: I honestly think that's all I would cut out. You gotta leave enough in so the
: emotion of the scene gets through. I think this shifts the focus a bit
: more to the chief and what he's feeling, and also makes the 'you don't
: talk much do you?" line slightly more humorous.

: I wish I had proper shots of the chief to insert so we aren't on Laskey for
: so long, but I have what I have.

: I watched this in context of the entire rest of the ending, and I don't
: really miss Laskey talking about Earth. Some folks might. Just an
: experiment.

See that's interesting... the cut does seem to lose a bit of the grander scale of the narrative and really focus on the chief and his inner conflict about Cortana, only collaterally connecting to humanity. The 2nd cut feels more like a partial or between-level cutscene rather than a final scene.
It's definitely less wordy :P But I think I prefer the previous one with just Chief's last line left out.

And on the matter of the chief no longer having the literal last word, I think that's actually a good thing - we know the Chief doesn't/didn't talk too much, and being the character that we the players play, having him actually be the last -visible- character, in a very thoughtful composition, it does give him the last word - whatever we're thinking :).