We both know that Halo stories have been done very well

by Chewbaccawakka , The Great Green Pacific Northwest!, Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 21:47 (4104 days ago) @ Cody Miller

They are structured fine, and did the job they were supposed to do. In fact, Halo had a pretty good video game story. However, I would not say any of Bungie's games even came remotely close to the types of stories that shape our cultural collective, nor do they offer anything morally, intellectually, emotionally, or philosophically interesting.

Edit: And with regard to the human condition, while Halo absolutely had some aspects of that,

Only if you were 12 years old and thought action movies were real life.

These are points you can not hope to make. You appear to be speaking with certainty towards matters that are almost entirely subjective.

The "human condition" is, quite often, unique to the individual. It would be incredibly narrow, not to mention small minded, to assume that because an element of a story only speaks to your '12 year old' self that it would do the same for everyone else.

Different strokes and all that.

Halo stories tend to be very archetypal, grand space opera that follows many of the basic tenets of conventional storytelling. Boy meets girl, boy finds "ancient evil", boy destroys ancient evil, boy saves galaxy, et cetera.

These tropes are used extensively in modern (and ancient) culture. When told well, they can indeed speak to the cultural collective. Halo has had millions of players, and while certainly some of them haven't given a second thought to it's story or universe, some have. By this simple acknowledgement it has, as a matter of course, helped shape the cultural collective.

I recognize that some of this is simply your opinion, but the fact remains that people, and they're myriad peculiarities, are a wide and far reaching canvas. And the story of Halo has had an irrefutable hand in painting on it.