I don't think he needs one. I had the exact criticism months ago, and I actually thought about how easy it would be to remove it, if someone had the equipment.

Different strokes for different folks and all that, but I have to ask people who like the original better, do you have any doubt about what Master Chief is thinking in Cody's version?

To me, not only are the extra lines unnecessary, they're clumsy. Cortana didn't say what Lasky said. They brought up the same idea, but each expressed it differently. Cortana is contrasting herself to Chief. Lasky is stating that soldiers aren't machines. They weren't echoing each other verbatim so the "she said that to me once" line is clumsy because it's not really true, so they tacked on the extra clumsy clarification "... about being a machine." Gag!

It's not uncommon to find weak writing in a game, but placement counts, too. You really don't want to end your game with it.*

Reminds me a bit of the idiomatic "were it so easy," which was misused (twice!) in Halo 3, which would not have been so bad if it weren't a repeating motif that ended the game.*

*post-credit cutscenes notwithstanding