Fallout: Equestria is a good crossover.
No, I'm not joking. You see, too many crossovers tend to just go "hey, video game character is in Equestria!" Like, there's another Fallout crossover that has the Courier showing up in Equestria. And I'm thinking "wait, the Courier? What build? Is he combat-oriented? If so, what weapons does he specialize in? Diplomatic build? Stealth build? Is it a guy or a girl? What perks did the Courier take? Is he/she gay? I mean, Confirmed Bachelor's a very useful perk for a male Courier. Or is this one of those builds where you max out 100 in every skill? Sounds like it'd make things like conflict kind of hard for the story if the main character can pass every single check. And what faction did this Courier side with, and what karma?"
Fuck, I haven't even read it and I'm already confused.
And there are plenty of these lame crossover things. Halo crossovers happen a lot. I read a pretty bad one that involved an Elite crashing onto Equestria and some other bullshit. It was terrible, and the author bitched at me when I mentioned it in the chat. But I don't feel too bad about it because the author was a wad of snot who spammed penises in the comments section of one of my fics, so he can go fuck himself.
And lots of these fics are kinda like that. I don't really see how you can make them interesting. They just seem to be along the lines of a character being in Equestria because Twilight Sparkle had diarrhea or something. I dunno. Like, I saw one thing that was Frank Horrigan being in Equestria after he dies in Fallout 2. Okay. Why? And why are you throwing in some sort of "reader, make a choice!" thing? Frank Horrigan is a cartoon supervillain. I kinda think an attempt at character development is beyond him.
And apparently there's something with Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2, and I
Okay, maybe that one works. I mean, character-wise or something. I dunno.
I mean, I bitch about Fallout: Equestria a lot, but at least that story made an effort at evoking the setting and stuff without being lazy. The author gave a shit. Had a backstory and everything. And the backstory didn't suck.
I wish more crossover fics were like that. I mean, there's a Warhammer 40k one called "Archives of the Friendquisition" that does that. And that sounds neat. More imaginative than "Here's a spess mareen lol FOR THE EMPRAWR!"
So today's fic is called "Halo & Half-Life: Equestria." Oh boy, it's not a crossover with one video game, it's a crossover with two video games! With the added bonus of it being one series I'm a fan of and another one I don't really care about. What's the blurb?
Sounds stupid. Let's take a look.
So we start with Cortana, that AI helper thingy from the Halo series, being adrift on a ship sending out a distress signal.
So we start with a computer program speaking in code jargon. Speaking in terms that mean absolutely nothing to the audience is a good way to keep them engaged. I mean, Victor05-3-Sierra 117. Means a lot to me. It's like 24601.
So yeah. The ship gets caught in the gravitational force of an unknown planet, I'm assuming it to be Equestria, and is going to crash.
So Cortana wakes up Master Chief from his cryo-sleep and tells him he needs to pull a lever. Seriously? You have enough control over the ship to access the communications and life support systems, but you can't do it yourself? What, is the emergency release manual override ONLY?
Well, it turns out the lever is busted. Great going, ship engineers. Brilliant design on your part. No wonder humanity had so much trouble fighting off fucking grunts.
"We'll make don't worry." Chief reassured her as he grabbed a fully charged Covenant energy sword, a magnum, a battle rifle and as much ammo as he could carry. He ran down the hallway and stuffed five emergency survival kits into a duffel bag he found, seeing as no one else would need them.
Four problems occur to me.
1. This author does not understand how to punctuate dialogue. For example, after "worry" it should be a comma, not a full stop.
2. "We'll make don't worry"? Seriously? You forgot to type "it"?
3. So you pack a fucking energy sword before the emergency supplies. And isn't one of the shticks in the series you can only carry TWO weapons at a time? I guess that detail isn't very important, but it just occurs to me.
So Master Chief gets into a pod and ejects from the crashing ship.
And then we cut to the end of Half-Life 2. I guess just as the story seems to ignore anything Halo after the third game, so too does this fic ignore episodes one and two. Maybe if this came out before Episode One it wouldn't be so jarring, but Episode Two came out six years ago. And was probably the best game in the series.
"Is it really that time again Mr. Freeman?" G-man, the name Gordon had given the infamous being that stood before him, asked, "You have done an excellent job Mr. Freeman, so excellent in fact that your benefactors have decided to give you another task. This particular task will prove more daunting, so I have been authorized to return your weapons you." On cue Gordon's suit notified him that he had acquired all his previous weapons. G-man continued, "In addition we have modified your so called 'Gravity Gun' to make it's current power level permanent."
The G-Man doesn't have a "blank" expression. His face can, in fact, be quite expressive, just in low-key ways, like when he smirks.
The bizarre thing about the G-Man isn't the way he looks, it's the way he talks - he has a very distinctive voice that emphasizes certain words and syllables that just manages to avoid being completely monotone but is still unsettling in that Uncanny Valley sense. He just doesn't seem right - he looks human, but something about his mannerisms just seems wrong, and his shady activities and unclear motives just add to the mystery.
Note that the narration says nothing about his voice at all. Great way of conveying the character.
Also, as Gordon continued his decedent? What, is he dying?
And what? All of his weapons? You mean you're gonna give him his crowbar, pistol, magnum revolver, submachine gun with the grenade launcher attached, pulse rifle with vaporizes-people ammo, shotgun, crossbow that shoots red-hot rebar, laser-guided rocket launcher, pherapod that allows him to command an army of big bug monsters, and the thing that lets him clobber people with toilets, AND you give him the supercharged version of said thing that allows him to completely roflstomp an army?
And that's just from Half-Life 2. Does this all previous weapons thing include the stuff from the first game? The gauss gun and the gluon gun? Does he get a complimentary bag of snarks as well?
And I like how he gets the super gravity gun. Y'know, the super-powerful thing you get at the end of the game when the rest of your stuff is taken away?
Because it's not like we need things like conflict or tension or anything. Just give the dude the BFG 9000 at the start of the game and the entire thing can be explosions with nary a sense of pacing.
Also, I guess the purple Vortigaunts aren't showing up, so Alyx Vance dies in the explosion. How cheery. Gordon doesn't seem all that concerned. But then again, he's a silent protagonist with no personality. Because that works so well in prose.
Say, you know what I'm not seeing a lot of in this ponyfic? Fucking ponies.
Mercifully, the next scene cuts to Twilight Sparkle. She's at Canterlot castle and she goes to talk to Luna, who is looking through a telescope and seeming worried because the Forward Unto Dawn is crashing down.
Luna stared at Twilight blankly before it hit her, (Shrapnel) "Aliens."
Oh boy. Broken homophones (their/there) and no commas. And the fuck is with the "shrapnel" in parentheses? Huh? Did shrapnel hit her? Did a grenade go off next to them?
Author, I'm begging you: Learn how to comma. Please.
And show the ship crashes into Equestria. There's a big explosion, aaaaaand yeah, this is pretty stupid.
The author has two chapters after this prologue up. This'll be fun.
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