they mention in game with the covenant, and how the ring worlds in halo are also weapons that cast energy resembling the grid fire of the culture etc. and how guilty spark is literally just supposed to be a culture mind, or personality likely based on the drone from the first book
id say out of all the books, they took the most from the culture series. in fact the body suit that the spartians wear actually seems more like the one hortza wears in consider phelbas.
@@MattyStokedi did, but you left out quite a bit of similarities, for example, you didnt mention the dre’azon the ancient race that was the caratakers of szhars world, a world that was originally a weapon, which was clearly what the forerunners were based on, also the fact that the idrians are also a fanatic religious race who work with several servile species that evolved with them to wage a fanatical religous war which eventually does fracture them (exactly like the elites in the covenant)
It's not too late! The song is called Ditching the Detective, by Akira Yamaoka. It's from the Silent Hill 3 Ultimate Edition soundtrack CD. The whole SH3 soundtrack is amazing.
It really makes you feel like "The Cyborg™" I've never read the book (or seen the film) but for you to say don't watch the film of Ender's game it has to be pretty shit considering you usually can get enjoyment out of bad films 😂 is it something that just completely misunderstands source material or just is poorly put together? I'm also convinced you could make a video on anything as long as you cared about it as those 26 minutes went past like it was nothing, really looking forward to any more like this one.
I will say personally I loved the movie and thought it was amazing. But I was also pretty young when I watched it and have never read the book. But hearing that the book is way better does make me want to read it and I never read. So take from that what you will haha
They didn't "rip off" anything Ripping off is what hacks do, they borrowed from a great many influences and created something original with it Don't use such a negative term for something so wholly unnegetive
Enders Game is terrible book, it's incredibly silly, the siblings subplot is just hilariously dumb, ender is a web blanket of a protagonist, the twost is transparent, the whole thing is deeply misoginistic, and orson Scott Card keeps writing his child characters naked for absolutely no reason. weird.
@@MattyStoked Try not to use the word “educate” as an action on the internet, makes you sound like some wimpy SJW whipping boy. Appearance is everything and you could have just asked the other guy to explain which sounds a hell of a lot more natural. Also instead of denigrating the Proud Boy pushback go after the jackboot thugs like Antifa and BLM who necessitated their existence with rampant bigotry and assault. You NEVER win by attacking the resistance to evil forces.
@@MattyStoked I would say your comparisons to "Proud Boys" etc seem way off-base and derogatory. If you could read the novel in a more positive-light; I think one of the key points Heinlein was trying to make with SST's social structure was basically "War should only be initiated by those who've fought in it". It's in part a rebuttal against toothless politicians sending off the poor to die and that those who fought in war would be less likely to participate in it on a whim. It was also relatively forward-thinking... The military in that novel was all-volunteer and was written during a time when conscription was still commonplace. I honestly think my biggest criticism of SST is that it's... rather boring.
The animation of the fall of reach is very different to the book. And it also got flak for that fact, and you footage of halo 2 is actually halo 3 and both, ce and reach are in mcc
Wonderful video. Deserves more likes and views.
Thank you for the kind words. Please feel free to share the video. It's pretty much the only way a small channel like mine can get more views 😇
John John the Halo man, if he can't do it no one can!!!!
Halo is such a special franchise for me. Specifically 1, 2, & 3. After that I don't really care, but I care tremendously about the first three. Something about the art and aesthetic of the first one still impresses me greatly. It has such a great sense of scale and it uses skyboxes so perfectly. The campaign was fun to replay over and over and the music and characters were fantastic. I think the Xbox Original is one of the most gorgeous games graphically to ever come out. I think the style and aesthetic of the remake pale in comparison.
Great video though. I like the music you used a lot and how you were altering the volume and cutting to yourself more. Also even for screenshots there's just lots of great movement and effects. Such a pleasing editing style. It's easy on the eyes and thoughtful.
One of the reasons I cut to and from camera work is because of how well you do it in your videos.
Thank you for the lovely comment 😊
Great breakdown. I read all these novels growing up and could see the influences they had on Halo and Science Fiction in general. I think a deeper appreciation and understanding of art/entertainment comes from studying what inspired them. Also just wanted to add in that I'm glad to see Armor get it's due! I feel like it's really underappreciated.
Thank you for this high effort, insightful comment. You are right, nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything is inspired by something and it was really great to lift the lid on this. There's a bit of conjecture here and there, but I don't mind if you don't 😉
Robert Heinlein was a former Military. He was a veteran of the National Guard and a graduate of the US Naval academy class of 1929 and served in the peace time Navy from 1929 to 34. So thats why he has praise for the military.
That would explain it 😎
Halo's story was influenced by loads of books, not just Ringworld! Have you read many of these? Got any other recommendations?
Nothing to do with Halo but if you like science fiction Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels are a must read. I also love anything by Greg Egan, though his early novels are very hard SF. Diaspora and Permutation City blew my mind.
@@JoeChip Hyperion is one the best books I've ever read! Great recco!
Absolutely brilliant video mate. Definitely given me some reading to do over my holiday next week.
Thank you so much! Biggest recommendations are Ender's Game, Armor, The Forever War and On Basilisk Station.
Matty this video is bananas good. Captivating and informative throughout. The production value has gone through the roof. Be careful as I’m unsure of your roofing budget.
Oh my gosh thank you. This was SO much work. Between this and the ID4 floppy disks, I don't have any more energy for "big" videos for a while. They're loads of fun but my God, the work!
i've always thought starship troopers was a satire starting with a "what if veterans ran the world" writing prompt.
I thought that, too. Once I started reading it though, I couldn't tell if it was satire or not. It's an interesting read and it's pretty rad that it still generates discussion ☺️
This is great - I've been playing through Halo for the first time and was curious about this exact topic. I hadn't heard of some of these so I'm definitely gonna have to check them out. Great video!
Perfect! That's exactly what I was hoping for when making this 😍
Regardless of everything else I learned in this video, the big one's really how to pronounce "Phlebas"
Great video, Matty. Lots of stuff in here that I've wanted to read for a long time and hearing you basically confirm my suspicions about a handful of them, is enough for me to narrow my to-be-read list down a little bit!
Thanks you so much. I am no authority on that pronunciation, that is a guess on my part! I'm glad to help curate the old to-read pile. I know mine is enormous. I _really_ wish I had the patience (and frankly the comprehension) to enjoy the Iain M. Banks books. But I'm too dumb for it, and that's that!
As someone who grew up reading SF and who also loves video games, I have to say this video was a breath of fresh air. It’s so nice to see something that isn’t the usual, brainless fanboy “my black box is better than your black box” bullshit.
Well thank you very much! If you're after positive takes and an attitude of spreading joy, hopefully you'll find more of that on this channel. Thanks for the comment!
Love the small Sanctuary Silent Hill Music
whats extremely surprising, heinlin said in a mail and message to joe haldeman that the forever war was the very best book he has ever read?!
which is weird because he supposedly hates hippies and loves war,
whats even more insane, is he talks about stuff like starting the 6th international in his moon is a harsh mistress theme on some weird anti imperialist rant perspective, which is extremely odd considering his political views. stranger in a strange land also has a weird theme as well that seems to dwell in hedonism and liberalism
Yeah he's a complex author. It's hard at times to get a handle on the man himself. As you said, he seems to show some anti-expansionist sentiment in his writing, but also talks a lot about _might is right_. Interesting guy, for sure.
Really enjoyed this and love the level of effort and research you put into it. +1 to the others wishing you the views you deserve
Thank you so much. This took nearly a year, so is one of my longest productions. Sharing the video helps immensely. I implore you to help the video get seen 😊
This is great! Really thought provoking and interesting. The Forever War is one of my favourites. Probably the best example of how punchy Sci-Fi can be at conveying real world ideas by a capable author. The feeling of disconnection the soldiers felt from their own society I found really thought provoking. Great stuff - it's a real treat to find your channel and having all these videos to check out!
Forever War is definitely one of my favourites on this list. Haldeman turned out to be a bit of a rotter, but the book is great!
One thing I feel like Halo took from The Culture as well was the ship naming scheme. All the major ships in both series have ship very flowery sounding names or really cheeky, kinda sarcastic names.
I did almost mention that. The ship names in The Culture can be pretty funny at times, too!
And yet not demanding to identify as a gender.
This was a great video. Ender’s Game is one, if not my favorite book, and I actually just happened to finish Armor. Was hoping to see it talked about, because when I read the title of the video Armor was my first guess.
Hey that's awesome, thank you! What did you think to Armor?
Brilliant video mate! I hope it gets the views it deserves better this is top quality content
Thank you so much. Please share the video on your socials, it really is the most important thing you can do to help the channel! x
This was a really good video. I’m glad that someone posted it to the /r/games subreddit. Thank you for making this.
I had no idea it had made it to Reddit. Absolutely fantastic! Thanks for dropping by and leaving me a comment ☺️
Great video! What a refreshing and interesting topic.
Thanks so much!
like how half life was inspired by a sci fi book i cant remember right now
The Books That Inspired [insert games franchise] would be a cool video series.
wait also why didn't you mention the fact that the covenant is literally just based on the idrians from the culture series.
like in consider phlebas, they are literally a religion fanatic group that literally hosts a bunch of servile species just like the covient and talk about immortal soul and reincarnation like what they mention in game with the covenant, and how the ring worlds in halo are also weapons that cast energy resembling the grid fire of the culture etc.
and how guilty spark is literally just supposed to be a culture mind, or personality likely based on the drone from the first book
id say out of all the books, they took the most from the culture series.
in fact the body suit that the spartians wear actually seems more like the one hortza wears in consider phelbas.
Wait, did you get to the bit where I talk about Consider Phlebas yet?
@@MattyStokedi did, but you left out quite a bit of similarities, for example, you didnt mention the dre’azon the ancient race that was the caratakers of szhars world, a world that was originally a weapon, which was clearly what the forerunners were based on, also the fact that the idrians are also a fanatic religious race who work with several servile species that evolved with them to wage a fanatical religous war which eventually does fracture them (exactly like the elites in the covenant)
Might be a bit late but what's the mid west emo song at the start
It's not too late! The song is called Ditching the Detective, by Akira Yamaoka. It's from the Silent Hill 3 Ultimate Edition soundtrack CD. The whole SH3 soundtrack is amazing.
@@MattyStoked Cheers man, fantastic video btw
@@thespooktacle3688 you're welcome, and thank you!
It really makes you feel like "The Cyborg™"
I've never read the book (or seen the film) but for you to say don't watch the film of Ender's game it has to be pretty shit considering you usually can get enjoyment out of bad films 😂 is it something that just completely misunderstands source material or just is poorly put together? I'm also convinced you could make a video on anything as long as you cared about it as those 26 minutes went past like it was nothing, really looking forward to any more like this one.
The film just misses what makes the book so good. Thank you for your lovely comment, you're so good to me 😘
I will say personally I loved the movie and thought it was amazing. But I was also pretty young when I watched it and have never read the book. But hearing that the book is way better does make me want to read it and I never read. So take from that what you will haha
@@boigercatmovie is actually good, but once you've read the book yeah the movie isn't as good as the original. Still like it tho.
Inspired, is just a polite word for cribbed, stolen, ripped off. 😜
Haha the original title was "The Books Halo Ripped Off"
They ripped off tons of stuff from the movie Aliens too...
Films, TV series, comic books and other computer games all would have played a part. This video is about the books!
They didn't "rip off" anything
Ripping off is what hacks do, they borrowed from a great many influences and created something original with it
Don't use such a negative term for something so wholly unnegetive
2nd ringworld novel was weird af, lots of strange sexual scenes
Hell yeah, sexy 70s sci-fi is my jam!
Enders Game is terrible book, it's incredibly silly, the siblings subplot is just hilariously dumb, ender is a web blanket of a protagonist, the twost is transparent, the whole thing is deeply misoginistic, and orson Scott Card keeps writing his child characters naked for absolutely no reason. weird.
Nah! OSC is a terrible person, I'll give you that. But Ender's Game is none of those things!
Wow, I didn't know it was possible to misread Heinlein this poorly.
Educate me! By all means, tell me where I'm going wrong.
@@MattyStoked Try not to use the word “educate” as an action on the internet, makes you sound like some wimpy SJW whipping boy. Appearance is everything and you could have just asked the other guy to explain which sounds a hell of a lot more natural.
Also instead of denigrating the Proud Boy pushback go after the jackboot thugs like Antifa and BLM who necessitated their existence with rampant bigotry and assault. You NEVER win by attacking the resistance to evil forces.
@@MattyStoked I would say your comparisons to "Proud Boys" etc seem way off-base and derogatory. If you could read the novel in a more positive-light; I think one of the key points Heinlein was trying to make with SST's social structure was basically "War should only be initiated by those who've fought in it". It's in part a rebuttal against toothless politicians sending off the poor to die and that those who fought in war would be less likely to participate in it on a whim. It was also relatively forward-thinking... The military in that novel was all-volunteer and was written during a time when conscription was still commonplace.
I honestly think my biggest criticism of SST is that it's... rather boring.
The animation of the fall of reach is very different to the book. And it also got flak for that fact, and you footage of halo 2 is actually halo 3 and both, ce and reach are in mcc
You can also trace bad rom coms to myth too
Took too long to get into the books.
If you don't have six minutes to establish a bit of background, I'm not sure books are for you bud