Master Chief's dialogue

Games Halo Infinite
1

In the original trilogy, Chief didn’t talk much, and this was obviously for silent protagonist purposes. However, there was still some charm to Chief with his awesome one-liners. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, it mattered.

I personally always saw Chief as his own character, I never saw him as myself or anything like that.

So 343 tried to flesh out Chief’s character a little more, and I think they did a good job with this in Halo 4. But now, with that Infinite trailer I am getting a slight feeling that they might scale back on how much the Chief speaks in the next installment, and go back to the one-liners and silence.

What Chief do you guys prefer, and which version will we see in Infinite? I personally don’t mind either, but classic Chief is my preference.

2

I prefer the halo 4 approach where he talks and they flesh out his character

3

I’m fine either way but I lean towards him talking more like in Halo 4.

4

I think Halo has moved beyond Chief as a “ghost in the shell” as Joseph Staten put it (I’m pretty sure he said it in an old interview). That fit well with the story-telling of the original trilogy. But 343 made some positive steps with H4 where they developed the Chief more as a character. He had a lot more character development in the extended universe, so I like that 343 took this approach. H5 kinda took two steps backwards by not only decreasing the Chief’s lines, but also removing all character from them. So I guess I wouldn’t mind an H4 approach. There’s a lot more room for Chief to have more meaningful dialogue, so long as it isn’t as bland as the dialogue we saw in H5.

5

I like classic Chief more. I appreciate the character development in 4, but when I heard “status report” in the trailer I realized I’d been waiting for that classic Chief back. It just felt so much like Halo to me after so long and that was a great feeling.

6

I want the classic Chief back

7

To me, Classic Chief wasn’t ever a complete void of character for players to self-insert themselves into the game by. The fact that he was a largely silent protagonist did lend itself to his character being very non-distractive so players could enjoy the world and story without feeling ill at ease with the role they occupied in it.

Chief in the original Halo games was a strong, silent type who personified the mantra that actions speak louder than words. He was effecient in all attributes, using as little as possible to accomplish tremendous things. To me, that applied in equal measure to his bullets and his words. He talked when he needed to, as much as he needed to, and that was all. Exceeding that wasn’t necessary, so to his logic, there was no purpose to it.

I know the earlier Halo books characterize this to an extent as inhuman machine-level behavior, and Halo 4 leans heavily into the idea that Chief has been repressing his human nature for his entire life since he was abducted as a child for the SPARTAN program. But to me, it never seemed all that inhuman. In Halo 1 and 3, He came across as eminently pragmatic and brutally effecient, but not robotic. In Halo 2, he actually demonstrated personality even beyond that point (“Giving the Covenant back their bomb,” “Sir, Finishing this Fight,” “I’d rather not piss this thing off”, and my personal favorite by far, “Boo!”). Even in CE and 3, he had moments that seemed very human (“Don’t get any funny ideas,” and, “Thought I’d try shooting my way out. Mix things up a little,” come to mind.)

That’s why I’ve always had a problem with some storytellers for Halo taking it as read that Chief’s been in this neverending gridlock internally between his human impulses and emotions and his SPARTAN sensibilities. To me, he demonstrated multiple times throughout the original trilogy that he didn’t feel ill at ease with himself and the balance between the two that he embodied.

8

I hope they’ll keep along the lines of Halo 4/5 where we can learn a lot more about his character and mental/emotional state that’s so well hidden in the past

9

I’ll always prefer the Halo 4 Chief over the OG Chief. He was never a self-insert character, so he always came off as rather shallow: Quippy badass is his defining (and only) feature in the OG, and I enjoyed it, but it at the same time it left me wanting more.

What’s ironic is that in Halo 2, the alien protagonist is more human than the other human protagonist in the story. I resonated and was more engrossed with Arbiter’s side of the story (though I preferred the Chief missions) because the playable character actually had characteristics that were entertaining past just ‘that’s was a good one-liner!’

Chief doesn’t need to be chatter box, and I think people exaggerate his talkativeness in Halo 4. He talks when it’s needed, and I think that’s the way it should be.

10

They might in some way continue the story-arc of Chief re-discovering his humanity via his interactions with the pelican pilot since he’s been confirmed to be an actual character in Infinite.

(Also I’m pretty sure I know MTN jew soda from matchmaking on MCC! How ya doing?)

11

It was better before Halo 4 as almost everything :slight_smile:

12

Personally, while I’m ok with the old Chief, I think they did amazing in Halo 4 with showing just how human he can be. He’s had his funny moments in the past, but I think Halo 4 really nailed it on the head with character development. Because funny one liners may be hilarious, especially coming from the Chief; but that’s not character development. That’s just some funny lines someone thought would sound hilarious coming from someone who’s normally silent as a lamb.

The thing about it is that most of the funny things he says, while not feeling completely out of place, do kind of feel like someone just wanted to break up the monotony of seriousness and silence coming from the main protagonist. Chief was a very serious, by the books character most of the time in the earlier Halo games; his motives were driven by protocol and his own determination. But we see as Halo continues on, Chief stops really playing by the rules and begins to make his own decisions. That’s not at all what he was taught growing up as a Spartan-II.

Halo: CE - extremely quiet, had maybe a few lines of dialogue
Deaths - many Marines, several ODST’s, Captain Jacob Keyes
Problem - Flood attempting to leave Halo Ring after the Covenant fail to activate it
Solution - detonate PoA’s reactor by destabilizing it making it go critical

Halo 2 - somewhat quiet, has some more humor, is barely hesitant to leave Cortana behind despite the protocol of leaving behind anything that could compromise humanity
Deaths - inconsequential as they were all Covenant (Mercy, Regret, Tartarus, Heretic leader (ex-Covenant)) along with the Marines and ODST’s deployed with us
Problem - Covenant were attempting to activate Halo and Truth was leading an assault on Earth
Solution - Arbiter, Johnson, and Miranda Keyes went after Tartarus while Chief escaped on the Dreadnought to try and stop Truth

Halo 3 - roughly the same as Halo 2, but driven by his duties, however, he abandons all protocol in favor of going after Cortana. Risking everything for her; true enough, she had the Index from 04-A to set off 04-B to stop the Ark from releasing a replacement and slowing the progression of the Flood. He could have singlehandedly doomed humanity with such actions.
Death - Sgt. Johnson, Miranda Keyes, and most of the UNSC and Sangheili forces deployed with us
Problem - the Covenant are trying to set off all of the Rings at once while the Flood are trying to destroy them and take over the Galaxy
Solution - kill the Prophet of Truth, ending the Covenant and then set off 04-B prematurely so it damages the Forge on the Ark

Chief’s personality was very slow to develop under these circumstances and so it was nice to see it take the steps forward it really needed in 4.

The reason i added the Problem, Deaths, and Solutions is because some times each of those had an impact on the slight progression we saw in the next game. Losing people close to him was a driving factor in his behavior I feel. The Problems and Solutions may have also changed how he looked at things when trying to stop the fall of humanity. (but that’s all speculation on my part)