Halo Chronicle - Master Chief

NeoKubrick

http://noaddedsugar.ie/opinion/halo-chronicle-humble-beginnings/

He is one of the most iconic game characters in the medium. However, Master Chief is virtually an avatar. He is encased in his Spartan armor and neither his human face nor human body is shown in any cut-scene. By the Halo canon, Master Chief is white, but this fact is described in the books and not the games; therefore, a player can project any appearance, race, onto the Master Chief character. Master Chief’s personality is as nondescript. In three games replete with, approximately, 121 minutes of cinematics, Master Chief’s dialogue occupies three and a half of that time; the quantity is insignificant and so too, the quality. When he speaks, it isn’t grand or elevated but simple matter-of-fact statements. Another significant fact is that Master Chief does not utter any dialogue in gameplay. The voice of Master Chief is Steve Downes: a radio disk-jockey in Chicago who has a background in commercial, rather than the usual gluttony of game/cartoon, voice-over work (aside from the Halo series, he is credited in one other game). Steve Downes says that the only direction he was given by the composer and voice-director, Marty O’Donnell, for the part was to think along the lines of a “Clint Eastwood, Fistful of Dollars, man-of-few-words” type (2).