Halo' is a game of epic proportions
Millions of fans are eagerly awaiting next Tuesday's release of Halo 3, the final installment in Microsoft's hugely successful video game trilogy.
"Everybody is really excited," says Anne Wolanski, 37, an executive assistant at a major Hollywood studio. "People just know it's going to be fantastic."
Miguel Chavez, 39, of Whitestone, N.Y., an administrator for fan site halo .bungie.org, wants to know "how this whole darn thing ends."
Another fan, Roger Travis, 38, of Stoors, Conn., admits that he, too, "can't wait to see the ending of the story." But Travis, an associate professor of classics at the University of Connecticut, also wants to see how Halo stacks up against the great mythologies of our time. Already, he says, "I certainly don't have any problem putting (Halo) on the shelf next to" classics such as Beowulf.
For those who scoff at the notion that a video game could rival modern-day epics such as The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars— let alone classics — consider some recent accolades given to Halo. "A cultural touchstone, a Star Wars for the thumbstick generation," Wired labels Halo in its current issue with the game's hero, Master Chief, on its cover.
Halo's story "is rich and complicated in ways that we're not used to in video games," Lev Grossman declared recently in Time. The level of lore rivals that of Jane Austen novels, he wrote, and its quality is Wagnerian. "Halo takes itself seriously as, if not art, certainly a spectacle. But art seems more apt."
Those who want to explore the story's underpinnings will find similar components of "creative mythology" that the late scholar Joseph Campbell identified in the exploits of Luke Skywalker and such classical Greek heroes as Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus, and Jason, who captured the Golden Fleece, says Travis, who has made the game part of his courses.
With Halo, Travis says, "the epic tradition that gave us The Aeneid, The Iliad and The Odyssey is being reawakened."
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3616744&page=1#.TzLhqPLYCSo
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