How Halo 2 Critiques Religion

Sorry to break it to you media literacy bros but Halo 2 is actually about being the strongest super soldier in the whole universe and blowing shit up all while jamming out to Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin.

I'm not sure how people got Halo as being anti religion. You put it so well. Its not about religion being bad its about people blindly following what they are told and using their religion to justify violence while ignoring the fact that what they are doing is wrong even when the being they consider gods are telling them they are wrong.

This kind of production quality and analysis is comparable with large channels. You also speak with a clear voice which is underrated. Clearly this is a channel that has the ability to grow large in size and I'm excited to stumble upon it so early.

I thought it criticized theocracy, rather than belief in any religion.
Edit: also, there have been atheist nations that also demand absolute fealty from their officials and citizens. China is a modern example, but there was also the USSR, Albania under Hoxha, Pot’s regime, and Cuba. Castro was even quoted as saying that he required elected officials to be atheists because he thought it would make them obey orders without questioning them.

Well, if this wasn't the strangest intersection of my interests.

the issues that halo 2s development led to the cliffhanger ending which received a very different conclusion than intended in halo 3. The original ending revealing that the prophet of truth wasn't just another fanatic, but someone who knew how to manipulate the faith of others to benefit himself. Unfortunately the ending we got never gave a clear explanation for his actions, which I believe plays a big part in people misunderstanding what halo is criticising about religion

Just to further add on to the point at 5:38, Chief almost does die to save humanity. The gap between Halo 3 and 4 can be seen as the days where Jesus was in the tomb after crucifixion, but Chief doesn't actually die so it's another "almost" connection.

Bless the YouTube algorithm for recommending me this masterpiece

I'm just going to say that you're going to make it someday. This video was shot, written, and produced so perfectly. The fact you went to an actual Church and filmed inside of their for this he's insane. Keep up the amazing work

I didn't realize I was watching someone with 100 subs and less than 500 views until the very end. Really good work. I really hope this blows up super soon.

Halo is deeply religious in its themes, I mean even in the names of the things, like the ARK, the flood, the halos. It also kind of gives context to those events by saying that in human history the biblical tales where actually just the ancient humanity as forerunners dealing with the flood.

Halo is so well done and its a shame people often misunderstand it or write it off as nothing. Halo deserves more love.

This is why I love the Covenant so much. They essentially are space Byzantines, Latin Crusaders, Islamic Caliphates, and Ottoman Janissaries combined into one alien faction.

Came into this expecting to see the standard, Twitter-tier fare of an atheist using Halo 2 to bash religious people.
I was pleasantly surprised. This video was very well done.

The fact that you don't have any views (currently) does not in any way reflect upon the quality of your content. I subbed to the channel 0:35 seconds into this video. Absolutely sick job, keep it up.

I once had a friend describe Halo 2 and The Covenant by asking me "You know what came between Halo and Halo 2? 9/11. And The Covenant are in a lot of ways like non religious religious extremists. Non religious because they aren't going by pure faith and their literal Prophets are flesh and blood telling them what to do directly."

I’m Jewish. It comforts me that if my people weren’t enslaved by the Egyptians we wouldn’t have Halo. My favourite game of all time. Sorry to my ancestors but ur sacrifice was worth it.

Severely underrated channel, here's to hoping you pop-off.

This is a superbly made essay. The parallel from Paul to the Arbiter is an interesting one that I've never considered. I've been playing Halo 2 for nearly 20 years at this point and it's ideas like this that made it my favorite story in video games for so long. At least until I finally played Bioshock a few years ago. I bet you could do a killer video on the philosophies in that game!

YOU ONLY HAVE 200 SUBS??? Bro I thought I Missread that. The quality of this is wild. Keep it up!!

this video had really great production quality, i really enjoyed it.

I liked also your story of becoming disillusioned with religion in college and then afterwards going to less fundamentalist interpretation of religion. I had a similar journey, except after i went back to religion i think went atheist and then i guess i would consider myself mostly atheist but like possibility of reincarantion, possibility of reincarnation as the same person and we do everything all over again etc, but not saying 100 percent on anything, i am accepting that i dont know and thats fine for me. But yeah you do you on that.

And ironically Halo 2 was another part of what kinda showed this to me, this showed the impacts of religion, i was raised to be very "obedient" and to not think for myself and i had to learn to think for myself and realize many people in my life wanted different things for me then i did. I was very limited in what media i could watch or experience, and i had to look into media that the news or other places would not talk about that much, so i usually read books. But then halo came out and it was fun so me and my dad played it and then halo 2 came out and i saw the story as being so cool.

Its interesting, how much media i find parents try to keep away from their children, but allowing children to experience media they do not enjoy or may have different beliefs then they do is important, as being incredibly sheltered can be very damaging to them.... I was a "Happy naive" child and i was bullied for not knowing things and how to act around "normal" kids. I learned eventually but i learned that a man should not be happy or show emotion and that if people see someone happy they will want to hurt them.

I learned the only person in life i can rely on is myself. I am a lot more calm then i was then i was always stressed but now i have come to be able to accept the punches of life and flow better, to be more calm and even when things get crazy it works out.... its ironic even though i am an atheist one of my favorite things to think/feel was "this too shall pass".

But yeah i really enjoy the story of halo 1-3 and reach, and the gameplay is cool but the story man was so cool and actually said something, instead of being all "look how righeous we are, the enemy is EVIL MONSTERS" when in reality it kinda seems that way at first but man so cool, like tartarus is such a cool character, man such an awesome series.