Word: masterfulness
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...video-game aficionados, the entertainment event of the year has nothing to do with Harry Potter or Jack Sparrow or Spider-Man. It happens on Sept. 25, when Halo 3 will be released, starring a faceless and all-but-nameless space marine called the Master Chief. He's a new kind of celebrity for a new and profoundly weird millennium...
...difficult to explain the story of Halo but that difficulty is in itself worthy of note. This isn't Donkey Kong. The Master Chief is not an Italian plumber whose girlfriend has been kidnapped by a gorilla. His story is rich and complicated in ways that we're not used to in video games. The Master Chief is a supersoldier, the only one of his kind, equipped with--encased in, really--powerful battle armor. He lives 500 years in the future, at a time when humanity is fighting a group of alien religious zealots known as the Covenant...
...Halo universe is clearly the stuff of pulpy space opera, and the Master Chief is as hard-boiled as they come. Much of the action consists of the Master Chief shooting alien antagonists while swapping Eastwoodian one-liners with his sidekick, a computer program named Cortana who appears as a sexy hologram. But the Halo games also have a curiously lyrical quality about them. They're full of literary touches and evocative phrases--the Master Chief travels in a spaceship called the Pillar of Autumn. The Halo universe is rich in lore--gamers love to be there the way some...
...face of the Master Chief is never revealed. His visor is solid reflective gold, like the faceplates of the Apollo astronauts. Halo 's designers see the Master Chief's facelessness as a dramatic device, a way of allowing players to place themselves in the game's leading role, to map their own faces onto that of a blank protagonist. "If he takes off the helmet, he should be you," says Marty O'Donnell, Halo 's audio director. "I mean, that's the big deal. Taking off the helmet is unacceptable." Engineering lead Chris Butcher agrees: "It's your experience...
...Edwards caravan rolls into Ottumwa in the southeastern part of the state, the candidate and his wife Elizabeth conduct a master class in the art of emotional connection. More than 300 people have packed into a wood-paneled room inside UAW Local 74, a modest brick union hall around the corner from a vast John Deere plant. They cheer when Elizabeth Edwards cites a poll that puts her husband 8 points ahead of Hillary Clinton in Iowa, and they fall into a hush when Elizabeth talks about health care. "Ninety-five thousand women in this state are uninsured," she says...