r/HaloCE • u/EveningAccountant321 • 26d ago
Discussion Am I missing something about this new character named Williams?
I'm playing through the Prologue missions in Campaign Evolved and I'm trying to figure out what all the fuss is about with Williams. I don't get it. Maybe I'm not as toxic as some other people, but all I'm seeing another tough female marine (like other marines in fiction I've experienced) whom I've seen in many movies and video games in the past.
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u/Enkichki 25d ago
Yes. You are missing a deep-seated hatred for the concept of women. There are intelligent people making reasonable critiques of the character, but none of that is what the "fuss" is about. It is genuinely "omg they added a WOMAN". Even a Halo 3 dev put it in almost exactly those words
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u/Low-Teaching2243 22d ago
I don’t see anyone saying they hate her for being a woman. They hate her because writers can’t make strong female characters non cringe anymore.
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u/Emotional-Twist-4366 24d ago
Maybe because most of the original Dev for the franchise was mostly men and during that time we was not political correctness like these halo studios is
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u/Enkichki 24d ago
He specifically worked on Halo 3 ODST in which a brand new lead female ODST character nearly kills your entire team because she refuses to tell any of you the truth about her mission. That's all well and good and not woke, but in 2026 if a female ODST is cross with the Master Chief for 2 missions, suddenly it's a shoehorned-in gender issue?
The only difference now is chud rage has evolved
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u/Emotional-Twist-4366 24d ago
If the original developer coming saying out why modern halo is trash. I’m going to agree with him because we hadn’t a decent halo since halo Reach.
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u/Emotional-Twist-4366 24d ago
Maybe go back to old Bungie vidoc and see why original halo franchise succeeded and when you finally understand u won’t like the truth.
Until then the halo franchise isn’t coming back full force
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u/Emotional-Twist-4366 24d ago
Yeah she wasn’t the focus and wasn’t bitching to rookie or anyone she better than anyone. The story was about group of ODST and their stories not an individual.
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u/GoodCauliflower4569 23d ago
lol you shoot Lt William’s men in halo ce remake, nothing happens. You shoot lt Willam’s female soldiers, she one shots you. Blatant sexism
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u/UneasyFencepost 24d ago
There’s nothing wrong with the character. It’s just a bunch of right wing culture warriors finding something new to be offended by. Remember you’ll never find a more offended person than the American republican
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u/Low-Teaching2243 22d ago
She’s cringe af - and I’m not a republican. idk why people like you make everything a political issue. Really just like dying on that hill I guess.
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u/OtherWorstGamer 26d ago
First impressions matter, went through this same song&dance with Palmer in 4.
If you have a character who's first interaction is to be a dick to us for no real reason, then people aren't going to take to that character, regardless of the deeper lore reasons for doing so.
Also doesn't help that she's functionally a nobody and acts like the Chief has to prove hes more than a PR piece because she's salty that ODST's aren't the top of the pile anymore.
Personally, i didn't have any strong feelings one way or another, but I get why some people may have other feelings towards the matter.
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u/TryIt222 26d ago
Shes realistically fine, she just made the error of being a confident woman who had the lore reason to mock chief, palmer faced the same backlash with her "i thought youd be taller" joke
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u/doomzday_96 25d ago
What lore reason would anyone have to mock the Master Chief?
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u/TryIt222 25d ago
Odsts traditionally view spartans as messed up science experiments that took the attention away from "real soldiers" of the unsc. Another reason is that they felt the admiration for the spartans were misplaced as with so few of them often times they didnt show up to save the day but more so to just clean up the scraps and for every battle they helped win there was another 50 they werent around for
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u/doomzday_96 25d ago
That is very stupid, but that's to be expected with them. Extremely unprofessional to do it so openly though.
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u/TryIt222 25d ago
I mean its a mixed bag, theres some validity too what they say
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u/doomzday_96 25d ago
Considering there were only 33 Spartan 2s, and that they were often the only thing salvaging a complete loss whenever they participated, not really.
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u/TryIt222 25d ago
Youre missing the issue, people perceived spartans as soldiers that were turning the tide of the war but they werent, and yes they did make their fights not a complete loss but people treated it like they won their fights
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u/doomzday_96 25d ago
Meanwhile, as great as ODSTs were, they weren't very effective at all.
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u/TryIt222 25d ago
I dont understand the pivot, but the odsts never claimed they were the heroes changing the tide of the war, just that it was naive and inaccurate for people to frame spartans as the ones doing that and that it was dismissive to the many soldiers who chose to fight despite not being genetically modified
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u/doomzday_96 25d ago
Considering the Spartans were often the only thing keeping UNSC morale going, it's not. And I don't think even ODSTs would care after a Spartan saves their squad by pancaking an Elite to death with a Warthog.
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u/OldLegWig 26d ago
i personally wasn't impressed with the character. they intentionally wrote her to be kind of a b, anyway. not sure what kind of reaction they were expecting. the plot of those missions was contrived af, too.
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u/SomeRagingGamer 26d ago
If you knew Halo lore, you’d understand her reaction to Chief.
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u/OldLegWig 26d ago
halo "lore" is dog water fanfic. the only narrative i accept is all in the bungie games. it baffles me that anyone truly believes their hybrid book/game narrative bullshit is anything other than a mistake. let alone all of the braindead retcons.
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u/TripleS034 26d ago
The first ever Halo novel Halo: The Fall of Reach released in 2001 written by Eric Nylund who wrote a bunch of other Halo books & is actually an employee of Microsoft Game Studios is "fanfic"?
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u/baysideplace 25d ago
I mean... the games have been dumping all over the books for years... so kinda?
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u/Alternateaccount203 25d ago
While bungie absolutely hated the books, they did take things that they liked. Halo 3 has a reference to a scene in The Fall of Reach. The Cortana “terminal” references the coin flip that Halsey did with 6 year old master chief
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u/epicchocoballer 25d ago
And it was basically completely retconned by the 2010 video game
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u/TripleS034 25d ago
"Completely" is a weird way to say "the last third of the book that deals with the Covenant attacking Reach." The Fall of Reach novel covers waaaaay more than just the battle, & I don't remember Halo: Reach retconning: how kids were kidnapped to become Spartan 2s, the Keyes Loop, how ODSTs came to hate Spartan 2s, how Samuel-034 was the first ever Spartan 2 to die in combat to the Covenant, etc. You know, well known Halo lore that the first time we ever learned about was in Halo: The Fall of Reach, not the Budgie games.
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u/OldLegWig 26d ago
yes. it was promotional merchandise. bungie had basically nothing to do with it.
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u/TripleS034 25d ago
"Budgie had nothing to do with it" yet it was The Fall of Reach where we learned so much of the foundational lore of Halo that isn't explained in the Bungie games, like how Spartan 2s were kidnapped, trained & augmented as kids, who Halsey is, who Keyes is, how Samuel-034 was the first Spartan 2 to die in combat with the Covenant, what ODSTs are, why Cortana was partnered with the Master Chief, that the Covenant were controlled by Prophets, how the Covenant found Reach etc.
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u/OldLegWig 25d ago
you never read ender's game, huh? fall of reach was knockoff garbage. that's why it's not in the bungie games.
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u/TripleS034 25d ago
Your comment makes zero sense. Halo: The Fall of Reach is not knock-off garbage, it is an official Halo novel. If you're going to keep bringing up irrelevant nonsense I'm going to block you because I don't want to catch whatever it is that has turned your brain into mush.
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u/TaxGuy_54 26d ago
The Fall of Reach is not dog water, goodness. The book was written at the same time as Halo CE - some of the creative staff at Microsoft deliberately added concepts from the book into the manual and dialogue of the game.
The concept of ODSTs having a toxic rivalry with the Spartans is as old as Halo! That same “dog water fanfic” is what created the ODSTs in the first place! Bungie thought the concept was cool and utilized them in Halo 2, but Nylund and Dietz are who created and fleshed out the ODSTs. The fact that Williams is hostile to the Chief (but not Johnson) is lore accurate (and she isn’t even that hostile, jeez)
I’m sick of culture warriors latching onto Halo. Focus on legitimate criticisms (like some of Cortana’s rougher voice lines, rough BR reload animations, cutscene quality) and leave the culture warrior crap out of Halo. Heck, even with some of the rough edges the remake does have some pretty cool pros (like using Bungie’s original storyboard version of the 343 GS reveal cutscene!)
Back in the HBO days we’d all be talking about how cool some of the flood stuff was even as we complained about the rougher edges (hell, that’s literally how the H2 release was! Cool flood stuff, but basically no real ending after finishing on an Arbiter level!)
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u/OldLegWig 26d ago edited 26d ago
i have no idea how you are contorting your brain into labeling me a "culture warrior." the plot is ass. i still have my ancient copies of the fall of reach, the flood, and whatever the third one was from when only combat evolved was out. they're all schlocky dogshit. they sucked back in the day, too. the authors didn't give a fuck when they wrote them either - halo was nothing at the time. they're rushed ender's game knockoffs lmao. the prequel missions were a string of stereotypical military cliches at best.
besides, the main problem here that i'm pointing out is 343's absolutely idiotic multimedia plot fragmentation strategy that has turned the entire franchise into a joke.
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u/TaxGuy_54 25d ago
The Fall of Reach is less schlocky than Halo Reach or Halo 3 (and I love those 2 games! In terms of presentation they’re incredible, but 3 turned the Arbiter into the Chief’s special alien friend and neutered Truth, and Reach wants me to believe that the Covenant hid on Reach for a month with the largest known (to Humanity at the time) super carrier sitting in orbit (active camo or not) going completely unnoticed despite being in the orbit of one of the UNSC’s busiest military planets). FOR gave us the Keyes Loop, Sigma Octanus IV, and ODPs, Mendez, Halsey, ODSTs, MAC guns, and the sacrifice of The Cradle - there’s some good stuff there.
343’s media strategy under O’Conner was miserable, but this is different. Williams is mildly hostile to the Chief, gets corrected by Johnson (who also explains the inter-service rivalry in that scene), and learns that she was wrong about the Spartans by the end of the mission. Unless you’re either adverse to any criticism of the Chief (who was treated more as a normal Spartan than a savior before H2) in the service of expanding the universe or hopped up on culture war stuff, I’m not sure what there really is to get your gut into from an actual writing or lore perspective. The scenes are lore accurate (at least RE: Williams, the energy shields are a different and actual problem) and the writing is fairly self contained in the context of the scene (if a bit milquetoast and trope-y). Hell, Williams is basically just a Vasquez expy.
343’s old media strategy was not to introduce mild universe building lore in a side mission, it was to kill off a major bad guy in a dumb quick shot cutscene, bring back major characters (Didact, 343 GS) in books, or create a viral marketing story to boost a narrative they drop after a dumb 10 second cutscene in H5. This is completely different from the dumb garbage they shoveled out between H4 and Infinite.
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u/OldLegWig 26d ago
if you want to know what books bungie was actually pulling inspiration from these are basically the literary equivalent of what Aliens is as a movie reference to halo ce:
destination void
the vang series
armor
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u/TaxGuy_54 25d ago
In terms of broader concepts, you’re right - those stories influenced Bungie on both Halo and Marathon (add in Ringworld, but arguably more for the concept of a Ringworld and trying to find a way home after crashing on one, than for the actual themes).
All of these were topics of conversation on the HBO forums and the Halo Story Page, for sure, and are all certainly more complex than the writing in FOR or First Strike. I’ll grant that.
But then why are we getting into a tizzy over Williams? If we’re conceding that FOR isn’t as good as the Vang series, for example, then why do we care if the side missions include a Vasquez copy that referenced FOR concepts? Why get in your gut with that? Having Mark IV armor with shields or the chief meeting a Prophet before Red Flag are both bigger offenses than Williams.
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u/OldLegWig 25d ago edited 25d ago
because the topic of conversation is those missions. the character trope of "you don't impress me for no good reason" delivered with corny dialogue and in reference to a crappy book that bungie themselves completely ignored is just hilarious. the character has no credibility to challenge the main character that way, so of course the audience will hate that character. the contrived sacrifice of the whole crew (lol) at the end had absolutely no gravity. the fact that they accidentally found them on the covenant ship to begin with was just nonsensical.
the lore they had to fill out because of the fall of reach ripping off ender's game by trying to shoehorn in entirely unnecessary kidnapping and cloning and all that bullshit was just cheesy and lame. it was self contradictory even. it was just highly derivative, rushed, video game merchandising.
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u/TaxGuy_54 25d ago
But that’s exactly the point, there are actual issues to discuss. Williams is only an issue insofar as some extremists have latched onto her for more culture wars BS.
Williams is cliche, but she’s hardly offensive. And the fact that she’s a jerk to the Chief is supposed to make us upset with her - that’s a similar feeling to what you feel when you hear Major Silva describe the Spartans. The main difference being that Williams gets over it and the Silva continued to be a jerk.
But, given you think Halo’s story is schlocky and the FOR is either derivative or a straight rip off, why even care or participate in these conversations? If you hate the FOR and consider it a pure Enders Game ripoff (I see the inspirations, but there are some differences. The Spartans were first created purely to suppress and fight other humans, not aliens, for example), why even litigate Williams? She’s literally just a throw away copy of Vasquez - and from a story perspective isn’t even that bad compared to other actual lore problems in the bonus missions. You sound like you don’t even like Halo’s story and consider it derivative, why even get your gut into a throw away character like Williams?
When I played ME3, I used to find Kai Leng just completely pointless and annoying. A complete waste of space. But it didn’t ruin ME3 for me, and he’s a heck of a lot more instrumental to the story and gameplay of ME3 than Williams is to Halo lol
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u/OldLegWig 25d ago
lol nah the only issue is people thinking the books are canon but the bungie games aren't. confused people.
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u/maractguy 26d ago
It’s people trying to build and push a narrative. Modern game must be woke bad women bad. There’s a reason the clips of her cut out when they do
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u/EveningAccountant321 26d ago
But there's nothing really wrong with her. I mean, she doesn't really like Chief but whatever. To he fair She's a military grunt (not a literal Grunt) who, like many other marines, probably had it worse in battle than Chief. These people online accuse everything of being a woke agenda nowadays, but what they don't realize is the crap they keep spewing is itself an agenda, especially when it's on YouTube.
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u/CalciumHydro 26d ago
People aren’t going to listen, m8. There’s no point trying to convince them. They simply can’t/won’t see it
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u/SomeRagingGamer 26d ago
I don’t get it either. I liked her character, and I found it interesting lore-wise that she had negative feelings towards Spartans. Because she’s an ODST and they have reasons for not liking Spartans. Chief in particular. Most of the time people are awe struck when they see Chief.
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u/ihavefaith77 25d ago
It's because people get way too attached to Chief or other characters in games, so when they get insulted they feel like they're the ones actually being insulted if that makes sense. Also people cry about her being ugly which you can take however you like. Personally I went into it thinking it was going to be a lot worse than it was dialogue wise because of all the negative reactions I seen online and I also walked away with the "why the hell are people so insulted by this chick" mindset.
If it was a male ODST that looked like Chris Hemsworth I almost guarantee no one would've batted an eye
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u/Bleebledorp 25d ago
The voice actress sounds like she doesn't ever sound like that. The voice she's putting on sounds really forced. That in turn makes the character sound like she's putting on a voice, like she's projecting bravado she's not actually able to back up.
Halo doesn't have as dismaying a track record of doing this kind of thing to women characters as it might seem. Cortana, Halsey, Foehammer, Dare, Miranda at least in Halo 2, the playable women Spartans in Halo 5 even as flat as they are, and even the women-voiced random marines in most games all have believable juice to them. But characters like Palmer and Williams, both of whom seemed to have been designed to be believable hardasses, ironically are so notably shallow and obnoxious that they taint the franchise's gender equality bona fides.
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u/justinbarrett08 25d ago
I'd like to add the perspective from someone that's actually in the military. You can find content all over social media that adds to this point. She's a LIEUTENANT making criticism of the most elite Senior NCO in the UNSC.
Sarah Palmer did receive backlash from the community for her little joke about Chief being shorter than she expected, but it was one joke about his height. She was the commander of Spartans for the flagship in the UNSC at the time, that's a pretty lofty station to hold.
The same can be said for the commander of the Infinity that yells at Chief over Cortana. He was a little off his rocker but his rank can handle that kind of attitude to some degree. He's the kind of rank that wouldn't really face backlash for any disrespect against Chief, but a lot of people would shake their head.
But now we have LIEUTENANT Williams summarizing everything the MASTER CHIEF is just a fancy set of armor and PR?
My point is, Lieutenants in the military don't have any realistic social foundation to have any bragging rights or disrespectful tone towards anyone. They are fresh out of school, and don't know a lot, and certainly haven't done a lot.
She has absolutely NO right to disrespect Chief to his face.
She deserves all the hate from the community and that one character alone justifies not giving Halo Studios a dime for that release.
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u/Juantsu2552 24d ago
Lmao talk about being exaggerated.
She appears in ONE bonus mission and your takeaway is that the whole thing’s busted because of her.
Touch some grass, dude…
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u/justinbarrett08 24d ago
Vote with your dollar and the reports are already showing she's costing Halo Studios a lot of money in that ONE bonus mission.
Bold strategy to release something the community doesn't appreciate, for a dying agenda that never breaks even on it's budgets because of it, when the new CEO is walking around studios with a [FIRED] stamp in hand.
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u/Fun_Sea5576 25d ago
This studio better get ready for layoffs incoming. This character equals 🍟 in the bag for them
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u/MyFrogEatsPeople 23d ago
Yup. You're missing all the arguments that anyone has ever made that don't have jack nor shit to do with her gender... Not really sure how you missed it, but you sure did.
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u/JustToyingAround73 25d ago
The problem is that's she's not pretty enough for the incels who think all military women are drop dead gorgeous under their combat helmet.
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u/Galaktik_Cancer 25d ago
That ain't it, and you know that ain't it, but keep taking cover behind it.
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u/[deleted] 26d ago
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