The Arbiter (Keith David) and the Master Chief (Steve Downes) find themselves backed into a corner in Halo 3 (2007), Bungie
In providing anecdotal confirmation to one of most widely assumed reasons for the currently abysmal state of Western entertainment, original Halo series composer Marty O’Donnell has revealed that any and all such industries are currently living in fear of “being on the wrong side” of various special interest groups and their outrage mobs.
Master Chief (Steve Downes) and Cortana (Jen Taylor) prepare to enter cryosleep for the foreseeable future in Halo 3 (2007), BungieO’Donnell, whose talents helped to provide the soundtracks to each one of the mainline, Bungie-developed Halo titles, spoke to this phenomena during a June 19th appearance on noted conservative commentator Andrew Chapados’ eponymous Andrew Says podcast.
Halo Theme Creator Marty O’Donnell is Running for Congress | ANDREW SAYS
Following a general discussion about his current political campaign to represent Nevada in the U.S. House of Representatives, O’Donnell was eventually pressed by Chapados for his thoughts on the topic of ‘DEI in video games’, with the host inquiring, “When you were involved in games, was [representation] on anybody’s mind? Was the amount of diversity, the amount of transgender characters, in games ever a topic that anybody thought they should worry about?”
In turn, the esteemed composer affirmed, “You know, no, it wasn’t.”
“And ‘Go woke, go broke’, we keep seeing that happen over and over again,” said O’Donnell. “DEI is not ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’, it is a code word for essentially a Marxist worldview of power structures. There’s so many catchwords that are being injected into the conversation – colonization, decolonization, all these kinds of things – it is so far from what, especially in the entertainment business, what people should be worried about. ‘Are you going to tell a good story? Are you going to make a good game? Are you going to do something that’s compelling emotionally for people? That’s fun for people? That’s what creators should be concerned about.”
Master Chief (Steve Downes) prepares to give the covenant back their bomb in Halo 2 Anniversary (2014), Bungie
Pushing back against the popular narrative that prior to the 2010s entertainment was composed solely of straight white people, he continued, “We’ve had our share of, I guess I would have to say, diverse characters, but it wasn’t because we needed to make sure there was a certain percentage of you know ‘fill in the blank’. It was because these were like either great actors or this was going to be a great character.”
“It was never any part of what our discussions were about, like ‘let’s make make sure we we fill in the blanks so the game characters reflect perfectly the makeup of the society,” the US congressional candidate told Chapados. “That is just such a creatively dampening way of approaching things, which is why I think the fans are rejecting [this ideology]. The fans don’t necessarily reject movies or games because diversity, or equity, or inclusion kinds of things are forced into face – certainly they don’t like being preached to – but basically, these are not good products. At the end of the day, it’s not fun to play, it is not interesting, these characters don’t sound real. That’s what ends up happening people just don’t like it. They’re not good stories. They’re not memorable.”
Master Chief (Steve Downes) returns to Earth to finish the fight in Halo 2 Anniversary (2014), Bungie
Further pressed by Chapados as to “Why do [these developers] keep doing it?”, O’Donnell revealed that the answer to his question was relatively simple: Fear.
“I can’t say for certain what’s in everybody’s mind, but I know when I was there, when I was on the Board of Directors at Bungie, when I talked to the higher ups at Microsoft, there is a lot of fear, and the fear started creeping in,” explained the former Bungie exec. “There is fear that you are going to essentially get on the wrong side of some special interest groups who can be very loud and very annoying, so lets placate those people. So I would say fear is probably one of the biggest things.”
The Arbiter (Keith David) is branded a traitor by the Covenant in Halo 3 (2007), Bungie
“I don’t think, in my experience, that these are deeply held beliefs,” he further detailed. “You have to understand that, especially in the big companies, the C-suite and the executives, all they are doing is looking at the bottom line. I honestly think a lot of these people are empty suits. They don’t actually have core values, so they adopt the core values of the moment to make sure they are on the ‘right’ side so they don’t get any sort of backlash.”
“And that’s an indictment against the kinds of people who end up running companies,” O’Donnell clarified, “but I’ve rarely found people with strong moral character running the companies. They tend to just go the way the wind blows, and it’s going to take them a little while to realize that this is actually not helping their bottom line. There might be a few true believers out there, but it’s few and far between in my opinion.”
Venting his own frustrations on the matter, the musician declared, “It doesn’t make sense. Almost nobody who ends up being at the top level of these entertainment companies actually ever made any entertainment.”
“They aren’t actual directors, they’re not artists, they’re not musicians, they’re not writers, they haven’t created anything,” he explained. “They might have come from marketing, or have an MBA, or worked their way up through the production side of things where they’re not really making things, they’re just overseeing the production side. And so for some reason, I don’t trust their judgment. They just don’t have good judgment when it comes to this. And they have a lot of fear. So I would say fear is the big driving factor here.”
Master Chief (Steve Downes) bears witness to the Earth-bound arrival of the Covenant’s main fleet in Halo 3 (2007), Bungie
Next asked by Chapados whether he could personally remember any instances in which a given industry executive forced a game to conform to the “dominant narrative’, O’Donnell informed his host, “I started seeing it a little bit even during Halo 2, which goes back quite a ways.”
“We were making Halo 2 in 2002, 2003, which was close enough after 9/11, and if you know the story of Halo, it’s about this group of religious zealots that essentially will commit suicide to keep their religion going,” the composer recalled. That’s the characters we had for the Covenant. That started making Microsoft a little bit nervous because they felt like there could be some backlash from the Muslim community in the Middle East that maybe this could be seen as Islamophobic, so all of a sudden we were being asked to be very careful about some names of people, or references, or phrases and things like that. So, I started seeing that and I thought, ‘Well, that’s not necessarily unreasonable’ because we weren’t trying to do some sort of allegory about the political situation in the world that had to do with jihadists and all the rest of it.”
The Arbiter (Keith David) reveals the Prophets’ treachery to Tartarus (Kevin Michael Richardson) in Halo 2 Anniversary (2014), Bungie
Providing an example of just what changes Microsoft ordered of Bungie, O’Donnell noted, “Maybe you know this story, but one of our main characters, the Arbiter, was not [originally named] the Arbiter. During the whole time we were making Halo 2, the character’s name was the Dervish. We had recorded all the voice, I had directed all the actors, and everybody was using the term Dervish. And then we found out, ‘Oh, this could be seen as an insult because there [are] Islamic religious figure known as Dervishes.”
“So, we had to change it,” he ultimately admitted. “We were forced to change that name to a different name, so we came up with the Arbiter I was never really happy about it, I thought, ‘This is an artistic choice. This is what we had from the beginning.’ We were not making trying to make any sort of political or religious comment. We had tons of religious imagery, the Ark, Halo, the Covenant, all of these things are sort of imbued with religious terminology, so I didn’t see why the Dervish was a problem, but we were forced to change that. I could see that the bigger the product, the more fingers would be in the pie trying to mess with things.”
The Arbiter (Keith David) makes an unlikely ally in Sgt. Johnson (David Scully) in Halo 2 Anniversary (2014), Bungie
Making a slight-but-relevant deviation from his main topic, O’Donnell then noted that “By the way, if your plot line deals with an evil white person, or an evil corporation, you’re fine.”
“Like evil white guy, especially men, and evil corporations – No problem,” he told Chapados. “You will never get push back. And that’s been around forever. And you can also be like, ‘Yeah, let’s make the Christians hypocrites and bad people.’ That’s easy.”
Finally bringing his thoughts on the topic to a close, O’Donnell ultimately noted, “It’s going to be a while for this tide to pass through and maybe withdraw and we get back to, ‘Hey, let’s let entertainment people and creative people make what they want to make, and if you don’t like it, don’t buy it’. But the thought police that is happening in the world is completely insane right now.”
The Arbiter (Keith David) welcomes the safe arrival of the Master Chief (Steve Downes) to Earth in Halo 3 (2007), Bungie
