I really like how the campaign demo features a quiet Chief. The setting is right, as he seemingly has no paired AI or any way to communicate with the pilot. With that being said, however, I don’t think 343 should abandon Chief talking in gameplay entirely. Should he stay silent during all gunfights and intense moments? Absolutely, in my opinion. But if the pilot acts like Foehammer at some point and drops off supplies, I don’t see any harm in hearing Chief thank him. When he runs into a squad of surviving marines, he might ask them what their situation is. A few scattered stoic lines wouldn’t seem very immersion-breaking.
I don’t have a problem with the chief of 4 and 5 (Well beyond the needless awol thing). The demo didn’t really provide opportunity for him to talk anyway. I don’t want him to keep having to re-assure pilot man he isn’t going to die every 5 minutes, and he’s not one to go “aha i killed something” when he kills something. Similarly, he doesn’t talk to enemies who are just trying to intimidate him. The only enemy he’s really spoken to is Cortana I think, and well, that’s more personal than some alien megalomaniac.
Short, professional conversations with marines I can see. He does outrank most of them and is a living legend. It’ll help avoid feeling like an ‘errand boy’ that often happens in these sandbox games.
As long as he stays a blank slate I don’t really mind. I prefer the chief of very few words.
I feel like Chief should only talk during cutscenes. It makes the player feel like he is the Master Chief
I agree. So far with the cutscenes we’ve seen I think Chief is perfect. Hope gameplay feels the same.
Chief was quiet in the original games to help with immersion. In the words of Marty O’Donnell, “Chief was too “talky” in Halo 4”. I totally agree.
I think he needs to interact with others whenever possible and express his thoughts and give his perspective about the situation at the moment. But he really doesn’t need to talk to himself, that’s something we never seen and it should keep it that way. In Halo 5 is super annoying whenever someone starts a conversation with Chief he is evasive and shuts down the conversation when it was an opportunity to expand on his character, on the story and on his relationship with others. Chief from Halo 4 for me is just right.
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> Chief was quiet in the original games to help with immersion. In the words of Marty O’Donnell, “Chief was too “talky” in Halo 4”. I totally agree.
Never honestly felt immersed as the Chief. I always knew he was his own character and him just not saying anything always felt off, especially if it felt like he could have answered Cortana. Him acting the same way in 4 just wouldn’t have worked. It’s him and Cortana for most of the game, no support from other characters. Cortana going through her rampant moments and Chief being stone silent without any reaction would be narrative whiplash.
Marty’s good with music, but I’d say he’s off-base here narratively.
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> > 2533274866906624;6:
> > Chief was quiet in the original games to help with immersion. In the words of Marty O’Donnell, “Chief was too “talky” in Halo 4”. I totally agree.
>
> Never honestly felt immersed as the Chief. I always knew he was his own character and him just not saying anything always felt off, especially if it felt like he could have answered Cortana. Him acting the same way in 4 just wouldn’t have worked. It’s him and Cortana for most of the game, no support from other characters. Cortana going through her rampant moments and Chief being stone silent without any reaction would be narrative whiplash.
>
> Marty’s good with music, but I’d say he’s off-base here narratively.
iirc, one of the og writers said they’d intended for Chief to be a blank slate too. Whether it succeeded or failed in making the game more immersive is up to each individual player, but I 100% agree there were some signs of a character during the original trilogy. Him taking a minute to mourn Miranda Keyes with Johnson before deactivating the rings is one such moment that stood out to me. The entire galaxy is about to be wiped of all sentient life, but he’s just in total shock that one of his friends has died. He’s also got a sharp wit a lot of the time, which I imagine was just to fit into the “wow, he’s so cool” aspect of the character. But I can’t even imagine a silent H4 Chief. That would have been one painful game to play.
Honestly chief in halo CE is also fairly talkative, there’s a certain banter with cortana there just isnt in 2 and 3. He also has the argument over activating halo, something thats hard to imagine in other games.
Halo 2 he’s pretty quiet because he really had no role in the plot beyond being the human. 2’s story is very much the arbiter’s, chief just cases prophets all games, and the one he kills doesn’t mean much because Truth was already having brutes slaughter elites according to ODST. 3 he has a bit of a spat with spark, but is otherwise pretty quiet, mostly because his personal plot has more to do with mind visions…which are not something you want to go talking to people about.
> 2533274812652989;8:
> > 2533274866906624;6:
> > Chief was quiet in the original games to help with immersion. In the words of Marty O’Donnell, “Chief was too “talky” in Halo 4”. I totally agree.
>
> Never honestly felt immersed as the Chief.
Neither did I.
I’ve struggled to understand Bungie’s philosophy regarding Chief as self-insert while simultaneously being his own character. That’s why I don’t have an issue with Chief talking during gameplay (as long as it makes sense), because it’s simply an extension of his character. This dissonance of where he’ll exhibit his own personality, behavior and mannerisms in trailers and cutscenes then do a heel-turn during gameplay and become a mute is jarring rather than immersive to me because it’s like… what’s the point? Nothing is done to allow the player to be creative with him; he’s just a void until the next cutscene is triggered. With no player agency over the character, the mute-during-gameply just seems shallow to me.
CE-H3 set a very solid precedent for Chief being a pristine embodiment of the archetypal “Strong, silent type.”
Novels set before the events of these games have John talking more, and obviously Halo 4-5 deliver a more talkative Chief as well. But the vast, vast majority of players were introduced to Chief in the original Bungie games, and developed their first and prevailing impression of him as a minimally verbose, mission-oriented supersoldier.
I’ve always had a pretty big problem with people saying that he “wasn’t really a character,” in CE-H3. He was very distinctly a character-- not a particularly dynamic or nuanced character, granted, but a very well defined, static and solid character who could best be described as someone who doesn’t care for chatting and prefers to get -Yoink!- done. He’s easy to inhabit for many players because these attributes don’t actively contradict most of our personal criteria for immersion. Despite him having extremely minimal development across the games, he works as a protagonist and a vessel for the player on these grounds.
Chief is a constant in the Bungie games; it’s through his stoic and static personality that we can best see the development of other more dynamic characters like Arbiter, Cortana, Keyes, Spark, Johnson, etc. The games aren’t lesser for John being a simple, undyingly reliable character. He’s the one who does.
Infinite needs to recapture some of the magic of Chief being a sounding board for the game’s other characters. Let him be the strong, silent constant that gives us all a barometer for the more dynamic and developing characters around him. Doing this isn’t making him a non-character, and it’s not a disservice to his character. It’s utilizing him as a strong and solid static presence in the narrative, which is arguably where he’s demonstrably been used the best in the past.
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> > 2533274812652989;8:
> > > 2533274866906624;6:
> > > Chief was quiet in the original games to help with immersion. In the words of Marty O’Donnell, “Chief was too “talky” in Halo 4”. I totally agree.
> >
> > Never honestly felt immersed as the Chief.
>
> Neither did I.
>
> I’ve struggled to understand Bungie’s philosophy regarding Chief as self-insert while simultaneously being his own character. That’s why I don’t have an issue with Chief talking during gameplay (as long as it makes sense), because it’s simply an extension of his character. This dissonance of where he’ll exhibit his own personality, behavior and mannerisms in trailers and cutscenes then do a heel-turn during gameplay and become a mute is jarring rather than immersive to me because it’s like… what’s the point? Nothing is done to allow the player to be creative with him; he’s just a void until the next cutscene is triggered. With no player agency over the character, the mute-during-gameply just seems shallow to me.
For me, I’ve always thought of Chief as multifaceted. Quiet enough to see yourself as him though the story, but talking just enough to grant the “Clint Eastwood” attitude that I find to be a joy.
> 2535418288909351;1:
> I really like how the campaign demo features a quiet Chief. The setting is right, as he seemingly has no paired AI or any way to communicate with the pilot. With that being said, however, I don’t think 343 should abandon Chief talking in gameplay entirely. Should he stay silent during all gunfights and intense moments? Absolutely, in my opinion. But if the pilot acts like Foehammer at some point and drops off supplies, I don’t see any harm in hearing Chief thank him. When he runs into a squad of surviving marines, he might ask them what their situation is. A few scattered stoic lines wouldn’t seem very immersion-breaking.
I think the 343 should make the Master Chief talk more often, he is not a Machine but a uman
I DR HALSEY I doctor what do you think since you know him better than me?
> 2535406417205447;14:
> > 2535418288909351;1:
> > I really like how the campaign demo features a quiet Chief. The setting is right, as he seemingly has no paired AI or any way to communicate with the pilot. With that being said, however, I don’t think 343 should abandon Chief talking in gameplay entirely. Should he stay silent during all gunfights and intense moments? Absolutely, in my opinion. But if the pilot acts like Foehammer at some point and drops off supplies, I don’t see any harm in hearing Chief thank him. When he runs into a squad of surviving marines, he might ask them what their situation is. A few scattered stoic lines wouldn’t seem very immersion-breaking.
>
> I think the 343 should make the Master Chief talk more often, he is not a Machine but a uman
> I DR HALSEY I doctor what do you think since you know him better than me?
There is certainly precedent for him speaking more than we saw in games like Halo 2. The books have him hold entire prolonged conversations with different folks and he displays various emotions depending on what’s going on. Does he need to be a chatterbox? Absolutely not. The context should dictate how conversational Chief is.
I think what would be good is to allow a lot of his body language to carry meaning paired with sensible dialogue in cutscenes and during gameplay. I still think Chief was probably his most expressive in Combat Evolved just by his body language. That reassuring tap on the shoulder for the scared Marine in the Bubblebee pod? Great. His bewildered expression when Cortana starts panicking about the Covenant releasing the Flood? Great. More moments like that and at the least 4’s level of dialogue would e my ideal.
I get the blank slate mindset, but I just don’t think it’s viable anymore since we have so many interpretations of the character across tons of media.
> 2533274812652989;15:
> > 2535406417205447;14:
> > > 2535418288909351;1:
> > > I really like how the campaign demo features a quiet Chief. The setting is right, as he seemingly has no paired AI or any way to communicate with the pilot. With that being said, however, I don’t think 343 should abandon Chief talking in gameplay entirely. Should he stay silent during all gunfights and intense moments? Absolutely, in my opinion. But if the pilot acts like Foehammer at some point and drops off supplies, I don’t see any harm in hearing Chief thank him. When he runs into a squad of surviving marines, he might ask them what their situation is. A few scattered stoic lines wouldn’t seem very immersion-breaking.
> >
> > I think the 343 should make the Master Chief talk more often, he is not a Machine but a uman
> > I DR HALSEY I doctor what do you think since you know him better than me?
>
> There is certainly precedent for him speaking more than we saw in games like Halo 2. The books have him hold entire prolonged conversations with different folks and he displays various emotions depending on what’s going on. Does he need to be a chatterbox? Absolutely not. The context should dictate how conversational Chief is.
>
> I think what would be good is to allow a lot of his body language to carry meaning paired with sensible dialogue in cutscenes and during gameplay. I still think Chief was probably his most expressive in Combat Evolved just by his body language. That reassuring tap on the shoulder for the scared Marine in the Bubblebee pod? Great. His bewildered expression when Cortana starts panicking about the Covenant releasing the Flood? Great. More moments like that and at the least 4’s level of dialogue would e my ideal.
>
> I get the blank slate mindset, but I just don’t think it’s viable anymore since we have so many interpretations of the character across tons of media.
thank you doctor for the answer, I am waiting for you on Halo Infinite 
Bye Bye From Italy