Friendly AI Conversations+ Humor+Dialogue

Games Other Halo
1

In my opinion, Halo 2 had the best dialogue for any Halo game, scripted, or non-scripted. There are countless quotes from Truth, Cortana, Chief, Johnson, the Gravemind, and even your neighborhood marines.

Something I missed from Halo 2 was the their were random AI conversations, which were funny.

No, not like tank beats everything, which plays every time you play the Ark, I am talking about random, non scripted dialogue.

I cared about the AI in Halo 2 more than any other Halo game, because they were human.

For example, if an AI cracks a joke about how ugly the aliens are, the other guy would congratulate him.

“Hey, take off your mask, you can’t be that ugly?!”
“Yehahaha, good one amigo”

Or, when an Elite dies, there is a random chance of this happening.

Elite walks up to dead body
“He is no more”

or when you get a headshot
“Nice one”
“Hey, you might be as good as me one day!”

or when a marine chucks a grenade
“Hey, fella, catch!”

And this was random, non scripted dialogue.

In short, one of the best ways to make people care about AI is to make them more human. Random dialogue is a great way to do this.

Although other Halo games had this, I felt that the marines weren’t actually communicating with each other or me as much, but just shouting random retorts.

2

Random dialogue is good, and a few jokes can help take the edge off. There is such a thing as too many jokes though.

“This reminds me of the time I got -Yoink!-.”

That’s from Halo 2. It’s utterly pointless and has a negative effect on my Campaign experience.

3

Ah H2, the second time a Halo campaign felt open world (last time being ODST, first time being CE).

H3 and Reach = over the top scripting

H3: AI get killed off… by the game.

H3: No longer can we save vehicles and AI from their deaths.

In H2, I could rescue that scorpion and it’s pilot on Metropolis from the Scarab. But in H3, the hog on Crow’s Nest is impossible to save because the driver’s death also causes the hog’s destruction. There’s also that hog on Tsavo Highway that gets plowed into by the Chopper. I launch myself to the top using a hog and what do I find? Invisible barriers. There’s also that marine getting beat up by the Brute captain in the barracks on Crow’s Nest. The others can be saved. This one always dies. And let’s not forget the 2 Phantoms at the end of S117.

H3: You have to kill all the tower enemies to be able to deactivate the barrier. You have to kill all the citadel enemies to start the light bridge. How the heck are their deaths connected to activation panel functioning?

Reach: Noble Team lose their AI when they go to their positions, even when there’s an enemy nearby.

Reach: Falcon rides. The worst part of this is when you can be killed during it.

Reach: Falcon hijacked. I can’t believe they actually allow vehicles that are essential to the mission to be hijacked!!

4

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I tried so hard to save those 'hogs back in the day before I gave up and just let it run it’s course…

Some less set piece scripting with unsavable things would be quite nice, if for no other reason than purely for the funzies (like that one and only troop 'hog in Reach). On the topic of vehicles, it’d also be nice if flying vehicles were only used as an enemy in future games when it’s possible to take them for my own use instead of having unusable dummy Banshee’s thrown around like chocolate sprinkles in almost every level which I find quite annoying.

As for the OP topic of dialogue, there’s still a lot of cool random stuff in Halo 3. I can’t think of any cool dialogue in Reach off the top of my head though. Probably due to the more serious (and less fun) tone of the game as well as how little you see of marines anyway, and when you do fight alongside them they either die almost instantly or stick to a single section of the level.

5

Lots of times when you melee a grunt: “Swing Batta batta SWING!”

My favourite halo 2 line will always be these two: “Hehe, wow its like a post card! Dear sarge, kickin -Yoink- in outer space, wish you were here.” (Johnsons reply) “I heard that, -Yoink!-.”

“I would have been your daddy, but the dog beat me over the fence!”- Johnson