Awh, look at you, being all cute by resorting to [i]ad hominem[/i] attacks and assumptions about my character. :) [quote]Sorry mate, but knowing everything there is to know is pretty shitty. We knew what the covenant was doing, and that we had to stop them, that was the focus of the story, and that's what we knew, get over it.[/quote] Oh yes, it's [i]really[/i] shitty when writers stick to Storytelling 101, isn't it? How is the player supposed to care (let alone see the series as anything less than generic sci-fi) when they don't even know why your main antagonist is attacking you? It worked with the Reapers in Mass Effect 1 because they were a race of godlike machines with goals and reasoning beyond the comprehension of simple organic minds, but it does not work with the Covenant - especially when they're humanised in Halo 2 and 3. You're making dickish statements about [i]my[/i] intelligence, yet you're utterly disregarding a vital aspect of the story as being unimportant and saying "get over it", being content with mediocrity over detailed storytelling... Bro, the reason for the Covenant attacking humanity is central to the whole connection between the Forerunners and humanity (a connection which gets gratuitously explored and is still being explored), it's part of why the Covenant fragments in Halo 2, those are 2 critical things in the Halo lore and the games do nothing to explain or even mention what could be summed up in a few sentences. [quote]You seem to think that some bullshit about 343's "vision" is why the novel's were well written, of course, nothing to do with the author of the novel's. It is clearly the genius of the writer's that causes the didact to come off as a shoddy villain.[/quote] Yes, because I clearly said "343 gets all the credit, screw Greg Bear", didn't I? Oh wait, I didn't and you're putting words in my mouth again. -_- [quote]How the -blam!- do you think it makes sense for a character to be poorly presented by the same people who you claim are responsible for him being a good character?[/quote] This is a remarkably easy concept to understand... 1) 343 and Greg Bear come together to discuss the Forerunner Saga. 2) 343 says "here's this character, here's how we want his story to progress". 3) Greg Bear says "sure, I can write that" and goes off to do so. 4) Greg and 343 meet up often over the course of 3 years for various sessions outlining, detailing, discussing and writing the different parts of the Forerunner Saga - as Bear has been implicit in mentioning the support he had from 343 in writing the novels. 5) 343 is making Halo 4, the Forerunner Saga hasn't been finished, constraints occur, they don't want to spoil Silentium, they have Terminals which can't be accessed in-game, the campaign isn't long enough to accommodate a full exploration of the Ur-Didact's character - his presentation in the game is incomplete from what they set out to do in the Forerunner Saga. I don't really see how any of that was unclear, Josh Holmes spent a fair amount of time at the GDC panel talking about why they didn't do a good job with the Ur-Didact's character in the game and so, because of the reasons I detailed above, he was portrayed poorly in the game and came off as a shoddy villain, but the direction they wanted his character to go in, his journey through the Forerunner Saga and Greg Bear's writing made him (as I said) "one of the most fascinating, well-rounded characters in the series".