Another criticism of Halo

First thing's first, a new word invented with the aid of Ernie: Distriss. A Mistress who lives a long distance away.

Now, the meat of this short post. In my usual boredom-fueled Wikipedia reading, I found the following sentence in the entire wikipedia page devoted to the marketing of Halo 3 (does it need this? Not really, no):

'According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather thant computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy - war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief".' (Halo 3 Marketing wikipedia page)

Having seen the diorama in question (here), my first thought is that it shows nothing but the futility of war rather then anything else, but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is the phrase "the heroism of Master Chief." As other Wikipedia wankers like myself know, along with Halo fans, Master Chief is a cybernetically augmented, brainwashed super soldier taught from near birth to fight. Anyone who's played the games (althought I admit only playing up to the end of Halo 2) knows that he has a personality that can be approximated to a brick with some glue on a corner.

Can he really be 'Heroic'? He's a near-mindless war-drone created solely for battle. For him to charge into battle and combat, especially considering he never friggin' loses, isn't really bravery, it's his nature. It's not like warfare is his job, it's his life. A Fireman is being brave for trying to save lives, even though it's his job. A bird isn't being brave for flying around really high, it's what the bird DOES.

The Master Chief, as a character, even as a narrative device, is just uninteresting. The only thing he is useful as is a reason for the player of a computer game to be massively more effectively then the player's allies and enemies. The Arbiter, who earned near universal scorn in the game, is a hundred times more interesting then the Master Chief, but even his story is really really dully predictable.

One day I'm going to find something to fan-boy about for an extended period of time. Until then I'm just going to rip on everyone elses's favourite things.