I don’t know how much I have to stress this fact. I really want to see the Covenant in Halo 5, speak english, I miss all the funny dialogue the Grunts would sputter in their frantic state, and how they would try to act all tough until you actually approached them and they basically peed themselves at the sight of you. I understand that 343 might not be able to get the original voice acters for the Elites, Brutes, and Grunts, but I am to the point now that I don’t care who voices them, as long as we can understand them. I want the IWHBYD skull to actually be useful again. As it stands the skull only works on the marines and they don’t really say anything interesting.
100% with you here. The Halo 4 IWHBYD Skull did absolutely nothing…
Sniff… the Elites didn’t even go ‘Wort wort wort’…
> 100% with you here. The Halo 4 IWHBYD Skull did absolutely nothing…
>
> Sniff… the Elites didn’t even go ‘Wort wort wort’…
Ever since Bungie decided to make the Covenant more “menacing” by forcing them into their native languages, the IWHBYD has never been the same. IIRC it influenced your character’s speech in Firefight - if using characters other than Noble 6, like say Cortana - but other than that it was limited to your AI buddies. Which was useless on a lot of missions. It did though make a sleeping grunt sometimes say “Funny, but I dream in English…” and that was it. 343 apparently decided to continue with Bungie’s flawed wisdom and have the Covenant return to grunts and snarls for Halo 4, which while unfortunate I can understand from an in-universe standpoint. But the Universe Lore shouldn’t always get in the way of gameplay and fun. Leave the Covenant dialect for cutscenes, and let the humorous dialogue and wort wort worts for in-game play yes?
I loved sticking grunts with plasmas because of their high pitched wails and frantic screams, cruel as it may sound, and played with Catch on at all times so they’d stick each other. It was beautiful. Alas, much of that fun died with Reach. Don’t get me wrong, their frantic flailing is still amusing, just not in the same way as Halo 2 and 3.
> > 100% with you here. The Halo 4 IWHBYD Skull did absolutely nothing…
> >
> > Sniff… the Elites didn’t even go ‘Wort wort wort’…
>
> Ever since Bungie decided to make the Covenant more “menacing” by forcing them into their native languages, the IWHBYD has never been the same.
But at the same time the covenant has been more menacing sans English. The issue more so though is that with Reach the audio balance was crap and you couldn’t hear the covenant in most situations over combat and the score. So you lacked any feeling of character or emotion from what easily became nothing more than pixelated DMR targets.
Try sticking an elite in Halo 1 instead.
343 might want to make the Covenant feel more menacing by having them speak their own language, but all they’re doing is making the Covenant less fun to play against. My favorite part of the Halo 3 campaign was that I got to turn on the IWHBYD skull and listen to the dialogue of grunts and brutes. In reach and 4, covenant dialogue has no meaning. It completely sucks out their character. Basically, the covenant are just a bunch of AIs to shoot.
At least we have the Arbiter to look forward to, if anything!
Overall, dialogue in general in Halo 3 was hilarious even without IWHBYD. Does anyone else remember that parts in the mission Crow’s Nest when one marine is standing at a door and there was a marine on the other side, and they were having this ridiculous conversation?
“Let me in!”
“What’s the password?”
“Password?”
“You might be the enemy!”
“But I’m not”
“You might be captured and being held hostage!”
“Let me in please!!”
Or
“Let me in!”
“What’s the password?”
“Password?”
“You might be the enemy!”
“But I’m not”
“You might be captured and being held hostage!”
“Let me in please!!”
“I’m not a brute I promise!”
“Tell that to your brute buddies.”
> > > 100% with you here. The Halo 4 IWHBYD Skull did absolutely nothing…
> > >
> > > Sniff… the Elites didn’t even go ‘Wort wort wort’…
> >
> > Ever since Bungie decided to make the Covenant more “menacing” by forcing them into their native languages, the IWHBYD has never been the same.
>
> But at the same time the covenant has been more menacing sans English. The issue more so though is that with Reach the audio balance was crap and you couldn’t hear the covenant in most situations over combat and the score. So you lacked any feeling of character or emotion from what easily became nothing more than pixelated DMR targets.
>
> Try sticking an elite in Halo 1 instead.
How are they more menacing by speaking gibberish? I don’t get that, the point of the game is to kill them, so I’m going to kill them. They could speak English, Russian, Swahili, or Gibberish and I’m not going to find any to be more threatening. So, why not have them say something I can understand and that could be useful for gameplay and give me the impression that they aren’t targets that wait around for me to kill them by having them talk with each other and/or give orders?
Stick an Elite in Halo CE and they go “Rawr” while shaking their hands in the air like an angry old man. Is that supposed to be threatening?
> > > > 100% with you here. The Halo 4 IWHBYD Skull did absolutely nothing…
> > > >
> > > > Sniff… the Elites didn’t even go ‘Wort wort wort’…
> > >
> > > Ever since Bungie decided to make the Covenant more “menacing” by forcing them into their native languages, the IWHBYD has never been the same.
> >
> > But at the same time the covenant has been more menacing sans English. The issue more so though is that with Reach the audio balance was crap and you couldn’t hear the covenant in most situations over combat and the score. So you lacked any feeling of character or emotion from what easily became nothing more than pixelated DMR targets.
> >
> > Try sticking an elite in Halo 1 instead.
>
> How are they more menacing by speaking gibberish? I don’t get that, the point of the game is to kill them, so I’m going to kill them. They could speak English, Russian, Swahili, or Gibberish and I’m not going to find any to be more threatening. So, why not have them say something I can understand and that could be useful for gameplay and give me the impression that they aren’t targets that wait around for me to kill them by having them talk with each other and/or give orders?
>
> Stick an Elite in Halo CE and they go “Rawr” while shaking their hands in the air like an angry old man. Is that supposed to be threatening?
Actually they don’t go “Rawr” but instead “wort wort wort” and "Blarrrg!
Sometimes they say “Honk” too. But usually just blarg blarg blarg.
> > > > 100% with you here. The Halo 4 IWHBYD Skull did absolutely nothing…
> > > >
> > > > Sniff… the Elites didn’t even go ‘Wort wort wort’…
> > >
> > > Ever since Bungie decided to make the Covenant more “menacing” by forcing them into their native languages, the IWHBYD has never been the same.
> >
> > But at the same time the covenant has been more menacing sans English. The issue more so though is that with Reach the audio balance was crap and you couldn’t hear the covenant in most situations over combat and the score. So you lacked any feeling of character or emotion from what easily became nothing more than pixelated DMR targets.
> >
> > Try sticking an elite in Halo 1 instead.
>
> How are they more menacing by speaking gibberish? I don’t get that, the point of the game is to kill them, so I’m going to kill them. They could speak English, Russian, Swahili, or Gibberish and I’m not going to find any to be more threatening. So, why not have them say something I can understand and that could be useful for gameplay and give me the impression that they aren’t targets that wait around for me to kill them by having them talk with each other and/or give orders?
>
> Stick an Elite in Halo CE and they go “Rawr” while shaking their hands in the air like an angry old man. Is that supposed to be threatening?
How about instead have improved AI to give the impression of an intelligent and coherent force? Then when you can’t understand what they’re communicating with each other it becomes more threatening because you don’t know what’s coming. Then it’s up to your skill and wits instead of them explaining in English what their going to do.
It’s commonplace to be intimidated by the unknown. When an enemy is more understood they are less threatening and even less alien.
In reference to the recent MCC trailer, I’m going to guess that possibly we will see a return to elites and other members of the covenant races that speak a dialect that the language software can pick up to convert to english in the case that Agent Locke is seen speaking to the Arbiter.
My proposal is why not both? Most likely, we will still be fighting the Covenant Remnant, thus for covenant enemies, we can still have the alien feel of the covenant speaking in their dialect and then if any covenant allies are seen, have them speaking english.