Friday, October 06, 2006

Is Halo 3 an allusion to the Battle of Thermopylae?


With the release of Ghost of Onyx, Eric Nylund's 3rd book in the Halo universe, my brain has once again been looking back to the story of Halo. Granted, the games themselves don't seem to shed any light on the literary or historical significance of naming conventions in the series, but rather it is the peripheral material that targereally shines in this regard.

I thought about the similarities between the story of Halo and the famous Greek and Persian battle that was forever used as a teaching tool to describe superior training, equipment, and strategy.

I`ll quote Wikipedia, as there`s no point typing it again:

In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian army in the mountain pass, Thermopylae. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the enemy in one of the most famous last stands of history. A small force led by king Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I could pass.

After several days of confrontation the Persians attacked but were defeated by heavy losses, disproportionate to those of the Greeks. This continued on the second day but on the third day of the battle a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks, revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. With the rest of the army dismissed, King Leonidas stayed behind with his bodyguard of 300 Spartans and the 700 man Thespian army even though they knew it meant their deaths, to allow the rest of the army to escape.
Many may theorize that Reach was the allusion to the ancient greek battle, but this has flawed reasoning. For one, Thermopylae was the first step in the Persian empire`s absolute failure to take Sparta from the Greeks. Despite surviving heavy losses, the Persian empire was forced to retreat, and was later defeated on a different front.

At Reach, while the spartans stayed to fight the covenant, the alien forces bulldozed through Reach, and continued on to destroy more and more of the human fleet.

There are a couple reasons Halo 3, the last stand on Earth, could be an allusion to the Battle of Thermopylae:

1) While in the game, Master Chief is mentioned to be the last remaining spartan, there are at least 4 others that were rescued in the books. I know that Bungie wants to seperate the two to avoid confusion for those who don`t read the book, but a short conversation inserted in the game to explain their appearance would be enough.

2) The very obvious: The superior training, tactics, equipment (somewhat) and courage are possessed by none other than the Spartan units in the Halo Universe. This is exactly the same in Thermopylae. 300 spartans held off an entire persian force through a narrow passageway.

3) On Volume 2 of the Halo 2 OST, Marty named one of the songs "Finale: Thermopylae Soon." Hmmm.

If this is indeed an allusion, we could take it one step farther. We could make more connections and predictions:

1) In Thermopylae, the greeks were betrayed by Ephialtes, who gave the persian army another path into greek land. Could this be the same thing with earth? Could someone betray the human fleet (Cortana?) during the final battle on earth, which could lead to a Thermopylae style conflict?

2) The thespians, citizen soldiers (opposed to the professional Spartans who were trained from birth to fight to the death), refused to leave when dismissed by Leonidas. Could we see this dedication in Sarge`s troops? Perhaps even the Helljumpers, despite them being career soldiers as well.

3) The Spartans delayed the invasion of greek land, but at a great price: Leonidas was killed, as were all 300 spartans. When Xerxes of Persia recovered his body, he ordered that he be beheaded and crucified. He regretted the event afterwards, and the body was returned to Greece 40 years later, where it was buried with full honors. Could we see the death of Master Chief by the end of Halo 3? Something else to consider...

Just some things to think about as we near the release of Ghosts of Onyx on October 31th. Anyone interested in checking out more information about this incredible historical battle can check out the wikipedia link here.

4 Comments:

Blogger Aesthete said...

Nice!! Impressive back-story reference. Excellent decutive reasoning.

Very pleased to see that the classical liberal arts education you received was not for nought.

You rock!!

8:49 PM  
Blogger Aesthete said...

Er..that should have been deductive reasoning. Damn Blogger doesn't allow you to edit a comment once you've posted it!!

8:51 PM  
Blogger Nayan said...

Blogger sucks confirmed!

5:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, I heard they are making a movie on this battle it looked decent but didnt go too far into it just the preview

12:29 PM  

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